http://thejakartaglobe.com/afp/huge-crowds-gather-in-havana-for-peace-concert/330961

More than half a million Cubans gathered in Havana on Sunday for a concert featuring Miami-based singer Juanes, a gig welcomed by US President Barack Obama, but criticized by Cuban capitalists.

Hundreds of thousands of parasol-waving fans braced blistering heat in the capital’s storied Revolution Square, with merriment belying the political undertones that the concert has produced.

Miami’s Cuban exile community has criticized the performance, saying it will legitimize the island’s communist regime, and Colombian-born singer Juanes received death threats ahead of the “Peace without Borders” concert.

Many of those present appeared focused on the need for Cubans everywhere to unite.

“We have to unite Cubans that are inside and those outside. Everyone has family there. It does not matter why they left. We have to leave hate behind,” said Yordanis Padron, a 34-year-old electrician.

Clutching a umbrella, bottle of water and a snack, 73-year-old Lidia said she hoped the concert would “serve as a message to the imperialists that we want peace and help to reconcile those here with those from over there.”

Earlier, Obama welcomed plans for the massive but controversial concert, telling US Spanish-language network Univision the performance could help improve ties with Cuba.

Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met the Colombian singer before he left for the island, a trip which has prompted some of Miami’s million-strong Cuban exile community to smash his records in protest.

“My understanding is that he’s a terrific musician. He puts on a very good concert,” Obama told the station as part of a five-channel media blitz on Sunday to sell his plan to reform US health care.

“I certainly don’t think it hurts US-Cuban relations, these kinds of cultural exchanges.”

Juanes has promised a “historic” show on Havana’s vast Revolution Square, the scene of countless declarations by Cuba’s communist leaders and home to an iconic mural of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.

“We are excited to connect with the audience in Cuba — saying that we are here, that they are not alone, and that we hope over time things can change and the Cuban family can be one,” the 37-year-old Grammy winner said Saturday.

“What better language than music… for that wake-up call,” said Juanes, who now lives in Miami.

The show is the second event under the “Paz sin Fronteras” banner, after a 2008 Juanes show promoting peace on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

The concert, headlined by Juanes — most famous for his hit songs “A Dios le Pido” and “La Camisa Negra” — will also feature some of Latin America’s brightest music stars, including Olga Tanon, Danny Rivera and the Orishas.

Speaking from Caracas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez described the event as “marvelous,” and said protests against were “insanity”

Although the concert has been politically charged, Obama warned that it was no substitute for politics.

“I wouldn’t overstate the degree that it helps,” Obama said.

“What I’d really like to see is Cuba starting to show that it wants to move away from some of the anti-democratic practices of the past.”

Since coming to office, Obama has lifted some restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling and sending money to the island, but there has been no major breakthrough in icy ties between the Cold War enemies.

Instead, both sides seem to be taking an incremental approach to improving relations.

This week, representatives from the two sides met to discuss the resumption of postal service between the two countries.

AFP

How much longer can timed to the needs of the production system go on? That is a very good question and maybe Glenn Beck has a chart with little lines that could tell us. In ten then 20 years timed is the wrong word. Unless this President can find the courage to face the problem for what it is and give this a try starting today yesterday would have been better just in Time Delivery, health care, food well need is a good word. My fellow Americans people of Earth we are in deep do do. Tuff times ahead even if we could start today. A car that can get 100 mpg does little good if we keep burning coal and thinking in terms of have and have more. Right now we are about 55 million years away from that happening. Still time to slow the real fun stuff and just seems so mindless the other way. Yes we can so far no you can’t.

the thing is that US media tries to divide small business owners against workers, and workers against each other so that the whole country is divided and unable to overthrow the real capitalists

Race is also a huge divider as well — maybe even more so that economic class. Zionism, White Supremacy, the anti-immigration nationalism are used to divide people along these lines as well. There is a lot of work to do.

I know I don’t agree with his proposed solutions of how the political economy should be altered but the fact that he raising the question is what I find important and why I have posted some critical assessments of the single-payer demand. Not because I am against single-payer but because I think health care needs to be looked at holistically and not just s an issue of access to a doctor.

Max is asking whether single-payer can be sustainable in the U.S. especially within its current structures. I think that is a legitimate question and one that demands some deeper introspection. I think the struggle for single-payer is important but I also think single-payer as demand is extremely weak. The only way single-payer will be won is when the public displays a massive show of force and a massive display of civil disobedience and struggle for something that can be irreversibly transformative.

As we have seen the struggle for single-payer has been co-opted into the struggle for the “public option”. Clearly the ruling class intends to yield little which is why especially during this crisis that the demands needs to be bolder and much more radical than they’ve typically have been over the past 30 years.

Most americans think that everybody who owns a small business is an evil capitalist, and even some dogmatic-marxists think that all US citizens are capitalists and part of the capitalist imperialist and support of the zionist-capitalist class. (Wrong). The enemy as Marx, Trotsky, Lenin and other socialist-philosophers claimed are those in the upper classes, the Giant corporations large stock owners. Small business owners like pizza restaurants, barber shops, bakeries, health food stores, gas stations, are victims of capitalism

the thing is that US media tries to divide small business owners against workers, and workers against each other so that the whole country is divided and unable to overthrow the real capitalists

and then there are anarchists, and libertarians in USA who don’t take part in political activism, i think that utopian ideologies that look only good on paper like libertarianism and anarchism are also tools of disinformation and confusion used by Rothchilds and real capitalists to prevent in USA a real united left movement backed by the US workers, and the nationalist-bourgeoise anti-giant corporations sectors (Small business owners, like barber shops, gas stations, family owned restaurants, and even supermarkets, not aligned to Wal Mart and Mega-stores), etc.

A question: Do you support a public option in the health care bill?

While I understand this sentiment, I cannot agree with it. The short-lived trajection of American empire and the engine that drives it was always on this course we are confronted with today. While, it may have been palatable to many, even so-called progressives, to live in the world of endless growth (which we know is not and never was endless), it was a simple denial at an earlier time in the history of this decline. In the late 70s it was clear to many, including the then president – Carter – that the problem was in thine self…not some bugey man called Communism.

But the problem is deeper, because the solution bantered by many progressives, single-payer health care/insurer, is confounded by the expansive nature of a nation-state that lives off (while committing slow suicide) the conquest of world’s resources, which it must share ever more with less and less available. The model fo the US as nation-state, as empire, is reflected in it’s economic corporate advance guard. It is rights without responsibility. The latter is inevitable when the distance between producer and consumer are extensive with many agents in between. And it is this economics which is the very soul of US Corporate Capitalism and the mantra of growth that prevails, is the dominant narrative, thus the culture of markets and the very affront to the ecological system that sustains life on the planet.

So, the “single payer” is a good solution for someone, but can any such system work adquately, sustainably in the US? There is a reason why it is rejected even when it seems the only real answer. It is not simply the propaganda of “socialized” medicine, but the very sense that the State is the PROBLEM. It is the problem because with one hand it giveth and the other it taketh away. It is the State which is in endless wars, it is the state that while seeming to remedy the issue of civil rights, sustains entrenched poverty and creates, or enables, massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. It is the state and its polity which creates monopolies, while it makes attempts to pull back the wolves from devouring the whole…

So, we have a massive military industrial/corporate complex, a war machine, par excellence, a scouring of natural resources, these are part and parcel of the United States of America. It is what it is. A transformation means, not simply hoping to inject a little civil rights, or a dash of single payer. These are all at the price of the whole, and the whole is an imperial empire. It is that empire and the state that sustains it that is the PROBLEM.

I am real angry and mad at CNN, and US gov. lies, i am very sensible and emotional person and i hate being lied to. What i mean is that i felt real angry when US gov. via CNN told me the bullshit that Al-Qaeda (Al Ciada) was gonna blow up trains in New york and about a “terrorist” organization in Denver Colorado last week.

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Here is my main site for that United Socialist Front for 2012 Elections: http://united-socialist-front-for-2012.blogspot.com/

i am thinking about the need in USA of a United Jeffersonian-Socialist Front composed of small socialist and alternative anti-war, anti-fascism, anti-rich people, anti-upper classes, anti-concentration of wealth, pro-workers, pro-economic democracy, pro-moralism, pro-humanism, pro-egalitarianism parties in USA. This is just an idea in my mind which i will suggest to some socialist political leaders of this country, to see what they think about it, it might be called “United Jeffersonian-Socialist Front”, which would be based on the humanist christian traditions of: Jeffersonian, Lincolnian, Washingtonian, Christian, Marxist, Trotskist and humanism ideology. And which would include the following political parties, politicians and independent intellectuals:

The green party, Ralph Nader, Socialist Party of USA, Socialist equality party, workers party, The Labor Party, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, green party, Ralph Nader, Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn, Ray Mcgovern, David Ray Griffin, Noam Chomsky bob bar, Cynthia Mckinney, James Petras, Michael Hudson, Bill Van Auken (President of the Socialist Equality Party), Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Juan Cole, Seymor Hersh, Chalmers Johnson, Alan Maass, Michael Parenti, Alexander Cockburn, Paul Craig Roberts, Tariq Ali, Jimmy Carter, Chris Hedges, and many other americans who are moralists, humanists, altruists, and rational human beings.

However this is just an idea in my mind, a work in progress, its is still a utopia and a dream, not realized and materialized yet. I still have to propose this idea to some of the leaders in the US progressive and humanist anti-zionism, fascism, anti-war movement. It will be a United Front in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, The Iraqui Revolution, The Palestinian Revolution, The Iran government, The Evo Morales Revolution, the Cuban anti-Imperialist revolution and all movements, liberation churches, and just anybody who has good intentions and morality in this world.

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You might consider using the “Enter” key a little more often. Such use will improve the presentation of your article.

The U. S. is a great piece of real estate. Too bad it’s overrun with eighth graders. Enjoy it while you can.