Wednesday, July 18, 2018.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
From the blog of Cuban photographer Juvenal Balán.
The prisoner with the number 46664 and the first black president of South Africa, who spent most of those 27 years confined in a damp cell barely 2.4 metres high by 2.1 metres wide, who showed gallantry and who was not, nor could anyone break his fighting spirit that led him to become the world’s oldest political captive and an icon of the universal struggle against the hated apartheid segregationist regime that existed in his country, would now be 100 years old.
A man of universal stature who is remembered today by all because, as Fidel said in a reflection following his death: “No present or past event that I remember or have heard of, such as Mandela’s death, had such an impact on world public opinion, not because of his wealth, but because of the human quality and nobility of his feelings and ideas”.
Granma’s photojournalists had the good fortune and joy of immortalizing him with their photos. Arnaldo Santos while attending the inauguration of the new government in Namibia on March 24, 1990, where Nelson Mandela exchanged with the Cuban delegation led by Revolution Commander Juan Almeida Bosque and Jorge Risquet Valdés.
Then Liborio Noval when Mandela first visited Cuba — a year after his release from prison, met Fidel Castro personally and began a close friendship — and was present at the July 26, 1991 ceremony in Matanzas, where Fidel was decorated with the José Martí Order. It was an intimate friendship sealed in the common struggle, and it remained undisturbed, for the admiration between the two was mutual.
Fidel visited South Africa again in September 1998 – the first time was in 1994 – and I had the opportunity to immortalize these two greats of history who treated each other like brothers.
Fidel said about Mandela: “Old and prestigious friend, how pleased I am to see you converted and recognized by all the political institutions of the world as a symbol of freedom, justice and human dignity.
Mandela, on Fidel’s first visit to his homeland, said: “I am a loyal man and I will never forget that in the darkest moments of our homeland, in the struggle against apartheid, Fidel Castro was at our side.
And this relationship between the two great men, both symbols of the moral strength of principles and dignity, lasted until Mandela’s death on 5 December 2013 at the age of 95.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Ultimately, people like to dream of a better world. They like to commit themselves, even to sacrifice for another being, or for an ideal, or for a revolution. The madness that the West has spread across the planet to keep capitalism and imperialism in control of the planet will not last much longer. Soon, people will understand that there is nothing more glorious than building their own country, improving conditions around the world, cleaning up our environment, loving and fully committing to that work.
But before that, however, the lies will have to be exposed. War is war, peace is peace. Aggressors are aggressors and victims are victims.
The West has immobilized people all over the world with its filthy, depressing lies. Soon, I’m sure, the world will rise up and demand the truth! With the truth, the psychological balance will return.
People will learn to dream again. The alienation that the West has been spreading will be confronted with dreams and imperialism will scream, howl, try to chew on everything that moves, but sooner rather than later it will lose all its power.
Millions of people are now, again, ready to fight for it and hopefully, it will kick the bucket. I believe in it.
The preceding paragraphs summarize the ideas of the philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist Andre Vltchek, a native of Leningrad, of Czech parents and resident in the United States. He has written several books, including The Great October Socialist Revolution, in a substantial essay entitled The West has taken a philosophical blow to the left, published in the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.
People all over the world, including certain groups within the imperialist countries, feel that they have already endured too much. The main media, academia, the most visible propagandists of capitalism have been trying to convince the world that ideology has died, or at least become irrelevant and that the left is actually… the right!
It is an extremely complex but important event. The main problem is that, after decades of philosophy being locked up, imprisoned, inside the decadent classrooms of decadent universities, most people have lost all idea of what they really dislike; of what they reject and what they want.
People all over the world have had enough. Even certain groups within the imperialist countries have endured enough. Philosophy and issues as deep and essential as “the direction in which the world should evolve” were no longer discussed at UNESCO meetings, but were no longer discussed by the presenters of surface talk shows. Light pop music, horror films, the promotion of selfish, often childish, values and desires did not satisfy the masses, but damaged them, reducing their ability to think, analyze and draw sober and well-informed conclusions.
Increasingly, the left has been defamed and conflated with the extreme right, even with fascism. In fact, comparing communism and fascism was tremendously rewarded. In the West, thousands of thinkers and ideologues have made their living doing nothing more than that.
In Europe or North America, when you tune into any television or radio station you hear the great political leaders of the left being systematically called demagogues, populists, or worse, and they make crazy comparisons between Stalin and Hitler. Never a logical comparison like Hitler’s with Churchill or German Nazism with European colonialism. The political reality becomes extremely confusing, Vltchek says.
The biggest problem is that the vast majority of Western citizens have succumbed to this propaganda. They are no longer able to question anything related to these issues, and if they want to question them, they don’t even know where to look for sources that could effectively challenge the official dogma.
They are indoctrinated, but they believe they are free. Not only that, they do not realize that they are deeply conditioned and brainwashed: they really think they are in a position to preach, obliged to enlighten others, instructing the world with what they have been taught.
And so, they talk and write, they get paid for it. They join the UN, international cultural institutions and NGOs, universities, and continue to spread all those dogmas developed by Western ideologues for one and the same purpose: to exploit and control the world.
August 23, 2018.
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