Can the Left Win an Election?
Can the Left Win an Election Without an Organized People?
By Hugo Moldiz Mercado.
He is a Bolivian lawyer, communicator, university professor, researcher, Master in International Relations and correspondent for international news agencies. He has advised some commissions of the Bolivian Constituent Assembly.
April 28, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Demonstrations in La Paz protesting the coup d’état against Evo Morales. Photo: Reuters.
In what way does the left have a chance of triumphing in representative (bourgeois) democratic elections? Is it an efficient and effective electoral strategy, regardless of the relation of forces between the dominant and subordinate classes, the predominant, even the only one, for a leftist candidate to be able to attract aa high percentage of the population and crown himself as the winning formula?
Is it a general political strategy, with its political-electoral correlate, that builds “from below” a favorable relationship of forces in the social struggle, to then translate it into votes greater than those received by the right-wing candidates, leading to a political-electoral victory?
It is evident that much reflection can be made on each of the questions posed. It is even possible to incorporate other questions in the same direction and make the issue even more complex. However, at the risk of appearing too simple, let us try some criteria.
The first is that the ways of doing electoral politics depend on the general political situation of the time. There is an intimate relationship between the political characteristics of a certain general historical period and the characteristics of a specific electoral situation.
A correct electoral strategy that ignores the political features of the period and the situation, however attractive it may be in the eyes and ears of the people, will not mechanically give the expected result: triumph. On the contrary, an electoral strategy based on the people as a social force with an effective territorial presence will be capable of convincing and attracting various fractions of the petty bourgeoisie and other backward sectors of the popular camp to lean towards a leftist candidate.
Second, it is true that the conditions and tools existing in this second decade of the 21st century are different, even radically different, from the conditions and tools that the left developed and used to conquer electoral victories, first, and install governments of its ideological-political court at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, later.
There is no doubt that the role of the media and social networks – as ideological state apparatuses – has an increasingly greater degree of influence in the configuration of electoral results. Whether or not it is predominant depends on the type of social formation, the nature of the class confrontation at the time, and the nature of the political strategies of the actors.
But neither the first nor the second criteria (forms of electoral participation, on the one hand, and conditions and tools, on the other), modify in substance the main aspect of representative democracy. That system, on the basis of the fetish of “one citizen, one vote”, is generally structured to ensure the reproduction of the type of capitalist state in the long term.
Except for a certain relative autonomy of the State from its dominant classes, in moments of general crisis, the left can take over the government, while previously building from “below” a relationship of favorable social and political forces.
Based on these two considerations, it is good to point out that, as a general rule, the left has been the winner of electoral competitions when its electoral strategy has succeeded in establishing or expressing the trend of social availability of the subordinate classes.
In other words, to build and condense through them a present state of mind and subjectivity of a social majority that is unwilling, for various reasons, with the government of the moment, and that is inclined to change through an option would answer the current state of affairs.
It is when the general crisis or even the indisposition with the government of the moment is made to lean to the side of a popular project. In other words, it is not only the candidate’s attributes that win over most voters but, above all, when that candidate or party synthesizes the “common sense” of what the people want and what they are fighting for at that moment.
However, this “common sense” does not arise spontaneously, even more so when the majority of the state system (repressive apparatus and ideological state apparatus) are against a leftist candidacy. It is rather the result of a patient and skillful construction of relations of forces favorable to change. This requires a conscious leadership. It is when, without abandoning modern techniques of inducing people to vote, the fragmented social tissues are gradually being articulated into a single large, strong and vigorous fabric.
The right-wing options have in an otherwise always expensive election marketing campaign the predominant way to win an election. This is because the whole state apparatus (repressive and ideological) works for their benefit. But the left, even if it is reformist, is obliged to find, in the organized strength of the people, the main source of its strategy, its tactics and its tools of triumph.
Moreover, even if the left obtained an electoral victory as a result of a high level of rejection by the population of the parties of the right, due to an unprecedented generalized crisis (ideological crisis of the classes and fractions of the block in power), its degree of stability and the possibilities of deepening its governmental measures will be very limited to face the medium and long-term challenges if it does not count on the organized people as a social force.
Does that mean that the left should abandon the use of modern techniques, such as social networks, to face an electoral competition? No, it doesn’t mean that. The progressive and leftist forces should use it to the fullest, but they should be convinced and not call themselves “self-deception” that their hypothetical victory was due to other, larger causes.
Only the naive or those who are unfamiliar with the laws of political operations are prone to be deceived by certain technical or tawdry electoral advisors who claim victory for a leftist candidate. In fact, a measurement of the level of impact of the battle on social networks will show that right-wing alternatives are the biggest beneficiaries.
The territorial work, the grassroots work, to organize the people and prepare them for a victorious battle that will translate into a vote will never be replaced by the forms of political incidence “from above”. These techniques complement, yes, but do not replace the consciousness and organization made into a material force.
For that, perhaps it is good to differentiate, as René Zavaleta did, between democracy as a mere aggregation of votes and democracy as self-determination. The sum of votes in a representative democracy can give the government, but not lay the foundations for the construction of a power different from the existing one.
This implies that a triumph within representative democracy for the right is in its condition of possibility. This is because it does not alter in any way the existing power relations. But for the left, it is insufficient since it is supposed to want the construction of power different from the capitalist one.
For the left to triumph in elections of representative democracy, it must first constitute itself as the leader of society, and this is only possible when the people become historical subjects who install their “common sense” as predominant over others.
In synthesis, it is not “from above” that the left wins the elections with the sole use of modern techniques of political incidence, but, above all, with the capacity to constitute itself “from below” as a political reference and as a part of the historical subject.
The left wins elections not only because of the charisma of a candidate, which is important but insufficient but also because of the benefit it derives from that space of representative democracy, which is not its own, to build itself as a power (hegemony translated into political practice) before becoming a government. Those are the lessons of history and that is the challenge of the present hour.
Precedents in Cuba of “Operation Gideon”
Precedents in Cuba of “Operation Gideon”
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The partial or total crushing of Operation Gideon against Venezuela left a significant number of mercenaries captured, including a self-confessed DEA agent supposedly dedicated to the fight against drug smuggling and abuse.
The DEA, which employs more than 10,000 people to implement its objectives as well as to prosecute money laundering linked to these crimes, also often serves the imperialist purposes of the U.S. government in Latin America and other parts of the world.
This new victory of the Bolivarian Armed Forces and the Venezuelan people has been another defeat for Donald Trump’s neo-colonigializing policy. It has created a focus of violence in various Venezuelan states and in the capital, Caracas. It’s done against a backdrop of systematic campaigns of lies in the hegemonic media aimed at spreading disorder in order to make governance impossible.
The idea is to create a matrix of opinion that shows Venezuela as an ungovernable country by forcing its president, Nicolas Maduro, to ask for support from the OAS and Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), first. These would then approve a humanitarian military intervention in his country.
It is not news that President Trump and his officials have denied Washington’s participation in the defeated maritime incursion. They know that it would be contradictory and unacceptable for the U.S. government to appear linked to mercenaries and drug traffickers. Such a scenario is not compatible with the image of representation that they want to project to internal and external public opinion, much less admit this scandalous failure now.
That is why Mr. Mike Pompeo told the press in his defense that “if we had been behind those actions the result would have been different”, omitting any comparison of such a humiliating American defeat what happened in Vietnam.
Something similar was done by the US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, on April 15, 1961, when he denied any link of his country with the bombings of mercenary planes against Cuba.
The Cuban Foreign Minister at the time, Raúl Roa, unmasked this when it became known that the mercenaries in the service of Washington had surrendered to the Cuban militia troops barely 64 hours after the invasion landed at Playa Girón (Bahía de Cochinos, aka Bay of Pigs).
Stevenson made an ethical gesture and recognized that this was the greatest humiliation that his government would have received, an ethical gesture that cannot be expected from Trump or Pompeo.
But now the shot has backfired on Trump, who apparently did not know that drug trafficker and DEA agent Jose Alberto Socorro-Hernandez, aka “Pepero,” had been apprehended in Caracas. There, he confessed to the instructions he received to carry out various violent actions in the state of Miranda that were carried out by DEA-oriented drug gangs and common criminals,
According to Pepero, they were intended to divert the attention of Venezuelan security services to entertain them and to guarantee protection for the landing plan, which took place this past May 3 in the town of Macuto, in the state of La Guaira.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the U.S. government has used the DEA to carry out these actions, as well as to play a façade role in Operation Gideon. If this turned out to be successful, there would be applause, if it went wrong, they would disqualify their agent.
Poreso did not use an American, but rather the Venezuelan drug trafficker-agent Socorro Hernández (aka) Pepero, who is linked to the Colombian cartels operating in Zulia. This is on the border with the Upper Guajiracolombian-Venezuelan region, a territory that was under the control of the powerful leader of the Northern Block of the narco-paramilitaries, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, extradited by Álvaro Uribe Vélez in 2008, who claims that Uribe betrayed him.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the U.S. government has used the DEA to carry out these actions, as well as to play a role as a front for Operation Gideon. If it went well, they would applaud it; if it went badly, they would disown their agent, and therefore they did not use an American, but a Venezuelan counter-revolutionary drug trafficker.
The installation of 10 U.S. military bases in Colombia, officially agreed to by the government of Barack Obama, is a humiliation to its people and a regional threat. It will take years for the Colombians to eliminate this Yankee military occupation. Guantánamo is an example, illegally occupied and denounced in all international forums whose agreements are not obeyed and/or blatantly violated.
May 13, 2020
This article can be reproduced quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source
Lifting Restrictions is Very Dangerous
Lessons from Hokkaido Island to the World:
Lifting Restrictions is Very Dangerous
The region acted quickly and contained the initial outbreak with a three-week quarantine. But when restrictions were lifted, a second wave hit even harder.
April 30, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Masked passers-by in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, on February 26, 2020 Photo: Reuters
The island of Hokkaido in northern Japan is experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, which experts say could have been avoided if the state of emergency had not been lifted too soon. Their experience offers a grim lesson for the next phase of the battle against covid-19, TIME reports.
The region acted quickly and contained the initial SARS-CoV-2 outbreak with a three-week quarantine. But when local authorities lifted restrictions, a second wave of infection hit even harder: less than four weeks later, the island was forced to re-implement the blockade.
Hokkaido reported 38 new cases on Tuesday, bringing its total number of infections to 688, the fifth highest in Japan. Simultaneously, one person died from the virus, bringing the number of deaths on the island to 27.
Chitose Airport, Hokkaido, Japan Photo: Reuters
Success Story
Thus, the island, which was seen as something of a success story for the way it worked to contain, track and isolate the virus, is once again in the spotlight as it struggles to cope with the second wave of contagion.
In late February, Hokkaido became the first place in Japan to declare a state of emergency for covid-19. Schools were closed, large-scale meetings were canceled and people were advised to stay home. The local government pursued the virus with determination, isolating anyone who had had contact with those infected.
The strategy apparently worked, and by mid-March, the number of new cases had been reduced to one or two per day. On 19 March, the state of emergency was lifted and schools were reopened in early April. But only 26 days after the state of emergency was lifted, a new one had to be imposed.
It should be noted that Hokkaido has acted independently of the central Government, which only last week placed Tokyo, Osaka and five other prefectures in a state of emergency.
Lifting the restrictions “is very dangerous”.
“Now I regret that we should not have lifted the first state of emergency,” Kiyoshi Nagase, president of the Hokkaido Medical Association, told TIME. “It really won’t be until next year that we can safely lift these blockades.
Experts say the restrictions on the island were lifted too quickly and too soon because of pressure from local businesses, along with a false sense of security about the declining infection rate.
According to Kazuto Suzuki, a professor at Hokkaido University, the example of the island “shows that what is happening in the U.S.,” where some governors are lifting restrictions, “is very dangerous.
“That’s what we know now: even if you control the first wave, you can’t relax,” Suzuki concluded.
(Source: Russia Today)
No Impunity for Spreading the Epidemic
No Impunity for Those Who Commit the Crime of Spreading the Epidemic or Taking Advantage of the Situation
The current Cuban Penal Code imposes penalties ranging from three months to one year’s imprisonment for the basic offence of spreading an epidemic; from three to eight years for theft; from three months to one year for disobedience, illegal economic activity, speculation and hoarding.
April 3, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Radio Nuevitas
Camagüey – Jacqueline Ballester Aranda, the chief prosecutor of the Camagüey Provincial Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Criminal Prosecution Department, told Radio Cadena Agramonte that the biggest complaints in that territory were about the crime of spreading an epidemic.
Eight people are involved in this case because of refusals by travelers from abroad to comply with the social isolation required to preserve the health of their families and the community.
Also, four cases are being prosecuted for speculation and hoarding, based on the occupation of large quantities of deficient products, both food and hygiene, which are basic necessities for the population or essential to combat COVID-19.
A citizen was tried for the purchase of 18 liters of chlorine, with the aim of selling it at a higher price, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, while another was charged with a similar amount.
On the other hand, 652 pounds of malanga and 175 pounds of rice have been recovered; in both cases, they were intended for illegal economic activity, and, for example, the defendant was marketing cereal at eight pesos a pound.
There was a robbery with force in a placita (point of sale of agricultural products) in the city of Camagüey, whose authors stole 38 sacks of potatoes and the weights of the unit. Those involved are already in custody and under investigation.
The Chief Prosecutor of the Department of Criminal Procedure of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office added that demonstrations of contempt for the authorities, including the health and public order authorities, have been made against the request to place the nasobuco on the public highway and the indication of isolation in the centers authorized for such purposes.
The current Cuban Criminal Code imposes penalties ranging from three months to one year’s imprisonment for the basic offense of spreading an epidemic; from three to eight years for theft; from three months to one year for disobedience, illegal economic activity, speculation and hoarding.
Cuba Returns 2000+ Stranded Cubans
Cuba guarantees the return of more than two thousand Cubans stranded in 15 countries
Since the beginning of the spread of the pandemic, Cuban Consulates have provided timely information to Cuban nationals abroad on the evolution of the disease on the island and on consular procedures.
April 27, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Cubaminrex
Since the announcement of the regulations on travel to and from Cuba, a measure adopted by the Cuban authorities as part of the national plan for the prevention and confrontation of COVID-19 as of March 20, more than 2,000 Cubans have returned to national territory, by air and sea, from more than a dozen countries, among them: Angola, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Nicaragua, Peru, Portugal, Mexico, Panama and Equatorial Guinea, Cubaminrex reported.
These return flights of Cuban citizens and foreigners residing on the island have been organized between the competent Cuban authorities and their counterparts in each of the countries involved, in strict compliance with internationally established standards.
Since the beginning of the spread of the pandemic, Cuban Consulates have provided timely information to Cuban nationals abroad on the evolution of the disease on the Island and on consular procedures. At the same time, the Cuban authorities are permanently monitoring the situation of our nationals stranded in different countries, while efforts are being made, whenever possible, to ensure their return to our country.
Equally commendable has been the action of Cuban residents and members of solidarity organizations with Cuba, who have provided food, medicines and arranged cheap accommodations for Cuban citizens who are waiting to return to our national territory.
Pandemic and Spirituality
Pandemic and Spirituality
The coronavirus forces us to assume a new spirituality and attitude towards reality. Spirituality is the capacity to open oneself lovingly to the other, to nature and to God.
By Frei Betto
April 11, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Life is full of contingencies. On a personal level, failure, loss of friends, illness, death. On the global level, events that no analyst or futurologist foresees, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers in New York. Nor did anyone suspect that in the midst of the 21st century, with all the resources of science, humanity would be threatened by a pandemic.
Who could have imagined that it would come from China, in the form of a contagious disease, the cause of the deepest crisis of capitalism since 2008? According to the Morgan Stanley Composite Index, in a few weeks in the financial market, the shares of the world’s stock exchanges lost $15.5 trillion dollars, more than eight times the GDP of Brazil in 2019!
Will any of those speculators and mega-researchers be affected in their pockets (the most sensitive part of the human body) have become poorer? And yet, before the pandemic, almost all of them refused to make their own contribution to measures to combat hunger and global warming.
That reminds me of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70. There came a time when the rich man offered a pot full of gold in exchange for a piece of bread.
The coronavirus forces us to assume a new spirituality and attitude towards reality. It does not make class distinctions, as does gastroenteritis, which kills thousands of malnourished children. Likewise, it makes no distinctions of sexual orientation, as does AIDS, which affected mostly homosexuals. Now we are all vulnerable, even if the age groups and situations of risk vary.
We are all forced to withdraw into the house and into ourselves, to become detached. This abandonment of routine activities and programmed agendas can uproot or humanize us. Those who are attached to certain habits that, for the moment, are forbidden, such as going to the movies, to the theater, to the club, will rebel. In the case of the elderly, they will not be able to have contact with their grandchildren and will have to stay at home as long as possible.
Air travel has been reduced, national borders have been closed, tourist tours have been canceled. We have no choice but to stay put where we are. Huit-clos [no exit], within four walls. We may discover, like Sartre, why others are hell. And it may be that we rescue family life, dialogue with the family, the care of the house (everything must be sanitized).
It is time to learn to work and study without leaving domestic space. Now we have more time to watch movies on TV, surf the internet, read good books, do research, meditate and pray.
The virus makes everyone equal. But it doesn’t level the playing field. The bourgeois couple, who never took the trouble to go into the kitchen or clean the house, are now forced to roll up their sleeves or risk having one of their employees bring the virus into their home. The recalcitrant does not follow the instructions of the health authorities, and the selfish buy all the alcohol gel and masks in the pharmacy.
I know a young woman who volunteered to do the shopping for the vulnerable neighbors in her building without charging anything for it. Another distributed her phone number so that isolated elderly people would have someone to talk to. A married couple of lawyers go in their car every morning to pick up their cook on the outskirts and take her back in the afternoon, to prevent her from using public transportation. Three neighboring families from a hospital decided to prepare lunches for the nurses and doctors who double their work hours. In Italy, neighbors look out the window in the late afternoon and sing in chorus. Churches, mosques, synagogues open their doors to those who live on the streets and need hygienic care. Finally, there are countless examples of generosity and solidarity in this period when we are all potentially threatened.
These gestures have their source in spirituality, even if it is not of a religious nature. Spirituality is the capacity to open oneself lovingly to others, to nature and to God. And its best teaching is in generosity, the secret of happiness. Rich is not he who has everything, said Buddha, but he who has need of little.
Hawks and Doves in the US Since Covid-19
Hawks and Doves in the US Since Covid-19
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
April 15, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Finding the right balance between public security and personal freedom after COVID-19 “will require a review of everything we in the United States say we need to do in the interest of our security, which should involve moving away from militarized approaches to global problems to many other instruments of American power and influence.
This is what Christopher A. Preble, Vice-President of the CATO Institute for Defense and Foreign Policy in Washington DC, reflects in an article published in the magazine “Responsible Statecraft”, on the possible implications of the COVID-19 outbreak on the future of US foreign policy.
Among the responsibilities of many U.S. government officials is the identification of national security threats and prioritizing, among many options, the appropriate tools to address them.
Those who advocate increases in Pentagon spending – the so-called hawks in the language of the day – are likely to argue that resources should not be cut to the military to free up more resources for public health.
“We will soon be back to normal,” they will say from their perspective, “it would not be wise to redirect our national security strategy and spending to address one particular type of threat, at the expense of all others.
This is not exactly how politics responded after 9/11, but, in that case, the military eventually emerged victorious. In fact, anyone who opposed the militarized approach (that of the doves, who see the fight against terrorism as primarily an intelligence and law enforcement problem) was attacked by the hawks for not taking the threat seriously enough.
“Only a war would be enough; anything else would be naive, or even insensitive: a sign of indifference to the inevitable suffering of future victims of terrorist attacks.
That perspective, set a few days or weeks after 11 September 2001, has persisted. Even today, proposals to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, for example, are met with serious warnings that this will increase the risk of future terrorist incidents in the United States. We are told that “only a continued, indefinite US military presence can manage this risk and the best we can do is to manage that danger.
Will such arguments survive the current crisis here at home? What politician will argue that Americans would have to die from COVID-19 today to ensure that other Americans are not killed by a terrorist in the future? And, will it be true that such military personnel so willing to “help” other countries are necessary to save our own?
The suggestion seemed absurd for generations, because the danger was not near, not even on the horizon. Now, it’s here.
If before it was considered naive to doubt that terrorism would represent a very serious threat to public security in the future, and skeptics were considered dangerously out of touch with reality, then the suggestion was not accepted,
Will the claims of the traditional defense hawks now come under greater scrutiny, without any senator or representative asking, for example, how that ship, tank or missile might function against a deadly pandemic?
In the post-September 11 era, a few dared to question whether the enormous expenses we had incurred amounted to unnecessary overreaction. But most Americans literally fell into that line.
The disease and its aftermath should provoke strong debate about how to preserve America’s national security.
In a peculiar twist, those who call for more spending to defeat the diseases could be called the hawks of the pandemic, while those who argue against it (and prefer that most resources stay in the military) become the doves.
The suggestion might seem odd, and the terms hawk and pigeon belong to more than just spending priorities. Because, even if the coronavirus didn’t change everything, it would necessarily change many things.
The senior leader of the Washington DC-based CATO Institute for Defense and Foreign Policy concludes that “finding the right balance between public security and personal freedom after COVID-19 will require Americans to review all the things we have to do to keep ourselves safe and to move away from a militarized approach to global problems.
Public Transportation Makes Adjustments
Public Transport Switches to
Direct Service for Essential Workers
In view of the logical concerns and worries in the population, caused by the paralysis of public transport in the country, Eduardo Rodriguez Davila, Minister of Transport (Mitrans), stressed the importance of understanding, support and discipline towards these provisions, in view of the progress of the new coronavirus
Author: Susana Antón | susana@granma.cu
April 13, 2020 21:04:09
Translated and edited by Merriam Ansara.
Edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The new measures in transport seek to prevent the spread of VOC-19. Photo: Endrys Correa Vaillant
Responding to the logical questions and concern of the population over the suspension of public transportation in the country, the Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodriuez Davila, remarked how important it is for people to understand, support and uphold these measures as necessary in the face of advancing COVID-19.
He explained to Granma, that the suspension does not for the moment include state vehicles that are used to ensure the functioning of the economy, nor privately owned personal vehicles which can circulate as needed, so long as they also are not creating traffic jams.
There is still also the movement of cargo, he said, as necessary to support the economy.
He confirmed that the mandatory suspension imposed Saturday, April 11, includes all public transportation both urban and inter-urban, includes both state and privately owned, and includes the support services for state vehicles.
Instead, transportation services have been organized for workers in the medical and health centers, commerce -related services, policing services and others defined by the Defense Councils (Civil Defense) throughout the country as essential activities.
He added that these are for specific workers at specific hours so that they can go and return from their places of work.
He said also that transportation has been guaranteed for all dialysis patients, people undergoing cancer treatments and in other situations of medical urgency. Information telephone lines have been set up at the main health centers in each municipality.
For these services as well, transportation reinforcements have been provided to all of the local defense councils, including ambulances and medi-buses.
He said that all transportation drivers concerned about the situation of their salaries should check with their own work centers which have been put in charge of administering the benefit directives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
In terms of self-employed transporattion workers, Rodriguez Davila said that the current suspension of service applies for the moment to passenger and cargo transportation (including bici-taxis and buggies), and services related to these such as driving instructors and taxi stand managers.
The suspension applies to the operation of vehicles and does not include suspension of related activities such as vehicle repair, bodywork, or tire repair. These can continue so long as it does not lead to any gatherings of multiple individuals and that those involved observe the prescribed infection protection measures.
He said that for any further clarification or needs, workers in these services should direct themselves to the offices from which they have received their licenses.
The MINTRANS minister said he realized that there have had to be huge adjustments from the public transportation of passengers to transportation for designated workers.
All of these newly adjusted services have had to be carried out with strict adherence to measures of zero crowding, everyone wearing facemask, ensuring use of hypochlorite for hands before boarding and complete disinfection of the vehicles after each run.
Each day there will need to be adjustments to improve the new services and to avoid any adverse effects to essential services. He said that instructions had been given to all of the provinces to improve organization of the routes, schedule frequency and other elements that would ensure maximum efficiency of service and conservation of fuel.
He said that MINTRANS was also working with all of the main entities of the central government administration, the defense councils and the state enterprises involved in operation of port-to -transportation to economic distribution so as to guarantee timely distribution of the family ration basket of regular guaranteed goods and other measures to ensure the delivery of food and other basic products to the community.
He remarked that yesterday, Monday, because of the possibity of propagaiion of COVID-19, the Business Group for Automotive Transport Services had decided to close the Schools for Road and Driving Education to avoid gatherings of multiple individuals and had issued an announcement to this effect.
He announced that the deadlines for certificates, license renewals and psychological/physical driver exams for those whose documents were expiring had been extended until services were restarted in the related centers and offices.
Anyone who had already paid for the service at the time of the service suspension, who didn’t wish to continue the service could ask for 100% reimbursement of the amount paid.
Cuban Media in Battle vs. COVID-19
Media Near the Front Lines of the Battle Against COVID-19
by Yaymara Villaverde Marcé // Cuban News Agency
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Guantanamo, 11 abr (ACN) After the heroic medical army, today on the first front of battle against COVID-19, there is also a commendable rear guard of professionals and essential workers, food producers, dependents, carriers, and journalists, recorder or camera in hand always present in times of contingency.
Every profession entails sacrifice, yes, and communicating in times of global health crisis a risk quota, a reality that challenges media institutions to unleash all the reporting and creative capacity of their journalists. They have reorganized their routines to ensure the safety of the guild and the time to inform the population in a timely and transparent manner.
We have that responsibility to our people and humanity-as Taimi Fernández, president of glove journalists, tells it, this is our duty to avoid misinformation. More so in this difficult context where accurate guidance is needed, from reliable and scientific sources, to raise public perceptions of risk and encouraging preventive behavior.
Information is a vital tool, a way to fight the new coronavirus and its spread-points out. The responsible press must take advantage of the influence that the media exert on the collective consciousness, with reliable and contrastable data that cut the wings to rumors and false news that only generate confusion and hinder an effective response.
Consequent with the decisive measure of social isolation and confinement, the Cuban media has redesigned its daily dynamics, strengthened the teleworking modality to reduce the influx of professionals and technicians, and have exempted those with chronic suffering from risks which make them vulnerable in this epidemic scenario.
This is how Mabel Pozo, director of the radio station CMKS Guantanamera, where today the necessary health and protection measures are taken. She works with the essential staff, programming was adapted to the context shee points ou, and this and the views of the people are monitored by specialists, depending on which deliveries move.
Similar strategies assume reporters and technicians of the newspaper and provincial television. There, several take advantage of remote work, in an informative reality in which mobile journalism intensifies, taking advantage of the potential of smartphones and basic technologies to generate content and products communicative for online platforms.
Lisván Lescaille, in front of Telecentro Solvisión, tells us that his medium reduced active staff-as a first step to protect vulnerable groups – adjusted the billboard by prioritizing three information magazines with the theme COVID-19 and invited experts, and working groups were created both on the streets and from homes, through social media.
Ariel Soler, Head of Information of the weekly “Venceremos”, spoke of vital hypermedial work in this context spoke about the journalistic exercise in which their reporters are inserted, six with corporate mobile phones and others with the Internet in their homes, with whom the editorial board of the journal organizes the work by phone, giving special follow-up to the epidemiological situation.
And nothing more revealing than the opinion of the people regarding this work, like that of the septuagenarian Guantanamera Dalia Aguilar, of those sharp to which no one makes a story, who told the ACN that no report from the national press is lost and local, “because warfare well warned does not kill soldier”, and thanks the professionals in that sector for their credibility.
Last March Ricardo Ronquillo, President of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), sent recognition to the professionals of the country’s public media system, for the extraordinary informative work in the confrontation of the global pandemic, urged to join this campaign to all communication platforms, and take institutional measures to protect the guild.
Journalists are close to the first line of battle against the disease, because they have to report what is happening around it in Cuba, so it is important to the media to ensure its protection, he stressed.
These are times to act quickly and informative transparency said Ronquillo in a meeting of the expanded presidency of the organization and emphasized-” UPEC is not demobilized, on the contrary, we must now unleash all the creative capacity to make visible to public opinion, national and international, the work of the media”.
The Coronavirus and the Crusade Against 5G
The Coronavirus and the Crusade Against 5G
Unique UK fires fuelled by conspiracy theories highlight the importance of fact-checking and maintaining common sense in the face of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
By Yurisander Guevara
guevara@juventudrebelde.cu
April 8, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
There is no scientific evidence linking 5G to COVID-19 Author: The Verge Published: 08/04/2020 | 08:49 pm
Conspiracy theories are generally harmless phenomena that rely on circumstantial issues to generate questions that often go unanswered. Thus, they sow doubt about a topic and generate debates that, in this age of the Internet everywhere, become endless.
However, when one of these theories causes consequences in the social fabric, it can already be described as dangerous. This is what is happening right now in the United Kingdom, where several telephone poles with 5G transmitters have been burned in some cities. These facts that are linked to an evil rumor that is spreading like wildfire in the networks, taking advantage of the social hysteria generated by SARS-CoV-2.
According to the “conspirators”, the deployment of the fifth generation of mobile data transmission technology, or 5G, is linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the burning of transmitters, a sign of the panic caused by the epidemic.
Theories
Rumors and conspiracy theories about a link between the launch of 5G and the spread of the coronavirus have spread mainly through social networks. There are groups on Facebook and Nextdoor, where thousands of members repeat false and misleading claims that 5G is supposedly harmful.
The theory claims that the new coronavirus originated in Wuhan because the Chinese city had recently launched 5G. Supposedly it has now spread to other cities that also use this technology.
It is the hottest hoax on social networks these days, after another one was dismantled, claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created for obscure geopolitical purposes. In this last case, the theory falls apart with a study entitled The Proximal Origin of the Coronavirus, published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Research compares the ribonucleic acid sequence of this microorganism with that of other coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS, and bases its conclusions on the characteristics of a protein called spike. This spike is found in the external envelope of the virus and has a sort of hook through which it attaches to human cells. This “ability” of the pathogen is essential in its ability to infect people, one of its most damaging characteristics.
And it is so perfect, according to the study, that “it is most likely the product of natural selection (…) strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of self-serving manipulation”. In the same sense, and even more categorically, researcher Kristian Andersen, from Scripps Research Institute, in Florida, United States, stated in La Repubblica, an Italian publication: “Confronting the generic data available today on the various types of coronavirus, we can resolutely state that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of natural processes”.
In the case of the theory linking 5G to the new coronavirus, there is no more than investigating the properties of this new technology, so-called because it is the fifth generation of mobile phone networks, designed to multiply the connection speed of our portable devices tenfold.
Those who defend the theory claim that 5G weakens the immune system, emitting harmful radiation and therefore facilitating the entry of the coronavirus into the body. They also add that viruses use radio waves to communicate.
The first “argument” collapses when we look at the radio spectrum. At the low-frequency end of the spectrum, we find the radio waves used by 5G. Therefore, this technology does not produce ionizing radiation and does not damage human DNA, which other frequencies such as X-rays or ultraviolet light, responsible for causing diseases such as cancer, do.
According to the AS newspaper, “radiation emitted by radio waves is at a similar level to that produced by televisions and natural light. It is true that this new generation is a bit above its predecessors in this type of emissions. It is also true that, according to Ofcom – the UK’s telecommunications regulator – the maximum it can generate is 66 times below the safety limit.
The Department of Health in England adds that 5G “should have no impact on public health” and the World Health Organization has included 5G under heading 2B of carcinogens. That is, among those not proven to be capable of producing cancer. According to this classification, it would be as potentially carcinogenic as coffee.
The second argument is pure fantasy, while there are no studies that point in that direction. There are, however, that admit that this communication through radio waves could occur between bacteria (in no case between different viruses). For example, there is a study by a group led by Allan Widom at Northeastern University in Boston, USA, whose conclusions have been discussed by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The facts
Despite all the evidence that disproves this crude conspiracy theory linking 5G to SARS-CoV-2, UK territories such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Melling have been the scene of cell tower fires in recent days.
The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport tweeted that “there is absolutely no credible evidence” of a link to the conspiracy theory, while commercial agency Mobile UK said such rumours and conspiracy theories were “worrying”.
UK telecoms operators now believe the attacks undermine the nation’s security. According to a tweet from Vodafone’s chief executive officer there, “this is now a matter of national security. The police and anti-terrorist authorities are investigating.
There have even been reports of harassment of telecommunications workers as they deployed fibre optic cables, as witnessed by a video also broadcast on Twitter by a BBC reporter.
The truth is that Iran, for example, is among the nations most affected by the new coronavirus, and there is not a single 5G tower there. There’s lots of evidence that dismantle this misleading theory, but the emotional fragility begins to make a dent. 5G is not a factor in its spread. Globalization is. And once the virus enters a territory, social isolation is the most effective measure to prevent its spread.
For our readers, who today are contributing to the great global battle against SARS-CoV-2 by staying at home, here is some advice: follow only official information from authorities about the pandemic and do not contribute to the networks that expand the reach of false news. We already see how harmful and dangerous it can be to feed on unverified facts, especially when the situation we are living in requires poise and a lot of common sense.
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