Have the ripple effects of President Obama’s Cairo speech now reached Latin America?
Many people now believe that the elections in Lebanon and Iran were a direct or indirect result of the president’s speech to Muslims.
This article by columnist Artemio Cruz of Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario shows that that beyond the fact that President Obama’s two speeches to Muslims [from Ankara and Cairo] are having an impact on people far removed from the Middle East or the Arab World, the opposition press in the land of Daniel Ortega is still alive and kicking despite his best efforts.
El Nuevo Diario, Artemio Cruz writes in part:
“The speeches and the policies they espouse are the children of North American pragmatism, but also the vital, libertarian and democratic visions of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman [photos below]. The policies have been thought out for the Middle East and its surrounding areas, but they undoubtedly possess nutritious tidbits for the goose as well as the gander. … I don’t think I exaggerate when by means of analysis and synthesis – I derive evidence of a new foreign policy for the United States of America – based on the above-mentioned principles. … These principles – integration, human rights, peace-building – are the foundations of the most progressive and revolutionary vision of contemporary humanity and it is perfectly plausible that they should be embraced in a responsible and consequential way by the greatest military power in the world.”
And then Cruz issues one of a number of broadsides against the giants of the Latin American left – Chavez, Ortega and Castro – that might be too off-color to make it into newspapers in the United States:
“I find it naive, backward and malevolent that the governments and parties of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are lost in the past, and don’t recognize Barack Obama’s presidency as an opportunity to redefine the terms of relations between the world power and our countries – countries of dependency, secular poverty, obsolete, reactionary and backward ideologies, anchored in a nearly-evaporated meta-totalitarian past that is frankly headed toward extinction. This doesn’t mean we should swoon into the arms of imperialism and submit to its august majesty, like a Jewish masochist surrendering to an Arian dominatrix. Not in the least!”
By Artemio Cruz
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
June 18, 2009
Nicaragua – El Nuevo Diario – Original Article (Spanish)
At the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, on June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech that, together with the one he gave in Ankara, Turkey on April 7, turned out to be two extraordinary pieces of oratory. But beyond the rhetoric, they constitute a new outline for a foreign policy based on cultural integration through tolerance and understanding of the other, a reconciliation of the parties in conflict, the defense of human rights, the preservation of the environment and the building of peace.
The speeches and the policies they espouse are the children of North American pragmatism, but also the vital, libertarian and democratic visions of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman [photos below]. The policies have been thought out for the Middle East and its surrounding areas, but they undoubtedly possess nutritious tidbits for the goose as well as the gander. Geopolitically, the Middle East and its surroundings are “hot” areas; and in practice, the most important starting point for the unleashing of war or the preservation of peace anywhere in the world. I don’t think I exaggerate when by means of analysis and synthesis – I derive evidence of a new foreign policy for the United States of America – based on the above-mentioned principles.
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