The CIA and the George Orwell Paradox
The CIA and the Paradox of George Orwell
The novel 1984, by English writer Eric Arthur Blair, known worldwide by the literary pseudonym George Orwell, constituted an accusation against totalitarian regimes and became the Central Intelligence Agencies greatest success
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by:
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Photo: Internet
English writer Eric Arthur Blair, known worldwide by the literary pseudonym George Orwell, was a combatant during the Spanish Civil War, which he said he joined “to kill fascists, because someone had to do it.”
His novel 1984 was an indictment of totalitarian regimes and became the CIA’s greatest success in its most widespread propaganda operation against the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
Orwell was born June 25, 1903 in India, where his father worked as a low-level colonial government official at the age of two, he moved with his mother and sister to England.
His literary career was based on those early experiences. He wrote the novel Burmese Days and essays such as A Hanging (1931) and Shooting an Elephant (1936) in opposition to the colonial system, in addition to writing stories about workers’ conditions.
These first texts place him in the liberal tradition of the generation of European writers born at the beginning of the 20th century, defrauded by the crisis of bourgeois society. In the face of the new conflict that German fascism would provoke, many of them took positions sympathetic with socialist ideas and the USSR in opposition to Nazi barbarism.
Another stage in his formation began in the Spanish Civil War, in which he was wounded and knew first hand the internal divisions of the anti-fascist front, among Trotskyists, with whom he sympathized, communists, anarchists and other tendencies. Meanwhile, from the USSR, came news about Stalin’s purges that shook his ideas favorable to socialism in that nation.
He wrote: “The Spanish war and other events in 1936-1937 changed things, and since then, I knew where I was. Every serious line I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and in favor of democratic socialism as I understand it.”
Under these premises he presented in 1945 the novel Animal Farm, a parody of a totalitarian society in which the local animals carry out an insurrection against the humans, a plot which expresses open criticism of the Soviet system and of English society of the time.
Later, in 1948, he finished his novel 1984, in which he presented a world ruled by great dictatorial powers and describes a totalitarian empire directed by “Big Brother”, or the maximum leader. He bases his power on instruments of domination of the whole life of his subjects, whose civil rights are violated and even their love life is regulated.
He spent his last energies in the writing of that narrative, affected by the tuberculosis that would take him to his grave in 1950. [Meanwhile], on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States, the recently-founded Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fine-tuned a subversive campaign aimed at “conquering the hearts and minds”, mainly of the European intelligentsia.
One of the propagandistic themes of that battle was the promise that, after the defeat of “Asian barbarism”, identified with the USSR, the Western camp led by the United States would build a better world, based on democracy, human rights and freedom. [This was] a fable in which not a few intellectuals of the time believed.
To achieve that goal, the CIA organized the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the early 1950s. It was supported by a vast global network of allied governments and special services, cultural institutions, think tanks, press organs, publishing houses, foundations, and all kinds of institutions related to the sphere of culture, in a mega operation that extended into the 1960s.
As never before, incalculable efforts, resources and police methods of recruitment, blackmail, propaganda and psychological influence were directed at a sector of the intelligentsia. [They had been] pigeon-holed by the strategists of the special services under the term “non-Communist or anti-Soviet left”, [who were] also joined by some who repented their support for the Soviet ideal in the first half of the century, among whom was George Orwell.
Michael Warner, a CIA historian, wrote that the strategy of conquering that left was “the foundation of the Agency’s political operations over the next two decades,” cites English researcher Frances Stonor Saunders in her book The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
The researcher points out that after Orwell’s death in 1950, the CIA, through its cultural front, negotiated with the writer’s widow the making of an animated film based on Animal Farm. [It was] considered the most ambitious project of its kind to that time.
More than 100,000 handmade illustrations were used for the animated film. Censorship of the original text was exercised, attacking characters [which he had] depicted as pigs, identified as the English and German bureaucracies and governments, which were removed from the final script to highlight anti-Soviet references.
Something similar happened with the film that was made about the other novel, 1984, in which all criticism of capitalist states was blurred. This turned the work into a notorious anti-communist manifesto, paid for with $100,000 dollars from the U.S. government.
Many years later, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR, the supposed end of history was proclaimed with the victory of the world capitalist system with the United States at its head.
This was the context in which the foundations were laid for the concept of maximum surveillance by the wave of the revolution in new communications and information technologies. This has had a greater impact than ever before on the history of human development in all spheres of society.
The “Big Brother” of Orwellian fiction was established in the new millennium in the virtual world of the Internet. There, the not-so-virtual creeds, yearnings, hopes and information of millions of inhabitants pass. But, unlike the literary image, this new system is built and generalized on programs of artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technology to manipulate society with lies, with media names like “post-truth,” “soft power,” “color revolutions,” “asymmetric wars,” “fake news,” and other concepts.
These doctrines come from the chain production of the centers of the U.S. National Security Agency. They are dedicated to electronic snooping on the secrets of friends and enemies around the globe. [This is done] at the command of the Pentagon and the intelligence community of powerful countries. There, an army of thousands of efficient servants of an empire that seemed destined to surpass by far the ideas of the controversial and censored creator of 1984.
AMLO’s Victory: Parting of the Waters
AMLO’s Victory, a Parting of the Waters in Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
There is no doubt that we are facing a wave of extreme right-wing movements. In order to understand what is happening, it is important to turn to a historical perspective. For that, we turn to the explnation given by John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the US left-wing magazine Monthly Review.
The political map on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to reveal a rise of the extreme right in the world. In most European economies, from the largest and strongest to the smallest and weakest, there was an increase in electoral support for right-wing forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, these forces of reaction achieved one success after another with impunity by resorting to various forms of disguised violence.
But the clean and resounding electoral triumph of Andres Manuel López (AMLO) in the race for Mexico’s presidency seems to have been a watershed towards a different reality.
It is known that, against this great victory by the Mexicans, there was put into practice a great clandestine Berlin operation. It’s named after the name of the street in the Mexican capital where the clandestine headquarters of the imperialist operation operated.
They used cyber techniques similar to those used shortly before, under the direction of the CIA. They targeted the electoral processes in Brazil, Ecuador and other points in Latin America and Africa that left distorting fruits of popular will, Operation Berlin was carried out in Mexico. Only this time, in Mexico, they failed. Marxist theorists, along with most historians, have explained that fascism has as its backbone a political alliance between monopoly capital and a certain stratum of the middle class (or petty bourgeoisie).
Historically, the extreme right, too, has gained followers from the countryside, from established religions and from sectors of the armed forces. Fascism is always marginally present in all capitalist societies. It never emerges with all its strength on its own. It is consolidated as a movement only in those cases in which the capitalist class offers its encouragement and support, mobilizing the most reactionary elements of the “middle class”, which acts as the rear of the system.
If, in a period of economic and political crisis, the liberal state becomes an impediment to capitalist government, the existing powers will seek to preserve, consolidate and expand their rule through a regressive change in the capitalist state using the political forms provided by the extreme right.
Neoliberalism de-legitimizes the state. It encourages the development of radical right-wing or neo-fascist movements that oppose neoliberal political elites in the exercise of power and influence impoverished sectors through bribery.
Emerging neo-fascism in the United States is rooted in the “white supremacism” that goes back to slavery and the predominant thinking of the first British settlers, mixed with all sorts of new ideological elements.
Trump’s militant political base is estimated to be between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate and is located in the lower-middle stratum, with family incomes of about $75,000 a year.
It is a very white sector of the population that finds itself in a position of extreme economic insecurity. Its ideology is national-imperialist, with militant racism. A large part of this demographic group is associated with right-wing evangelism. It is something similar to the mass in Brazil that supported Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump’s main value for the ruling class lies in the fact that the radical right has been able to deliver added value to the rich: it has removed obstacles to market dominance over the whole of society.
The notion that coheres its social base is the construction of a wall along the Mexican border and new detention centers. These symbolize a war against poor immigrants. But the economic policies of the Trump administration have little to do with the demands of its social base. Trump has increased the power of financial monopoly capital, given huge tax and subsidy exemptions to big business and the rich. He has promoted economic and environmental deregulation, undermined unions, privatized education, expanded the penal state, destroyed the little progress which had been made in health care, and waged a relentless war for U.S. hegemony. Hence, Mexicans can feel like they are on the cusp of a well-deserved future.
October 31, 2019.
The Right Falls, But Neo-Fascism Grows
The Right Falls, But Neo-Fascism Grows
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Decadence and neofascism are two concepts that are difficult to define although essential to understanding current reality. Their overwhelming presences, their blurred frontiers make them sometimes invisible to the eyes. Where does bourgeois authoritarianism end and begins? How can a process of decadence be distinguished from a great persistent turbulence or a phenomenon of widespread social corruption?”
This is what the Argentine thinker, economist and Marxist Jorge Beinstein wrote shortly before his death.
Emerging neo-fascism in the United States today is rooted in “white supremacy”. It dates back to the time when slavery was the predominant thought among British English settlers, of course with influences from several other new ideological elements.
Today, in most European economies, from the largest and strongest to the smallest and weakest, an increase in the electoral strength of the right is noticeable – with very few exceptions.
On the other side of the spectrum, resorting to violence, we are faced with a wave of extreme right-wing movements, for which the term neo-fascism seems to be the most appropriate designation. In order to try to understand what is happening, it is important to turn to a historical perspective. All these reactionary movements share certain similarities in terms of class.
Trump’s militant political base is estimated at about 25-30% of the electorate. It is located in the lower-middle stratum, with family incomes of about $75,000 a year. It is a very white sector of the population that is in a position of extreme economic insecurity. Its ideology is national-imperialist and wit0qw an accentuated racism.
A large part of this demographic group, in addition, is associated with right-wing evangelism which, in many aspects, resembles those Brazilians who support Jair Bolsonaro.
Within the neo-fascist bloc, the economic sphere invariably dominates. Capital is the first and most important nexus. Trump’s main value – for the ruling class – lies in the fact that the radical right has been able to deliver added value to the rich while removing obstacles to market dominance over all aspects of society.
Therefore, if you look at Trump’s program in detail, you will see that many of its ideological characteristics are in line with those of the lower middle white stratum (nationalism, racism, misogyny, anti-socialism, etc.),. Trump’s political ability has been to take advantage of these regressive ideologies as a means of mobilization and political power.
Hence, the slogan that gives cohesion to its social base is the construction of a wall along the Mexican border and the new detention centers – or, rather, concentration camps – symbolize that a war is being waged against poor immigrants.
But the economic policies of the Trump administration have little to do with the demands of its social base. Trump has increased the power of financial monopoly capital, given huge tax and subsidy exemptions to the wealthiest and big business; promoted economic and environmental deregulation; undermined unions; privatized education; expanded the penal state; destroyed the few advances made in health care; and is in a constant war for U.S. hegemony.
The disappearance of the Soviet bloc countries and the collapse of social democracy have disarmed this left. To some extent, the extreme right has filled this political vacuum by pretending to confront the ruling elites.
Despite its populist rhetoric, the radical right directly defends the current order, which includes promoting a neo-liberal policy of austerity that has lost all legitimacy.
Under the slogan of Make America Great Again, they pit the neo-fascist elements against the liberal state, itself in full stagnation.
For the left, the challenges are much more complex. There are two options: social-democratic policies designed to save capitalism in a fatal compromise with neo-liberalism or, on the other hand, a true movement towards socialism that represents a long revolutionary road against capitalism in its superior imperialist stage.
Social democracy, as a strategy, has proved increasingly dysfunctional and has capitulated again and again to the neo-liberal state, when genuine socialist movements have not been able to confront the capitalist regime in a clear and total way.
November 18, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
United States, Ready for Socialism
United States, Ready for Socialism
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann. for CubaNews.
The emergence of more leftist agendas among some Democratic Party politicians and a certain radicalization of awareness in the “ordinary” U.S. citizenry about social and economic equality in the United States led to an interesting interview with Colin S. Cavell, professor of political science at the helm of Finian Cunningham, conducted and disseminated by the Strategic Culture Foundation.
President Trump has frequently condemned “evil socialism” in his speeches, reflecting the U.S. ruling class’s fear of a shift to socialism in the country. Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard are calling for increased taxes on wealthy Americans and powerful corporations, reversing decades of neoliberal tax policies.
Voters join in calls for more radical redistribution of wealth and support policies against growing inequality in the United States, where a handful of billionaires now own more wealth than half the total population.
Professor Cavell views the current evolution of U.S. politics from a historical perspective of socialist movements in U.S. society, although he warns that the pro-capitalist political class and media work assiduously to thwart any movement toward a more just and democratic society.
Asked if Bernie Sanders, who seems to receive much support from the working class for his policies of Medicare for All and the progressive taxes on the rich if this augurs an American awakening to a socialist government, Cavell responds that most Americans have little understanding of the perspective they delineate since the media only talks about fear of socialism.
“After a century of anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda by the capitalist state and its supporters, socialism, in the minds of most U.S. citizens, is a totalitarian hell with fire and brimstone in which an evil satanic dictator orders everyone to enslave themselves to the detriment of the body politic, coupled with the erosion of individual liberties and personal happiness,” denotes Cavell.
“After the unceasing repetition of such concepts for ten decades, people have begun to glimpse, since the 1970s, and given the stagnation of their wages and living standards (in most cases and setbacks in others) have come to the conclusion that the benefits of capitalism only reach a small part of that class and not the great majorities.
Therefore, they are open to hear the voices of those who, like Sanders and other more leftist Democrats, are calling for the implementation of universal health care for all. It’s an idea that has been so belittled by former U.S. presidents and politicians as “socialized medicine”, a term that most citizens conceive of as the reduction or elimination of health care costs.
As for other aspects of the socialization of the economy, most are not clear about this, although there is strong support for extending access to free education in higher education institutions, called “colleges” and universities. Student loan arrears in that sector currently exceed $1.5 billion and affect at least one-sixth of the U.S. population, about 43 million adults. And, given that the “best job” is the one that pays the most and has the most benefits, there is a tendency to advance through the acquisition of an education with a formalized degree.
Cavell believes that class consciousness is present in most citizens, but rarely articulated. Instead, the notion remains that the United States is a class-free nation in which merit guarantees the best retribution to those who are able to “get up by their own means. Most citizens believe they are members of the middle class even though the vast majority live “from paycheck to paycheck” and have little or no savings for emergencies.
So, what is present there is a working class conscious of its existence, functionality, strength and power, but which does not recognize its historical role called to overthrow capitalism by force if it wants to enjoy a true sense of freedom.
Cavell believes that if presidential elections were held today in the United States, without interference or obstruction from the Democratic and Republican parties, Bernie Sanders would easily be the winner.
This, however, will never happen, as the capitalist class through all its mechanisms will ensure that Bernie will never make it to the Democratic Party nomination and therefore will not be a candidate in the 2020 Elections.
October 19, 2019
(http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com)
(*) This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO! as the source.
Hong Kong Demos Turn Violent
Demonstrations turn violent in two cities in Hong Kong
Hong Kong police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse protests after groups favorable to Beijing destroyed some of the “Lennon Walls” of anti-government messages in the city ruled by China after more than three months of unrest
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By Digital News Staff
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Riot police remove a barricade in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, China on September 21, 2019. Photo: Reuters
Hong Kong police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse protests after pro-Beijing groups destroyed some of the “Lennon Walls” of anti-government messages in the city ruled by China after more than three months of unrest.
The gases were fired when protesters threw Molotov cocktails into a police cordon in the new city of Tuen Mun in the western New Territories and near Yuen Long during the night.
Some demonstrators in Tuen Mun set fire to a Chinese flag while others knocked down wooden and metal fences and traffic bollards to block roads, at least one was set on fire.
Some destroyed equipment at the tram station, unearthed bricks and collected stones from the margins of the tracks. Others used police fire extinguishers.
“Radical demonstrators damaged the Tuen Mun Center tram station facilities with metal sticks, threw objects against the tracks and placed barricades nearby, causing traffic obstruction,” police said in a statement.
“Radical protesters also threw Molotov cocktails, posing a serious threat to the safety of police and others.
Hundreds of protesters strayed from the police cordon when tear gas was fired, many of them running down the highway to regroup.
Dozens of Beijing sympathizers had already knocked down some of the large colorful mosaics made with Post-it notes calling for democracy and denouncing the perception of Chinese interference in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese domination in 1997.
The “Lennon Walls” have flourished through the Asian financial center, in bus stops and shopping centers, under walkways, along pedestrian walkways and in universities.
Protests in Hong Kong intensified in June over legislation, now withdrawn, that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial. Since then, the demands have been extended to demands for universal suffrage.
Motives for Emigration to the US
Motives for Emigration to the U.S.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The determining ideology in the “First World” defends the free movement of goods and capital but emphatically excludes the possibility of the labor force enjoying that same freedom. It condemns all governmental action in poor countries to protect their products from the effects of an unequal confrontation in the external market. However, it rejects the possibility of the international displacement of labor according to the same law of supply and demand that they claim for their own goods, capital and other factors of production.
In conditions of absolute freedom of movement of goods in the world market, the winner is the one who produces at the lowest cost.This can only be achieved with higher productivity, which is always the one to which the large corporations of developed countries have access through more efficient technology born of their financial superiority. This leaves the poor countries with cheap labor as their only resource to compete.
A genuinely liberal economic globalization, which upholds the principle of competitiveness and fixes in the market the possibilities of all parties, should include the freedom of movement of all factors of production. This would include the labor force, but this possibility is not even mentioned in neoliberal discourse.
In Latin America, the fundamental receiving pole of commercial exchanges, the United States, closes its borders to spontaneous immigration promoted by the laws of the market. It projects programs aimed at attracting immigrants with specific qualifications or political refugees (real or supposed) that suit its political purposes of domination, ignoring the obvious fact that the economy of the United States objectively needs labor, especially unskilled labor.
Such inconsistency reflects the will to avoid conflicts derived from competition between immigrants and their own workers, without forgetting the manifestations of xenophobia and discrimination against minorities that are manifested in that society, due to multiple historical factors.
From the point of view of the U.S. business which exploits immigrant labor, although their interests in the legal prohibition of immigrant income are affected, the continued income of undocumented workers – with depressed rights – solves their needs. The big losers are the undocumented, persecuted, mistreated and super-exploited immigrants. Emigration to the United States becomes the dominant fact of the regional migratory panorama.
But since the last decades of the 20th century, the Latin American and Caribbean migratory process, which from the time of the conquest until then had left a positive balance, has become negative. That is to say, more emigrants than immigrants.
In the 1980s, with the rise of neoliberalism promoted by Ronald Reagan’s government in the United States, Latin America, like the entire Third World, entered a new period. It is characterized by the effects of an unpayable foreign debt that hindered its development, aggravated by the rise of corruption, embezzlement and the discrediting of traditional politicians.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist system in Eastern Europe deprived the world’s underdeveloped countries of an alternative of economic and technical assistance, as well as relatively safe and advantageous markets.
The rich countries took advantage of the conjuncture to impose a neoliberal orientation on the objective trend towards globalization that technological advances determine for the economy of nations. They then reduced development assistance, forced the weakening of state apparatuses, the de-statification of natural resources and the privatization of state enterprises, preferably through their acquisition by U.S. corporations.
Thus, Latin America, which for centuries was a recipient of migration, became a region of emigrant outflow. Tens of millions of Latin Americans have been forced to emigrate in the last twenty years. All this has led to a sharp increase in inequalities and the concentration of wealth in a small number of people and entities in Third World countries.
England, when its fleet was the largest and most efficient in the world, demanded freedom of the seas without protection measures that would raise the competitiveness of the fleets of other countries. Today, the highly developed countries demand freedom of movement fpr their goods and capital, without barriers that protect the production of countries with less economic development. But they do not include that freedom for the workforce.
September 16, 2019. This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Zimbabwe President Receives Cuban VP
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Zimbabwean President Receives Cuban Vice President Inés María Chapman Havana, Sep 15 (ACN) Emmerson Mnangagwa, President of Zimbabwe received in Harare the Cuban Vice President Inés María Chapman, who led her country’s delegation to the funeral of Robert Mugabe, founding father of that African nation. During the meeting, the Zimbabwean president highlighted the solid relations between his country and Cuba, reports a Prensa Latina dispatch. Mugabe was honored this Saturday with an official ceremony at the National Stadium in Harare, attended by heads of state and government of the African continent and personalities from other regions of the world. Mnangagwa thanked Cuba for sending a high-level representation to pay tribute to the Zimbabwean independence leader and recalled that thousands of professionals from this southern African nation were trained on the Caribbean island. He stressed that the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and Mugabe were like brothers, and ratified the friendship between Zimbabwe and Cuba, and his intention to continue consolidating it. Inés María Chapman, Vice-President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, expressed her condolences on the death of the former president of Zimbabwe, on behalf of Army General Raúl Castro, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and President Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez. According to sources, the Cuban leader stressed Cuba’s willingness to continue developing and expanding bilateral relations, with emphasis on cooperation. In her words at the ceremony paying tribute to Mugabe, Chapman recalled that he was a dear friend of Cuba and Fidel Castro, and both shared countless moments ‘in the common struggle for the independence of our peoples and for the freedom and sovereignty of the African continent’. The vice-president stressed that her people had always been on Zimbabwe’s side in its struggle to achieve its definitive freedom from colonialism, which had a logical continuity after independence had been achieved ‘in the cooperation that we modestly offer to the construction of this nation’. In this regard, she revealed that about two thousand young Zimbabweans graduated in the most diverse specialties in Cuban universities. Hundreds of professionals from the island have passed through Zimbabwe to offer their knowledge, experience and thus contribute our grain of sand to the construction and development of this beautiful country. She also thanked that the Zimbabwean people and dear friend Mugabe were always on Cuba’s side “in our historic struggle against the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the Government of the United States against our country and in all the battles that the Cuban people have had to fight in the last 60 years”. The Cuban leader stated that Cubans will always remember “with affection and gratitude the presence of Mugabe in the funeral honors of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, when all our people and friends of Cuba bid him farewell”. Chapman arrived in Harare on Friday as head of a delegation, also composed of Marcos Rodriguez, director general of Political Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the ambassador of the Caribbean nation in this country, Carmelina Ramirez. The visitor was received at the capital’s airport by Zimbabwe’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Sibusiso Moyo.
Recibe Presidente de Zimbabwe a vicepresidenta cubana Inés María Chapman La Habana, 15 sep (ACN) Emmerson Mnangagwa, Presidente de Zimbabwe recibió en Harare a la vicepresidenta cubana Inés María Chapman, quien encabezó la delegación de su país a los funerales de Robert Mugabe, padre fundador de esa nación africana. Mugabe fue honrado este sábado con una ceremonia oficial en el Estadio Nacional de Harare, con asistencia de jefes de Estado y Gobierno del continente africano y personalidades de otras regiones del mundo. Mnangagwa agradeció a Cuba el envío de una representación de alto nivel para rendir tributo al líder de la independencia zimbabwense y recordó que en la isla caribeña se formaron miles de profesionales de esta nación de África Austral. Subrayó que el líder histórico de la Revolución cubana, Fidel Castro, y Mugabe eran como hermanos, y ratificó la amistad entre Zimbabwe y Cuba, y su intención de continuar consolidándola. Por su parte, la vicepresidenta de los consejos de Estado y de Ministros de Cuba Inés María Chapman transmitió las condolencias por el fallecimiento del expresidente de Zimbabwe del general de Ejército Raúl Castro, primer secretario del Partido Comunista de Cuba, y del presidente Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez. Según las fuentes, la dirigente cubana destacó la voluntad de Cuba de continuar desarrollando y ampliando las relaciones bilaterales, con énfasis en la cooperación. En sus palabras en la ceremonia de homenaje a Mugabe, Chapman recordó que fue un apreciado amigo de Cuba y de Fidel Castro, y ambos compartieron innumerables momentos ‘en la lucha común por la independencia de nuestros pueblos y por la libertad y soberanía del continente africano’. La vicepresidenta subrayó que su pueblo siempre estuvo al lado de Zimbabwe en su lucha por lograr su definitiva libertad del colonialismo, que tuvo una lógica continuidad después de lograda la independencia ‘en la cooperación que modestamente brindamos a la construcción de esta nación’. Al respecto reveló que cerca de dos mil jóvenes zimbabwenses se graduaron en las más diversas especialidades en las universidades cubanas y cientos de profesionales de la isla ‘han pasado por Zimbabwe para brindar sus conocimientos, experiencias y así aportar nuestro grano de arena a la construcción y desarrollo de este hermoso país’. Agradeció también que el pueblo zimbabwense y el querido amigo Mugabe estuvieron siempre al lado de Cuba ‘en nuestra histórica lucha contra el bloqueo económico, comercial y financiero impuesto por el Gobierno de Estados Unidos contra nuestro país y en todas las batallas que ha tenido que librar el pueblo cubano en los últimos 60 años’. La dirigente cubana manifestó que los cubanos siempre recordarán ‘con cariño y agradecimiento la presencia de Mugabe en las honras fúnebres del comandante en jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, cuando todo nuestro pueblo y los amigos de Cuba lo despedimos’. Chapman llegó el viernes a Harare al frente de una delegación, integrada también por Marcos Rodríguez, director general de Planeamiento Político del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, y la embajadora de la nación caribeña en este país, Carmelina Ramírez. La visitante fue recibida en el aeropuerto capitalino por el ministro zimbabwense de Relaciones Exteriores y Comercio Internacional, Sibusiso Moyo.
Zimbabwean President Receives Cuban Vice President Inés María Chapman
cmb cmbRecibe Presidente de Zimbabwe a vicepresidenta cubana Inés María Chapman
En el encuentro el mandatario zimbabwense destacó las sólidas relaciones entre su país y Cuba, informa un despacho de Prensa Latina.
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Why in Cuba No One Surrenders
Why in Cuba No One Surrenders
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
A decade ago, Cubans lost one of their most popular and beloved revolutionary heroes. This fact that was remembered with unused patriotic fervor on the West Indian island. On September 11, 2009, Juan Almeida Bosque, a Cuban patriot who had extraordinary merits in the struggle struggle that would have been enough to place him among the most exalted representatives of the Cuban people at any time in the history of the island, ceased to exist physically.
But in Almeida’s case, during his lifetime, the personality and talent of a young man from a very humble family, with black skin and a heart of gold with whom Cubans quickly sympathized. He barely transcended his leading role as part of the contingent that, led by Fidel Castro, led the popular battle against Fulgencio Batista’s tyranny leading to the successful liberation of the homeland from U.S. hegemonism and materializing Cuba’s second and definitive independence.
Some time before, Almeida had been one of the heroes followed by Fidel Castro in the attack on the Moncada Barracks. It was a feat that, despite being a failure in the military sense, ignited the spark that led to the triumph of the Cuban revolution and set the tone for the revolutionary changes that have shaken the continent since that July 26, 1953.
In the middle of 1960, I was working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Ambassador Introducer (Director of Protocol). It was a period in which Cuba, exercising the independence and sovereignty obtained for the people by the victorious revolution, responded as it could to the political and economic siege that the empire intended to impose against it on the continent. Cuba’s task was to develop diplomatic ties and friendship with other nations. I was assigned to accompany the recently-inaugurated Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Poland in his courtesy visit to the thenhead of the Rebel Army, Commander Juan Almeida Bosque.
This was one of the first meetings of the diplomat on the island with authorities of the highest level of the revolutionary government. He was a man who spoke fluent Spanish because he had learned it as a revolutionary fighter in the international brigades that defended the Spanish republic.
During the drive from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the temporary headquarters of the General Staff of the Army, on Avenida del Puerto (a building then occupied by the Revolutionary Navy), the European envoy requested, and obtained from me, information about the military and revolutionary trajectory of the then-Commander Juan Almeida Bosque. I had briefly introduced him as one of those whoh had attacked the Moncada Barracks, an expeditionary of the yacht Granma, and founder and chief of the Third Eastern Front of the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra and other merits for Almeida’s actions in combat that came to mind.
When I spoke of the bravery, discipline and modesty that made him one of the most beloved heroes of the revolution, I also mentioned, because it seemed important to me, to indicate his sensitive personality, Commander Almeida’s capacity as a musical composer
After the rigorous presentations and offering Almeida a welcome to the Ambassador, he used the word to express feelings of solidarity with the Cuban revolution and gratitude for the opportunity to make contact with one of its top figures.
Using the information recently received, the Ambassador galade knowledge about the political-revolutionary history of Almeida, but, to conclude, with the evident intention of emphasizing his expressions of sympathy, he affirmed to feel “great admiration for the hymns and combat marches that you compose”.
Commander Juan Almeida Bosque, without hesitation, responded by demonstrating his recognition for the diplomat’s declaration of solidarity with the Cuban revolution, and then, with a smile that showed understanding drawn on his face, clarified that although he made war… the musical pieces he composed were all love songs.
The diplomat blushed.
Without going back over the matter, there followed an in-depth conversation about the prospects of the ties between the nation represented by the Ambassador and Cuba, which concluded half an hour later with a cordial farewell.
As soon as we got into the car for the return trip, the Polish diplomat said into my ear: “You were too sparing in your praise. He is an extraordinary man. That’s why he composes love songs.
September 13, 2019
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
The CIA and Mossad After Mass Shootings
The CIA and Mossad After Mass Shootings
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
After another bloody mass shooting, new catastrophic solutions seem destined to be imposed on an American public frightened by a litany of crimes and a terrifying history of plans to crush internal dissent in the United States, writes journalist Whitney Webb on the Global Research EcoWatch site , belonging to the Ron Paul Institute.
She has recently won the “Serena Shim 2019 for integrity without compromise in journalism” award, dedicated to honoring unconventional journalists who remain true to the truth by challenging difficult times. After the arrest and death in prison of the alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a technology company of his little known began to receive more publicity, his relationships and finances were widely exposed.
It was revealed that the Israeli company Carbyne 911, or simply Carbyne, had received substantial funds from Jeffrey Epstein, as well as from his close associate and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump supporter, Peter Thiel
Carbyne is a company that offers call handling capabilities for emergency response services in countries around the world, including the United States, where it has already implemented them in several counties, partnering with major American technology companies.
Carbyne promotes its product as a way to mitigate mass shootings in the United States without having to change the laws for possession of existing firearms.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not hidden the fact that placing members of this Unit in the highest positions of multinational technology companies is a deliberate policy aimed at guaranteeing Israel’s role as a dominant global “cyber power”, while serving to combat movements that are directed against violations of international law by Israel and reject criticism of the United Nations to the policies of the Israeli government and its military operations abroad.
As Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to intelligence – both in the United States and in Israel – began to be revealed, Carbyne’s funding was scrutinized, in particular by the company’s deep ties with Israeli intelligence centers, as well as with the intelligence of the United States.
Ehud Barak’s own role as financier and president of Carbyne has also added to that concern, for his long history of involvement in covert intelligence operations for Israel and his long-standing ties to Israeli military intelligence.
Cuba: The “Monte Carlo of the Caribbean”?
La Pupila Insomne
Cuba: The “Monte Carlo of the Caribbean”?
By Fabián Escalante Font
La Pupila Insomne, August 9, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
On December 10, 2015, in a message to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Fidel expressed, among other ideas: “Cuban revolutionaries – a few miles from the United States, which always dreamed of taking Cuba and turning it into a hybrid of Casino and brothel, as a way of life for José Martí’s children – will never renounce its full independence and [demand] total respect for its dignity,” something necessary to remember today, when, from the North, the intention is to “glorify” Fulgencio Batista and the Cuban society of that time.
Relations between the United States and Cuba have been conflictive since ancient times, due to their old geopolitical ambitions. The Monroe doctrine,[1] promulgated in the first third of the 19th century, advocated its right over the countries of the continent. When Cuba became independent from Spain, they were entitled to it, as long as it was located in its sphere of influence. They seemed to be unaware that Cuban independence was achieved by the sacrifice and blood of its children, who suffered the complicit support of the Metropolis of that country, which only decided to take sides when the Cuban forces had defeated the Spanish army.
The U.S. military intervention that put an end to the war installed a provisional government, which, after dissolving the Mambí Army and holding elections in which the patriots were relegated [to the sidelines] and divided, created a neo-colonial republic. New interventions, and finally a constitutional amendment (Platt), which granted Washington the right to intervene militarily when they considered it [justified], opened a neo-colonial era in our homeland, frustrating our national independence and sovereignty.
Before, during the colonial period, U.S. economic interests had begun to establish themselves in Cuba and after the republican process had begun, financial groups from that country took over the Cuban economy, mainly in sugar, agriculture, livestock and services. In those first days. they invested approximately $1,500 million dollars. Sugar was their primary objective, from which they derived important dividends, not only because of the weight it had in their production, but also because they were the ones who commercialized it and later had to pay tariffs to their government for its export. In the 1920s, the government charged an incredible 1,119’000,000 dollars for this concept.
Cuba and its riches belonged to them. The Rockefeller group, one of the pioneers in settling in the Island, possessed a score of sugar factories, 40,000 caballerías of land [1,326,461 acres], the King Ranch for cattle development, the exploitation of nickel in the north of the Cuban east (Nicaro), Banks (like Chase Manhattan Bank and others) and petroleum refineries (Standard Oíl of New Jersey, Texaco…) and other businesses more.
The thirties were about definitions. On the one hand, the need to thwart the Revolution [of 1933), the result of the overthrow of Machado’s dictatorship, and on the other, the urgency of establishing a heavy-handed government that would provide stability for trade and business, a role then assigned to Colonel Fulgencio Batista.
Those years were the beginning of the penetration of the tentacles of the Yankee mafia, first with the smuggling of alcohol and then with money laundering. In the 1940s, U.S. capital invested in the island began to emigrate from the agricultural sector to services, mining, industry and tourism. The Constitution of 1940, which foresaw the possibility of an Agrarian Reform, forced them to make this decision, in addition to the reduction of the sugar quota assigned to Cuba in the North American market, which decreased significantly from 50% to 28%.
During the Second World War, in the United States, there had been a strategic alliance between the State, finance capital, the security and intelligence complex and the mafia. Its first result was to guarantee the security of the North American ports from possible German sabotage and then to facilitate the disembarkation of its troops in Sicily, Italy. This “holy” alliance would be strengthened over the years. The effects of this alliance would reach Cuba. One was the 1946 meeting of all the chiefs of the North American mafia at the Hotel Nacional, where the control and spheres of influence of the “families” on the island and the legalization of their fortunes were decided.
Graham Greene, the well-known British writer, after one of his visits to Cuba wrote: “Havana is the city where all vice is allowed and all business is possible. He delighted in talking about it at the Floridita, in its brothels, the roulette in the hotels, the Shanghai theater where for a dollar and twenty-five cents one could see a show of extreme obscenity. When he got bored with this, he would go to look for a little bit of cocaine, which was within everyone’s reach. The favorite brothel (Marina2) was furnished with spotless linoleum tables and chairs arranged around a small dance floor. The girls, all teenagers, were in shorts and were white and many were blond, with Latin eyes.
In Havana, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Gardner observed with growing disbelief and publicly lamented that “The masses of people who come here are inclined only to pleasure and think only in terms of fun, rum and nightclubs.
Little by little, the great North American economic interests took over the nascent industries, export and import companies and leisure tourism. Meanwhile, the smuggling of drugs, diamonds, sumptuous items, skilled prostitution and money laundering grew disproportionately. To this end, 72 banks and financial institutions were opened, of which just to mention one, the Gelats, received almost $1 million a day in 1949 to be “laundered”.
The economic project consisted of making Cuba the “Monte Carlo of the Caribbean”. According to Batista’s “memoirs”, the Cuban government invested one billion dollars, of which some was given for services (electricity and telephones), others for airlines, others for infrastructure, in short, all aimed at facilitating this enormous plan to make this country a brothel. At that time, Havana alone had 270 brothels and 11,500 registered prostitutes, although some commentators at the time considered a figure close to 100,000.
According to prominent Cuban intellectual Graziellla Pogolotti, “the leisure industry expanded throughout the country, the dives, meeting points for organized prostitution and the business centers of the mafia multiplied throughout the provincial capitals. In that scenario, the government outlined a master plan for tourism development, called the “National Planning Law,” through which it designed urban plans aimed at developing infrastructure in Varadero, Trinidad, Isla de Pinos and East Havana, and projected a new Presidential Palace between El Morro and La Cabaña.
The tourist function was enhanced with hotel development in front of the Havana Malecón and was reinforced with the creation of an artificial island (opposite the mouth of the Almendares River) to receive new facilities for leisure, hotels, casinos and shopping centers. It was proposed to extend the Jesús del Monte roadway through Muralla Street and the extension of Habana Street, directly connected to the Havana tunnel and eliminating the blocks between Lamparilla and Amargura, to create a landscaped promenade from the Capitol to the Port”.
The Financial and Atlantic banks owned by Julio Lobo and Amadeo Barleta, one, a sugar businessman and the other head of one of Havana’s mafia families, created two partnerships for this project: the Riviera company in Havana and the Hotel company in Cuba. They were in charge of – with the illegal money that constantly arrived from the United States – investing it in legal operations, which at that time consisted in the construction of 50 hotels in the capital and as many in the provincial capitals of Pinar del Rio, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Camagüey, Holguín and Santiago de Cuba.
As if that wasn’t enough, dirty money began to invade all sectors: the department store La Filosofía, TV channels 2 and 12, the newspaper El Mundo, Ámbar Motors, a company selling the latest model cars, import and export companies in charge of introducing duty-free goods from the United States into the Latin American market, etc, etc, etc.
Until the early 1950s, the main drug consumed in the North was heroin, but when Batista inaugurated “aerovías Q” that provided trips between Havana, Camagüey and Barranquilla, cocaine began to flow from Colombia to the United States, at the same time as it flooded Cuban markets.
At the time of the revolutionary triumph, 23% of the population over the age of 15 was illiterate, only 55% of the children between the ages of 6 and 14 were enrolled in school; one million inhabitants of the 6 who had not passed any school grade, the population under the age of 15 had less than a third grade, 600,000 children had no school and 100,000 teachers had no jobs.
A single example shows the unjust distribution of arable land in the country. In the Ciénaga de Zapata, of the 25,000 existing caballerías laborables, only 273, or 1.15%, were in the hands of farmworkers.
In the city of Havana, tall buildings, mansions, hotels, gambling casinos, luxurious deals, flourished, while slums or favelas took over the capital’s periphery. There, the poor, unemployed and peasants who came by the thousands to try their fortune ended up, becoming cheap and disposable labor. However, seen from an airplane, the roof of a luxurious hotel or a tourist ship, the Cuban capital dazzled, hiding its vices and rottenness.
Those, in short, were the plans of the United States, its capitals and the mafia, along with the lackey government of Fulgencio Batista. He had the mission of maintaining order and tranquility in Cuba with blood and fire, which would cost our people 20,000 victims. His role was to facilitate the construction of the “Monte Carlo of the Caribbean,” the dream of the “owners of Cuba.”
These were the causes of the rebellion of our people, which was started on July 26, 1953, in the attacks on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks. José Martí, in his speech known as Los Pinos Nuevos, declared himself heir to those foundational events. Fidel, who led these actions in the face of the prevailing corruption and injustice, said during the Moncada trial that the Apostle was its intellectual author. A few years later, in 1968, during the commemoration of the centenary of our independence struggles, he stated that “then we would have been like them and now they would be like us.
Notes
1 James Monroe, first secretary of state and then president of the United States.
2 Marina was a madam subordinate to Meyer Lansky’s mafia who owned a “chain” of “high-class” brothels in Havana.
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