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So really if they are refuee’s than why do they keep their U.S. passports? Wouldn’t you say that if the issue was permanent that they would burn their U.S. passports?
You know brad, You really are the one that dosent get it. This is old news, and I would have to say I REALLY REALLY KNOW ALOT MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC of Paraguay! How ever as many people try to convince themselfs of rumors and properganda than they can spin things out of countrol! But it is very interesting why you would think that the U.S. would even want a base here? I would love to hear your opinion!
I would give you one clue TBA! How ever there will never be a U.S. base here!
” I know a lot of Salvadorians that would vomit to hear that the US was actually what saved El Salvador when they still have relatives that are “missing” and of course others they can only now remember since they’re dead”
Tell me who created the Death Squads? was it the land owners or the peasants? Who did the U.S. back? Who did the communist back? Why did El Salvadorians flea to the U.S. if we were so bad? Today is there Communist parties there and are they in political power?
Wow, brad after reading these web sites you really need to get some better sources! I really mean that because none of this is true. (im not trying to be negative but truthful) This is really a prime example of misguided journalism and spewing out misguided information. Really! Im just appauled!
I’ll stop talking about this but really I can’t beleive that this information is so way off course!!! To me it shows how people need to check their sources before they believe in them..
I like the picture of the runway… it dosent even look like this in real life. Paraguay doesnt even have any large airplanes to land on that strip.
Edited on Nov 10, 2007 19:05
Your one source of information is absolutely NO match for the sources I can cite, or that Ms Aragon can cite, or for the documented historical facts of how the US meddled in those countries. That’s like finding one person in America who still believes, despite information to the contrary, that there were WMDs in Iraq and therefore the war was justified. Just because this person is from El Salvador doesn’t mean she has all the facts, anymore than some Bush supporters here have all the facts.Want to talk about Chile? Maybe Argentina?
How can we know if anything is permanent, aside from death and taxes? Your leap of someone being a refugee to burning their passport is just not sound or critical thinking, Scott.
I believe it’s time to throw a little gasoline on my own fire. This week in Cuba, their international trade fair was held. The US had 100 companies showing there. How can this be? Don’t we have an embargo still in effect, except for food sold on a cash basis. 213 representatives attended. ooops, I thought we couldn’t travel there? Are all these companies selling grain? I’ll also be willing to bet small and medium sized business were well represented….Right. Did anyone happen to see this on the nightly news?
Here’s the link.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/noviembre/mar6/45feriai.htm.
Nov. 6, 2007
The Havana Trade Fair is also being attended by 213 representatives of 100 US companies, as well as four agriculture secretaries from different US states. The US group was led by Nebraska Governor Dave Heinemann.So, what I’m trying to get at is, why do we apparently talk out of both sides of our mouth? Try to tighten restrictions on Cuba, yet obviously get invited, and participate in a trade fair. Could it be only business has access? Are we trying to perform some more nation building? Mixed signals bug me.
I know I’m just trying to stir the pot, but you have to ask yourself, what is going on, and why do you have to read this only in Cuba’s newspaper. What happened to a free press here? Maybe it just wasn’t newsworthy.
There are plenty of things still right in the US, and those things that are left, are seemingly going down the drain daily. We have to vote in responsible leaders, if you can find them in this crop of politicians. And we have to hold the present ones feet to the fire. They are elected to represent us, not just big business or themselves. It is time to stop being a divided country, and pull together for what is right. Our children and future generation deserve a better country.
Greed has taken over in every facet of life. The breakdown of all our institutions, family, economic, and social traditions, are ruining what we have left. At the rate we are going, in one or two generations, we will be nothing of our former nation. Some people would like to see that happen. I do not. Our family has been in this country a little over 100 years. Four generations have lived here, and I would hate to see what my grandchildren will have to look forward to.
If I sound a bit down on the US, it is because I look around and see the situation for what I think it is. If anyone can provide a little ray of sunshine, I would gladly listen.
Now I think I’ll go read a little Jimmy Buffett. Somehow the tropics look good right about now.
I agree with the article Jeff wrote and am still shocked that the american people are so preoccupied with the ringtones for the cell phone that they cant realize that the economic situation in the US is dire. The dollar is dropping like a rock and when countries like China no longer finance our debt because the return on their investment is not worth it then we are in real trouble. The US has changed from the largest producer and creditor to the largest consumer and debter. When we can no longer borrow money, we can no longer consume. All FIAT currencies throughout time have failed. The root of all failing economies is either high taxes or unstable currency. People better wake up. As Scott O mentions, it may be too late.
Ok, you got me, she was a history major in Washington state and went back to El Salvador after their family fled from the country during the war. So now she started up a company giving tours to embassy member in El Salvador.
I don’t think I would trust her as a source either!!!!!
I don’t know, it sounds pretty sound to me, when majority of people becomes a citizen in the U.S. they normally don’t move back to the country they came from.
In that case why would you keep your passport if you were not planning on moving back? One issue is taxes! Do you feel insecure and want to keep your options open?
If that is the case than it must not be that bad in the U.S. its not like Haiti where they burn people alive!
Alfred, did you really buy that the embargo on Cuba was for any legitimate reason? Besides, Castro has found a way to make business dealings with other countries and do you really think that US based companies are going to loose out on that opportunity to make some money? Obviously those companies had no trouble getting permission to “visit” Cuba, but if a US citizen who happens to want to see her family wants to go then she’s restricted to once a year, for a 21 day stay and she can’t take her family to many of the tourist resorts with her!! Heaven forbid ANY US citizen go to Cuba for “pleasure”–it’s literally forbidden according to the current law. Funny, I thought that we had the “right to the pursuit of happiness” by some document that this administration obviously refuses to read or to respect!!!
We went to war with Vietnam, they killed our boys we killed theirs and now we send them TONS of aid and do business with them. The Chinese are more economically, politically and militarily able to challenge the US and by the way Scott B—THEY ARE COMMUNIST– Yet we have NO problems doing business with them. Hell, in the US there are children in commas and dying in hospitals because the US does NOT control the toys coming from and being made in China. Read for yourselves:
http://jackandjillpolitics.blogspot.com/2007/11/toy-contaminated-with-date-rape-drug.html
“NEW YORK (CNN) — U.S. safety officials have recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots bead toys that contain a chemical that has caused some children to vomit and become comatose after swallowing them.Scientists have found the popular toy’s coating contains a chemical that, once metabolized, converts into the toxic “date rape” drug GHB, or gamma-hydroxy butyrate, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson told CNN….”
********Now, either the Chinese are really bad with their chemistry formulas or they have adopted the ruthless formula the US seems to be proposing regarding capitalism. What do you say? Did you know that it wasn’t Darwin the one that coined the term “survival of the fittest” it was a man named Spencer? Did you also know that this adage was actually used to justify ruthless capitalism and Darwin was mortified that his theory of Natural Selection had been so bastardized as to come up with this and to boot–they were giving Darwin credit for the little slogan that he detested?
But getting back to Cubans, now those are REALLY bad communists the Chinese are GOOD communist, we can visit them, do business with them and make all sorts of political alliances with them, we are even allowed to experience “pleasure” in any way we choose there—-Heck, they’ve only been poisoning American children and making US companies filthy rich in the process–NO BIG DEAL!! Casualties of capitalism I guess…well, that “survival of the fittest” and all…..
Ethics is not college course that people have to take, ethics is what people know even in the remotest parts of El Salvador or Guatemala and that governments should have not just in discourse, but in their ACTIONS. BTW, Scott B, some of the most profound lessons I’ve learned were taught to me by people in the countryside of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. When I stayed in the parish of Monsignor Romero in El Salvador (who publicly denounced the death squads which WERE in fact backed up by US money and power)–it was those people that were not formally educated, but were profoundly and bitterly educated by their experience of US meddling in their country that educated me. I agree, life experience trumps book smarts any day and I can quote you times and places throughout Latin America where the US might have directly or found indirect ways to get the jobs done. Can we say the backing of Pinochet and the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, can we say the slaughter of Cubans at Bay of Pigs in the stupidest attempt to overthrow a heavily supported gov’t on that island , that the US just left them there to die or be imprisoned. Did you know that the geniuses from Washington D.C. did not even try to communicate and organize with the existing counter revolutionary movement that was inside the island at the time? The Cubans on the island did not know of the plan and had to hide or exile themselves after the attempt because even though they had not been involved they were being made to pay for it!! My family found themselves eating documents and crashing into Brazilian embassies to stay alive! Can we say the backing of Somosa in Nicaragua or the backing of the Contras when they were just as brutal in their methodologies–not to mention that little ditty of the Iran-Contra shingding?–I guess the Iranians were GOOD to do business with then but NOT now!! Can we ask why Honduras is in such a shambles if our presence has been so strong there? Can we ask ourselves about the people in Chiapas in Mexico have to be so repressed and if anyone in the US listens when one of them is murdered on a bus? Can we say Rigoberta Menchu still having difficulty today living in Guatemala today because of what she has had the NERVE to tell the world and how the US & Guatemalan gov’t officials asked the Nobel Prize committee that she NOT win the prize? The list goes on and on and it’s too sad to depict, but I’m sure you have access to information and can look this stuff up. Try various sources so that your info doesn’t come straight from the State Dept and you will also find much more reliable information. I know people directly related to these instances–real people, not just quoting books to you…But can we also say the millions of displaced people throughout Latin America because stubborn, greedy men without an ounce of compassion decided from their dictatorships and from Washington D.C. that what they offered, no matter how cruel, how inhumane and how counter productive that it was better than HEAVEN’S FORBID another form of gov’t? If you think I’m proposing communism, the answer is a resounding NO, but I do not blind myself to the damage that has been created in Latin America or are we now going to also pretend as some mentally blind folk would have us think that the Holocaust never happened???
When someone is killed because he or she happened to dare to think differently from us, we should mourn not cheer–Life is precious and should never be for sale or at the will of the strongest because there always comes a time (ALWAYS) when the many who are oppressed will turn on the few that have brutalized them and also turn on those that sat idly watching…That’s how revolutions are made…If people are not abused and taken advantage of, then there will never be an extremist group that could get the population behind them–The US has created and supported a million messes around the world and who will be there for us when it’s our turn to face the piper after the disgraceful way we have behaved as a government? We the people of the US have tacitly and some not so tacitly given our government the right to act like lunatics and it’s time we demand sanity and accountability from those we have placed in office!!!
It’s not about given up the passport, it’s about ACTING OUR OUR CITIZENSHIP IN A RESPONSIBLE MANNER! Or are you suggesting that Germans should have just given up their German passports when the Holocaust was taking place and people had actually started fighting back? NO–even those of us that choose to move to find a more peaceful place to raise our families are always going to hope and do whatever is in our power so that the US behaves in accordance with the dignity expressed in its founding documents…
Now you’ve got me laughing, Scott. She’s giving tours to embassy members? And you don’t think she doesn’t have a party line??? I was a history major too. It’s pretty meaningless in the scheme of things. And why did her family flee? In other words they weren’t there when all the sh** was happening, eh?
Scott’s arguments are specious at best, considering his source is spouting State Department propaganda! I’m still chuckling about that. She’s running tours for the embassy — what’s she going to say besides the spiel she’s been programmed to deliver.
As for giving up my passport, why should I? It’s not the only one I have, but just because I’ve moved to another country is no reason for me to destroy it. That’s just a knee-jerk reaction to you being confronted by people who see that the situation in the US has become untenable. For those of us who oppose the war we find a place like Costa Rica embodies our ideals of peace and tranquility.
As for Cuba, the daughter of a dear friend of mine goes there all the time building a cultural bridge between Cuba and the US. You can read about her endeavors here. I am so proud of this young woman whom I have known since she was 4.
http://www.litchfieldcountytimes.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18955404&BRD=2303&PAG=461&dept_id=623528&rfi=6Maravilla, It sounds like wonderful work and there are many people that have been able to build these type of bridges (educational, arts, religious–well, some churches have been fined for actually having fun while in Cuba, but at least they get to go). It’s the families that are severely restricted and told when and how they can see their loved ones, how much money they can send, etc. Restrictions were worse before so I guess I should be grateful, but I’m not. How dare any government tell me if I can meet my grandmother before she dies! As you may have imagined, Cubans throughout the world have found ways to get around these ridiculous restrictions…except of course, if you can only travel from the USA—then you’re stuck begging Washington D.C. for permission and thanking your lucky stars that you can actually get to see your family….
A perfect answer to the question I always wondered about Cuba, Rebeca. The country is 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has never attacked the US, and we can’t go there or trade with them for nearly fifty years. Yet, other communist nations with questionable, and even terrible human rights records, are given most favored nation status or freely traded with. It is not a matter of conscience, it is a matter of money. We can go against our beliefs when money is on the table.
When the vote in the UN comes out as it did, and has for the last fourteen years I believe, and US companies are down in Cuba vying for economic position, you know that the embargo has to be very close to ending. Before you and I can travel there though, the businesses in this country want to set up shop, so they can take a profit off of the inevitable boom in tourism that will follow. I wonder how many hotel companies were there at the trade fair. I can just see the sign now.
El motel seises, dejaremos las luces encendido para usted. (I hope that’s correct, I used Babelfish translator), my Spanish is horrible.It is not fair that travel restrictions from the US for people with families in Cuba are to the point of being inhuman. I can’t see it being in any way, shape, or form, reasonable to punish people by keeping them separated from their loved ones. Again, we have to have a moral conscience, not an economic one. And only then will we truly be able see the value of people’s lives.
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