Category: International

*Back in March, geopolitical observers were shocked when two prominent Cuban officials, Vice President and Executive Secretary of the Council of Ministers Carlos Lage, 57, and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, 43, were summarily ousted from power. These were not your basic high-ranked officials, but consummate insiders and high-profile, next-generation faces of Cuba’s post-Castro Brothers future.

 

Word was they had been seduced by the “honey of power.” Those euphemistic words belonged to former President Fidel Castro.    

 

Well, it could be a lot more serious than “honey of power” seduction, according to El Nuevo Herald. The Spanish-language sister publication of the Miami Herald reports that Cubans “associated with” Lage and Perez Roque will go on trial next year on charges that could include “espionage and the disclosure of state secrets” involving the Spanish intelligence service.

 

Reportedly, Cuban Prosecutor General Juan Escalona Reguera will personally present the government’s case. The retired army general is considered a quintessential hard-liner.

 

*So much for the principle, at least editorially, of Americans’ freedom to travel to Cuba. The Miami Herald has long been pro embargo — but anti travel-ban. The rationale for the latter has been the consistent belief in the value of “people-to-people contacts.”

 

Except, it now appears, during turbulent economic times.

 

The Herald is now proffering more pragmatic advice to Washington. “The question members of Congress should ask now is whether this is the right time to be opening up all travel to Cuba – in the midst of a recession where tourist meccas from Miami to Las Vegas are hurting with empty hotel rooms.”

*Imagine, China throws a glitzy street party in Beijing’s rebuilt Qianmen shopping district to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the founding of its communist state. Anyone remember Mao jackets?

 

*The first ever summit of South American and African leaders convened recently in Venezuela. Trade, climate change and populist rhetoric was the agenda. Interestingly, they gathered on tourist magnet Margarita Island, far from the maddening crowds – aka “the people.”

Cuba represents signal-sending, low-hanging geopolitical fruit with economic implications for recession-bludgeoned Florida. And yet the Obama Administration hasn’t done much more than undo some George W. Bush Administration restrictions regarding travel and remittances. In fact, the State Department, implausibly enough, recently re-upped Cuba’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism.

 

As a result, many continue to speculate about the Obama Administration’s conservative, incremental approach to Cuba. Is “normalization” even in the mix? The best-case rationale for the go-slow policy is that the Administration doesn’t need yet another distraction diverting attention away from its core priorities. It doesn’t need to hand Rush, Glenn, Sean & Co. ammo about “kissing up to a dictator” and backing off support for democratic reforms.

 

Here’s another take. The Administration, notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, senses that the Cuban regime is near collapse. According to Domingo Amuchastegui, a former Cuban intelligence officer who has been living in Miami since the mid-1990s, “The Obama Administration isn’t really interested in petty, back-and-forth discussions with fading Cuban leaders who have little hope of rescuing the economy and saving the revolution. …This is the real ‘new policy,’” Amuchastegui told the monthly Cuba News, “which some experts are already characterizing as ‘keeping the status quo.’”

Among America’s more high-profile antagonists is Venezuela. But for those looking for signs of encouragement in the strained Washington-Caracas relationship — beyond the Obama Administration’s pragmatic inclination to talk to America’s adversaries — it might lie in the Miss Universe contest.

 

The newly crowned Miss Universe is from Venezuela.  And her predecessor was also from Venezuela. So were four others. Venezuelans lionize good looks. Their beaches are paeans to the T-back. Hey, we can work with these people.

 

They love baseball, including America’s Major Leagues. The Rays even have a prospect compound there. And Caracas, for all of its portentous street crime, is a modern city with enviable light rail and a designated financial district.  

 

It’s a reminder that for all of Hugo Chavez’s blustery rhetoric, rogue populism and oil-skewed, Bolivarian revolution, Venezuela remains a country we should be able to deal with. We have stuff — from cultural excesses to polarized politics to tabloid media — in common besides oil-based economies and political enmity.   

 

We might be imperial “Yankees” on a given day in Venezuela, but that’ll beat anti-Islamic “infidels” any time.

By some merciful, magnanimous stretch, maybe there could be a scintilla of compassion for that terminally cancerous, convicted Lockerbie bomber recently released from a Scottish prison. Maybe. A scintilla, mind you.

 

But the ultimate outrage was the jubilant, flag-waving homecoming that greeted Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in his home country, Libya. Celebrants were bused in to the military airport in Tripoli. It was beyond disgusting and appalling.

 

It was also a reminder of the civilizational divide still separating the West and many Muslim countries. And Libya, it was thought, was someone we could now reason with.

Ever notice how low the bar is set on certain, sensitive subjects, especially those with strong political/cultural overtones? Especially in the Muslim Middle East? Take, for instance, the recent headline-grabbing, (Western) compliment-yielding comments by King Mohammed VI of Morocco. He acknowledged the Holocaust in a speech.

 

Sure, the moderate King must tread softly amid his own Fundamentalists, let alone the greater Islamist cauldron. But getting acclaim for acknowledging history?  It speaks volumes.

Finally.

 

Enough of bending over backwards to be cultural contortionists. Enough of misplaced, colonial guilt and ethno-centrism paranoia. Enough of appeasement in our time.

 

Nicolas Sarkozy has declared the burqa, the face-covering, body-length Islamic shroud for women, formally unwelcome in France. It is, he underscored, a symbol of subservience and, as such, at odds with French values. He is the French President – not the Burqa King – he, in effect, stated.

 

He called women wearing such identity-suppressing garb “prisoners behind a screen.”  He didn’t have to reference the obvious security ramifications.

 

Finally, a Western leader not so tethered to the shibboleths of diversity and inclusion that anything — including that which is patently demeaning — is acceptable. Finally, a leader who doesn’t see common sense as incompatible with legitimate issues of cultural sensitivity. Finally, a person of influence who recognizes outrage – even in a cultural guise.

 

Finally.

How ironically fitting that the first post-election-travesty, scheduled trip for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to Russia for a summit with other regional leaders. In addition to Russia, the gathering included Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. A pseudo-democracy, a nominal democracy, a sham democracy and a non-democracy. And the meeting place? Yekaterinburg. That’s where Czar Nicholas, Alexandra and their five kids were permanently voted out of office by the Bolsheviks.

Remember when you were in college and you learned the term “ethnocentric?”  As in, the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group. The corollary was “don’t be judgmental. Cultures are neither good nor bad. They’re just different and, well, cultural. Don’t judge them by your (usually skewed Western) standards.”

 

And then along came folks who used rattlesnakes in their religious services. Or tribes who engaged in genital mutilation. And, for all too long, anything Taliban. Pick an abomination. Most recently, it was the couple who were executed in southwestern Afghanistan for trying to elope.

 

Ethnocentrism. There’s a reason why it lives on.

It certainly seems an outrage that Roxana Saveri, the journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship, is still jailed in Iran on spying charges. Some observers think she is the victim of internal Iranian politics and will eventually be used as a leverage pawn in Iranian-American relations.

 

President Obama has said he is “gravely concerned” about Saberi’s safety and well being and was confident she wasn’t involved in espionage. Notably not yet commenting officially: CIA director Leon Panetta.