OMG Beyonce and Jay Z visit Havana and cause a stir updated

[flamingdem]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57578004/beyonce-jay-z-turn-heads-in-havana/

[dipsydoodle]

1. I'd go with the local musicians anytime.

Aside from their own music on acoustics I met a guy there who does his own backing tracks and plays his electric guitar to them live - Dire Straits, Gary Moore etc. Absolutely brilliant.

[flamingdem]

2. She's there as a Unicef ambassador

This is really quite wonderful coming on the heels of Yoani trashing the Cubans on the island for a week, very refreshing to see this.

[Judi Lynn]

3. So great seeing these photos, from today's visit, even. Tremendous.

Looks as if they were completely enjoying the trip, too.

The little Pioneers around Beyoncé were adorable kids, too.

[flamingdem]

4. Some have made a great point that went right by me

.. if they can go we should demand anyone can go, even the right wing "haters" who are posting very nasty things on the yahoo article about this could agree ... they shouldn't get special treatment!

It is interesting that Beyonce is close to Michelle Obama so let's hope there is interest in her trip at the White House.

[Mika]

5. Obama was against the US sanctions on Cuba.

Then, he came to Miami to speak to the CANF. Flip flop.

It's all an illusion. It matters not what he might or might not personally want.
This is US politics.

[flamingdem]

6. .. a groundswell is all we have left

our side has no $ and their side has all that USAID money (we pay), dark money and who knows what else !!

[Judi Lynn]

8. Isn't that hot?Our side has no funds & we supply USAID money to support these clowns.Yikes.n/t

[flamingdem]

9. Yohandry who is a pro-Cuba blogger says (in spanish on his blog)

http://www.yohandry.com/

You keep Yoani and we'll keep Beyonce

[joshcryer]

11. I don't understand the political manuvering though.

There's nothing to lose for him to come out against the embargo. Nothing. Cuban Americans already support ending the embargo by majority.

I'm confident that Obama personally is against the embargo. I think to get elected in 2008 he had to be on the fence (or at least not push it). I think getting reelected in 2012 he would've been fine saying he was against it. And finally I think that now that he doesn't need to get reelected he doesn't even have to worry about it. Just speak your mind Obama, damn, it's not that hard.

[Mika]

13. How is it that you continue to ask this?

Its not about ANYTHING other than US campaign funding streams - FOR BOTH SIDES OF THE SANCTIONS.

This has been explained and exemplified so many damn times here I just can't believe the same questions and the same old illusions upon which they are based are still being asked here.

[joshcryer]

19. The point is Obama is out of the loop.

As a second term President it matters not one iota to him. He could have a Regan-esque Bring Down This Wall moment and it would be fine.

You act as if President, the man, is beholden to funding streams. That is not the case.

[Mika]

31. Perhaps you are unaware that congress is in charge of US sanctions.

We do not have unitary executive power over this policy.

[joshcryer]

34. In theory he could declare Cuba a democracy and the embargo would end instantly.

He won't do that, of course, but he could still come out like Regan did and say that it should be ended.

[Mika]

35. No. One (of many) of the congressional conditions for that is ...

... that NO ONE named Castro can be on any ballot in Cuba. (Gawd forbid a Castro winning an election )

There are a myriad of laws wrapped up into what are collectively known as the embargo/sanctions on Cuba.
It will take much more than any POTUS making declarations.

[Bacchus4.0]

7. Media focused on dissident instead of Beyonce, Cuban official laments

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/media-focused-dissident-instead-beyonce-cuban-official-laments-000146528.html


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The media is too fixated on Cuba's best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, who is on an 80-day multination tour, and has not focused enough on important news in Cuba like the visit of pop star Beyonce, a Cuban official said on Thursday.

Jose Cabanas, the top Cuban diplomat based in the United States, said Sanchez was garnering much more media coverage than necessary after she was granted a passport and set off in February on a journey to more than a dozen countries.

"Too much attention has been devoted to this lady, taking a lot of attention from the most important ... news that has been happening these days in regards to Cuba," Cabanas said in response to a question at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.

"Including the presence of Beyonce, the singer, who is today in Havana, enjoying a lot of attention from the public, but it's not covered by the media - incredible."

-------------------
sorry Sr. Cabanas but if there is one person other than Kim K. who we can do without hearing about for a spell, with all due respect, its Beyonce.

[joshcryer]

12. 28 news articles for Yoani, 148 for Beyonce.

I searched Google news for "yoani sanchez" and "beyonce cuba" respectively.

This Cuban official underestimates the US fascination with celebrities and how, in the end, our news is more likely to cover Beyonce than a relatively obscure Cuban dissident.

Note: to even make the point more, most of the articles about Yoani are on Miami related sites (like Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, etc) and other political news sites (like Havana Times, who, btw, has shown agreement with Yoani's words and doesn't vilify her like is done on these forums). Bryonce's trip? It's everywhere. From Huffington Post to CNN.

[flamingdem]

16. There's another thing - Beyonce is a very positive figure

and truly popular whereas Yoani is a media creation with a lot of fake followers on her blog and twitter, she's not well liked in many parts and this is why she cancelled the rest of her tour. She would have faced protests, most of Latin America is not right wing like she is..

[joshcryer]

21. She cancelled her entire trip? She's in Peru right now.

I suspect she was warned that she would get massive (potentially state funded) protests in Argentina so she canceled that leg of her trip but I am not aware that she canceled the whole thing. Yoani is not allowed, for practical reasons, to go to Argentina, Venezuela, or maybe Nicagurara and Ecuador. She would be publicly ostracized and assaulted as she almost was in Brazil by the protester thugs who didn't want to allow her to speak.

Frankly I think it's a bad move, she should allow the fascist elements to attack her, and hope she makes it out unscathed, but I think she's afraid.

[flamingdem]

22. I agree, smacks of Sara Palin, take the money and run..

She did cancel due to health reasons supposedly. I think there's just not enough in it for her to finish the tour.

[joshcryer]

23. I disagree, she says she hopes to recover.

I do not think her tour is over. She could be even making arrangements to make the Argentina trip assuming she could assure her safety.

Sarah Palin was never in threat of bodily harm when she went somewhere.

Yoani most certainly is.

[flamingdem]

24. The trip was for a meeting I believe and she missed it

but I haven't checked her updates today so who knows.

You do know that she met with some of the most vile neo cons and ex Bush pals don't you?
Like Otto Reich.

She tries to pretend that politics are something below her but the right wing has her wrapped.
She has herself totally associated with the right wing and the Cuban stupid like Sen. Bill Nelson
who publically gave her a US flag. Now that's not a negative signal to send to the island, please,
even the anti-Castroites think she is a nobody.

A nobody with money however, for her digital newspaper project. No one on the island really
reads her --it's mostly white Cubans in the diaspora who will be angry basically .. forever ..
and could care less how conditions are on the island as long as they can get their hate on.

[joshcryer]

25. Her writings are online.

Of course "no one on the island really reads her." The internet in Cuba is abysmal. At one point the island actually blocked her site (which is what brought her into the limelight, actually). Eliecer Avila is petitioning for everyone on the island to have internet access (simply hook up the intranet to the internet, volia).

[flamingdem]

26. Always the fact there that the USA blocked any fiber optic connection and that

satellite has been the only way to connect to the web, thus it's slow and they have to limit usage.

I don't know what the deal is with the new cable. It doesn't seem to have changed anything so far.

It's true that very few Cubans on the island read her or even know who she is if they don't watch Miami TV.
They don't really need her, not like those who leave and for them she's a kind of nostalgia, constantly
complaining.. so they can feel glad they're not there.

She said it herself, it's apathy, most Cubans are going along with the pace of reforms, it's just the USA
and right wing forces, usaid, all the dissidents who are paid for their "work", who act like there's some
huge state of repression on the island. These groups FOMENT trouble to keep it in the news so they
can get their paychecks.

If you haven't figured that out by now estas perdido.

[joshcryer]

27. Oh lordy we've been over this so many times.

The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 has a telecommunications exception. If Cuba asked it would've been received. Maybe not under Bush, but under Obama it was signed off on. Cuba simply never asked. I think even Bush would've signed off on it because it would've been lucrative to telecoms to build the line.

Of course they don't need Yoani, they need the internet, which is going to change things dramatically in Cuba, whether you like it or not.

[flamingdem]

28. I've been watching this longer than you

and in 1999 a Canadian company was all set to rig a fiber optic cable to the island and it was prevented by the US.

The exception is just another ruse, if not why wouldn't they have taken it?

[joshcryer]

29. Being in US territory they needed a license to operate from our shores.

If Cuba was serious about it at the time they could have very nicely asked the United States if it would be allowed. This never happened.

I know full well that if Cuba had asked then I would be aware of it. Telecommunications were named as a subversive element to Cuba and therefore were one way we were going to break the regime. As we see with other countries where social media has flourished it is indeed quite subversive to totalitarian regimes.

[flamingdem]

30. This sound pretty accurate, the issue for popular use is infrastructure

I maintain that the bloqueo was the reason the connection didn't happen sooner. I think the jury is
out as to how much internet will be able to be available for public use.

http://www.cubanews.com/sections/un-videoconference-sparks-debate-about-fiber-optic-cable

[joshcryer]

33. I think it was a mix of cost, priorities, and the embargo.

Cost is the principle factor as Venezuela basically gave it to Cuba for free (via the oil for doctors program of which Cuba gets about $500 million a year free money).

Priorities are the second factor as it wasn't (and in many ways still isn't) important from the government's point of view for Cubans to have unfettered communication with the outside world.

The embargo is the third factor because without it they couldn't make excuses. People would have been petitioning long ago for wireless links (couple of thousand dollars, FL is not far away). Telecoms in the US would've happily offered to lay a line (it's only a 150 mile line from FL to Cuba, tops, the distance is only 90 miles but you have to account for sea floor geography). There would've been a bidding war, etc. Cuba would've been hard pressed to say no to it.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Ah, ha ha, haaaaaa: US lawmakers seek reason for Beyoncé for Cuba trip

US lawmakers seek reason for Beyoncé for Cuba trip
07 Apr 2013
WASHINGTON (AFP)

Two US Republican lawmakers want to know if popular American pop star Beyonce and her husband, rap singer Jay-Z, had the US government's permission to travel to Cuba despite an economic embargo.

Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida on Friday sent a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department, requesting information on the type of license Beyonce and Jay-Z had received before traveling to Cuba.

"As you know, US law expressly prohibits the licensing of financial transactions for 'tourist activities' in Cuba," the pair wrote.

They went on to say that these restrictions were in place because the Cuban government was listed by the US State Department as one of four state sponsors of terrorism and has "one of the world's most egregious" human rights records.

More:
http://www.afp.com/en/news/topstories/us-lawmakers-seek-reason-beyonce-cuba-trip

[flamingdem]

14. They are soo predictable!

I wonder if they know how to use google because the reason for her trip was explained in a few articles. She is a Unicef ambassador and was there for a theater troupe visit. I think they could probably pull the trip apart according to the law because she had bodyguards with her and her mom and so forth but for sure they got it passed by ofac, if not then it's a salvo, whether inadvertent or not, against travel restrictions, that would be great but I doubt that's the case.

[naaman fletcher]

15. I'm against anyone being prosecuted for going to Cuba

But as long as it happens to the regular person, then celebrities shouldn't get a pass.

[joshcryer]

20. I agree. Cronyism is bullshit.

There was an elderly couple who lost their boat just because they gave a band aid to a Cuban person. It was insane.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Cuba trip sparks questions over US trade embargo

Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Cuba trip sparks questions over US trade embargo

The pair were greeted by big crowds as they strolled through Havana

James Legge
Sunday 07 April 2013



Pop power couple Jay-Z and Beyonce have caused a small furore over a fifth wedding anniversary trip to Cuba.

The pair were greeted by big crowds as they strolled through the capital, Havana, where they ate at some of the city's best restaurants, danced to Cuban music, walked through historic Old Havana and posed for pictures with locals.

But a long-standing US trade embargo against Cuba prevents most Americans from traveling to the Communist-ruled island without a license from the government.

And on Friday two Republican members of congress for Florida asked Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, for "information regarding the type of license that Beyonce and Jay-Z received, for what purpose, and who approved such travel."

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart represent districts where there is a high Cuban-American population.

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/beyonce-and-jayzs-cuba-trip-sparks-questions-over-us-trade-embargo-8563261.html

[flamingdem]

18. Aha now the Brits have picked up the story

a friend thinks that this story will put an end to the bloqueo, wishful thinking but if it gets attention that would help

[Mika]

32. Found this on Facebook - End The Travel Ban

This is a discussion on the trip to Cuba and the exiles mewling about it...

End The Travel Ban
https://www.facebook.com/endthetravelban/posts/436478766444020?