By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“For those who have followed Venezuela closely in recent years, there is an inevitable sense of déjà vu in U.S. foreign policy toward the South American nation, because Washington’s strategy of regime change there is almost identical to the one it has adopted in Latin America on numerous occasions since World War II. It is a strategy that includes the application of economic sanctions, broad support for the opposition, and destabilizing measures to create a degree of human consternation and chaos that justifies a military coup or direct U.S. military intervention.
That is the introduction that Canadian writer and researcher GaryLeech makes to the readers of his most recent essay entitled “Business as Usual: Washington’s Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela” (GreanvillePost, 23/11/2018).
“Because of how well the strategy has worked for the United States for more than half a century, our elected leaders see no reason not to use it with respect to Venezuela. In other words, from Washington’s perspective, their policies of regime change toward Venezuela constitute the coda of a business that is already customary in Latin America,” Leech says.
This strategy of regime change does not take into account whether it is a democratically-elected government or the human rights consequences of such interventions. Virtually all the Latin American governments that the United States has successfully overthrown in the last 65 years had been democratically elected.
Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (2004) and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009) have been democratically elected leaders who have been ousted by coups d’état using such methods. Washington pressured all these leaders with economic sanctions and destabilization campaigns that created the economic chaos and humanitarian crises necessary to justify a military solution in their nations.
The common denominator in all these cases has nothing to do with democracy or human rights, but with the fact that the scaled-down governments prioritized the interests of their own people over U.S. provisions.
This was demonstrated by the attitude of CIA director George Tenet during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February 2002, when he declared that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez “probably does not have the interests of the United States in mind” and two months later, Washington promoted a military coup that attempts to overthrow the Venezuelan leader.
That was the first of many failed U.S. attempts to overthrow Chavez after his electoral victory in 1998. After that failure, Washington multiplied its efforts to install a government in Caracas with its heart set on the interests of the United States.
It increased support for opposition groups by increasing funds for USAID programs dedicated to the goal of turning the population against the government. Wikileaks published a classified headline sent from the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela to Washington in 2006 that clearly stated that USAID funding for local programs sought to influence community leaders by slowly moving them away from “chavismo” and stated that the embassy’s broader goal should be to “isolate Chávez internationally.”
In 2015, President Obama signed a presidential order designating Venezuela as an “extraordinary threat to national security” and explained that U.S. law requires his administration impose sanctions on detractors of his country. On that basis, two years later, Trump declared that he would not rule out a “military option” against Venezuela.
The major U.S. media have played their propaganda role with a narrative aimed at demonizing a Venezuelan government and calling Chávez and Maduro authoritarian, anti-democratic and even dictatorial. They have also focused their attention on food shortages and an alleged humanitarian crisis that would lead Venezuelans to ignore the extraordinary social advances made in education, housing, poverty reduction, participatory democracy, and to abandon their homeland.
In foreign policy, it reproduces measures successfully implemented in past decades that overthrew governments that did not have “U.S. interests at heart.
The strategy of undermining democracy and imposing economic difficulties to achieve regime change worked in several Latin American countries, but this time, with the Venezuelan people, Washington might have run into the last of their shoes.
November 29, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In geopolitics, it is rare that events are what they seem to be. This is especially true when we look closely at the strange “war” launched by Trump this spring under the guise of a trade war “to make up for the enormous annual deficit in the U.S. trade balance, the most extreme of which is that of China.”
The real motor force for Washington’s tariff war attacks on China can only be understood when we look at it through the prism of the U.S. Administration’s most recent report on the industrial base of US defense industry.
That’s how F. William Engdahl, a strategic risk consultant and U.S. professor based in Germany, understands it.
Coming out of the work of a special group charged with it a year ago, by a little-known Presidential Executive Order, the report is a detailed analysis of the sufficiency or incompetence of the industrial supply chain that feeds the vital elements of the U.S. armed forces.
The declassified version of the report cites 300 vulnerabilities or gaps in the nation’s military industrial base. It reveals in great detail that the national economy can no longer provide the basic essentials of national defense as a consequence of globalization and industrial outsourcing.
He details the dramatic shortage of skilled workers in areas such as machining, welding, and engineering. Vital machine-tools are imported, mostly from Germany, a country with which Washington does not have the best relations at present.
Many small suppliers of the main sub-components are specialized from a single source, many of whom are on the verge of insolvency due to U.S. budgetary uncertainties in recent years.
The defense industry depends on China for virtually all of its rare earth metals, as the set of naturally scarce metals that are vital to various technological applications of the military industry are known.
Since the 1980s, domestic metal mining in the United States has virtually collapsed for economic reasons, as suppliers moved to China in search of cheaper sources.
Today, 81% of the rare earth metals needed by military equipment, superconductors, smartphones and other high-tech applications come from China.
The report says that in many cases, the only remaining producer of critical materials is on the verge of shutting down its U.S. factory and importing lower-cost materials from the same foreign producer that forced them to abandon domestic production.
It highlights the alarming potential bottlenecks from dependence on a single source for the propeller shafts of navy ships, cannon towers for tanks, fuel for rockets and space-based infrared detectors for missile defense, among others.
The report is the most comprehensive critical look at the military industrial base that has been made since the early Cold War years in the 1950s. It blames U.S. arms companies for relying on vital components outsourced to China, which it sees as the United States’ greatest strategic threat.
Today Asia produces 90% of the world’s printed circuit boards and half are made in China. Beyond relying almost entirely on Chinese suppliers of rare earth metals, the Department of Defense contracts the acquisition of weapons with the largest consortiums. These in turn subcontract in their supply chain to the most efficient, which are often those of China.
It is claimed that the US defense industry depends on Chinese producers for 100% of its rare earth materials. A report by the Government Accountability Office in 2016 described the issue as fundamental to national security.
The main conclusion of the report is that “China poses a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials considered strategic and critical to U.S. national security.”
This also explains why the focus of the Trump Administration’s current trade war against China is, in fact, to press China to abandon its Made in China 2025 agenda, which aims to bring China to dominate advanced technologies in the coming decades.
The report states that “China’s dominance in the market for rare earth elements illustrates the potentially dangerous interaction between economic aggression against China, guided by strategic industrial policies, vulnerabilities and gaps in the U.S. manufacturing and defense industrial base.”
November 26, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu
November 21, 2018 20:11:30
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
He studied Secondary Education at the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu in Madrid, where he played in the basketball club Estudiantes.
In 1995 he graduated in Economics and Business Studies from the Real Colegio Universitario María Cristina, a centre attached to the Complutense University of Madrid.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the European Union at the Free University of Brussels and a Master’s Degree in Advanced Studies in European Economic and Monetary Integration from the Ortega y Gasset University Institute.
In 2012 he received his PhD in Economics from the Camilo José Cela University, where he taught Economics.
He worked as an advisor in the European Parliament. He was a member of the cabinet of the High Representative of the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 1993 he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), of which he is its Secretary General.
He was a deputy in the Congress for the district of Madrid and Councillor in the City Council of Madrid.
He was leader of the opposition and candidate for the Presidency of the Government between 2014 and 2016.
He has been President of the Spanish Government since June 2018.
Married and father of two daughters.
By Julio Martinez Molina
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann
British comedian Ricky Gervais says that “comedy is that moment when the mind tickles itself”. My mind which at this point –after so much limp and conventional boring comedy– has forgotten about tickling was however exulted and rolled with laughter when I saw a model of the genre like New Zealand’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I’ve owed this post to that film since I saw it two years ago; and since then I have not seen any other movie of my once beloved genre with so much comic efficacy.
The film fulfills, and surpasses the cardinal objective of the genre recognized by Chaplin himself: to entertain and make people laugh. His formula, not new, operates perfectly here: a plot whose dramaturgical thread and whose cause-and-effect sense have organic purpose in the structure of situations –logically overlapped and sustained—are conducive to hilariousness. The timing and duration of the gags are perfect. Most dialogues, the precise and semi-invisible emotive handling of the characters/actors function without failure. This is all a result of the good work in the characterization and direction of the actors and the empathy arising from their interaction. The recipe never failed: from [Ernst] Lubitsch and [Billy] Wilder to the first Farrelly.
However, in truth, this film by director Taika Waititi, bears little relation to that kind of cinema in other aspects. The geographical context and the tone used represent the adaptation of the best concepts of those masters to the peculiar expressive coordinates and appetites of the comedy. These confer a very rare injection of weirdness to the essence of a genre that is blown up from within by means of the most gentle dynamite cartridge in the universe. It unleashes a strong implosion of endorphins coated with affection, tenderness and the resulting joie de vivre. But, beware, this is nothing like a “feel good movie”, or the commonplace “funny” story. With this film we thank life, without restrictions or double intentions. It does not feel the need to say anything fashionable for others to applaud. Perhaps, it is in the deep and timeless simplicity of its statements that lies part of its charm.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople makes you roll [on the floor] with delightful laughter from beginning to end. It finds in its main character –teenager Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison)– its best hilarious asset. This chubby, rebel, gang-hip-hop lover, who must march, wander, and run for his life, through the intricate forests of the New Zealand archipelago, is perfectly drawn as a character. The actor who plays the role –I can’t think of any other like him to do it– depicts him with colors full of endearing and overflowing sympathy.
When the spectator does not want a comedy to end, it has done its duty. With Hunt for the Wilderpeople one feels this desire, which is currently in a state of extinction after the poor state of the genre. Good comedies are nowadays isolated exceptions that usually come from emerging cinema industries (like this one), but which are unfortunately made invisible (like this one too) by the world film distribution apparatus.
+++++++++++++++++++++
*Julio Martinez Molina: Film Critic, member of the Cuban Association of the Cinematographic Press and of the UNEAC. Author of the books published on film criticism: “North America and the Cinema of the End of the Century”, Sources and Influences of Contemporary Cinema” and “Haikus of My Filmic Emotion.
Posted: Saturday 24 November 2018 | 02:21:56 pm.
Updated: Saturday 24 November 2018 | 02:24:25 pm.
Author: Leyanis Infante Curbelo
leyanis@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
This edition of Havana’s Fashion Week began its fourth night with the largest influx of people to date, and opened the Havana weekend with one of the most interesting parades that have been presented.
Functionality, contemporary nods to tradition, diversity of materials and styles, characterized the proposals of the day, which closed with a golden brooch to climb on the catwalk a collective collection of wedding dresses by more than 10 designers.
As a tribute to the Matanzas poet Carilda Oliver Labra, Ismael de la Caridad presented a series of textile designs in which the exaltation of female eroticism and sensuality were the central axis. The use of transparencies, and the color black characterized the sample.
Also focused on the feminine universe, the fashion house Salomé decided to break the moulds of the formal jacket-pants set to resize it in an aesthetic context of the 21st century, accompanied by Laura Lis’s jewellery.
Two other collections focused on women. The first one, completely textile, in charge of one of the foreign guests, ElietteLesuperbe, from Guadeloupe Islands. Her proposal was divided into three fundamental parts, each guided by the use of a color: gold, representing light; red, for passion, and white, for purity.
The second belonged to the Baeza family, with a long trajectory in the area of leather goods. This time they offered a series of bags, wallets and accessories, in different formats and for different occasions.
In the masculine sector the young Yunior Hierro was located this Friday, with a series of guayaberas that managed to combine heritage and modernity; Maya Sierra, with a set of woven pieces, and the trinitarian project TRIEL, with classic and utilitarian linen shirts. All with a common line, to approach the contemporaneity, taking as base concepts and traditional materials.
Undoubtedly the highlight of the night were the NOVIAS, a sort of range of aesthetic possibilities for this special moment. The public was able to appreciate a wide range of designs close to fantasy, classic, alternative, youthful, daring, but, above all, national.
These are the images of the parade, by Maykel Espinosa Rodríguez.
http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/cultura/2018-11-24/vestidas-de-novia-con-factura-nacional-fotos
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
There has been an intense and extensive media campaign that involved a group of U.S. officials accredited as diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Havana with strange acoustic attacks. Their origin and actors could not be identified, and then Washington decided to reduce the staff of its representation in Cuba. This had a big impact on consular, political and tourist relations between the two countries.
Washington’s rhetorical indictment didn’t identify presumed culprits or evidence of the supposed crimes, nor the sources for the speculative comments that were always anonymous. This peculiarity later served to justify the fact that the main victims could not be met with, given that they were agents of the U.S. intelligence services, and therefore unable by the nature of their functions, to contribute to the inquiries with testimonies related to their secret work at the Embassy.
The Cuban authorities, from the beginning, took on themselves the task of clarifying the facts. Cuba contributed to the U.S. investigative work. This included including supporting the work in Cuba of an ad hoc FBI delegation that traveled especially for that purpose. Then the U.S. government decided to drastically reduce the personnel in its mission in Havana. That aroused distrust with respect to the cooperation offered by the Cuban side.
Faced with the evident impossibility of discovering the origin and identifying the culprits, the idea that it could have been yet another malicious action against Cuba by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gained discreet strength.
But recently, coinciding with the entry into the arena of the ultra-reactionary and shadowy diplomat and politician John Bolton, as Trump’s National Security Advisor, with the prediction that he will soon become the power behind the throne in the White House, the press began to resurrect the issue of sonic attacks, increasing the number and scope of journalistic work on the subject.
A striking report by Jon Lee Anderson in The New Yorker served as a prelude to the resumption of the “acoustic attacks” campaign.
Almost simultaneously, Ottawa’s Globe and Mail reported that Canadian diplomats whose families, by a decision of their government, had to leave the embassy in Havana because of alleged sonic events they were publicly protesting, claiming that Global Affairs, Canada’s foreign ministry, had turned its back on them.
Canadian diplomats complained that, unlike the U.S. State Department, Global Affairs had said very little about the matter in public. It also did not seem to be making their case a priority without which it was difficult for them to get specialized medical attention.
“We didn’t expect to be abandoned, or more precisely, sacrificed. That’s how we feel now,” a spokesperson for the group told the Globe and Mail. Several of those affected believe that Ottawa has said little in public because it wants to maintain friendly relations with Cuba, the newspaper wrote.
Adam Austen, speaking Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, barely said that “we will continue to do everything we can to provide advice and support to those affected,” provoking opinions such as, “Canadian diplomats affected by the unidentified disease in Cuba feel abandoned. They feel that the Canadian government is covering something up, or is indifferent to a problem that someone in Washington is interested in magnifying.
Headlines such as “Canadian diplomats affected by strange ailments in Cuba feel abandoned” proliferated in those countries where information is decisively influenced by U.S. consortia.
It should be noted that investigations have been hindered from the outset by mysterious circumstances. First, because the U.S. side did not allow accredited experts of any nationality clinical access to those affected, nor to U.S. military doctors who could see them within a period of time close to the events, arguing that the patients were personnel working in intelligence tasks, thus obliged to respect strict rules of secrecy by the nature of their tasks.
I still think that the search for an intellectual author of the attacks between enemy persons or governments of the United States ignores the possibility that it may have been authorities of the American intelligence community. They may have been trying out some clandestine program or secret weapon, which for some reason fell into the hands of opportunists such as Senator Rubio with the unscrupulous help provided by Bolton.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
According to Federico Pieraccini, reproduced by Global Times on November 10, the midterm U.S. elections constituted a lottery of public office between Democrats and Republicans that culminated in a defeat for Trump’s administration and a clear victory for Washington’s “War Party”.
While it is true that it is in the Senate that the most important appointments are confirmed, it is the House that carries the main weight when it comes to domestic politics. The fact that Democrats have the majority of seats there makes the battle for Trump’s re-election in 2020 extremely arduous.
Trump should be able to prove to his constituents that he has kept the promises he made in 2016, and this is almost impossible with the House in the hands of his opponents.
As Pieraccini puts it, “the country faces a scenario of surrender to the war party, which is that faction that responds to the interests of specific conglomerates of power and not to voters. The real winners have been the intelligence agencies, Wall Street and the banks, the credit rating agencies, the Federal Reserve, the big media, the think tanks, the political directorates and the military-industrial complex.
Trump has been able to discover, in his first two years as president, how little autonomy he has in foreign policy, because of the warmongering of the American establishment.
The realistic vision of foreign policy on which Trump based his electoral campaign was swept away within days of his victory. Hoping to bribe the hawks in Washington, he surrounded himself with neoconservatives. They ended up trying to box him into something similar to the Washington Consensus in which any attempt at dialogue with opponents is seen as a weakness or a sign of surrender, Pieraccini notes.
“Washington and its elites live trapped in a uni-polar bubble, convinced that the United States is the only world power left on the geopolitical chessboard. Pentagon planners have confirmed in two official documents (the Nuclear Posture Review and the National Defense Review) how international relations have become a multi-polar reality in which the United States will have to deal with competitors like Russia and China.
The outcome of the midterm elections could accelerate this process. With the House of Representatives in the hands of the Democrats, Trump will have to abandon his vulgar foreign policy even more than he has in the past two years. The accumulation of foreign policy concessions is remarkable. Suffice it to note that in the enmity towards Iran is fostered by Israel and Saudi Arabia, which are the Trump administration’s main partners.
The same goes for China, with the antagonism fostered by Trump himself to justify the impoverishment of the American middle class that voted for him to change that situation. And, of course, then there follows the endemic hatred of Russia, the sworn enemy of the Washington establishment.
But after his defeat in the House, in order for the House to approve something, he will have to grant much more freedom in foreign policy to the neoliberals, eager to reactivate the foreign policy of Bush and Obama. Without any concessions from the House, all of Trump’s national promises to his constituents will be thwarted.
The permanent political civil war in the United States seems destined to intensify, and the prospect of an even less independent administration in foreign policy will push the rest of the world to become less and less dependent on Washington and start looking the other way. Even towards European countries like France, Germany and Italy. They seem to have understood that an exclusive alliance with Washington is not beneficial to them.
Indeed, it is doomed to failure as a result of the chaos in US foreign policy. While many Eurasian countries such as India, Japan, Turkey, Iran, Russia, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan try to overcome their differences by creating international cooperation frameworks, Washington unnecessarily pushes the accelerator on disorder.
An example of Washington’s decline can clearly be seen in Korea, where Seoul and Pyongyang seem to be heading towards peaceful reconciliation, without the direct participation of the US.
In India’s disagreements with China and Japan’s disputes with China and Russia, the tension is always centered on the interests of distant Washington rather than those of the others involved. The next two years will resolve the question of whether the current reality is already multi-polar, or whether the uni-polar order remains, Washington being the indispensable nation for its friends and enemies.
November 12, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
November 19, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
International Men’s Day is celebrated in 45 countries around the world on 19 November. The date was first established in 1992 by Thomas Oaster, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas in the United States, and popularized in 1999.
It is currently supported by the United Nations (UN). In Latin America there are few countries that have officially joined the celebration, however, each year its recognition increases in the region.
November 19 seeks to promote gender equality, male non-discrimination and highlight the contributions they make to society on a daily basis.
It also aims to highlight problems affecting men on a global scale, such as mental health, toxic masculinity and the prevalence of male suicide, adds The Independent.
The date has not been without criticism. As leaders of the global MenCare.org campaign ask: “Why do we need an international men’s day when we already have the rest of the year?
In a column published in the Huffington Post, Michael Kaufman and Gary Baker criticize the existence of a day that tries to resemble International Women’s Day, March 8, as men occupy a privileged position in society.
Scholars instead call for existing days, such as Father’s Day, to be used to highlight how men can contribute to gender equality and how toxic masculinity is one of the factors contributing not only to inequity, but also to impoverishing men’s mental health and relationships, both familial and personal.
Men die by suicide at a higher rate than women worldwide. Most of the more than 800,000 people who take their own lives each year are male, according to the World Health Organization.
In the tweet, he alluded to the role that men play in Bolivian society and their contribution to the country’s development.
https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1064448748439461888
On International Men’s Day, greetings and congratulations to our Bolivian brothers. To all the grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends, who contribute with their effort and work to the development of our beloved homeland.
1:22 AM – 19 Nov 2018
Published: Monday, November 19, 2018 | 08:47:39 pm.
By Lázaro Fariñas
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Think about the comments made by the American extreme right and, therefore, the Miami anti-Cuban right, about the famous caravan of migrants approaching the southern border of the United States. They bring to my memory that verse of the poet Campoamor in which he says: “And it is that in the traitorous world/ there is neither truth nor lie, / everything is according to the color/ of the glass with which one looks”.
Remember. more or less two years ago, Cubans who had left Cuba legally and who were residing in different South American countries began to advance through Central America with the idea of arriving in the United States? In order to be able to take advantage of the famous Cuban Adjustment Act. The right-wing made statements about a supposed humanitarian crisis. Those Cubans were fleeing, according to them, from the “Cuban communist dictatorship”, and that those compatriots only had the desire to reach “lands of freedom” in order to find the famous American dream.
Very selectively, the same people who described Cubans in Central America as people who pursued the American dream, now accuse the migrants who approach the border with Mexico of being a gang of thieves, criminals, drug traffickers and the sick. They supposedly came exclusively with the idea of murdering, stealing and infecting the citizens of this country (the US). What do you think? A humanitarian crisis in one case and an invasion by criminals in the other.
That caravan is made up of those who have been coming for years, people who flee poverty in search of better living conditions. The constant stream of migrants has never stopped. The difference is that in these moments they have come together to make the journey in larger groups. Perhaps they hope to gain more publicity for their attempt to reach the United States. Hostility is what they have received, not a compassionate welcome like that of the Cubans two years ago, but a negative and demonized one.
Those people who arrive and those who for years have been arriving, come from countries where everything exists that, since the very day of the triumph of the Revolution, the US right-wing have asked of Cuba. These include a multiparty system, market economy, representative democracy, with elections every four years, freedom of the press, etc. And if all that exists in their countries and if by implementing it all problems are solved, we have to ask ourselves, why do they emigrate? Why do they abandon the paradise that should exist in their countries since their social, economic and political system is the one that, according to the right, must prevail in all nations so that progress, wealth and social development can exist?
Obviously, the fact is that there is a multi-party system does not solve anything, but it does create a lot of politicking, corruption and demagogy. Freedom of the press only guarantees that those who have money can control the media to defend their interests. Those who believe that the market should be allowed to regulate everything, if not they are dreaming, at least they are sleeping, since even in the most developed countries there are control mechanisms over it. Representative democracy has shown time and again that it does not represent anyone in the long run. Although, well, it does represent the sectors that in one way or another control power, be it the army, the oligarchy or the political parties.
The poor wretches who come in caravan for the United States were taken as an electoral campaign flag by the Republican right. The President got tired of scaring the voters, telling them that a real invasion of thugs was coming, with the idea of them going to the polls in support of the candidates of the Republican Party. So much so that, starting from election day itself, the man stopped talking about the imminent dangers represented by the arrival of the caravan. Even the army was mobilized to the border and there this part of the troops are waiting for the supposed unarmed invaders to arrive.
The control of a country’s borders is normal and it is a duty of the government. It is true that no one has the right to enter illegally into a nation that is not their own, but what should not be done is to politicize immigration and to let some in and not let others in, only because it suits them politically.
Even now, after the policy of dry feet, wet feet, has been abolished, Cubans are subject to the same treatment as the other peoples of Latin America, since there is still the famous Cuban Adjustment Act, which makes Cubans different and privileges us only for political reasons Why? Oh because, and we have to go back to poetry, “everything is according to the color of the glass with which one looks”.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The “wars against terrorism” waged by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in retaliation for the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, have caused the death of half a million people, according to a study released by Brown University, which is based in Providence, Rhode Island, United States.
Brown is an important private center of advanced studies and research that is part of the Ivy League. Brown brings together the most accredited and exclusive private universities on the East Coast of the United States, where a high proportion of the political, intellectual, scientific and business leaders of that country graduate.
The surprising new study by Brown University reveals that between 480,000 and 507,000 people were killed during the U.S. Wars after September 11, 2011.
The study examined the three “war on terror” conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – the latter as an extension of the Afghan war and the focus of U.S. drone attacks.
The half a million deaths include those of combatants and civilians due to direct fighting and war violence. However, the number could be much higher, given that the study did not take into account the perhaps much higher number of civilians killed by infrastructure damage, such as the disablement of hospitals or water supplies, or other indirect results of war.
Tragically, civilians account for more than 50% of the approximately 500,000 deaths. The study further estimates that both U.S.-backed foreign forces and opposition militants each suffered more than 100,000 deaths.
As for U.S. forces, the report reveals that more than 60,000 U.S. soldiers were killed or injured in the three previously-mentioned conflicts after September 11. This includes 6,951 U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since U.S. invasions of those countries in 2001 and 2003.
As for the seventeen years of the so-called “forgotten war” in Afghanistan, the study concluded, according to the Voice of America (VOA), that in October 2018 deaths in Afghanistan numbered about 147,000 people, including Afghan security forces, civilians and opposition fighters. The figure also includes the deaths of 6,334 U.S. soldiers and contractors, as well as more than 1,100 allied soldiers.
In particular, Brown University’s study makes explicit reference to attempts by the U.S. government to “paint an optimistic picture” of wars, which has prevented the American public from knowing the true extent of the civilian casualties from the United States and other countries.
A recently-published study entitled Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars: Lethality and the Need for Transparency denounces the fact that: “Full accounting of the total death toll has been “prohibited by governments interested in painting a promising picture of perfect execution and progress” but also points out that war chaos and inaccessibility of dangerous places prevent narrower, more truthful and accurate accounting.
In fact, the total number of direct deaths in these wars may never be known. For example, tens of thousands of civilians may have died in retaking Mosul and other cities held by the Islamic State (ISIS), but most likely their bodies have not been recovered.
In addition, this figure does not include “indirect deaths”. Indirect damage is damage that occurs when the destruction or damage of wars has long-term consequences for the health of people in war zones. For example, due to disruption of access to food, water, sanitation, electricity or other infrastructure.
Estimates compiled in the past by independent monitoring groups and survey organizations have put the death toll in Iraq at more than one million people.
November 12, 2018.
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