Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
April 22, 2018 20:04:56
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Next May 5, 200 years after the birth of Karl Marx, this proven director, who is undoubtedly the Haitian Raoul Peck, made the German film The Young Karl Marx in 2017, a film to which even those who do not sympathize with Marxism have had to grant him artistic merit and the rigor of the concepts on which it is based.
The film tells of two young people who did not know firsthand the ruthless exploitation of capitalism in their day – and of course the other is Frederick Engels – and yet set in motion a movement that overflowed the antagonistic politics of their time and has inspired the emancipatory yearnings of millions of people around the world over the course of a century and a half.
Biographical notes on some lives and events that began in 1843 and ended in 1848 with the edition of the Communist Manifesto, years in which Marx and Engels met and solidified an eternal friendship. The director Raoul Peck, adapting himself to the didactic demands of the biopic, shows that even in a genre, the biography, coming from a consolidated literary tradition at the service of bourgeois glorification, back in the 19th century, can innovate and make more attractive a narrative whose vital substance is the weight of ideas. A well-told film with a convincing August Diehl as the young Marx, it is a story not to be missed by those who want to know how a key text of contemporary political thought was forged, which is like saying how the Communist Manifesto was forged.
Haitian Raoul Peck was forced to emigrate with his family to the Congo after the Duvalier dictatorship threatened them with death. He was closely linked to African reality and studied filmmaking in Berlin. His films, such as Lumumba and I’m Not Your Negro, the latter a documentary about racism in the United States that was nominated for last year’s Oscar, highlights the political and social concerns of this filmmaker. Director Peck – and the film makes this very clear – is not interested in wax figures. Hence we will see a passionate young Marx, a troublemaker, a drunkard at times, a Marx with defects, as his wife reproaches him, at times self-sufficient, a person of flesh and blood. Peck’s Marx is also overflowing with a youthful energy channeled under the imperative that happiness, the meaning of life, becomes concrete for him in an act of resistance and constant struggle against social injustice.
A film for any kind of audience, but one that scholars of history and Marxism will enjoy very much as they witness the dialectical battles established between the two young revolutionaries and other figures who understood only part of what the struggle for a new world should be. Thus we will see a gallery of these characters in this story that, faithful to reality, dedicates a special treatment to the women who influenced the life of Marx and Engels, and not only in the love aspect, but also contributing ideas.
Excellent moments are recreated, such as when the young people are introduced and the director conceives the scene as a train wreck, with an ironic Marx reproaching his great friend for the golden buttons he wore on his jacket the day they first met. From the beginning, both face their egos, then show mutual admiration, and finally end up in a night party. From then on they will fight together against censorship and police raids, riots and riots that will augur the strengthening of the workers’ movement, which until then had been disorganized in no small measure.
Although the film takes fictional licenses as is usual in any biography, historically it is impeccable. At the same tim, nourishing new points of view concerning this present of ours, contaminated by many of the contradictions then predominant and perfectly explained in Das Kapital, the film is a masterpiece for then and now. It’s not for pleasure that director Raoul Peck concludes his film with a dynamic editing that alludes to the perennial validity of Marxism. First, we’ll see the historic photo of Mary and Frederick, Jenny and Karl Marx and No Direction Home, played by Bob Dylan, a collage of photos and images that remind us of what the world has been like over the last 60 or 70 years. It’s a way of telling us that the two young friends are still as relevant as when they wrote 170 years ago that a specter was haunting the world.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Ottawa government, which maintains cordial relations with Cuba despite the enormous pressure against the United States, seems to have given in to the manipulations led by Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He is presented as an exile from Cuba – a country where he was not born and has never visited – to carry out an agenda of dissimulations and lies to Havana´s detriment.
Senator Marco Rubio aspires to be Donald Trump’s replacement in the U.S. presidency. His promoters have prepared an anti-Cuban program for him that is based on the calculation that the next president of the United States will be Latino and Republican. Rubio’s family fled Cuba, it is true, but this happened in 1956, during the bloody tyranny of Fulgencio Batista imposed by the United States in 1952 through a coup d’état and was deposed in 1959 by the popular revolution. He was born in Miami and has never set foot in Cuba. Calling Marco Rubio as Cuban is like defining Donald Trump as European.
Canada established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1945 and maintained them uninterruptedly after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Cuba was the first country in the Caribbean region with which Canada exchanged diplomatic missions.
Cuban-Canadian ties were particularly warm in the 1970s and 1980s, during the government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, since November 2015.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Fidel Castro had a very close relationship of friendship, solidarity and respect. This was symbolized by the fact that, at the death of the Canadian leader in 2000, Fidel Castro was one of his pallbearers at the state funeral.
In 1994, a joint venture was formed between the Cuban Nickel Union and the Canadian company Sherritt International, which operates a mining and processing plant in Moa, on the eastern tip of the island. A second joint venture, Cobalt Refinery Co. Inc. was established in Alberta, Canada, to refine nickel. All together, there are 85 Canadian companies and subsidiaries of various profiles in Cuba.
Canada has consistently criticized the blockade against Cuba and has strongly opposed the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act.
In 1996, the Godfrey-Milliken Bill was introduced in Canada’s Parliament in rejection of the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act. It was a law that would have trained some three million Canadians of British Empire loyalist descent who fled the U.S. revolution to demand retribution for property and land confiscated by the U.S. government in the late 16th century as a result of that revolution.
Such a law would have placed a financial burden of many trillions of dollars on a number of large and medium-sized economic entities in the United States, given the current valuation of expropriated property.
The Godfrey-Milliken bill did not become law but resulted in an amendment to the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act that effectively neutralized any attempt to impose the Helms Burton Act on Canadians and Canadian entities.
The Canadian government also imposed a $1.5 million fine on any Canadian entity that contributed in any way to the implementation of the Helms Burton Act in Canada.
Canada has also protested against the presence of U.S. agents at Canadian airports trying to catch U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba as tourists in defiance of U.S. blockade laws.
Canada has operated an embassy in Havana since 1945. Cuba has its own in Ottawa and consulates in Toronto and Montreal.
Marco Rubio has declared himself the architect of the current stage of U.S. aggression against Cuba. He´s also the inventor of the hoax of sonic attacks on U.S. diplomats on the island. In this capacity, he advises on the drawing up of lists of Cuban persons and entities that Washington sanctions as violators of the provisions of the U.S. blockade.
It is not easy to understand why the government of Canada, the nation that is the biggest source of tourists to Cuba, could have aligned itself in a campaign against Cuba that has as its axis someone with such a fuller trajectory.
To disavow for security reasons the travel to Cuba of the relatives of Canadian diplomats accredited to the island is extremely strange considering that there has never been any report of a fact indicative of insecurity against any Canadian among the millions who, many years ago, enjoyed the goodness of the Cuban climate and the sincere affection of its people.
April 23, 2018.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The new president of the Council of State and Ministers, Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez would be able to be the first Cuban president to publicly recognize the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.
In his career, which we commented on extensively when he became the country’s first vice president in 2013, we can highlight facts such as the unconditional support he gave to the El Mejunje Cultural Center since he was a leader of the Communist Youth and later as the first secretary of the Party in Villa Clara.
Ramón Silverio, founder of this inclusive project, always highlights Diaz-Canel’s defense of the place, at a time when it was more difficult to do so, in the 1990s. “He always knew how to cope with the pressures of those who disagreed with the activities for the LGBT community, which were undoubtedly the ones that bothered me,” he told me that time.
For two consecutive years – in 2012 and 2013 – Díaz-Canel participated in the Cuban Gala against Homophobia and Transphobia at the Karl Marx Theatre, which makes him the highest ranking state and political leader who has supported the Cuban Days against Homophobia and Transphobia.
But perhaps the most significant event that demonstrated this new Cuban President’s understanding of the issues of diversity and sexual rights occurred during the debate on the Labor Code in December 2013.
As first vice-president, on that occasion, he recognized the political significance of the proposals made by Deputy Mariela Castro to add to the bill important issues such as non-discrimination based on gender identity, in addition to the explicit mention of sexual orientation that it already contained.
In mediating the controversy, Díaz-Canel also suggested that a parliamentary committee be charged with drafting a final version of the law that would take into account all the positions, in order to reach a consensus on the technical arguments, which were allegedly prejudiced, of some parliamentarians.
At that juncture, Diaz-Canel’s comments received the support of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and the approval of Parliament, which finally allowed the new law to be endorsed by majority vote, which, unfortunately, would later enter into force without incorporating the term gender identity.
The close link the current president had with the entire intellectual and cultural sector in its broadest sense, with young people, creators, the work of the media and information and communication technologies, undoubtedly brought him even more information on the problem of discrimination based on homophobia and transphobia.
It will even be easier for Díaz-Canel to address any of these issues in official contexts, when appropriate and necessary, because we must not forget that Raúl would probably find it embarrassing to intervene or advocate in public for a cause that is not only further away from his training, sensitivity and knowledge, but that has also been led his own daughter Mariela for more than a decade.
It is quite possible that this crucial moment will come with regard to the debates that will have to take place in order to bring about the announced constitutional reform. To these very important purposes we will also have to add the necessary modernization in relation to such sensitive issues as the family and marriage, in order to implement the policies already approved by the Communist Party of Cuba through legislation.
The already imminent XI Cuban Day against Homophobia and Transphobia will be, then, a good opportunity to see the progress and obstacles that we still have to face in terms of accompaniment and political will, in this fight for non-discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
April 19, 2018.
I am Paquito, from CUBA; I am a Marti follower and a an author; I am a communist and gay journalist; I am a convinced and superstitious atheist; I am the father of a son whom I have adored and have been a partner for fifteen years with a seronegative man who loves me; I have been an AIDS patient since 2003 andam a survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for more than twelve years; I am a university professor and a student of life; a follower of Cuban economic issues and a passionate devourer of universal literature; an incontinent and belligerent moderate; a friend of my friends and a compassionate friend of my enemies; often wrong and never repentant; a hardened and eternal enthusiastic optimist; alive and kicking; in short, another ordinary man who wants to share his story, opinions and desires with you…
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
An American friend of mine believes that when Donald Trump’s presidency ends – no matter how it ends – the best account will have to be in a comic strip book that would be the most hilarious in American history.
However, the disastrous effects in terms of deaths and misfortunes that the madness of this clown is leaving on people, peoples and nations throughout the world are not compatible with a festive approach to the suffering caused by this grotesque character and his gang of hawks.
In recent days, the US armed forces have made a huge fool of themselves in the name of satisfying the will of their mad president. In the process, they have made their counterparts in France and the United Kingdom look like foolish satellites.
On the night of 13 April, this disparate coalition of powers launched an attack on Syria. “I ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to launch precision attacks on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump. He wasn’t able to justify the aggression with the testimony of the U.N. experts charged with overseeing the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons. A few hours after the attack, they were to rule on the nature of the alleged attack by the Syrian government against its opponents.
The arrival of these specialists was scheduled for April 14, but the U.S. government decided to act earlier, showing its fear of the verdict of these specialists. Nearly a hundred Republican and Democratic congressmen had sent a message to Trump insisting that he seek congressional approval before attacking. “Engaging our military in Syria when there is no direct threat to the United States and without prior official authorization would violate the separation of powers clearly outlined in the Constitution,” they said.
However, Donald Trump, with his ears deaf to so many calls for sanity, self-rule and international law, launched his air strikes on military positions in Damascus, including a scientific research center in Barzeh and Al-Domair Airport on the outskirts of Damascus. There were also rocket attacks on Damascus International Airport and Mezzeh Military Airport, among other targets.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, regretted that the attack on Syria by the USA, the UK and France had taken place just when the Arab country had a magnificent opportunity to have a peaceful future.
“First they tried going against the Syrian people using the Arab Spring, then with the Islamic State, and now by launching their smart missiles at the capital of a sovereign country, which for many years has been trying to survive in the midst of terrorist aggression,” Zajárova said.
Both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May made statements in support of Trump’s barbarism.
What is unique about these statements is that they all start from a hypothetical attribution to the United States and the two ancient former European colonial metropolises to intervene in the internal affairs of Syria, a nation that is a sovereign member of the United Nations.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, declared that the alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Duma, which served as a pretext for the start of the military operation against Damascus, was a setup. He declared that he had irrefutable data that confirms it. As the first details about the effects of the unlawful aggression became known, thousands of people in the Syrian capital took to the streets to jubilantly to show their support for President Bashar al-Assad, who had quietly arrived shortly before in his offices in central Damascus.
Syrian television broadcast live the demonstrations of the population. With Syrian flags and clapping their hands, they spontaneously showed their national pride in the actions of the Syrian military. On their own, they had the latest generation of modern military equipment provided by the solidarity of Russian forces, and had been able to successfully carry out the defense of their country against the direct imperialist aggression of the United States. Washington, which possesses the largest arsenal of atomic, chemical and other prohibited weapons in the world, and therefore has no moral right to blame other countries.
It was a unilateral action, on the fringes of the United Nations Security Council, and a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and of the Charter of the world organisation. It was a rude outrage against a sovereign state that, although it left only three people injured, cannot be summed up in a simple cartoon of a comic book about the picturesque performance of an eccentric president.
April 17, 2018.
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