By Russia Today
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The District of Columbia Attorney’s Office has filed charges Friday against an Alabama man who allegedly parked a van with 11 Molotov cocktails and other weapons near the Capitol on Wednesday, the same day of the congressional riots.
According to the statement from the Attorney General’s Office, on January 6, Capitol Police officers were warned of the possible presence of explosive devices in the area surrounding the legislative seat. During a protective sweep of the area, agents observed the handle of what appeared to be a firearm in the passenger seat of a pickup truck, which, according to their database, belonged to Lonnie Leroy Coffman, a 70-year-old man from Falkville, Alabama.
When they proceeded to search the vehicle, the police found a pistol, an assault rifle, as well as rifle clips loaded with ammunition and components for the manufacture of eleven Molotov cocktails (glass jars filled with flammable substances, rags and lighters).
Later, Coffman was stopped near his truck when he tried to return to his vehicle. When he was searched, he was found to be carrying two other guns.
The man has been charged with illegal possession of a destructive device, which carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years, as well as carrying an unlicensed gun, which carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 5 years. Coffman remains in custody pending a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, January 12.
FROM THE LEFT
Despite the intense propaganda to which the US allocates tens of millions of dollars each year, the results are overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades
Author: Iroel Sánchez | internet@granma.cu
November 2, 2020 02:11:30
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
A Brazilian friend who, as a journalist, was in Cuba for a few days, told me of her amazement at how all the Cubans she spoke to know who Bolsonaro is, who Dilma is and who Lula is, which was not the case in other Latin American countries she had visited recently.
The exceptional interest with which Cubans follow international events is something very particular that often goes unnoticed by those of us who live on the island. The social upheavals in Haiti, Chile, Panama and Ecuador, the conflict of powers in Peru, the endless repressions and assassinations of social leaders in Honduras and Colombia, the inherited ungovernability that forced the Mexican government to release a drug trafficker, the unjust imprisonment suffered by the leader of the Brazilian left to prevent his safe electoral victory and the elections in Bolivia and the United States, or Washington’s constant aggressions against Venezuela, can be topics of conversation anywhere in Cuba, from a corner where dominoes are played to a university classroom.
Of course, these conversations do not avoid the serious difficulties that the Cuban economy is going through, against which every week new US government sanctions are announced, nor any of the deficiencies in services with which the citizenry clashes. In these, the impact of the economic blockade can be mixed with bureaucratic laziness and cause discomfort and dissatisfaction.
However, this mixture of economic warfare with internal shortcomings does not cause social upheavals, and when the system – single-party socialism – has been put to the test at the ballot box, as in the recent constitutional referendum. This is so, despite the intense propaganda to which the US spends tens of millions of dollars each year and a well-funded “Cuba Internet Task Force”. The results have been overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades.
The explanation for the dominant media machine is that the mix of “intense regime repression” and “Cuban relaxation” prevents an outbreak. But in the history of Cuba –from Weyler’s reconcentration to Machado’s dictatorship to Batista’s– no regime based on repression has ever managed to remain in charge of the country for a long time, despite a “relaxation” in which corruption was the dynamic of the functioning of politics and the economy at all levels.
On the contrary, if instead of February 2019, the electoral consultation were to take place now, in the midst of an intensified blockade, the percentage of approval would probably exceed that obtained then, and that would be the result, without a doubt, of the combination of three conjunctural and two structural factors.
Conjunctural factors:
The intensification of the U.S. government’s aggressiveness strengthens patriotic sentiment and national unity.
The political effectiveness of the Cuban government, convincingly explaining the relationship of shortages with the increase in aggression, and the way in which the strategy to confront the US sanctions seeks to lessen their impact on the daily life of the people.
The international situation with visible failure of neo-liberal policies and discrediting of the formulas of bourgeois democracy
Structural:
The massive political culture among Cubans, established for 60 years by Fidel Castro’s teaching, about the nature of imperialism and the project of social justice and national sovereignty of the Revolution.
The link between the revolutionary leadership and the people, continued by the leadership of Raúl and supported by Díaz-Canel, which has reinforced the perception that the government listens to the people and works for them.
No Latin American country, of those who right now repress social protest with gunshots and gases and/or openly violate the rules of formal democracy that they themselves defend, has been subjected to economic warfare, to multi-million dollar financing to create an artificial opposition and, much less, to permanent global media and academic lynching of their leaders and their political and social project.
But in spite of all that, it must be recognized that there are dissatisfied people in Cuba, and many of those dissatisfied people are going to Miami. The accumulation of almost six decades of migratory privileges, together with the development of educational capabilities and the state of health brought about by Cuban socialism, make them very competitive with respect to the rest of the non-native communities, but they do not make them freer. More than one million Cubans in the US suffer serious limitations in their relations with their families in Cuba thanks to Trump’s measures; however, there is no news that this causes significant protests there.
Nor do we read anywhere that this public absence of disagreement is attributed to corruption and the repressive practices, not at all democratic, that the ruling class on the island until 1959 seems to have implanted in Miami during its already long stay in that city. This is not to disregard the uplifting example offered by a system that today puts Donald Trump and Joe Biden in competition, in corruption and insults.
By Carlos Rafael Dieguez
January 07, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Letter from US religious organizations and institutions to the Secretary of State opposing the inclusion of Cuba on the List of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
The Honorable Mike Pompeo
Secretary of State
Washington DC.
Dear Secretary Pompeo,
Press reports suggest that he is considering adding Cuba once again to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and we write to express our strong opposition.
There is no justification for adding Cuba to this list. While the United States has political disagreements with Cuba on a variety of issues, these issues are not related to state sponsorship of terrorism. Adding Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism will be perceived internationally as a political gesture that will undermine US credibility on the issue of terrorism.
Designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism would not only be wrong, but cruel. While it would not tighten existing sanctions on US companies trading with Cuba, it would harm the Cuban people, including families, communities and congregations who are our partners. It would complicate some third country sales to Cuba and discourage foreign investment.
The Cuban economy has received several hard blows in recent years, including US restrictions on family remittances, the contraction in the number of US visitors as a result of travel limitations imposed during this period.
These include the government’s decision to impose a ban on oil exports to Cuba, the COVID blockade, the United States’ efforts to restrict oil shipments to Cuba, and Cuba’s own internal economic challenges. The result has been hardship and scarcity for the Cuban people.
Because our partners in the Cuban churches – congregants, ministers, and their communities – are severely affected by these measures, we have called for their end.
The proposal to add Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism would only worsen this situation and harm those who are already suffering from economic problems.
For all these reasons, we strongly oppose any decision to add Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism and urge you not to do so.
Sincerely,
Alliance of Baptists
American Baptist National Missionary Societies
Armenian Orthodox Church
Church World Service
Committee of Friends of the National Legislation
Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ
Latin America Working Group
Mennonite Central Committee Washington Office, USA
National Council of Churches of Christ USA
Pax Christi USA
Presbyterian Church (USA)
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The United States has experienced a very bitter drink of the acíbar [aloe juice] or purgative that has made other nations of the world drink more than once with names of seasons or colors. As an unusual fact for the idyllic image with which the American democracy has sold itself and deceived the planet throughout three centuries, we have witnessed an insurrection of the most extreme and violent ultra-right, determined to maintain the political power of he who is its image and likeness.
Products Retail Price UM: pesos per pound |
|
ROOT VEGETABLES |
|
1. Sweet potato (Boniato) |
3.00 |
2. Malanga xanthosoma |
8.00 |
3. Malanga colocasia |
4.00 |
4. Yuca |
4.00 |
5. Banana fruit |
3.00 |
6. Banana lunch |
4.00 |
7. Donkey banana |
2.00 |
VEGETABLES |
|
8. Tomato |
8.00 |
9. Dried Caribbean Onion |
28.00 |
10. Green Caribbean onion |
13.00 |
11. Dried white onion |
15.00 |
12. Green onion branch |
10.00 |
13. Garlic |
47.00 |
14. Bell pepper |
10.00 |
15. Cucumber |
3.00 |
16. Pumpkin |
4.00 |
17. Melon |
3.00 |
18. Cabbage |
3.00 |
Other vegetables |
|
19. Carrot without the top |
6.00 |
20. Beet without the top |
6.00 |
21. Chives |
6.00 |
22. Eggplant |
5.00 |
23. Hot bell pepper |
11.00 |
24. Chay bell pepper |
7.00 |
25. Radish |
5.00 |
26. Bean |
8.00 |
27. Okra |
6.00 |
28. Lettuce |
5.00 |
29. Chard |
4.00 |
30. Spinach |
3.00 |
31. Chinese Cabbage |
3.00 |
32. Watercress |
4.00 |
CITRUS AND FRUITS |
|
33. Sweet orange |
10.00 |
34. Lemon |
13.00 |
35. Mango |
6.00 |
36. Guava |
7.00 |
37. Grated fruit |
5.00 |
38. Green fruit bomb |
3.00 |
39. Pineapple |
4.00 |
40. Avocado |
5.00 |
GRAINS |
|
41. Baby Corn |
(UM: weight per ear) 3.00 |
42. Black common bean |
14.00 |
43. Common red bean |
16.00 |
44. Chickpeas |
35.00 |
This article also appears in GRANMA:
http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-01-03/aprueban-nuevos-precios-de-productos-agropecuarios-en-la-habana-03-01-2021-18-01-25
The times are not good, and any political, social or economic agenda of a beginning President must be subject to the dictates of confronting the COVID-19 pandemic plus the vicissitudes of a very complicated Trumpian legacy
Posted: Saturday 02 January 2021 | 06:10:07 pm.
By Juana Carrasco Martin
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University, was also not wrong in predicting the winner of the 2020 presidential election. His record of accurate predictions, which dates back to 1984, remained intact.
The clues worked, which he explained in an interview with The Morning Show on Wisconsin Public Radio, why they were giving Joe Biden the victory even though he was not charismatic, and which then made him state categorically in an opinion piece in The New York Times in early August that “The clues predict that Trump will lose the White House:
The terrible numbers of the coronavirus pandemic, the national movement of protest against police brutality and systematic racism, the social unrest and economic collapse that erased the economic gains Donald Trump was presenting until the
Covid-19 appeared on the scene.
To tell the truth, Trumpism and its mishandling of the unexpected situation of this fateful 2020 and its aftermath, defeated the tycoon who administered the United States for four years as if it were an enormous capitalist monopoly, and not the imperial representative of big business that must follow the rules of the game because it is a showcase of democracy.
Without a doubt, the pandemic is rising as the giant to be faced by the elected president, although he already has the weaponry of the vaccine. A population of more than 300 million inhabitants is not immunized -what remains to be seen effectively- in a flash, therefore the numbers of those infected and killed and their consequent involvement in the country’s economy will continue to grow.
Without a doubt, the first months of Joe Biden’s administration will be torturous, and he does not have a Congress in which the Democrats, while retaining a majority in the House, will have to fight tooth and nail in the Senate.
Now, the legacy that Donald Trump leaves behind is much more notorious and damaging, because he led the United States into a state of extreme polarization and manipulated a good part of the American people in such a way that his faithful followers and the 74 million Americans who voted for him have accepted impunity and the existence of the swamp of corruption at the highest levels of the nation and of the power elites, even though one of his campaign promises was to end the “Democratic” swamp.
The pardons of these final days of his presidency speak for the clarity of that quagmire, when a good part of the pardons and annulments of sentences are for people very close to their political or family environment, faithful to their actions, millionaires who have committed tax fraud and other economic crimes.
An “achievement” of Trump, completed this one in the year 2020 will probably give a substantial turn to the legality towards the right. He appointed three Supreme Court justices – a lifetime appointment – and 25 percent of the federal judiciary. In doing so, he has reversed or broken the balance of federal appellate courts and, in the case of the highest court, could result in an alteration of the government’s regulatory power, the right to abortion, and the immigration law, to name three that are under debate and in the face of which the positions of the outgoing president, who will be sworn in on January 20 as the nation’s 46th president, are diametrically opposed.
According to judicial experts, and Democrats in particular, this is a takeover by the more conservative wing of the Republicans.
How will Biden deal with the very serious problem of institutionalized racism and its most public and violent expression, police brutality? Not a few analysts believe that the extreme white right promoted by Trump will persist in asserting its “right” to supremacy.
While Trump could not build the physical wall with Mexico, nor make his southern neighbors pay for it, since the cost of the remodeled areas and the little that was new took it out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers, the restrictions he imposed on immigration have more than made up for that fence and it will have to be seen how the coming administration undoes them or how the judiciary keeps them in check, but he owes it to the Latino population and to the dream of millions of undocumented people that Trumpism turned into a nightmare.
In any case, Biden, whose motto was to recover “the soul of the nation,” faces an enormous challenge because that nation is divided and not precisely by a line of the color of the parties, but one that puts liberal democracy in check, with the promotion of distrust towards government institutions, the press, science and the electoral process itself.
Biden, on the other hand, was forced to wink at American progressivism and within the Democratic Party and must also comply with them, or at least try to do so, and there are not a few matters to approve of, nor are they easy.
Among them are education – only with the insurmountable debt of the university students will he have a good headache -; public health, which the Covid-19 has called into question, should introduce universal public insurance; organized labor, when unemployment reaches millions of Americans, hit by the closing of businesses of all sizes and sectors of the economy, and where the demand for the minimum wage will return with force.
Taxes cannot be absent from that list – when the reductions executed by Trump served to make the richest people benefit highly from 60 percent – and now it could not fail to benefit those with the lowest incomes, workers, ethnic minorities, women, immigrants.
A 180-degree turnaround is now mandatory on key foreign policy issues and on relations with allies, friends, and even adversaries. A field in which Trump has sown tensions and economic wars.
In some cases it will be “easy” for him, such as returning to the Treaty of Paris, the World Health Organization, restoring civilized exchanges with his allies in the European Union and NATO, among others.
Not so with respect to Iran, China, Russia, even Latin America, where renewed airs of sovereignty are returning in some countries and with them of integration.
How much it will maintain from the policies of sanctions, from the commercial wars, established with high tariffs that not only confronted the US with the Asian Giant and other adversaries, but also political and strategic allies for that vision of fierce business competition that prevailed for four years in the White House.
Will Biden be able to respect the right of the Palestinian people by reversing Washington’s embrace of Netanyahu’s apartheid?
There’s plenty of room to cut through, and we’ll have to wait for the new president’s first steps. One thing is certain: 2021 will not provide an answer to all the uncertainties, since the Covid-19 will continue to implement rules.
However, the clouds of four years of trumpism will not be easy to clear. Economist and columnist Robert Reich has said that the most vile legacy that Trump will leave is the acceptance of its behavior, and practically half of the American population seems to be enrolled in that list.
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