Does Puerto Rico need a civil war?  I know this is like asking “Do you need a hole in your head?”  But is the United States waiting for one to develop before it realizes the implications of one fateful decision in American foreign policy in 1898?

IN MEMORIAM ORLANDO ZAPATA TAMAYO

In Cuba there is a non-written policy, yet a firm “understanding” by regime whites in power that Afro Cubans do not have a right to protest because after all the revolution was done for them. This narrative is echoed in sophisticated tones in American academia and mainstream media.

It  is well known that the current administration blames every problem we are facing as problems inherited from the previous administration. There is one exception,  “I am very optimistic about, about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration”, said VP Biden on Larry King (2/10/10).

It is well known that candidate Biden’s solution for Iraq was the partition of that country in three parts. It is also well established that he vehemently opposed the sending of additional troops to Iraq, in what was called “the surge”.

Dictionaries now have a face to go with the word duplicity. It is the face of Vice President Biden.

Both VP Biden and President Obama opposed the surge, and not only that but constantly threatened to halt the war and any effort in Congress toward its success. According to both, the war was one “of choice” and "a distraction." According to leading Democrats Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Biden the war in Iraq was “Bush’s War”. But let us let words speak for themselves.

“I’m going to actively oppose the president’s proposal (the surge)…I think he is wrong”, Sen. Obama, July 21, 2008.

The academic world moves at the speed of a glacier. It is a culture within a culture, and more often than not a culture which examines other cultures and rarely, if ever, examines itself. It is a culture with all the elements of a culture, and at times a very conservative one at that; even if coated in the language of progressive terminology. It has its own code of words that shouldn't be used and those that must be used in their place. It can be even faddish and provincial.