Congressional Black Caucus Praise Castro

politico ^

[cycle of discernment]

CBC members praise Castro

By ALEX ISENSTADT | 4/7/09 7:01 PM EDT

CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee and others heaped praise on Castro, calling him warm and receptive during their discussion. Photo: AP

Key members of the Congressional Black Caucus are calling for an end to U.S. prohibition on travel to Cuba, just hours after a meeting with former Cuban president Fidel Castro in Havana.

“The fifty-year embargo just hasn’t worked,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Ca.) told reporters this evening at a Capitol press conference after returning from a congressional delegation visit to Cuba. “The bottom line is that we believe its time to open dialogue with Cuba.”

Lee and others heaped praise on Castro, calling him warm and receptive during their discussion. But the lawmakers disputed Castro's later statement that members of the congressional delegation said American society is still racist.

"It was quite a moment to behold," Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro.

“It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro’s home to be modest and Castro’s wife to be particularly hospitable.

“In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor,” Rush said.

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) said Castro was receptive to President Obama’s message of turning the page in American foreign policy.

"He listened. He said the exact same thing" about turning the page "as President Obama said," said Richardson.

See Also Obama the rationalist Reality hits Obama Express Stevens judge calls for DOJ probe Richardson said Castro knew her name and district. "He looked right into my eyes and he said, 'How can we help? How can we help President Obama?'"

President Obama vowed during the 2008 presidential campaign to loosen the longstanding travel embargo on Cuba, and Lee – who has been pushing for an end to travel and trade restrictions for some time - said now was as good a time as any to change the way the two countries did business.

There is now serious momentum in long-standing efforts to overturn the nearly five decade ban on travel and trade with Cuba. Previous efforts have been blocked by a vocal and influential Cuban American community, and former President Bush's veto threats on legislation to overturn the prohibitions have kept such proposals at bay.

In a statement following the meeting today, Castro said that the delegation had expressed to him that a segment of American society “continues to be racist,” and is at least partly to blame for the travel restrictions.

But the delegation this evening said those remarks were not expressed in the meeting.

“That did not happen,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), told r

[Doogle]

of course

[Parley Baer]

Peas of a pod.

[Bodhi1]

From Wikipedia:

According to anthropologists dispatched by the European Union, racism is systemic and institutional.[2] Blacks are systematically excluded from positions that tourism related jobs, where they could earn tips in hard currencies.[2] According to the EU study, blacks are relegated to poor housing, complained of the longest waits for healthcare, were excluded from managerial positions, received the lowest remittances from relatives abroad, and were five times more likely to be imprisoned.”[2] Enrique Patterson describes race as “social bomb” and says that “If the Cuban government were to permit black Cubans to organize and raise their problems before [authorities] . . . totalitarianism would fall”.[5] Esteban Morales Domínguez, a professor in the University of Havana, says that “The absence of the debate on the racial problem already threatens . . . the revolution’s social project”.[5] Carlos Moore, who has authored extensive on the issue, says that “There is an unstated threat, blacks in Cuba know that whenever you raise race in Cuba, you go to jail. Therefore the struggle in Cuba is different. There cannot be a civil rights movement. You will have instantly 10,000 black people dead”.[5] He says that a new generation of black Cubans are looking at politics in another way.[5] Barack Obama’s victory has raised disturbing questions about the institutional racism in Cuba.[2] The Economist noted “The danger starts with his example: after all, a young, black, progressive politician has no chance of reaching the highest office in Cuba, although a majority of the island’s people are black.”[6] Jorge Luis García Pérez, who was imprisoned and tortured for 17 years, states “The authorities in my country have never tolerated that a black person oppose the regime. During the trial, the color of my skin aggravated the situation. Later when I was mistreated in prison by guards, they always referred to me as being black”.[7]

Useful idiots is too generous a label.

[Not now, Not ever!]

And they are moving there, when?

[Mr. Mojo]

“It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Bobby Rush

An old friend from his Black Panther days, no doubt.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Birds of a feather. I imagine they all experienced a very melancholy moment when someone brought up the fall of the old Soviet Union.

[mylife]

I am shocked! Shocked I tells ya! That the CBC cant see beyond a “Choclate Island”

[mylife]

These FOOLS are so blinded by color that they would sell their Granny out of spite

[popdonnelly]

These very same people have been proclaiming how great Castro’s Cuba is for the last 60 years. If Cuba and Castro are so great, why don’t they go live there? These Democrats are leftist morons who loved communism back in the 1960’s and 70’s.

[popdonnelly]

He’s no friend of mine, and neither is Bobby Rush.

[Frantzie]

CBC did:

1. The Army begged Clinton for M1 and Bradleys for Somalia when he changed the mission. CBC said no tanks will be used against Africans. This is how Blackhawk Down happened. No back up tanks. We eventually had to get a Malaysian tank to help rescue our troops.

2. Backed Fannie and Freddie MEGA MEGA frauds which caused a wipe out to the whole financial system.

[ETL]

Fidel Castro meets with 3 visiting US lawmakers

By WILL WEISSERT
April 7, 2009

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., current head of the 42-member caucus, said at a news conference in Washington after the group's return that lawmakers met for nearly two hours with Fidel Castro and found him "very healthy, very energetic, very clear thinking."

Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who also met Fidel with Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said Castro 'looked directly into our eyes' and asked how Cuba could help Obama in his efforts to change the course of U.S. foreign policy. Richardson said she had the impression that 82-year-old Fidel wants to see changes in U.S.-Cuba relations in his lifetime.

Raul Castro, added Lee, "said everything was on the table." ..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090407/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_us
________________________________________________________

Roland Burris and Rep. Bobby Rush (speaking)
at a Chicago news conference announcing
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of
Burris to the U.S. Senate Dec. 30, 2008.
CBS
________________________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: BOBBY RUSH:

* Democratic Member of Congress

* Member of the radical Progressive Caucus

* In 1968, went AWOL from the U.S. Army

* Co-founder of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party

* In 1969, served six months in jail for an illegal weapons conviction

* Advocates reparations for African Americans

"Bobby Rush has described his involvement with the Black Panthers as part of his maturation process, as a youthful indiscretion that he abandoned immediately after Hampton's death. He described his role mostly as running the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program.

But Bobby Rush served six months in jail for a 1969 illegal weapons conviction and, even after his release, in 1971 his comrades were still describing him as the 'Deputy Minister of Defense' for the Black Panther Party in Illinois. In 1992 the socialist magazine In These Times praised fledgling congressional candidate Rush, writing that he 'has continued to support progressive policies and has never disavowed his Panther past...."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1198
________________________________________________________

From the Maoist Internationist Movement:
[1960s/original] Black Panther Party [BPP] Archives
From the article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS

"On May 1st, May Day [1969], the day of the gigantic Free Huey rally, two of Alioto's top executioners vamped on the brothers from the Brown Community who were attending to their own affairs. These brothers, who are endowed with the revolutionary spirit of the Black Panther Party defended themselves from the racist pig gestapo.

Pig Joseph Brodnik received his just reward with a big hole in the chest. Pig Paul McGoran got his in the mouth which was not quite enough to off him.

The revolutionary brothers escaped the huge swarm of pigs with dogs, mace, tanks and helicopters, proving once again that "the spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology."

To these brothers the revolutionary people of racist America want to say, by your revolutionary deed you are heroes, and that you are always welcome to our camp."

Source: Maoist Internationist Movement
Article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS (May 11, 1969):
http://web.archive.org/web/20041230150623/http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bpp/index.html

[JustaDumbBlonde]

It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that these ignorant negroes would liken Bush to the devil himself, but go to Cuba and play kissey-face with the Castro brothers and talk about what great men that they are. Fidel is the ultimate survivor in the Bobby Rush household. In footage of the meeting, Barbara Lee is gazing at Castro like he was absolutely dreamy while clinging to his every word.

[odin2008]

Are these pictures real? If they are Disney can kiss my as$ and never get another penny from me.

[Syncro]

1. The Army begged Clinton for M1 and Bradleys for Somalia when he changed the mission. CBC said no tanks will be used against Africans. This is how Blackhawk Down happened.

That's a very interesting bit of information.

Traitorous racist bastards.

Clinton as much as them for doing their bidding.

Pandering racist Clinton. Racist against whites.

[Windcatcher]

This is a surpise? Who doesn’t know who the MOST RACIST people in the country are?

[yankeedame]

Met Castro, huh? Where are the pictures? These are politicians, for Pete's sake, there's always pictures.

[proudCArepublican]

I am still waiting for all the actors that said they were moving to Canada when Bush won for President and they are still here so I doubt they will be leaving soon but would enjoy it if they did move!! Like they say you never knew what you had until you lost it. Maybe they would appreciate this country alittle more.

[proudCArepublican]

You had this in your post (I think it was you)
“Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said Castro ‘looked directly into our eyes’ and asked how Cuba could help Obama in his efforts to change the course of U.S. foreign policy. “

Remember Mr Rush.........George W. Bush looked Putti Put in the eyes and look what happened with that.

[wardaddy]

just remember how these critters act is not the fault of the black folks in their districts that vote them in

it’s my fault....wardaddy.. as an unreconstructed white southerner whose ancestors did bad stuff...

i accept full responisbility it goes without saying

a warm multicultural embrace to everyone

[wardaddy]

Bobby Rush is an old buttboy radical pal of POTUS

[Syncro]

Yup

[Titus-Maximus]

Why can’t citizens vote in Cuba?
Why do they imprison journalists?

Cuba | 9.08.2006
Raúl Castro urged to free all independent journalists from jail

Reporters Without Borders called today on Cuba’s acting leader, Raul Castro, to immediately and inconditionally release all the country’s independent journalists who are in prison.

“We are waiting for a gesture of clemency towards the 23 journalists who have been in jail since the crackdown in 2003,” it said. “They are living in dirty cells with contaminated water, are ill-treated and visits to them are restricted. They are not getting proper medical care and the health of most of them is deteriorating each day.

“It is urgent for the new head of government to act. Cuba is the world’s second biggest prison for journalists. Harassment and threats of jail must also stop so the freedom to report and think differently from the government can be restored,” it said.

Hounding of journalists has continued in the week since President Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother because of illness. Ahmed Rodríguez, 21, who works in Havana for the news agency Jovenes sin Censura, was harassed with his family all night long on 4 August by officials and about 60 government activists who surrounded his house, stuck political posters on the walls and stopped family members and others coming or going.

Negotiations were needed for the journalist’s 12-year-old sister to be allowed to go and buy bread. The activists insulted Rodríguez about his work and he angered them by shouting back “Long live human rights!” His sister vomited in fright and his mother became ill.

Independent journalist Alicia Niobis Ortis Salmón, of the Cuban Liberal Party, was arrested by police on 4 August, interrogated by the head of state security, warned to stop working as an independent journalist and told she was being watched and could be prosecuted.

The conditions of detention of some jailed independent journalists have deteriorated, including for Oscar Mario González, of the Grupo de Trabajo agency, who has been held without trial for the past year and is in very bad health, with blood in his urine for several days but still not allowed to see a doctor or take any medicine.

Ricardo González Alfonso, founder of the magazine De Cuba and correspondent for Reporters Without Borders, who has been in jail since March 2003, is weak after an urgent operation to remove an abdominal granuloma caused by an earlier gall-bladder operation botched when surgeons closed the excision wound on the outside but not the inside.

Guillermo Fariñas, head of the Cubanacán Press agency, is near death since a hunger-strike he began on 31 January to obtain Internet access has now had irreversible effects on some of his organs. He has intercostal nephritis and strong pain attacks prevent him from sleeping.

Meanwhile the government released journalist Santiago Albert DuBouchet Hernández, head of the Noticia Habana Press agency, on 5 August at the end of his sentence after a year and seven days in prison. He had been convicted of alleged “resistance” by the people’s court in the southeastern town of Artemisa.

Updates on all the 23 prisoners can be found on the Reporters Without Borders website: www.rsf.org

Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.

© Reporters Without Borders 2006

The Washington Times -www.washingtontimes.com
Artists, writers defend Castro Published May 3, 2003

>From combined dispatches

HAVANA - Singer Harry Belafonte, who recently called Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell a “house slave,” has joined actor Danny Glover
and more than 160 artists and intellectuals to defend Fidel Castro’s
government against criticism over its recent crackdown on dissent.

The group issued a two-paragraph declaration denouncing the war in
Iraq and condemning U.S. “harassment” of Cuba, which it calls a
“pretext for invasion.”

Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez announced the declaration Thursday
at a May Day celebration in Havana, Reuters news agency reported.

It was also signed by Latin American Nobel laureates Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and
South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize
winner.

The two-paragraph declaration is titled: “To the Conscience of the
World.”

“A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of
understanding, debate and mediation among countries,” the declaration
says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.

“At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against
a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against
Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion.”

Mr. Castro’s government has come under unprecedented international
criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to
prison terms of up to 28 years last month and executing three men who
hijacked a ferry in a failed attempt to reach the United States.

Havana has said the crackdown was in response to a U.S. plot to
topple the Castro government after more than four decades of failed
efforts to do so.

Mr. Belafonte has emerged lately as one of Hollywood’s most
fervent critics of the Bush administration by attacking its two most
senior black officials.

He likened Mr. Powell to a “house slave” who curries favor in the
conservative Bush administration “to come into the house of the
master.”

He has also criticized National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
for working for President Bush.

His defense of Mr. Castro’s regime, along with others who signed
the declaration, comes at a time when Cuba’s government is being
criticized by foreign writers and artists.

Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning novelist Jose Saramago, a longtime
supporter of Mr. Castro, wrote last month that, “from now on, Cuba
can follow its own course, and leave me out,” saying Cuba had cheated
his illusions.

At the Thursday rally, Mr. Castro told critics, particularly on
the left, that their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion.

The intellectuals who signed the declaration defending Cuba
apparently agree, though they did not specifically express support
for Mr. Castro’s policies.

The declaration concludes with a call to governments and others to
“uphold the universal principles of national sovereignty, respect for
territorial integrity and self-determination, essential to just and
peaceful co-existence among nations.”

Mr. Gonzalez did not say who originated the declaration but that it
would continue to be circulated among cultural figures around the
world.

While Latin America’s revered left-wing intellectuals are
abandoning Mr. Castro in horror at the recent crackdown on
dissidents, Mr. Garcia Marquez continues to stand by the Cuban
leader, an old friend.

The 1982 Nobel Prize-winning author, whose novel “Autumn of the
Patriarch” has been acclaimed as the classic account of the Caribbean
strongman, refuses to join the likes of Mexican novelist Carlos
Fuentes and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in condemning Mr.
Castro.

The Colombian writer defended himself in Tuesday’s edition of
the daily newspaper El Tiempo after U.S. feminist writer Susan Sontag
told reporters that it was “unpardonable” for him not to have spoken
out over the recent Cuban crackdown.

“I don’t answer unnecessary and provocative questions,” said the
author, whose sympathies for the Cuban revolution go back decades.

Moral support from such respected figures as Mr. Garcia Marquez
is highly valued by a Cuban government whose material resources have
dwindled since the Soviet collapse.

“I myself could not calculate the number of prisoners, dissidents
and conspirators that I have helped, in absolute silence, to emigrate
from Cuba over no less than 20 years,” Mr. Garcia Marquez, 76, said
in his defense.

“As to the death penalty, I don’t have anything to add to what I
have said in private and publicly for as long as I can remember: I’m
against it in any place, for any reason, in any circumstances,” said
Mr. Garcia Marquez who lives in Mexico and Los Angeles.

Mr. Castro in 2002 wrote a glowing review of Mr. Garcia Marquez’s
recently published memoirs.

“In my next reincarnation, I would like to be a writer, and, on top
of that, I’d like to be one like Gabriel Garcia Marquez,” the
communist leader wrote in the Colombian magazine Cambio.

Copyright © 2003 News World Communications, Inc. All rights
reserved.

[Candor7]

The Congressional Black Caucus ( They are all 'Dems" and do not represent Republican Black Americans but they want the public to think they represent ALL black Americans)),is the Center of the Nationalist Socialist ( fascist) Movement of the USA.

Many might scoff at that. But PLEASE.

Edumacate yourselves.

Page 1 of their position paper presented to Zero:

Page2:

See the rest here, make no mistake about it. The Conressional Black Caucus represents a danger to the freedoms of Americans, and it is bent on " historic justice" the calling card of all fascists:

http://www.avoiceonline.org/document.html?idq=urn%3Autlol%3Aavoice.txu-diggs-220-f02-01&exhq=CBC+History&themeq=&wpq=3&pageq=1

[Beckwith]

These Congress critters are also members of the Progressive Caucus:

http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/progressivecaucus.htm

[Joe Boucher]

black caucus members?
Garbage.

[y6162]

““The fifty-year embargo just hasn’t worked,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Ca.)”

I think it worked great. Communist dictators get no MTV.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Correct me if I’m wrong somebody, but I was pretty sure that Cuba was a country in which the governing elite was mostly white?

[Candor7]

Well at least we can round them all up if they are in the same room together.LOL (Have a good Easter weekend Beckwith, Try not to "ham it up" too much!> The most ridiculous aspect of the Black caucus is that they claim to represent all black Americans. They derive a "moral force "from that supposition, characteristic of fascists throughout modern history. Someone needs to put them in line, like we almost did with Jefferson and his bag man activities from African kick back money. Bush called off his AG, a very bad mistake. What a wasted opportunity. It could have handed the election to the Republicans if the whole kick back scheme had been rolled up.