By Liudmila Peña Herrera digital@juventudrebelde.cu
January 30, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
My good Samsung Note 3:
Although it sounds corny, I must say that I miss you; that everything seems boring and unimportant without you; that I will try to learn to love the Xiaomi that I will buy for myself when I get my 13th month and my uncle Alcides gets paid for the pig he sold us for the 31st there in La Caoba; that now I am going back to study for my Master’s thesis because of the books or the handwritten notes, but nothing, absolutely nothing, is the same without you: neither the HD videos I recorded with you, nor the photos, nor the 3G, nor the audio, nor the music – alas, the last records of Buena Fe and Carlos Varela went with you!—. I can’t even listen to music now, my never well-pondered Note 3. I’m crestfallen and forgetful, because not even the calendar of this little task I was lent is any use at all (nor any reminder!)
Who knows in whose hands you are! Maybe at the bottom of a drawer, hidden by the guy who put his hand in my purse in the middle of the P-12 full of people squeezed and protesting. And I was taken away by the demands of my girlfriend to look her in the face and attend to her when she began to tell me, in the middle of the bus, and to all of the other guys, another of her banal anguishes of a contemporary woman: that if the boss only listens to himself and laughs out loud at his own jokes, that if the receptionist is a gossip and applies the x-ray or ultraviolet rays to every nylon jaba [Cuban shopping bag] she enters the office with, that if she doesn’t have a balance left in the Nauta account and all that blablabla that, you and I know, was never of interest to me when you were with me.
Who would have sent me to roll up your headset around your waist and put them in your purse pocket? What feminist article would have convinced me that women are right or should be made to believe they are! Nothing, I’m keeping my talking girlfriend, but I’m getting ready for a new cell phone.
Now she says she’s got me back, that I’m finally the same person she knew at the university when neither of us knew what a mobile phone was. This was because we didn’t even have a flash memory, just five or six three-and-a-half inch discs to make the many copies of the research methodology papers we kept like a gold chain inside a pullover in a Santiago van.
It’s true that I’ve been sexually active for a week since that bastard put his hand in my purse. It’s true that I talk more and am noticed to be a little less entertaining and anxious. I have to admit that I don’t wake up anymore and the first thing I do, almost without opening my eyes, is to look for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter notifications. I don’t even have bad digestion anymore!
Oh, but how I miss you in the bathroom, especially when I sit on the toilet and do my thing calmly. Now you can call and call, and if I’m in the bathroom, I don’t answer.
And how envious I am of people who arrive at the office meeting, at the policlinic emergency room, at the bus stop – and even on the bus itself – and take out their cell phone, activate their mobile data and go surfing! And those who have no data start looking at the photos in the gallery, reading their digital books, playing games?
How hard it is for me to wait without you. I didn’t know, before my partner Robert brought you “from the outside”, after I broke that iPhone that was also in use, that you could love a Note 3 so much. It’s true that when I met you you already had miles traveled with Robert on the fast lane roads in the First World Internet, but how efficiently you always worked with me, after they changed your little piece that cost me 15 cuc in that “cell clinic”.
Now my girlfriend, who criticized me so much for my obsessive-compulsive stance towards you that she even took it out on her students at the university. She took all their cell phones and put them on the desk until after class so that they wouldn’t get distracted. Now she is now the one who walks around the house all day with her headphones stuck in her ear every Saturday while she washes or lays out her clothes.
It makes me angry every time I go to stay at her house and when we talk or watch a series, between one sentence and another, I catch her activating the data and reacting to some publication of her friends with a face of “I love you” or “I adore you”. Why lie to you: I even hate it when she says “Titi, come, open me up, let’s make a selfie” (this token doesn’t have a front camera, boy). Sometimes I see her attached to her Galaxy S10 that her uncle brought her and I think she looks like a woman attached to a cell phone. I tickle her ear and she doesn’t even notice, with that modern appendage in her hands.
Then I see it all so clearly: I hate both my girlfriend and her cell phone. She doesn’t even listen to me anymore. I look like a monkey talking to itself. Oh, my Note 3, I can’t wait for my girlfriend’s phone to be stolen!
Desperately,
The owner of the “tarequito”. [old clunker, wl]
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
During his annual message to the Federal Assembly (Russian Parliament), the President of that nation, Vladimir Putin, proposed a series of constitutional amendments that he considered important for the development of Russia as a legitimate social state, one whose highest value lies, he said, in the freedoms and rights of citizens, the dignity of people and their welfare.
Putin proposed that a package of legislative actions to be put to a citizens’ vote, the outcome of which would serve to make the final decisions. Putin’s most publicized proposal was to transfer from the President to Parliament the power to approve nominations of the Prime Minister and members of the government.
It also gives Parliament the power to approve, on the proposal of the head of government, the appointment of all deputy prime ministers and federal ministers. However, the Prime Minister shall retain the power to dismiss the Prime Minister, his vice ministers and other ministers, when they lose their confidence or perform their duties incorrectly.
It consolidates the regular indexation of pensions and sets the minimum wage that cannot be below the level of the current subsistence minimum. It prohibits the adoption of foreign citizenship or any residence permit abroad for certain categories of public officials who hold positions critical to ensuring the country’s security and sovereignty, such as regional leaders, parliamentarians, ministers, heads of other federal agencies and judges.
It adjusts the requirements in order to ensure that candidates for the Russian presidency have permanent residence in the country for no less than 25 years and that they do not have citizenship or a residence permit in a foreign country.
It consolidates the status and role of the Council of State, so that the highest leaders of all regions of the country are included in this high legislative body.
Limits the priority of international law so that the requirements of international law and treaties, as well as the decisions of international bodies, may act on the territory of Russia only to the extent that they do not restrict the individual rights and freedoms of citizens, and do not contradict the [Russian Federation’s] Constitution.
It grants the Council of the Federation (the upper house of the Russian Parliament) the power to dismiss federal judges and, in some cases, to remove – on the proposal of its president – judges of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.
It strengthens the role of the Constitutional Court, giving it the right to verify the constitutionality of federal laws that are initiated by the President, before they are signed by the Head of State.
It assigns to the Russian President the power to appoint the heads of law enforcement agencies, after agreement with the Council of the Federation.
Currently, under the Russian Constitution, the President only requires authorization from the State Duma to appoint the head of government and, after that, to appoint the head of the Cabinet, his
deputy ministers and all ministers.
Now Putin has proposed changing this order and entrusting the State Duma not only with the authorization, but also with the approval of the candidacy of the President of the Government of the Russian Federation, and then, on the proposal of the President of the Government, of all the deputy prime ministers and federal ministers”.
The Head of State will also be obliged to appoint them to the post, i.e. he will not have the power to reject the nominations of officials approved by Parliament.
Putin said that this is “a very serious change in the political system that will increase the role of Parliament, as well as the importance of the State Duma, the parliamentary parties and the accountability of the head of government and all members of the Cabinet.
He assured that they will assign greater responsibility in the formation of the Executive with “more responsibility for the policies that the Government implements”.
Currently, under the Russian Constitution, the President only requires authorization from the State Duma to appoint the head of government, and after that the President appoints the head of the Cabinet, his deputy ministers and all ministers.
Putin argues that greater responsibility in the formation of the executive augurs well for greater accountability in the policies that are implemented.
After the opinions of 75 experts with diverse profiles created to discuss the constitutional amendments proposed by Putin are known, they will be voted today, Thursday 30th, in the Duma.
January 31st, 2020.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
It’s easy to imagine the formidable negative impact that the presidency of the energetic Donald Trump may be having on America’s youth.
In every action, every gesture, and every word of his behavior as head of the nation that rules the destiny of the capitalist world, Trump sends signals that being racist, sexist, homophobic, or misogynist is a merit equivalent to an honorary badge.
Historically, inept presidents are challenged, among other defects, for being liars, spoiled and rude, which are precisely the adjectives that most “adorn” Donald Trump’s daily behavior.
This is highlighted in a new book entitled The Fixers, which examines the relationship between Trump and Roy Cohn (1927-1986), an American lawyer who was best known for being Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief advisor during the anti-Communist Senate hearings held by the Army and Senator McCarthy himself in the 1950s.
It was Cohn who orchestrated the McCarthyite persecutions of suspected communists that later extended to homosexuals. Thousands and thousands of Americans were subjected to police and legal investigations. Their lives, families, and careers were destroyed as a result.
Later, Cohn would become the personal lawyer of Donald Trump, the current president of the American nation. Roy Cohn was publicly homophobic and encouraged public persecution of homosexuals. It is now known that he himself was a homosexual man and died in 1986 at the age of 49 due to AIDS-related complications.
Trump had “distanced himself” from Cohn after he became ill. However, the President organized a “farewell dinner” in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago club shortly before his death from AIDS, according to the book mentioned above.
The book states that Trump would later recall Cohn’s visit when, in 2016, he jokingly told guests at his club that he had to have Mar-a-Lago sprayed after the man’s visit because he was dying of an AIDS-related illness. “I had to spend a fortune to fumigate all the dishes and silverware in this place,” he said amid jokes.
In an excerpt from the book published in the Wall Street Journal, authors Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld wrote that Cohn, as Trump’s first fixer, “manipulated the media and the legal system to secure business advantages for Mr. Trump. “He passed his client off as a fabulously successful developer who transformed his father’s collection of low-cost apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens into a Manhattan-based luxury condominium tower empire.
Trump’s views on the media and celebrities were shaped by Cohn and his successors, people he trusted to project a particular version of himself that often bore little resemblance to reality.
“Their careers with Mr. Trump shed light on his rise in public life and his victory in the 2016 presidential election. In 2017, recordings emerged of President Trump joking that he forced Princess Diana to take an HIV test before having sex with her. Trump made such horrific comments shortly after Princess Diana’s death in 1997, in a radio interview with athlete Howard Stern. When Cohn died of AIDS in 1986, his biography was as fascinating as it was despicable. His life journey made him more like a movie villain than a royal lawyer. Which might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that the consequences of his worst acts still reverberate throughout the world.
After graduating from law school at the age of 20, Cohn made a name for himself by prosecuting the couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on espionage charges. Even then, he set aside ethics to ensure that the Jewish couple would not only be found guilty but also sentenced to death and executed, even though the evidence was clearly insufficient to do so.
Throughout the 1950s, he became McCarthy’s right-hand man during the witch-hunt and the lawyer for mob boss Anthony Salerno. Two moves that propelled him into the circles of power – and corruption – in New York. His figure was something like a bridge between the bosses of organized crime and the politicians and businessmen who had to deal with them.
His lack of scruples and his bellicose ways made him a notorious character, who surrounded himself with the most prominent people in the country: celebrities, communication magnates, the Reagans… and Donald Trump.
The two men first joined forces when Trump, then a young construction entrepreneur, was sued, along with his father, for refusing to rent his apartments to Black tenants. Contrary to Cohn’s initial opinion, Trump settled with the plaintiffs, not without first suing the government for $100 million. Trump had learned one of Cohn’s golden rules: “never admit you’re wrong and never apologize.”
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Although there are still several months to go before the U.S. vote is held for the 2020 presidential election, scheduled for November 2020, the U.S. media has been noting concerns about the vulnerability of the event to foreign interference.
The initial factor in the escalation of fear appears to have been the release of a joint statement issued by key members of the Trump administration last November, authored by Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, FBI Director Christopher Wray, National Security Agency Director General Paul Nakasone, and Director of the Infrastructure Security and Cybersecurity Agency Christopher Krebs.
This document states that foreign interference in the voting for the 2020-2024 presidential election is imminent although it admits that there is no evidence for such a claim.
“Our opponents want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment, and affect our government policies with Russia, China, Iran, and other malicious foreign actors who will try to interfere with the voting process or influence voters’ perceptions.
“Opponents may seek to achieve their objectives through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations, or carrying out disruptive or destructive cyber attacks against state and local infrastructure.
“While we have no evidence at this time that the electoral infrastructure has been compromised or altered to allow opponents to prevent voting, alter the vote count, or alter the ability to count votes, we continue to closely monitor any threats to the U.S. election,” the statement said.
Despite the key caveat that there was no evidence at the time the document was issued, many media reports such as BuzzFeed, ABC News and Newsweek used the statement to claim that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent.
In addition to reports that have confirmed the involvement of state actors – Russia, Iran and China – and despite the lack of evidence, other media have claimed that this supposedly imminent interference will inevitably be successful. This is, in large part, due to claims that the tactics used will be based largely on technologies that the US does not have the capacity to successfully counteract.
CSO Online, an online media outlet that provides news, analysis and research on security and risk management, recently warned that “fixing the United States’ voting and election infrastructure problems is a long-term proposition that will not be solved in time for the November election.
Meanwhile, the New York Times warned of the impending chaos. It said that “stealthy” and malevolent foreign actors had already laid the foundation for “an ugly campaign season marred by hacking and misinformation. The US monthly magazine Wired and its news website of the same name claimed last year that the security of the US elections “continues to hurt on all levels”.
The target is the mind of the American people,” says Joshua Geltzer, former director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “In some ways, we are less vulnerable than we were in 2016. In other ways, more. Almost all experts agree on this: The worst-case scenario – for which we must prepare – is a situation that causes Americans to question the very foundations of our democracy – “with free and fair elections.
Long before this kind of rhetoric reached the U.S. media, the Israeli intelligence-linked technology company Cybereason said in a statement on its Web site that “messing with the voter’s mind” would have a greater impact than changing the total vote, even before the 2016 election.
That statement, released by Cybereason before the last presidential election, was written by the company’s CEO, Lior Div, who was then leading offensive hacking operations against nation-states for Israeli military intelligence.
Everything indicates that a great electoral fraud is being prepared for next November’s elections and that the scene is being set for the identification of the “culprits” of an alleged “foreign interference” to cover up the simulation.
February 3rd, 2020.
You must be logged in to post a comment.