‘A Visit To Cuba’ By F. Sheikh

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Editors

(Observation of Communism in practice in one of the last bastion of communism. Pictures and poem” Eulogy to the little white shoes” at the end of article)

Our visit to Cuba was different as compared to our visits to other countries-it was very cerebral and filled with discussions among the members of the visiting group as well as with Cuban people, Artists and scholars. It was one of the most enjoyable, rewarding and satisfying trip.

We still has embargo on Cuba. Travels to Cuba are prohibited except annual visits by immediate family members, but Obama Administration has recently allowed cultural and people to people interaction visits to Cuba. Our Visit was arranged by a travel agency who has a USA government license to arrange such visits. The visitors on such trip are required to keep a written daily log of all activities and safe keep such notes for five years for inspection by the US Department of Treasury.

Our group had 27 members which included teachers, school manager, engineer, business- man, physicians, professional photographer, Security Expert and City manager. We flew on a chartered flight from Miami to Cienfuegos; a beautiful southern city of Cuba. We visited nearby city of Trinidad, famous for its beautiful cobblestone streets. After spending about three days in this area we drove to Havana and spent four days in Havana before heading back to Miami.

Our guide was a young lady who was very knowledgeable and fluent in English. She gave historic perspective and elaborated on Castro Revolution, economy, education, health system, rationing, Art, music, culture, housing and government’s role in people’s lives. She was frank in discussion, answering all questions, but still somewhat hedging and vehemently supporting Castro and the Revolution. We visited a clinic where a doctor explained and answered all our questions on Cuban health system. We took a tour of Nursing Home, a closed sugar mill, a Cigar Factory, a Theater, a mall, Liberty square, Art Museum, Art Gallery, artist’s home, Bay of Pigs Museum and Ernest Hemingway’s estate. We visited a music school and Literacy Museum. The Director of the Museum, a teacher and a scholar herself, explained and answered questions on Cuban Education system. We attended a dance studio, took Salsa dance lesson, and attended Choral and Cubic Music performances. Everywhere we went , we were allowed to interact with Cubans and ask any question. In the cigar factory, a worker asked us how much money we make in a day and how you can afford to travel abroad. She was surprised by our answer. In Cuba a physician is the highest paid profession, and earns about $ 60.00/month. The physician frequently has to walk or ride a bicycle to make house calls.

In Havana we were placed in National Hotel, a beautiful hotel where most of the dignitaries stay. In the beautiful backyard of the hotel, there are still old Gun and war trenches of Spanish-Cuban-American War. On the last day of the visit a Cuban scholar and ex-diplomat, held a lecture and Q/A session with our group on US-Cuba relations.

Cuba is a beautiful Island where Ernest Hemingway spent part of his life because of its beauty and bluish green beaches and rivers. Unfortunately it does not possess many natural resources except sugar cane harvest and sugar mills which are gradually dwindling. Cuba depended heavily on subsidiaries from Soviet Union and discounted price oil from Venezuela. Despite limited resources, its communist system provides free health, free housing and free education to all citizens. Every community has a clinic which provides health care to local residents including house calls by doctors. The clinics are staffed by primary care and specialist doctors. Care is free including cosmetic plastic surgery. Cuban doctors practice in many Latin American countries and are source of foreign exchange. Everyone has a ration book and receives monthly ration. As per our guide, about 80 % of all businesses are owned by the State. Private business requires government approval, is difficult to start and is usually limited to small items. All the hotels and restaurants we visited were owned by the State. The internet is very slow and one gets the impression that the country is isolated from the rest of the world and technologically decades backward. The Island has not kept up technologically even its agriculture sector- its main source of income. We saw harvest being cut by hands by machetes.

The communist system has done a great job of providing daily necessities to all citizens at basic survival level, but there is no social upward mobility incentive or avenue. It has great free health care and free education system with very low illiteracy rate-1.5%, as per our guide. But this low illiteracy rate has not translated into either individual or national prosperity. The State does not guarantee a job to everyone, but State is the only major employer which pays meagerly to everyone. Anyone seen with extra wealth has to answer to the local Communist committee to explain source of income. The neighbors keep an eye on each other. The Island has beautiful, mostly Spanish Colonial Era, buildings but they have not been kept up and many are crumbling. It will require millions of dollars to rehabilitate them. The housing is provided by the Government and the buildings are supposed to be maintained by the State, but many are breaking down with missing windows and doors. Recently government allowed the people to maintain their houses and some can even sell and buy the houses/apartments. Many Cuban Americans in Florida are trying to take advantage of this provision, and are buying property through their relatives in Cuba, but Cuban government is considering banning this practice.

The hot topic repeatedly discussed was the impact of US embargo on travel and commerce with Cuba. The American visitors are treated with lot of care, and are repeatedly requested to write to their representatives to lift the embargo. One gets the feeling that Cubans blame embargo as the main source of their problems. It seems partly true because many companies are reluctant to do business with Cuba because they are afraid to run afoul of any American law. If idea of embargo was to force Cuba towards open and democratic society, it has not worked and actually has the opposite effect. In fact, lifting embargo will force Cuba to become more open society and change its ways.

“Is Cuba ready for the day when embargo is lifted and infusion starts of capitalist signs of McDonald, Starbucks, KFC, Wall Mart and Casinos?” asked one of the participants in final discussion session. The speaker, Camilo Garcia Lopez, ex- Cuban diplomat and scholar, took a moment of silence for reflection and said (paraphrasing) “The Cuban society has made a great social progress by providing free health, education and housing to all its citizens, and we are apprehensive and afraid to lose it”. Then he added “we will try to bring changes slowly on our own terms”.

One of our group member wondered, what will happen environmentally to this pristine and unmolested island when the embargo is lifted?. It will be interesting to visit the island few years after the embargo is lifted.

Some pictures and a poem ” Eulogy to the white little shoes”.

View from Hotel Jagua in Cienfuegos

View from hotel in Cienfuegos

Chorus Girls in Cienfuegos . All regular workers and they did an amazing performance.

Chorus Girls in Cienfuegos . All are regular full time workers and they did an amazing performance.

Our Guide, Mrs. Enedis

Restaurant in Trinidad

Pharmacy shelves-mostly empty

Ration Store with few items on shelves

Guide explaining use of Ration Book. One could see and feel the anguish on her face when she was trying to explain.

Hotel maid would leave daily figurine made from towel, and thanks note on bed-hoping for good tip. Hotel in Cienfuegos was five star but equal to our motel 6.

Hotel maid would leave daily figurine, made from towel, and thanks note on bed-hoping for good tip-and it worked. Hotel in Cienfuegos was five star but equal to our motel 6.

Arch of Gate has Arabic Inscription-visible in next photo

Arabic Inscription on one of the arches.

An artist's beautiful carving in old wood

An artist’s amazing carving in old wood

One lane of the road was blocked to dry rice crop on the road. On the open lane buses, horse carriages were passing by.

Rice Crop being dried on one lane of the road

Beautiful cobblestone streets of Trinidad. Not easy to walk on

Local Musicians on foot path of Cobblestone street in Trinidad

A mother and child sitting near the window to get a fresh breeze of air in hot weather of Trinidad

A mother and child sitting near the window to get a fresh breeze in hot weather of Trinidad

A private entrepreneur on a donkey with cigar in mouth charges 50 cents for photo. He has a license to do the business and license is attached to his pocket.

A private entrepreneur, on a donkey with cigar in mouth, charges 50 cents for photo. He has a business license attached to his shirt pocket. Trinidad

Country side

Typical houses but some has missing windows and doors

Bay of Pigs has special attraction for Scuba Divers, This group is from Canada.

Old Era train ride. It started to rain during the ride, and there was no place to hide.

Sugar cane being squeezed for juice. It was very sweet but did not has the flavor of Indo-Pak sugar cane. Same is true about other local fruit.

Bicycle and Horse Carriage is the frequent vehicle of travel in Rural areas. In city buses, Rickshaw, bicycle, horse carriage and cars.

Un-kept beautiful decaying building of Spanish colonial era. Such sights are frequent

Un-kept decaying beautiful building of Spanish colonial era. Such sights are frequent

Hotel Lobby of beautiful National Hotel in Havana. Hotel was equivalent to our 5 stars hotel.

Pictures of Dignitaries in Hallway who stayed in National Hotel Havana in pre and post Revolution period.

Pictures of Dignitaries in Hallway who stayed in National Hotel Havana

Pictures of Dignitaries in Hallway who stayed in National Hotel Havana-pre and post Revolution period

Backyard of National Hotel in Havana

Old Silo for missiles in backyard of National Hotel Havana

Old War trenches of Spanish-Cuban- American war in backyard of National Hotel Havana

Old War trenches of Spanish-Cuban-American war in backyard of National Hotel Havana

Old Gun of Spanish-Cuban-American war in backyard of National Hotel Havana.

Lovers Lane- In the evening young couples come out to stroll along the river bank in Havana

Downtown Havana

A poster for Cuban Cigars

Embargo or no embargo, idea of America is still very attractive. A young lady with American Flag trouser in Havana

In Havana a visit to old private cemetery for rich and famous for its artistic architect. In nearby cemetery for the commons ,the burial is allowed for only two years after which the body is exhumed, incinerated and ashes are placed in a bin nearby; and the burial site is used again for the next burial. It is the current practice and law.

Hemingway’s Apartment in Downtown Havana

Living Room of Hemingway’s Estate

Library in Hemingway’s Estate in Havana

Graves of Four Cats in backyard of Ernest Hemingway’s Estate in Havana

Time for Salsa Dance lesson

One see many times young adults/teens sitting or standing in streets.

Often sight of young adults/teens sitting or standing in streets during day.

On last day of visit all group traveled in American Classic Antique Cars in Havana

On last day of visit, all group traveled in American Classic Antique Convertible Cars in Havana. Front of National Hotel.

A rare treat on last day to ride in American Classic Antique Car in Havana

A special treat on last day to ride in American Classic Convertible Antique Car in Havana

A picture is worth thousands words-joy of riding American Antique Classic Car

Group Photo behind American Classic Antique Car 1954 model

Little White Shoes- subject of a poem on Bay of Pigs war. Poem is below.

The poem has a propaganda flavor , but still beautiful and worth reading. It was frame posted in Bay of Pigs Museum.

Eulogy To The Little White Shoes

I came from the swamp

that has been redeemed

with a story of

the past that seemed

drenched in blood and

tears. If you choose,

hear my sad tale

of the little white shoes.

Nemesia a charcoal

makers’s child

grew up barefoot

in the wild

she dreamed of having

little white shoes.

She knew it was

an impossible dream,

distant as the blue light

that, a celestial bud,

shields us at night

from pain and mud.

One day, something new

…..unexpected—came

to the swamp,

bringing light. Its name;

Revolution,

Fidel Castro’s Sun,

and, with it, changes were begun.

The charcoal makers

and fishermen

founded co-ops

which brought them

unimagined wealth, a dawn of letters, numbers—-everything.

Nemesia began to sing.

No longer barefoot

now she wore

little white shoes

she ‘d hungered for.

On Sunday she was pretty, neat,

with her shoes upon her feet.

But Monday she woke

to the thunder of fear

Furious birds—-

vultures —- flew near

startling and inflicting pain mercenary U.S. planes

Nemesia saw

her mom fall dead;

her little brothers,

wounded, bled.

The hurricane of shots, they say, also blew her shoes away,

She cried in grief,

“ The planes must lose!

They have killed my family

—-and my shoes!”

The monster thought,

“ My bombs will scare

the mothers from raising

brave children there.

Also, why shouldn’t

their feet be bare?”

Now Nemesia has dried her tears;

militiamen have stopped the bombs

that traitors brought

to kill her mom.

Karen Armstrong on Sam Harris and Bill Maher: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps”

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Editors

Blaming religion for violence, says Karen Armstrong, allows us to dismiss the violence we’ve exported worldwide

MICHAEL SCHULSON ( shared by Babar Mustafa)

Karen Armstrong has written histories of Buddhism and Islam. She has written a history of myth. She has written a history of God. Born in Britain, Armstrong studied English at Oxford, spent seven years as a Catholic nun, and then, after leaving the convent, took a brief detour toward hard-line atheism. During that period, she produced writing that, as she later described it, “tended to the Dawkinsesque.”

Since then, Armstrong has emerged as one of the most popular — and prolific — writers on religion. Her works are densely researched, broadly imagined and imbued with a sympathetic curiosity. They deal with cosmic topics, but they’re accessible enough that you might (just to give a personal example) spend 15 minutes discussing Armstrong books with a dental hygienist in the midst of a routine cleaning.

In her new book, “Fields of Blood,” Armstrong lays out a history of religious violence, beginning in ancient Sumer and stretching into the 21st century. Most writers would — wisely — avoid that kind of breadth. Armstrong harnesses it to a larger thesis. She suggests that when people in the West dismiss violence as a backward byproduct of religion, they’re being lazy and self-serving. Blaming religion, Armstrong argues, allows Westerners to ignore the essential role that violence has played in the formation of our own societies — and the essential role that our societies have played in seeding violence abroad.

Reached by phone in New York, Armstrong spoke with Salon about nationalism, Sept. 11 and the links between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Over the course of your career, you’ve developed something of a reputation as an apologist for religion. Is that a fair characterization? If so, why do you think faith needs defenders?

I don’t like the term “apologist.” The word “apologia” in Latin meant giving a rational explanation for something, not saying that you’re sorry for something. I’m not apologizing for religion in that derogatory sense.

After I left my convent I thought, “I’ve had it with religion, completely had it,” and I only fell into this by sheer accident after a series of career disasters. My encounters with other faith traditions showed me first how parochial my original understanding of religion had been, and secondly made me see my own faith in a different way. All the faith traditions have their own particular genius, but they also all have their own particular flaws or failings, because we are humans and we have a fabulous ability to foul things up.

The people who call me an apologist are often those who deride religion as I used to do, and I’ve found that former part of my life to have been rather a limited one.

Your new book is a history of religion and violence. You point out, though, that the concept of “religion” didn’t even exist before the early modern period. What exactly are we talking about, then, when we talk about religion and violence before modern times?

First of all, there is the whole business about religion before the modern period never having been considered a separate activity but infusing and cohering with all other activities, including state-building, politics and warfare. Religion was part of state-building, and a lot of the violence of our world is the violence of the state. Without this violence we wouldn’t have civilization. Agrarian civilization depended upon a massive structural violence. In every single culture or pre-modern state, a small aristocracy expropriated the serfs and peasants and kept them at subsistence level.

This massive, iniquitous system is responsible for our finest achievements, and historians tell us that without this iniquitous system we probably wouldn’t have progressed beyond subsistence level. Therefore, we are all implicated in this violence. No state, however peace-loving it claims to be, can afford to disband its army, so when people say religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history this is a massive oversimplification. Violence is at the heart of our lives, in some form or another.

How do ritual and religion become entangled with this violence?

Well, because state-building was imbued with religious ideology. Every state ideology before the modern period was essentially religious. Trying to extract religion from political life would have been like trying to take the gin out of a cocktail. Things like road-building were regarded as a sort of sacred activity.

Politics was imbued with religious feeling. The prophets of Israel, for example, were deeply political people. They castigated their rulers for not looking after the poor; they cried out against the system of agrarian injustice. Jesus did the same, Mohammed and the Quran do the same. Sometimes, religion permeates the violence of the state, but it also offers the consistent critique of that structural and martial violence.

Is it possible to disentangle that critiquing role from the role of supporting state structures?

I think in the West we have peeled them apart. We’ve separated religion and politics, and this was a great innovation. But so deeply embedded in our consciousness is the desire to give our lives some meaning and significance that no sooner did we do this than we infused the new nation-state with a sort of quasi-religious fervor. If you regard the sacred as something for which we are willing to give our lives, in some senses the nation has replaced God, because it’s now not acceptable to die for religion, but it is admirable to die for your country.

Certainly in the United States, your national feeling, whether people believe in God or not, has a great spiritual or transcendent relevance — “God bless America,” for example; the hand on the heart, the whole ethos. We do the same in the U.K. with our royal weddings. Even in our royal weddings, the aristocracy are all in military uniform.

Ah, that’s a great observation.

In your great parades, you know, when a president dies, there’s the army there.

The religiously articulated state would persecute heretics. They were usually protesting against the social order rather than arguing about theology, and they were seen as a danger to the social order that had to be eliminated. That’s been replaced. Now we persecute our ethnic minorities or fail to give them the same rights.

I’d like to go deeper into this comparison between nationalism and religion. Some people would say that the ultimate problem, here, is a strain of irrationality in our society. They would argue that we need to purge this irrationality wherever we see it, whether it appears in the form of religion or nationalism. How would you respond?

I’m glad you brought that up, because nationalism is hardly rational. But you know, we need mythology in our lives, because that’s what we are. I agree, we should be as rational as we possibly can, especially when we’re dealing with the fates of our own populations and the fates of other peoples. But we don’t, ever. There are always the stories, the myths we tell ourselves, that enable us to inject some kind of ultimate significance, however hard we try to be rational.

Communism was said to be a more rational way to organize a society, and yet it was based on a complete myth that became psychotic. Similarly, the French revolutionaries were imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment and erected the goddess of reason on the altar of Notre Dame. But in that same year they started the Reign of Terror, where they publicly beheaded 17,000 men, women and children.

We’re haunted by terrible fears and paranoias. We’re frightened beings. When people are afraid, fear takes over and brings out all kind of irrationality. So, yes, we’re constantly striving to be rational, but we’re not wholly rational beings. Purging isn’t an answer, I think. When you say “purging,” I have visions of some of the catastrophes of the 20th century in which we tried to purge people, and I don’t like that kind of language.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/23/karen_armstrong_sam_harris_anti_islam_talk_fills_me_with_despair/

Link to a you tube video of an other interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQc9ovrtGZ4

Posted by F. Sheikh

‘The One State Reality’

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Editors

A worth reading article in New Yorker by David Remnick.

Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, the new President of Israel, is ardently opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is instead a proponent of Greater Israel, one Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He professes to be mystified that anyone should object to the continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank: “It can’t be ‘occupied territory’ if the land is your own.”

Rivlin does not have the starched personality of an ideologue, however. He resembles a cheerfully overbearing Borscht Belt comedian who knows too many bad jokes to tell in a single set but is determined to try. Sitting in an office decorated with mementos of his right-wing Zionist lineage, he unleashes a cataract of anecdotes, asides, humble bromides, corny one-liners, and historical footnotes. At seventy-five, he has the florid, bulbous mug of a cartoon flatfoot, if that flatfoot were descended from Lithuanian Talmudists and six generations of Jerusalemites. Rivlin’s father, Yosef, was a scholar of Arabic literature. (He translated the Koran and “The Thousand and One Nights.”) Ruvi Rivlin’s temperament is other than scholarly. He is, in fact, given to categorical provocations. After a visit some years ago to a Reform synagogue in Westfield, New Jersey, he declared that the service was “idol worship and not Judaism.”

And yet, since Rivlin was elected President, in June, he has become Israel’s most unlikely moralist. Rivlin—not a left-wing writer from Tel Aviv, not an idealistic justice of the Supreme Court—has emerged as the most prominent critic of racist rhetoric, jingoism, fundamentalism, and sectarian violence, the highest-ranking advocate among Jewish Israelis for the civil rights of the Palestinians both in Israel and in the occupied territories. Last month, he told an academic conference in Jerusalem, “It is time to honestly admit that Israel is sick, and it is our duty to treat this illness.”

Around Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Rivlin made a video in which he sat next to an eleven-year-old Palestinian Israeli boy from Jaffa who had been bullied: the two held up cards to the camera calling for empathy, decency, and harmony. “We are exactly the same,” one pair read. A couple of weeks ago, Rivlin visited the Arab town of Kafr Qasim to apologize for the massacre, in 1956, of forty-eight Palestinian workers and children by Israeli border guards. No small part of the Palestinian claim is that Israel must take responsibility for the Arab suffering it has caused. Rivlin said, “I hereby swear, in my name and that of all our descendants, that we will never act against the principle of equal rights, and we will never try and force someone from our land.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/one-state-reality?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

Posted By F. Sheikh

USA Vs China & Cold War By F. Sheikh

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Editors

President Obama will be visiting South Pacific Asian countries next week. The President is trying to pivot our foreign policy in Asia to build new economic and military alliances , from strengthening our relations with India to new ties with Vietnam and even re-activating military bases in Australia and Philippine. Are we encircling China as a precaution in case of military conflict? Or are we wooing china to start a Cold War and follow the same script as we did with Soviet Union that bankrupted it?

China and USA has a different mindset, and not just in its form of Government, but how to proceed in international affairs. China does not have any ambition of spreading its ideology and does not want to interfere in any other country’s internal or external affairs. It establishes its relations with foreign countries on stand-alone basis. It does not have any expansion designs except quarrels for the disputed territories with its neighbors. China is establishing relations with democratic as well as oppressive regimes in search for natural resources and does not want to pass judgment on their method of governance. Its relations are mostly limited to economic ties and do not come with political strings attached. Despite international pressure, China does not want to become a major stakeholder in international conflict solving endeavors, including international humanitarian crisis.

By contrast an American relation with a foreign country is a wholesome game. We get involve in foreign country’s internal and external affairs both directly and indirectly. Our economic as well as military alliances come with ideological and political strings attached, which are dependent on our own internal politics. Once involved in other country’s affairs, our main goal becomes our own national interest and mutual interest takes a back seat. We get involved in international conflicts with good intentions, because we want to spread our ideals and want to be world leader, but again our national interests take precedent over the interests of the countries involved and the outcome is not always in the best interests of the countries involved. However we are exceptional in organizing and helping in international natural disasters and humanitarian crisis.

During the cold war with Soviet Union, we were competing with Soviet Union on same terms-arms race as well as busy in spreading competing ideologies and sphere of influence. Russia was supporting many communist countries both militarily as well as economically and ultimately went bankrupt both ideologically as well as economically and that lead to disintegration of Soviet Union. USA was economically strong and able to afford the cost of this cold war.

China is a different breed with different mindset and most likely will not take this bait, because historically China is neither interested in expansionism nor spreading of any ideology. China will continue to arm itself to leave no doubt that any ill designs on China’s sovereignty will be ill affordable. Despite territorial disputes with neighbors, China’s main focus is economy and trade with its neighboring countries. Today Vietnam’s main trading partner is China and trade is increasing 20 % per year. In 2013 it rose to $ 60 billion. China will not follow the course of old Soviet Union.

There is an inherent danger of misunderstandings in developing our military ties with countries surrounding China. These countries counting on American help, may start a war with China over territorial dispute, and that can lead to a bigger war which neither country can afford. We are already involved in many military conflicts and our resources are stretched. We encircled Russia with NATO alliances and have taken economic as well as military load of many of these corrupt and economically basket countries. We are doing some of the things which made Soviet Union bankrupt. China has not and most likely will not play the same game. It will be a mistake to view our relations with China with the same old mindset of Cold War with Soviet Union and it may backfire. China is more focused on economic future than anything else, and that is where our focus should be.

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Category Archives: Politics

‘A Visit To Cuba’ By F. Sheikh

Karen Armstrong on Sam Harris and Bill Maher: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps”

Blaming religion for violence, says Karen Armstrong, allows us to dismiss the violence we’ve exported worldwide

‘The One State Reality’

USA Vs China & Cold War By F. Sheikh

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Blaming religion for violence, says Karen Armstrong, allows us to dismiss the violence we’ve exported worldwide

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