The image of Cindy Sheehan's arrival in Cuba, followed by Medea Benjamin, Tiffany Burns, Adele Welty and Ann Wright, these good, honest Americans who happen to believe in integrity and who happen to get it right, evokes for me so many memories of my own mother, an American woman, tall of stature and of humble heart who lived in Eastern Cuba, the Cuba I left through those very gates of that very Jose Martí International Airport some 49 years ago.
This woman of humble heart and high stature, Cindy Sheehan, who has vowed to pursue an agenda of peace and of holding the Bush administration accountable for their crimes against humanity, and who will not be forced to back down or away from what she believes is right, connects, for me, a universe so much more larger than the one inhabited by George Walker Bush, his parents George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce, and any of his siblings.
It is an infinite universe of right and integrity, of moral correctness, that my mother first taught me about and worked to connect me with. It is the universe of the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls and the Little Princes of St. Exupery's, "only with the heart does one see rightly."
Sheehan's universe is the universe of the unpretentious American for whom the one thing that really matters in life is that of doing the right thing. It is a universe which is or has been populated by people like Janet Reno, by the father of Family Therapy Murray Bowen, M.D., by Socrates, Gandhi, Jesus Christ and a few other souls, whose lives have been a guiding beacon for those in search of truth.
Truth: is the very enemy, at every step of their way, of the Bush Family Evil Empire's quest for power and dominion...and, as the gadfly of truth, Cindy Sheehan, like a modern day Socrates is seen by the Bushes as a mortal enemy to whom they dare do nothing but ignore and then have their minions go out and flame.
Doing the right thing in Sheehan's mind is stopping the occupation of Iraq by the United States, holding George W. Bush and his administration accountable for their High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and to that end she is willing to go wherever the call takes her to spread her message of opposition to said Occupation of Iraq by George W. Bush, and to holding Bush and his administration for the lies and manipulations that took us there and for those lies and manipulations that have kept us there.
It was from my mother, an American of humble heart living in Cuba, from whom I learned that the value of truth can never be measured in pounds, or in gold, but that there is very little which satisfies the heart as much as a heart that walks in union with truth.
It is an image of my mother's final departure from Cuba in 1956 through that very airport, which the photo of Cindy Sheehan's arrival in Cuba brings to mind.
Sheehan's arrival in that Cuban soil and her projected trip to that Eastern Cuban soil that I left so long ago bring to mind so many memories of growing up in one of the most poetic regions of Cuba, amidst the mountains and the Caribbean, in the meeting place of Heaven and Earth.
It is that I find, that from this far away land, her arrival at the Eastern Coast of Cuba opens up for me the floodgates of memories of that very Eastern Coast of Cuba where I was born and lived with my mother until 1956, when I was 13 years old, when we came to my mother's Mississippi home, where she spent the last months of her life, and to which I returned after my Mother's death until March of 1961 when I came back to this land which had, in 1909, given birth to my own mother.
It is that Sheehan's arrival in Cuba takes me to a much unexpected place I have not visited in 49 years and as such I was touched by the picture of her arrival at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.
It is that it is good to see the image of the Good Americans, an image endangered or made extinct throughout the world since George W. Bush took office in 2001, shining, spiritedly, in a land which I left so long ago.
Teresa Simon-Noble is a computer activist for peace. She is a former mental health clinician. A poet and a freelance writer. Her work has been published in several online publications.
Nice article and I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think it's a shame that Cindy Sheehan did not take this opportunity, while protesting the human rights situation in Guantanamo, to also highlight the political repression in Cuba.
True, she would not have been as welcomed by the Cuban government, but it would certainly have been more intellectually honest.
by
ivan hernandez (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 11:52:05 AM
with so many others protesting the repression in Cuba,
with so few protesting the abuses, High Crimes and Misdemeanors of George W. Bush here in this country, and sometimes elsewhere; with the urgent need to bring attention to the need to stop George W. Bush, the Bush Crime Family, the Bush Cabal, and the Neocons from doing more damage to this world than they have already done ...
I am glad that Cindy Sheehan kept her focus on the detainees in Guantanamo and the need to stop George Bush without mixing in the Cuban Repression.
I too thought about putting something about Fidel Castro and the Cuban Repression in the article, but other than to say I left Cuba, I refrained from it, guided by the essence and clarity of what Sheehan went to do in Eastern Cuba.
Then, too, I am sure, that people like the Diaz-Balart Brothers and the Ros-Lehtinen woman would not have appreciated the mixing in of the Cuban Repression with a protest against George W. Bush by Cindy Sheehan.
I am sure that for them Cindy Sheehan is as much an avoid-avoid human being as she is for George W. Bush and the Bush Crime Family.
I think Cindy Sheehan was correct in what she did.
I continue to applaud Sheehan's actions in Cuba, in the United States and wherever else her voice against George W. Bush and the Bush Crime Family takes her.
by
teresa simon-noble (56 articles, 17 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 12:15:14 PM
I have no problem with Cindy going anywhere in the world to air her grievances against her government, but she is being hosted by the Cuban government, and she's turning a blind eye towards that same governments abuses. I simply do not agree with that, and I continue to call her intellectually dishonest in this case.
by
ivan hernandez (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 1:18:37 PM
i, on the other hand, believe that cindy sheehan was FOCUSED
during her trip to Cuba,on her purpose for calling attention to the BUSH CRIMES and THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY -- some of which are being committed on CUBAN SOIL at the GUANTANAMO NAVAL BASE STATION.
I am glad she chose not to mix it up.
Had she done so, the focus would have been FIDEL CASTRO... which was never the purpose of her trip, and which is what you are wanting it to be; since it is not, you are flaming Sheehan, just as I have seen many Bush followers do.
The Diaz-Balart brothers and the Ros-Lehtinen woman make sure focus on FIDEL CASTRO'S Cuban Repression remains focused upon... and apparently so do you.
by
teresa simon-noble (56 articles, 17 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 5:11:24 PM
Cindy was focused on her cause, true. But for goodness sake she was hosted by a government that is orders of magnitude worse than anything the US has ever seen.
She went to a country were human rights are trampled as a matter of course to protest the violations of her own country. Had she at least once mentioned those simple facts I would certainly respect her actions more. As it is I continue to call her intellectually dishonest.
by
ivan hernandez (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 7:53:54 AM
my dear ivan, have i not been civil towards you? i think i
have. However, if you call my identifying the cuban-american agenda, which, by using my article on Cindy Sheehan you are promoting, uncivil, then it is true. I have been uncivil towards your agenda.
On the other hand,you, who are calling for civility, do not seem to be civil towards cindy sheehan as you are demeaning and insulting towards her in your comments.
Nothing that Fidel Castro has done can ever compare to the 600 thousand + innocent iraqi civilians killed by an occupation based on lies, manipulations, and greed for oil.
I repeat, Cindy's focus is on George Bush. Not Fidel Castro.
She was received in Havana, from what I have been able to surmise by a Minister from the Methodist Church there. Not by Raul Castro. Not by Vilma Espin, not by any of the Cuban officials there. Is the Church, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish which works there without protesting the Cuban repression publicly, also intellectually or spiritually dishonest?
I know that, that idea has been promoted by some rabid Cuban Americans here like the Diaz-Balart brothers and the Ros-Lehtinen woman, whose goal is to return Cuba to the Dictatorship of the Right once espoused by their Holy Father Fulgencio Batista y Záldivar, who, by the way, was a bloodier dictator than Fidel Castro has ever been.
Returning to the agenda here in the United States,however, do you not realize that there is no longer any democracy here in these United States due and owing to the many unravelings of the American Constitution by one George W. Bush and by his, You-Are-No-Benito-Juarez, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez?
Do you not realize that Bush is a repressive dictator whose repressive hand has done more to harm this world than Fidel Castro's ever has?
Do you not realize that Cindy Sheehan and any good American first needs to oppose repression here, by the dictator here, before we can oppose repression and dictatorship in any other land by another dictator?
And let me repeat, it was not Fidel Castro, nor his brother Raul, nor Castro's sister-in-law Vilma Espin who went out to the airport to receive Cindy Sheehan.
As far as I have been able to surmise, it was a Minister from the Methodist Church in Havana. And, knowing how much the churches in Cuba must oppose repression, I still don't hear any of them opposing it publicly. Again, is that an act of intellectual, or of spiritual dishonesty? Do you want to call their ministers there intellectually, or spiritually dishonest?
You want to keep it civil!
Then begin by keeping it civil towards Cindy Sheehan whom you continue to berate, minimize and insult.
I am sorry that you have the need to latch on to my article to promote the Cuban-American agenda which is not the focus of my article, nor was it the focus of Cindy Sheehan in her trip to Cuba.
My article was, and continues to be, about how her trip made a reconnection for me with my American mother, and with my life in a land of long ago. It evokes a something that was and no longer is. That should have been sufficient for any sensitive soul to understand without having to bleat out, once again, the many vociferous insensitivities bleated out by so many Cuban Americans against Janet Reno and Bill Clinton, when they, the Cuban Americans wanted to latch on to a six year old boy who desperately needed his father to be able to heal from the loss of his mother and the trauma of a sinking at sea.
What was done to Elian Gonzalez by the Cuban Americans here was abusive and murderous. But, Cuban Americans like to bleat a lot about righteousness. They don't seem to stop and examine their own. I have learned. You, the Cuban Americans have taught me that, just like George Bush has taught Cindy Sheehan that he is not interested in examining his own lies and manipulations or in giving any honest answers to any questions posed to him.
I continue to applaud Cindy Sheehan and, I deplore the fact that your own right wing agenda does not allow you to see that supporting Cindy Sheehan in these steps that she takes now may actually benefit your own cause.
In the meantime. Go ahead.
Flame away if you must.
Be insulting if you must.
You have been whether you can see it, or not, whether you want to admit it or not.
by
teresa simon-noble (56 articles, 17 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 10:40:13 AM
But before I go, please go back and re-read my posts. I have offered what I think is a mild criticism of Cindy, calling her intellectually dishonest is mild in comparison with what others have called her. I stated my reasons for doing so, and moved on.
You have responded by questioning my motives, my background, my agenda, and my associations. Hardly good form. In a debate it helps to debate ideas, not the debaters personality or agenda, once you go in that direction you have crossed over into personal insults, and frankly I just not interested. Consequently
by
ivan hernandez (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 12:11:22 PM
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