++I leave the flood of e-mails from the Right about how awful Obama's Middle East policy is and how bad the Iran deal is--p.s. it was a negotiation, which is the primary negative.
++Meanwhile, our head of state visits Caricom,the Caribbean Community, the site of some of my most memorable days reporting for Business Week. I actually had a scoop when Caricom leaders were persuading Maurice Bishop to mend fences with the United States. Something he actually tried with a secret visit to Washington. But,alas, he was murdered and soon we had the Grenada invasion.
++President Obama makes his first stop in Jamaica to follow-up Joe Biden's energy summit with the island nations. President Obama is to encourage energy diversification for the islands. This will be read as trying to get them weened off of cheap Venezuelan oil.
++I remind my readers about the worry of Caribbean countries about the effect of the opening of Cuba to American tourists on their own economies. However, it should be noted they support the move toward normalization politically. It's just they are anxious.
++Then Friday, we have the Summit of the Americas, where President Obama and Raul Castro will probably steal the limelight. Normalization can't quite happen until the State Department takes Cuba off its list of states that sponsor terror. President Obama promises a decision soon.
++President Maduro will try and do a Zelig and hijack the Summit with his petition of millions against American sanctions on Venezuela. For reasons that escape me, our Left still embraces the Bolivarian Revolution started by Hugo Chavez.
++But the howling will begin with the Right objecting to President Obama meeting with Raul Castro.
++Weirdly, the Washington Post expects Raul to make a statement that Cuba is open for business and investment. I don't. I expect him to talk about North-South issues.
++President Obama goes there with a some goodwill. Latin Americans see President Obama taking good faith efforts on immigration,proposing a $1.5 billion aid package for Central America to stem the flood of children refugees, and breaking the logjam on Cuba.
++The institutions of the hemisphere are under stress for a variety of eccentric reasons. The human rights regime of the hemisphere has seen several countries pull out of their obligations because the Inter-American Commission and the Court of Human Rights has ruled in support of indigenous peoples against the states. This creates the strange situation of human rights lawyers and advocates winning their cases but seeing the rulings contribute to the erosion of human rights practices in the hemisphere.The Southern Cone countries feel none of the institutions give them recourse against predatory Western companies.
++I wish our media would give broader attention to both the Caribbean and the rest of the hemisphere. We are going to be eaten up again by Cuba but in a nice, distracting way.
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