Empire of Evil
The Empire of Evil Seen From Within
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
“It is depressing to observe how the United States of America has become the evil empire. Having served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War and in the Central Intelligence Agency for the second half of the Cold War, I had an insider’s viewpoint of how an essentially pragmatic national security policy was being transformed bit by bit into a bipartisan doctrine that featured as a sine qua non global dominance for Washington.
Unfortunately, when the Soviet Union collapsed the opportunity to end once and for all the bipolar nuclear confrontation that threatened global annihilation was squandered. Instead, President Bill Clinton chose instead to humiliate and use NATO to contain an already demoralized and effectively leaderless Russia.”
This is what American journalist Philip M. Giraldi writes in an article dated April 18, under the title “Rumors of War: Washington Is Looking for a Fight”.
American Exceptionalism became the battle cry for an increasingly clueless federal government as well as for a media-deluded public. When 9/11 arrived, the country was ready to lash out at the rest of the world. President George W. Bush growled that “There’s a new sheriff in town and you are either with us or against us.”
Afghanistan followed, then Iraq, and, in a spirit of bipartisanship, the Democrats came up with Libya and the first serious engagement in Syria.
In its current manifestation, one finds a United States that threatens Iran on a nearly weekly basis and tears up arms control agreements with Russia while also maintaining deployments of US forces in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and places like Mali.
Scattered across the globe are 800 American military bases while Washington’s principal enemies du jour Russia and China have, respectively, only one and none.
Venezuela is being threatened with invasion primarily because it is in the western hemisphere and therefore subject to Washington’s claimed pro-consular authority.
Vice President Mike Pence told the United Nations Security Council that the White House will remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, preferably using diplomacy and sanctions, but “all options are on the table.”
Pence warned that Russia and other friends of Maduro need to leave now or face the consequences. Russia has accepted that war is coming. By some estimates, its army is better-equipped and combat-ready than is that of the United States, which spends nearly ten times as much on “defense.”
Never before in my lifetime has the United States been so belligerent, and that in spite of the fact that there is no single enemy or combination of enemies that actually threaten either the geographical United States or a vital interest of the US.
According to Giraldi, Iran is also upgrading its defensive capabilities, which are formidable. Now that Washington has withdrawn from the nuclear agreement with Iran, has placed a series of increasingly punitive sanctions on the country, and, most recently, has declared a part of the Iranian military to be a “foreign terrorist organization” and therefore subject to attack by US forces at any time, it is clear that war will be the next step.
In three weeks, the United States will seek to enforce a global ban on any purchases of Iranian oil. A number of countries, including US nominal ally Turkey, have said they will ignore the ban and it will be interesting to see what the US Navy intends to do to enforce it. Or what Iran will do to break the blockade.
But even given all of the horrific decisions being made in the White House, there is one organization that is far crazier and possibly even more dangerous. That is the United States Congress, which is, not surprisingly, a legislative body whose decisions are approved and is viewed positively by only 18 per cent of the American people.
April 19, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Forty years of impunity
Forty years of impunity
Special for Por Esto!
By Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Date: April 30, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
On April 28, 1979, in broad daylight, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a group of assassins shot and seriously wounded a young man just 25 years old, Carlos Muñiz Varela, who died after painful agony on the 30th of that month.
It is now forty years of shameful, scandalous, impunity. None of those who planned, directed and executed the crime has been punished. Working hard, without refusing to face the threats, the obstacles, and the disinterest or the complicity of politicians and bureaucrats, his friends and family have not stopped for a moment to demand that justice be done.
It has been an incessant struggle. Over the years it has brought about the revelation of documents, testimonies and other evidence that would have made it possible to completely clarify a fact that still awaits action by the court. Some of the culprits died unmolested. But half a dozen of those who participated in the unforgivable misdeed still circulate freely in Miami and Puerto Rico.
Carlos’ murder could have been prevented if the Puerto Rican authorities or their colonial masters had wanted to do so. During the previous year, 1978, for several months, threats against his life had multiplied, reproduced even in propagandistic attacks by anti-Cuban terrorist groups operating openly on the sister island.
Now, on the eve of the 40th anniversary, “El Nuevo Día,” the newspaper with the largest circulation there, reports other documents that confirm and expand on what was already known thanks to the indomitable tenacity of his colleagues and friends.
Carlos had been born in Cuba and was a very young boy when he was taken to Puerto Rico after the Cuban revolutionary triumph. There he grew up and joined the efforts for the independence of what for him was also his other homeland. He was the initiator of the visits to Cuba by other young Cubans who, as he had been, had been taken to live outside their native land. His work met with fierce opposition from the annexionists – narrow allies of Cuban-born gang members – who even used the colonial “Senate” for that purpose.
This anniversary also coincides with the redoubled attempts to asphyxiate Cuba, which include additional restrictions on travel and family remittances from Cubans living abroad. These were announced in Miami by Mr. John Bolton, in a grotesque ceremony with the defeated invaders of Playa Girón and other mercenaries. There they were, celebrating their impunity, those who took the life of an innocent boy who never hurt anyone and gave his all for the reunion and harmony among Cubans.
His friends did not forget him. We will never forget him.
Good Capitalism
The Tall Tale of Good Capitalism
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Cecilia Zamudio is a Colombian-born painter and writer who has lived in a dozen countries around the world. Her work, very versatile and integral defined within Humanist Colorism, stresses her concern and study of social and historical processes.
One of her most recent works is devoted to demonstrating that capitalism is ruthless by nature, that there is no less-savage form of capitalism since it is a social order based on exploitation.
“Poverty is steadily increasing worldwide at the same time that big fortunes are growing exponentially: capitalists gradually degrade the planet and enslave and objectify more living beings.”
“They exclude millions of people from the possibility of a dignified healthy, life while exterminating species and ecosystems,” says the Colombian intellectual.
Millions of human beings, impoverished by the plunder perpetrated by the multi-nationals –that capitalize on the basis of the destruction of mountains and rivers– end up huddled in the miserable slums of the big enriched cities.
The exodus of people from the most brutally-plundered countries to the metropolis of capitalism is intensifying.
But the countries enriched at the cost of impoverishing others cynically appreciate riches but not people. Walls and fences grow while analysis and empathy diminish.
The sand of the beaches is whitewashed with the skeletal remains of the thousands of the gshipwrecked who perish in their attempts to flee from the capitalist cauldron their countries have been turned into due to looting and imperialist wars.
The bosses of the countries in the capitalist metropolis, who also intensify the exploitation against their own workers and make them live in precarious conditions, need a scapegoat. It’s purpose to take the blame for the actions for which they do not wish to be accountable, and to use their media to alienate the majorities on the grounds that the precariousness of their living conditions is caused by “immigrants”.
The promotion of racism and fascism is intensified by the media of mass alienation in order to increase divisions within the working class, and to multiply the levels of racist fanaticism.
Violence against women is also intensely promoted by the media of mass alienation. Given that machismo is an essential part of the capitalist superstructure, the profits of a few grow resting on the aberration of femicide [woman-killing].
The objectification of the human being is promoted to extremes. The values of solidarity are replaced by consumerist pseudo virtues. The notion of “social justice” is to be erased, and supplanted by the perverse, egocentric, and sad concept of “charity.”
“As the media of capitalist alienation homogenize the people with their promoted “don’t change the world, change yourself” (as if were impossible to do both things at the same time) capitalists continue to depredate.
“They implement with greater intensity the idea of planned obsolescence (premature and planned wearing-out of things), turning the planet into a dumpster.
They poison the earth and food in a carcinogenic way, murder by hunger a child every five seconds in a world where today’s agriculture would be enough to feed 12 billion people.”
“Capitalists take advantage of the increasingly precarious conditions of life that they themselves have caused to expand their quarry of enslaved, and thus modern slavery, prostitution, sexual exploitation, and child trafficking grow.”
It is urgent to get out of this system in which a few capitalize on the blood, sweat and tears of the majority.
Faced with the inevitable increase in exploitation of misery and plundering of nature, the big capitalists attack with their think tanks: they try to colonize our minds and manage our perception of reality.
These think tanks try to pose the problem under distorted lights and, in order to gain time, they invented the false dichotomy of a “savage capitalism” versus a so-called “capitalism with a human face”
Capitalism is savage by nature, since it is based on the exploitation of one part of the human race against another: there is not a “less savage capitalism” because its violence is intrinsic to the acceleration of capitalist accumulation that increases every day
And together with it: exclusion, exploitation, looting, repression, state terrorism, imperialist wars, fascism, racism, machismo, and all forms of violence by the rich against the poor.
April 24, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
AOC dismisses capitalism
Democratic Hopeful AOC Dismisses Capitalism
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
A CubaNews translation edited by Walter Lippmann.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, identified in the press by her initials AOC, is one of the probable candidates of the Democratic Party to integrate the candidature for the presidency of the United States in 2020.
Born in New York, on October 13, 1989, she won the Democratic primary in the 14th congressional district of New York after defeating Democratic leader Joseph Crowley by a very large majority. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and has been linked to a wide variety of other progressive U.S. political platforms.
In the course of an interview she gave in Austin, Texas, to The Intercept, AOC gave her opinions on the defects she observed in the capitalist system.
The interview took place when the first vote was being taken in the Senate on a draft resolution known as Green New Deal, a set of her policy proposals for integrating the United Nations Environment Program that originated in a green economy initiative known as the “Global Green New Deal.”
This initiative, which evokes the plans of Franklin D. Roosevelt for economic stimulation triggered by the Great Depression, is a resolution drafted by Alexandria and one of her Democratic colleagues, Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. Though it is not likely to see the light as legislation, for the time being it symbolizes the new progressive momentum after the Democratic victory in the House of Representatives last November.
The 14-page document calls for a reduction in greenhouse gase emissions by 40% to 60% by 2030 and bringing global emissions down to zero by 2050. AOC has reached that conclusion because she believes that “the United States is dealing with the consequences of putting profits above everything else in our society and that’s what makes the capitalist system, as it is today, irredeemable”.
Although it is seemingly ironic to bash capitalism in the midst of a marketing orgy funded by the technology industry, AOC maintains that “capitalism is the ideology of capital and in this system the most important thing is the concentration of capital, the search for and the maximization of profits… and that’s why I think capitalism can’t be saved “, she said.
Talking about her bill called Green New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez said she hopes to address minority communities and places like Flint, Michigan, because these groups were left behind by the original New Deal — the one that was approved by President Franklin Roosevelt.
While most Americans view the original New Deal as the precursor of social welfare programs that benefited millions of white and minority Americans, Ocasio-Cortez says the law was, in fact, deeply racist, because of what’s been called the “red line.” “The New Deal was an extremely racist economic policy that drew red lines around the black and mulatto communities to isolate them from white America.”
“It allowed white Americans to access mortgage loans that black Americans could not aspire to and they were denied access to the greatest source of inter-generational wealth,” argues AOC.
Ocasio-Cortez is a progressive member of the Democratic Socialists of America. A defender of universal health care and of the Jobs Guarantee program, she calls for an end to the privatization of prisons and access to public university education free of charge; she also favors arms control policies. She criticizes Israel’s foreign policy and described the death of Palestinian demonstrators on the Gaza border in 2018 as a “massacre.” AOC supports the abolition of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and maintains that this agency uses clandestine detention centers.
In the legislative elections, held on 6 November 2018, she won the seat for New York’s 14th Congressional District. Since her election, she has been the target of all sorts of attacks by conservative sectors in the U.S. She is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in the history of the United States after surpassing Republican Elise Stefanik who was elected in 2014 at the age of 30.
Although AOC’s political, economic, and international agenda is a long way from being an anti-imperialist program for real social justice, the presence of this possible candidate for the presidency of the United States indicates a healthy trend for humanity.
March 16, 2019.
Who Will Be the War Candidate in 2020
Who Will Be the War Candidate in 2020
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
“The president has said he doesn’t want to see this country wrapped up in endless wars… and I agree with that,” Bernie Sanders said to the Fox News audience last week at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Then, looking directly at the camera, he added: “Mr. President, tonight you have the opportunity to do something extraordinary: sign that resolution. Saudi Arabia must not determine the military or foreign policy of this country.”
Sanders was talking about a resolution on the War Powers Act that would put an end to U.S. involvement in the 5-year civil war in Yemen. This war has created one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world of our time, with thousands of children dead in the middle of a cholera epidemic and famine.
Supported by a Democratic Party united in Congress, and an anti-interventionist faction of the Republican Party headed by Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee of Utah, the War Powers resolution had passed both houses of Congress.
But 24 hours after Sanders urged the President to sign it, Trump vetoed the resolution, describing it as a “dangerous attempt to undermine my constitutional authority.”
According to journalist Buchanan J. Buchanan, “with enough Republican votes in both chambers to resist Trump’s veto, this could have been the end of the matter; but it wasn’t. In fact, Trump gave the Democrats his them for peace by 2020.”
If Sanders emerged as the nominee, we would have an election with a Democrat running with the catchphrase “no more wars” that Trump had promoted in 2016. Thus, Trump would be defending the bombing of Yemeni rebels and civilians by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
In 2008, John McCain, hawk leader in the Senate, was defeated by the progressive Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who had won his nomination by defeating the bellicose Hillary Clinton who had voted for authorizing the war in Iraq.
In 2012, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who was much more aggressive than Obama in his approach to Russia lost.
However, in 2016, Trump presented himself as a different kind of Republican, an opponent of the Iraq war, an anti-interventionist, and promising to get along with Russian Vladimir Putin and getting out of the Middle East wars.
None of the main candidates for the 2020 Democratic nomination — Joe Biden, Sanders, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker– seems as aggressive as Trump has become.
Trump pulled the United States out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, and re-imposed severe sanctions against the Iranians. He declared the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran a terrorist organization, to which Tehran responded with the same action against the U.S. Central Command.
Trump has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moved the U.S. embassy there, closed the consulate that was in charge of Palestinian affairs, cut off aid to Palestinians, recognized the annexation by Israel of the Golan Heights snatched from Syria in 1967 and kept silent about Netanyahu’s threat to annex the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Trump has spoken of getting all U.S. troops out of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, they are still there.
Although Sanders supports Israel, he says he is looking for a two-state solution, and criticizes Netanyahu’s regime.
Trump came to power promising to get along with Moscow, but he sent Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine and announced the US withdrawal of the 1987 Treaty of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) subscribed by Ronald Reagan, who banned all ground-based nuclear intermediate range missiles.
When Putin sent a hundred Russian soldiers to Venezuela to repair the S-400 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system that was damaged in the recent blackouts, Trump provocatively ordered the Russians to “get out” of the Bolivarian and Chavista country. According to Buchanan, the gravity center of U.S. policy is shifting towards Trump’s position in 2016. And the anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party is growing.
The anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party together with the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party in Congress are capable — as they were War Powers Act resolution on Yemen– to produce a new bipartisan majority.
Buchanan predicts that in the 2020 primaries, foreign policy will be in the center and the Democratic Party would have captured the ground with the catchphrase “no more wars” that candidate Donald Trump exploited in 2016.
April 22, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Debate on sexual harassment
SEMlac
Harassment Debate Asks Men to Put Themselves in Women’s Place
From the Editors. April 15, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Fear, shame, fright, confusion, astonishment and discomfort in the face of the situation are just some of the reactions that several Cuban men said they felt when they were harassed in the street by a woman. Such unusual scenes are part of a social experiment carried out by the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Center (OAR), which toured the networks in the form of a video and reflects what happens when harassment occurs the other way around and it is women who verbally “assault” men.
At phrases like “you’re super cute,” “how hot you are,” “I didn’t want to know the time, what I wanted was to talk to you, mess with you because you’re divine,” or “kidding, but please believe me,” the men who were harassed felt assaulted in various ways, as they said after being informed that it was a hidden video.
“I was ashamed to see a young girl, pretty, giving herself away, saying: look, I want to go out with you, because it’s very strange”, said one of the interviewees.
Another of them claimed to have “gone blank” at the approach of a stranger, while a third said “he felt attacked, because the form and the words he used were not correct”. She added, however: “with harassment there is nothing right, everything is unpleasant, it goes against the integrity of the person”.
“I thought I was crazy, because the man is the one who always harasses the woman, not the woman harassing the man”; or “I got scared, I felt nervous, this is the first time this has happened to me” were feelings that the experiment generated for them.
According to statements by Juan Carlos Travieso, director of the video social experiment, the purpose of this initiative is “to put men in the place where women usually are and then in the place where men are almost always.
“We are trying to make people think about and respect the individuality and integrity of human beings, so that everyone can decide what to do with their body, who touches it or not,” said the director.
The controversy about what to understand by sexual harassment also emerged from the comments of the men interviewed. This was in the face of ideas such as their dependence on the way in which they address women, or the conception of the so-called compliment as “something of our idiosyncrasy that should not be lost, as long as it is said in a nice way, with respect”.
“Harassment is a crime, but it is not the same to interfere with them as in fooling around than to harass them” or “it depends on the woman, in the way in which it is done: it is not the same as a compliment or disrespect” were other opinions of the men, many of whom agreed that harassment is not seen well in a woman, but in men it is “normal”.
This social experiment is an idea of the members of OAR’s Youth Articulation Network and is linked to the approaches of the Evoluciona campaign, which conceives street harassment as an expression of male violence.
Widely socialized on the networks in recent days, its publication coincided with the International Week against Street Harassment, an initiative that was born in Peru in 2011, and seeks to inform women about their rights and condemn any form of sexual violence in the street.
For journalist Dainerys Mesa Padrón, who is a member of the campaign team, this experiment opens the fingerboard on an edge of women’s body control and social relations. At the same time, it contributes to the discussion of street harassment in Cuba and its naturalization [acceptance], because it is associated with traditional cultural practices.
“It is essential to change the belief that our self-esteem depends on compliments, on an opinion about our body or clothes in order to feel good. [These are] ideas that most people assume to be normal, when it is a clear symptom of violence against women,” she said in the making of the video.
Harassment vs. compliments: daily acceptance of violence
One of the expressions of gender violence is sexual violence and, within it, sexual harassment is one of the most invisible, minimized, legitimized and silenced forms of violence, psychologist Mareelén Díaz Tenorio, an OAR specialist, told SEMlac.
According to the expert, sexual harassment practices are very diverse and range from sexual approximation, demand for sexual favors, insinuations, physical contacts (touching, pinching, talking in the ear, overlapping, grabbing, touching, patting, squeezing, deliberate rubbing), to teasing and jokes with sexual and offensive content.
This group also includes telephone calls, notes, letters, texts, photographs, emails with sexual and aggressive content (through cell phones and cyberspace); the display of pornographic material; lewd looks; obscene gestures; exhibitionism: showing one’s genitals or naked body to another person without their consent; public masturbation with or without ejaculation and cornering, among others.
“We are talking about various practices of a sexual nature and connotation, unwanted and offensive, that do not consider the impact on the recipient. They are intrusive and have repercussions for physical and psychological integrity,” she said.
The psychologist indicated that the contexts in which sexual harassment occurs can be institutional (work, educational, religious), family, public and social networks (cyber-harassment).
Street harassment occurs precisely in public spaces. “It is carried out by unknown people and it is less visible because it is legitimized by culture,” she said.
The specialist points out that there is great controversy about what is meant by sexual harassment and compliments. In her opinion, not all compliments are sexual harassment.
“It is supposed that compliment is a compliment and ceases to be a compliment to become sexual harassment when the action is unwanted and is experienced with annoyance, displeasure, affectation, harm, even when its content is not offensive, vulgar or obscene. There is no good compliment and no bad compliment. There is a compliment and sexual harassment,” she emphasized.
“Many people legitimize the compliment at all costs because they consider it a cultural tradition in the Cuban context. The ablation of the clitoris is a practice of certain cultures and does not stop being extreme sexual violence,” said Díaz Tenorio.
In her opinion, there is a social imaginary in which women exist as objects of sexual desire and it is “normal” to judge their bodies and use them without their consent. In the public space, practices are seen as “natural” that cannot be cataloged as compliments, but as authentic expressions of sexual harassment. If they are not recognized as such, we are guaranteeing their perpetuity, their injustice and the harmful consequences for the victims (not only women, but also girls), she said.
For María Teresa Díaz Álvarez, also an OAR specialist, the so-called compliment becomes street harassment when it involves insult, imposition, and the intention to bend. “Then it becomes a pattern of abuse,” she warned.
Oxfam’s report “Breaking the Moulds: Transforming Imaginaries and Social Norms to Eliminate Violence” found that among the young Cuban population, “complimenting” women is still seen as logical and normal.
With the participation by Cuba in the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research, in collaboration with OAR and Oxfam in Cuba, the investigation concluded that 75 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 accept street harassment (whistles and compliments) as natural.
The study delved into youth images regarding violence against women and points out that more than 81 percent of girls and boys think that most of their friends see this behavior as normal.
On the other hand, several young people from different age groups and territories linked these demonstrations with provocative actions by women in their attitude and way of dressing. Others placed responsibility on the beliefs and social norms that condition these machista and stereotyped practices.
Liset Imbert Milán, OAR’s legal advisor, told SEMlac that harassment is not expressly regulated today, as it does not appear in any legal norm. [there’s no law against it, ed.]
She pointed out that the new Magna Carta endorsed last February opens the doors in its article 43 to improve and include these issues in the rest of the laws, insofar as it states that “it protects from gender violence in any of its manifestations and spaces, and creates the institutional and legal mechanisms for it”, and harassment is a form of violence.
Beyond legal remedies, it is a question of making the phenomenon visible, since in the workplace the employer’s obligation to ensure the physical, moral and psychological integrity of workers is regulated, while in the criminal field, from the extensive interpretation of the jurists, it could be used as a means of ensuring the physical, moral and psychological integrity of workers.
“However, much remains to be done, not only in terms of rules, but also in raising awareness among law enforcement officials and law enforcement officials, as well as empowering and giving a legal culture to society in general,” the jurist stressed.
In this regard, the Evoluciona campaign has found echo in many voices, individuals, groups and institutions that join the strategy of awareness, largely youth, in the opinion of Diaz Tenorio.
“Of course there is resistance. But the inert is not the polemic. The indolent would be the absolute acceptance of harassment as `natural´ and indifference. If there is controversy we are on the road to change, which will occur when the insertion of women’s rights in the multiple ways of education and spaces of socialization of the country,” said the expert.
In addition to the social experiment, broadcast on television and social networks, during the International Week against Street Harassment, workshops were held on communication and equity, exchanges with young people from the University of Havana, polytechnic and pre-university students from territories such as Jobabo, in the eastern province of Las Tunas.
The social networks were flooded with messages from audio-visual directors, singers, journalists and other opinion leaders about why street harassment should be eliminated, generating multiple comments and positioning interesting like #PonteEnMiLugar.
Graphic against family violence
Chapter III. Article 85. Family violence, in whatever its manifestations, is considered destructive of the persons involved…
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
This cartoon was one of a many which appeared in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde during the campaign to secure approval of the new Cuban constitution.
Xinhua Interviews Iroel Sanchez
ANALYSIS: Cuban President Validates Political Leadership Despite Challenges in First Year of Government
Spanish.xinhuanet.com 2019-04-19 05:12:50
By Noemí Galbán
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
HAVANA, Apr 18 (Xinhua) — Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel arrives tomorrow, Friday, at the first anniversary of his term after going through internal and external difficulties that have demonstrated his political leadership.
In an interview with Xinhua, Cuban political scientist Iroel Sánchez said that the last 365 days have been intense and have demanded a great ability to govern from the current president.
It’s a quality that has characterized him since his work at the bases of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and that earned him the trust of the top leaders of the Revolution, Fidel and Raul Castro.
Both identified Diaz-Canel as the most competent successor to face the generational change of the historic political leadership of the country and for this, they had the majority support of the people.
Sánchez affirmed that “this first year has been one of a rearticulation of the political consensus around him, which is great because he has had to face major events, from the lamentable crash of an airplane to a tornado and he has done it successfully”.
According to the Cuban journalist, these facts have allowed the authority and image of the president to be strengthened, because it gave a new dynamic to the government’s management.
Not only did he renew part of his ministerial cabinet, but he also promoted direct contact with the people by traveling around the country and taking with him the majority of the highest officials of the central administration of the State to verify the existing problems in each province and look for possible solutions in situ.
This method of work also contemplated a greater presence in the media, where Díaz-Canel’s work is appreciated almost daily in meetings, balance sheets, visits to productive facilities. Meanwhile the ministers appear in local television programs to respond to the concerns of the citizens.
The president was one of the first Cuban leaders to open a Twitter account, an example that stimulated others, with the aim that Cubans participate and be informed about what is being done for the country.
“He has elaborated a discourse coherent with revolutionary tradition, with the needs of the historical moment and with popular expectations. He has had enormous acceptance for his anti-bureaucratic management and is very accurate in his detection of current needs,” said Sánchez.
The columnist from such local media as “Cubadebate” and “Revista Temas,” said that in this new dynamic he also highlights the speed of reaction to the most important events in the country.
“Not to give long terms for solutions, but to shorten those times in function of the transformation and improvement of the living conditions of the people,” he said.
“Not being satisfied with the first version of a response, that has been something that has marked this year and that people have perceived with satisfaction,” said Sanchez.
The person also responsible for the office for the Informatization of Society of the Ministry of Communication of Cuba explained that despite the same objectives of preserving national sovereignty, deepening social justice and increasing international solidarity, the reality today is different.
Added to the complex domestic economic panorama are the crisis in Venezuela, Cuba’s first trading partner, and the growing hostility of the government of U.S. President Donald Trump.
All this creates a scenario that poses colossal challenges for Diaz-Canel, especially in the economic field and the goal of growing 1.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2019.
Challenges also due to the country’s delicate external financial situation and the aggressiveness of U.S. measures that hinder the objectives of attracting greater volumes of foreign capital to exceed the 2 billion dollars needed annually by the nation for its development.
“There is a program that has not yet been implemented, to a large extent, because the conditions for implementing it are worsening. Now that the strategy of attracting foreign investment was paying off, Trump activates Title III of the Helms-Burton Act to stop the first successes,” Sanchez said.
Title III of the Helms-Burton Act allows Americans to file lawsuits in U.S. courts to lay claim to property nationalized in Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.
However, said the analyst, it is necessary to find ways to move forward and reorder the country internally in order to correct distortions and make the role of the State more and more efficient.
“The high political consensus and legitimacy he has will allow him a margin for initiatives and creativity in that sense. For example, as in the case of giving more power to municipalities and making the functioning between the private and state sectors coherent in order to tax economic growth,” he said.
On April 19, 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel, a 58-year-old electrical engineer, took over the reins of the country, backed by 99.83 percent of Parliament’s deputies and became the first president born after the triumph of the Revolution.
He is a leader born at the base of the PCC who does not bear the Castro name. He embodies the generational relay in the historical leadership of this Caribbean nation, determined to preserve its socialist path but convinced of the imperative need for profound economic transformations.
Dreaming in Miami
Dreaming in Miami
by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
April 19, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
John Bolton this Wednesday in an act dedicated to Brigade 2506, trained by the CIA to invade Cuba in 1961. Photo: AP.
After three months of threats and threats to a double stage – the State Department in Washington DC and a theater in Miami – the US Administration finally announced what it intends to do to intensify its economic war against Cuba.
On the 17th, at the mid-morning in a brief ceremony, just a few minutes, in the capital, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made it known that they will fully implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. He did not offer any further explanations, although he said that as of May 2, “Cuban-Americans” will be able to file claims before the US courts against those who use in any way the properties that they claim were theirs or their families’.
There were no questions and no text was answered to answer the questions that such a decision must have been given among those who remember that for twenty-three years – Clinton, W. Bush, Obama and Trump himself – had adopted a position contrary to what is now being announced.
Official statements were immediately made by Spain, Canada, Mexico and the European Union who, in addition to protesting, warned that they will take the necessary measures to neutralize any attempt to harm their legitimate interests and recalled that they are capable of doing so, bearing in mind that there is no shortage of US investments in their countries.
The most notorious spectacle was reserved for Miami and John Bolton, National Security Advisor, played the main role. His audience was the members of what remains of those who were part of the 2506 Brigade, that is, the remains of the invading group that 58 years ago was defeated by the Cuban people in 66 hours.
Bolton repeated what Pompeo said earlier regarding the lawsuits and also announced the re-imposition of severe restrictions on the travel of Cuban Americans to their country of origin and on the remittances they send to their families on the island, measures that were previously applied by W. Bush and generated the rejection of the vast majority of that community which has since been reflected in the Miami-Dade County elections.
The Miami show was as pathetic as it was grotesque.
The old and tired veterans failed when they were young, and organized by the CIA and with the support of the U.S. armed forces they went to Cuba to recover “their” estates, “their” factories and “their” mansions. Now Bolton promises them that the chimera will finally become a reality.
The show was summed up by Nicolás Gutierrez Castaño: “Even in our most feverish dreams we could not conceive that a U.S. government would do it. No one ever did. Forget Reagan. Forget Bush.
Excited, the skillful managing lawyer of Helms-Burton believes the time has come to “recover” the large properties stolen by his great-grandfather.
An unabashed dreamer, Bolton, for his part, invited to make a toast to the Monroe Doctrine that, according to him, is alive and healthy.
Intoxicated, “celebrating” his fulminant defeat, the guests at the strange banquet applauded him with delirium.
It is time to wake them up.
April 19, 2019
Atomic Bombing of Japan Reinterpreted
Atomic Bombing of Japan Reinterpreted
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In the summer of 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman sought a decisive blow against the Japanese Empire. Despite the allies’ many victories during 1944 and 1945, Truman believed that Emperor Hirohito would urge his generals to continue the fight. The United States had suffered 76,000 casualties in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Truman administration anticipated that a prolonged invasion of continental Japan would bring even more devastating numbers. However, Washington was developing plans for a final assault on Japan that it named Operation Downfall.
Estimates of possible mortality were frightening. The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the casualties would be 1.2 million. Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur predicted more than 1,000 casualties per day, while the Department of the Navy predicted four million. They estimated that Japan’s enemies would have up to ten million casualties. The slightly more optimistic Los Angeles Times projected “only” one million deaths.
From these figures, it was no wonder that the United States chose the nuclear option when it dropped the bomb called Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6 and then Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9. Japan surrendered 24 days later, avoiding the dreaded predictions of millions of American deaths cited here.
“Such is the narrative that has been taught in American schools. But like so many other historical versions, it turned out to be an oversimplification and historically distorted,” says Alan Mosley in an article published in the Russian Strategic Culture Online Journal on December 31, 2018.
When President Truman approved the deployment of the new atomic bombs, he was convinced that the Japanese planned to continue the war until the bitter end. Many have argued that victim estimates forced him to act cautiously for the lives of U.S. soldiers in the Pacific, but this version ignores that other figures close to Truman came to the opposite conclusion.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “I was against the use of the atomic bomb for two reasons. First, because the Japanese were ready to surrender and it was unnecessary to hit them with the horrible bomb. Second, because I hated that our country was the first to use that weapon. He used the same argument as then-Secretary of War Henry Stimson in 1945, who recounts in his memoirs:
“I expressed my grave doubts to him, first because I believed that Japan had already been defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I believed that our country should not scandalize world public opinion through the use of a weapon whose use, in my opinion, was no longer obligatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, looking for some way to surrender at the lowest possible cost.
Fleet Admiral William Leahy, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer on active duty during World War II and one of Harry Truman’s top military advisers wrote in his 1950 book “I Was There,” “The use of this barbaric weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material help in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective maritime blockade and the successful bombardment with conventional weapons.
Foreign Policy magazine wrote that the most critical day for Japan was August 9, the first day the Japanese Supreme Council met to seriously discuss surrender. The date is significant because it is not the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, but the day on which the Soviet Union entered the Pacific theater of war invading Japanese-occupied Manchuria on three fronts. Before August 8, the Japanese expected Russia to be an intermediary in negotiations for the end of the war, but when the Russians spoke out against Japan, they became an even greater threat to the Japanese than the United States.
Russia’s position, in fact, forced the Japanese to consider unconditional surrender. Until then, they were only open to a conditional surrender that would guarantee Emperor Hirohito some dignity and protection from war crimes trials. Foreign Policy concludes that, as in European theatre, Truman did not defeat Japan; Stalin did.
Truman never publicly regretted his decision to use atomic bombs. However, subsequent studies supported by testimonies of surviving Japanese leaders involved have testified that Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if an invasion had not been planned or contemplated.
April 17, 2019.
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