----- Original Message ----- From: Sid Shniad Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:42 PM
http://www.blackcommentator.com/229/229_cover_questions_for_obama_fletcher_ed_bd.html Black Comentator May 10, 2007 Questions for Candidate Obama By Bill Fletcher Senator Barack Obama has become a major celebrity, a truth that is now almost a cliche. His campaign has raised massive amounts of funding. He draws large and enthusiastic crowds when he appears. Often described as charismatic, he is more importantly smart and well spoken. Yet before I jump into his campaign, I have a few questions that I first want to share with you and which I hope he will address in the not-too-distant future. There is a way in which I cannot tell who is the real Senator Obama. For one, he has not carved out - at least as of this writing - any cutting edge issues where he is taking the lead and defining the terrain. Second, and to some extent more troubling, he permits people to see and assume in him what they want to see and assume. I have said to many of my friends that this situation reminds me of an episode from the original Star Trek series where there was a creature that appears to the viewer the way the viewer would like to see it. I am, to add to this, very uneasy about some of the Senator's foreign policy pronouncements, particularly with regard to the Middle East. To his credit, he opposed the Iraq invasion and had the courage to say so. Yet over the last year, he has displayed a peculiarly uncritical stance when it comes to Israel and has all-but-ignored the plight of the Palestinians. This past summer, when Israel launched its massive and deadly assault on Lebanon, the Senator was quite vocal in his support. He seemed to miss the Israeli use of illegal cluster bombs and the lies the Israelis offered for their unapologetic destruction of entire Lebanese civilian communities. Further, the Senator seems to ignore the atrocious conditions being faced by the Palestinians who, after all, are occupied by the Israelis in violation of United Nations' resolutions. This occupation is worsening with the creation of what some people describe as the "apartheid wall", and what I simply call the "wall of death," that the Israelis are building as they carve out the land they wish to control in perpetuity. Compounding this odd situation, the Senator seems to want to be a "hawk" when it comes to Iran, describing that country as a threat to Israel and the USA. Here again I remain perplexed. Iran does not have the military capability to hit the USA. There is absolutely no proof of Iran advancing military nuclear ambitions. It is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Everything else is speculation. Israel, on the other hand, has not signed the treaty, possesses nuclear weapons but will not acknowledge that fact, and has assisted apartheid South Africa in developing weapons of mass destruction. India, to use another example, has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has nuclear weapons, has those weapons pointed at Pakistan (which has its own weapons pointed at India), has fought several wars with Pakistan, and yet received nuclear support from President Bush and the US Congress. I cannot find any record of Senator Obama suggesting a tough stand against ei! ther of these countries, irrespective of his particular concerns with the Indian nuclear deal. Perhaps I did not Google long enough??? So, I think we need to understand the Senator's thinking. After having what many observers described as a friendly relationship with Arab Americans over the years, the Senator appears to have yelled, "abandon ship" and jumped into an anti-Palestinian and anti-Iranian lifeboat. The uncritical support for Israel displayed by most US administrations since, at least, the June 1967 Arab/Israeli War has not only cost the USA global credibility but undermined most prospects for peace in the Middle East. The hope for many of us has been the rise of a Presidential candidate committed to seeing the world as it is, and transforming the relationship of the USA from being a global bully into being a global partner. I am not ready to write off the inspiring Senator from the great State of Illinois, but no matter how hard I try, I keep thinking about that creature from Star Trek. ________ BC Editorial Board member Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a long-time labor and international activist and writer. He is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. *** http://www.indypendent.org/?p=1054 The Independent April 26, 2007 Reading, Writing and Red-baiting 4 Local High School Students Who Went on a Controversial Spring Break Trip to Cuba Reveal How They Learned More About Their Own Country Than They Ever Expected By John Tarleton When several Beacon High School students cut themselves on sea urchins while visiting the seashore in Pilar del Rio, Cuba, they went to a nearby government- run health clinic and were treated free of charge and with no bureaucratic hassles - like everyone else who comes through the facility.'All the technicalities we have to deal with here when you are admitted to a hospital - Social Security number, health insurance coverage, etc. - gets disregarded in Cuba,' said Jason, one of roughly a dozen Beacon students who made the trip. 'When you are in pain, they treat you and deal with the other stuff later.' Jason and the other students journeyed to the Communist nation in early April both to study a different society and to compare it to their own. But, ever since they were greeted on their return with a four-hour interrogation by U.S. Customs officials, threats of fines as high as $65,000 per person for breaking U.S. travel laws and a media feeding frenzy led by the New York Post (see below), they say they have learned more than they ever expected about their own country. 'I thought maybe we'd get a little bit of media attention but I definitely didn't think we'd get on the front page,' said Julian. 'I picked up the paper and was like, ˜wow'. I've heard a lot about how the media falsely portrays stuff and is corrupt in many ways. But I never really understood it,' said Andre, who also traveled to Cuba. 'Many aspects of the media aren't just there to distribute information but they have a goal in mind and a lot of the time it's based on what's in the government's best interest, not the people.' 'We have freedom of speech, freedom to travel. Yet, we have these sanctions that stop us,' said Mark, another student who went on the trip. 'If we're fined all this money, it's going to make the United States look bad for something that is so unnecessary.' Speaking with a reporter for the first time since the furor erupted, Jason, Julian, Andre and Mark gathered down the street from their Upper West Side high school after classes let out early on a Friday morning for parent-teacher conferences. They asked that their real names not be used due to legal concerns. The four students emphasized that the trip had been organized independently of the school and that it was unfair to attack Beacon for it. According to the four students, preparation began many weeks in advance of the trip and included regular Wednesday meetings after school at a local church where they read and discussed a wide range of views on Cuba and its government with Nathan Turner, a popular Beacon High history teacher who chaperoned the trip. 'This wasn't a Beacon trip and nothing should have come back to Beacon in anyway. This is on us and on Turner,' Andre said. ARRIVAL IN CUBA Upon arriving in Cuba, the students kept up a busy pace each day visiting schools, clinics, farms and cultural centers and meeting with political, religious and community leaders, while accompanied by a government-provided translator. Though wrapped in a cocoon of relative privilege during their nine-day stay, the students were confident they had seen Cuba from enough different perspectives to gain a strong insight into the country and its people. For Jason, one of his most powerful memories was of Havana's vibrant nightlife. 'Everyone there is such a good dancer. Everyone,' he recalled. 'Even if they are not dancing, you can tell when they are walking down the street. They have complete control of their body.' More than seeing some hot dance steps, the students were struck by their encounter with a society free of most commercialism, where scarce resources are shared equitably and concern for the common good is considered more important than individual greed. 'They are an environmentally aware people,' Jason said. 'They don't waste water or paper or anything! 'You can hitchhike. Everyone picks up each other. It's unheard of to have one person in a car.' 'Here, we're so powerful and have all this money yet we have all these gaps in social class [and] there's all this crime and tension between different races,' Mark noted. 'There, that's not an issue. You're not looked at on how much money you have or your skin color or where you live.' 'We've seen what America does when a hurricane comes. They set up a system for poor Black people to fail,' said Andre, who did volunteer work in New Orleans as a part of an earlier field trip also organized by Turner. 'In Cuba, the moment they find out a hurricane is on the way, they do a mandatory evacuation and get every single person out of the way [and] people will stay in other people's homes. A guy we spoke to had the biggest house in his neighborhood. He had 30 people stay in his house for a week and he had no problem. He fed them until the government supplied emergency food and then the government supplied the resources to rebuild every single home.' As things turned out, memories of their visit was the only thing the students were allowed to bring back into the United States, as customs officials in the Bahamas confiscated all their souvenirs from the trip and took them into a separate room where they were grilled for four hours before being allowed to catch their connecting flight to New York. Restrictions on the rights of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba date back to the early 1960s (see right) and were further tightened in 2004. To the students, the travel ban smacks of the kind of heavy-handed repression that the U.S. government frequently accuses Cuba's leaders of engaging in. And they say they have the full support of their parents as they vow to resist any sanctions that are levied on them. 'It's our First Amendment right to travel,' Mark said. 'Post 9-11, everyone has been paranoid and has all these fears of terrorism and I think Cuba should be the last one on their list.' While they brace themselves for possible legal actions, the four students are also grappling with reverse culture shock as they readjust to everyday life. 'It's kind of depressing,' Jason said. 'I just want to tell everyone a better world is possible. But a lot of people don't believe it and because they don't believe it, then it's not possible.' _____________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. 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