The PM would continue to spend billions, Summit or not, so why can’t the Indians get a piece of the pie like the others, despite their advocate’s poor leadership.

And wow Sarah your government just wasted $2 billion of your money and your response is it wasn’t Indian enough. Classic.

etc etc etc etc

But of course, the OAS has never been much more than a puppet international alliance for the US government to spread its influence through Central and South America and the Caribbean, and the US just so happens to have also had a hand in putting all these previously mentioned dictators and sinister presidents into power. A lot of the coups and fraudulent elections that have slowly disintegrated the fabric of responsible politics in Latin America have been orchestrated in the US, have been funded, have been trained, have been nudged forward and protected by the US.

The problem with Cuba is not that it doesn’t have a traditional democratic electoral system with people putting pieces of paper in boxes so that their pictures can be published around the world and exhibited as part of some sort of “standardized freedom”, the problem is that since the revolution it hasn’t allowed the US to inflict on their sovereignty, it hasn’t allowed the IMF to condemn its future to debt and it hasn’t allowed any other country to undermine their determination to build a different model for a country.

Cuba doesn’t need the OAS to continue building, but the OAS should be ashamed of calling itself a representative model of the continent while keeping them at bay. As long as the US blockade continues, and as long as organizations like the OAS refuse to admit Cuba into their structure, Cuba will remain a country at war. On the defensive. Unable to develop and grow, to bring to fruition the ideas of its revolution.

An electoral process or some political prisoners (both of which can be found in countries all over the world in conditions much more worrisome than in an Island of 10 million) is just not reason enough.

The Prime Minister’s Role
After the Summit of the Americas

Waajihatul Islaamiyyah (The Islamic Front) would like to send a strong warning to Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his administration to ‘make it right’ after the Fifth Summit of the Americas.
This summit ought to be a purging of his heart, mind and soul and should begin with a clean slate on Tuesday April 21st, 2009.
In keeping with the theme “Securing Our Citizens’ Future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability”, the Prime Minister must note that the common factor here is the human lives that make up these 34 states, more so, since the most important resource of any country is its people.

You must take care of the people (or his children as he would put it) but in recent times the citizenry has been treated as bastards.
The time has come where Prime Minister Manning is to step up to the plate as a real leader and deal with the issues affecting the human lives of this twin island state.
This ‘band-aid’ policy is not going to work anymore.

Six hundred million dollars ($600,000,000.00) is a lot of money.
We are giving him (the Prime Minister) the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that social organisations across the region complained that governments have not fulfilled commitments assumed at earlier editions of the summit, on issues such as access to information, freedom of expression, decentralisation and participation by civil society.

The main conclusion is that the majority of the governments have been backsliding; that is, they have taken concrete actions that actually run counter to the commitments signed at previous summits.

Apart from the summit agenda, we have real issues that include:
• Poverty as it relates to preventable maternal mortality and deprivation.
• Adequate health care, food, housing, land acquisition, education, access to clean water, proper roads and unemployment relief as it relates to government policy.
• Human rights as it relates to government operations and behaviour (e.g. to prison life and prison reform).
• Environment as it relates to government projects.
• Public security as it relates to crime, corruption and arbitrary detention.

All these are issues of great human concern.

Any attempt by Prime Minister Manning and/or his administration to shift from these and other related issues would result in no other choice but for him and/or his administration to suffer the consequences… which would in turn hamper the health of this dying democracy.

Umar Abdullah
Leader
Waajihatul Islaamiyyah
(The Islamic Front)

1-868-787-0765

For Immediate Release
14th April 2009

Once Cuba move towards Democracy then becoming a member is inevitable. Unless, of course, the OAS changes its mind about democracy.

The problem with all the media coverage of the summit going to Chávez/Obama is not only that it takes away from talking about all the other leaders and issues of Latin America, to me the bigger issue is how easy it becomes to dismiss the argument for Cuba in the OAS once it’s championed by a leader that has been so widely demonized. Disagreeing with Chávez shouldn’t be reason enough to disqualify his arguments or overlook causes like Cuba, where it’s clear that a majority of Latin American leaders agree. While the Latin American press celebrates this agreement and discusses the different nuances to Cuba’s cause (instead of just calling them communists and/or bringing up the fact that they have political prisoners and moving on) and the historic importance of this convergence of leaders, all I read and hear in the US is that Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America is a lefty, anti-American book and that the sky should fall down because Chávez and Obama shook hands.

If the mainstream media is going to digest our news so thoroughly and drown any possibility of independent thought or analysis to come from them, it really is up to the bloggers to ask the hard questions and I’m really sorry to say this, but I just don’t think any of the pertinent questions are being asked in this article.