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”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.