Last Dash
CUBAN CHRONICLES
by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2029
Yours truly, just coming back from one of my last dash. As you know, I like bright colored garments. Lili, my landlady, took this photograph. I really do not like having my picture taken and you can tell that by the fact that my smile here is a little bit forced. In my left hand is a little shopping bag filled with goodies from the store CLANDESTINA, a shop which was celebrating its 4th anniversary today.
They specialize in garments, shopping bags, and other items made of 2nd or 3rd generation recycled Cloth of various kinds. Interestingly, if you look on their website, they have received help, from the local Google operation here in Cuba as well as from the Norwegian Embassy. Their prices are someone out of League of ordinary Cubans, but for foreigners with disposable in incomes oh, they’re not too much and they are charming and attractive.
And so I spent a total of $63 for which I obtained a couple of shopping bags a couple of t-shirts an apron for my next door neighbor in Los Angeles, and for printed guides to the city produced by the shop. They also do a considerable online business and I will give you their web address.
Originally posted on Facebook February 12 at 10:32 PM
Havana Book Fair
CUBAN CHRONICLES
by Walter Lippmann
February 10, 2019
These are some pictures I took yesterday at the Havana book fair. There are captions along with each of these images giving some context.
These are two of the nice staffers at the OCEAN PRESS/OCEAN SUR booth at the Havana Book Fair where, at long last, I obtained my copy of the big Trotsky anthology you can see here, edited, introduced and contextualized by Fernando Rojas, Cuba’s Deputy Minister of Culture. I’m so grateful to have the book and to know that it’s available through Ocean, the only foreign publishing house with a regular office and distribution operation here in Cuba.
Viva Ocean Press/Ocean Sur!
Black history is a very important component of Cuban identity. These are just some of the books on this sapsect which are available here at the Book Fair.
More books on black history, identity and politics available at the Havana Book Fair.
These books are available in English at the table of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the Havana Book Fair. Not many people here read English, but for those who to, they can learn a lot about the religion of Al-Islam. I’ll try to get pictures of their Spanish offerings as well. Islam has been growing here in recent years. but that’s a topic for another day.
Large size poster at the Havana Book Fair, advocating condom use. It says, “Put your consciousness into action, protect yourself” and is produced by the VIGOR brand of condoms which are very easy to find here, and CHEAP (a couple of pesos for a pack of three).
I couldn’t get far away to get the whole thing into the picture with my phone, which is the only camera I’m using here. This is part of a small trailer known as EL CARRITO which goes to concerts and other public events like the book fair to encourage people to engage in safer sex practices. They were giving out posters, condoms and topical related litereature.
PATHFINDER (see sign up on the left), is the onlly US publisher to consistently come to the fair. They’ve been coming for I think nearly two decades, and run a very professional operation. In the past, they’ve shared their booths with others, but now they have an entire room for themselves.
Their books are too expensive for most Cubans, being sold in CUC, but on the last day, they unload their remaining stock in CUP, so they don’t havve to carry them back to the United States where they are based. I noticed, also, that their staff also spoke very good Spanish.
THE MILITANT was being offered to individuals at one regular Cuban peso (roughly four US cents), but when I said I was not Cuban, they immediately raised the price to one CUC. Notice the posters of Malcolm X as well as the book by Jack Barnes, the leader of the Socialist Workers Party which is the guiding spirit for Pathfinder Publishers.
Another perspectve on the Pathfinder booth.
The other side of the carrito.
Selfie with super-tall trans woman at the stand with the carrito. No, I didn’t get her name.
This is a manual for recommended exercises for senior citizens. It’s really important as the island’s population continues to grow, and so many younger Cubans hope tl leave the country. I should have picked up a copy, but I was already loaded down. Now I’m planning to go out to the cabana again, so if there are any left, I’ll try to get one.
TITLE: More Live to Your Years
This is a playground which is set up so children can have fun as well as going along with their families and caregivers to the book fair.
This is a great big machine which grinds the sugar ot of the cane stalks you can see in the upper right-hand sid eof the image. These stalks are five or more feet long, and it takes a crew of two to operate the machine. One to insert the stalks and another to pull out the stalks and toss them aside. Don’t know if the stalks are recycled or reused in some manner.
If someone knows, please tell us here. Thanks!
CLR James’ famous THE BLACK JACOBINS, his account of the Haitian Revolution and its leader Toussaint LÓverture, in a Cuban Spanish edition from Casa de Las Americas.Incredibly cheap at 30 regular Cuban pesos.
Originally published on facebook February 10 at 3:55 AM
Cuban doctors left in Brazil without a job
Cuban doctors left in Brazil without a job
The reality of the doctors who decided to stay in that South American nation is that they can no longer exercise their profession after the end of the More Doctors program.
February 5, 2019.
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Bolsonaro fails with his supposed promise. photo: reuters
Faced with the attempt by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to sully the work and honor of the Cuban doctors working in the More Doctors program, Cuba responded with customary dignity. The Ministry of Public Health announced the withdrawal of our doctors.
The decision implied the return to Cuba of the more than 8,000 doctors working in Brazil on the program that began in August 2013.
Since his election in October 2018, Bolsonaro repeatedly attacked Cuba and the More Doctors program.
In addition to repeating his questioning of the quality and training of Cuban professionals and requiring them to carry out an examination to revalidate their degrees. Bolsonaro was thus undertaking it against the PAHO-Brazil-Cuba agreements.
Of the 8,332 professionals who were in Brazil, the majority decided to return to the Island, the dignified gesture of the Cuban doctors awakened the admiration of the world and made visible once again the validity of the internationalist character of the Cuban Revolution.
But what has been the fate of the Cuban doctors who stayed in Brazil?
A paper published by EFE on February 3 describes the desperate situation in which Cuban doctors find themselves in the face of unfulfilled promises and the latent reality of a system that is not interested in the health of the poorest and that used them as a disposable tool in the machinery of manufacturing lies and manipulation.
According to EFE, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, the doctors who did not return to the island after the end of the More Doctors program can no longer practice their profession in the South American country.
Some of those who stayed were granted the status of “refugees”, so as not to lose their status as residents and be able to obtain a job portfolio, “a procedure that takes time while they do not receive any income”.
The hope of re-entering Más Médicos as a way to obtain the necessary employment is fading, “to achieve this they must wait at the end of a long line, because the competition launched by the government to fill the vacancies made Brazilian doctors a priority.
Initial applications surpassed the number of vacancies, 8,517, but there are some 800 not filled because “some of the Brazilian doctors chosen gave up their positions because they were in areas that were difficult to access or lacked resources.
Meanwhile, the Cuban doctors who remained in Brazil are trying to obtain one of the 800 places, as soon as they have the right to access the competition, a possibility that has been delayed time and time again.
Getting a job in “anything” becomes the only possibility, the other is waiting for a revalidation exam to be held in order to compete in the labor market on equal terms with Brazilians, but the bad news is that since 2017 there are no exams, it can take years for one to be called.
WAR AGAINST THE CHINESE ECONOMIC MODEL
WAR AGAINST THE CHINESE ECONOMIC MODEL
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The growing hostility of Western governments towards China has more to do with the interests of Western investors than with legitimate security fears, according to Stephen Gowans, a Canadian political analyst, who regularly publishes in the Voltaire Network, Global Research and other progressive media.
The U.S. National Defense Strategy for 2018 ranks China at the top of the world’s external threats to the United States, even above Russia, North Korea, Iran, and “various terrorist groups with global reach”.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo describes China as the “great long-term threat to the United States” and the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post, considers China to be “the real enemy.”
What has China done to deserve so many “distinctions”? The answer –according to Gowans– is that China has developed a state-led economic model that limits the profit opportunities of the U.S. investors and defies their control over high-tech economic sectors that include artificial intelligence and robotics, which are essential to U.S. military supremacy.
“Washington is immersed in a multi-faceted war to prevent Beijing from going ahead with plans to become world leader in10 broad areas of technology, including information technology, aerospace and electric vehicles”. Washington seeks to “curtail China’s plans to develop advanced technology ” and “force China to allow US companies to sell their products and operate freely” in China, in conditions that will allow the United States to maintain its economic and military supremacy.
For its part, “China seeks to alter a global economic system that only allows them to manufacture t-shirts while the US is in charge of high-tech productions,” according to Yang Weimin, senior economic advisor to Chinese President Xi Jinping. But now Xi is “determined to have China dominate its own microchips, systems, and other basic technologies” in order to become “technologically self-sufficient.”
But self-sufficiency in industries such as aerospace, telecommunications, robotics and artificial intelligence means taking China –a huge market– out of the scope of US high-tech companies.
In addition, given that the supremacy of the West has always depended on technological superiority, China’s efforts to challenge the monopoly of high technology directly generate a renewed challenge to Washington’s capacity to utilize the Pentagon as an instrument to obtain advantages in trade and investment opportunities for U.S. entrepreneurs.
China’s economic model is called state capitalism or “market socialism.”
Both terms refer to the two defining factors of the Chinese model: the presence of markets, for materials, products and labor force, and the role of the State, in charge of the industrial planning and corporate ownership.
The “pillar of the economy” is made up by the more than 100,000 state-owned enterprises of China. The State has a strong presence in the higher echelons of the economy.
“Key sectors, such as banking, are dominated by companies controlled by the State”. State-owned enterprises “represent about 96% of the telecommunications industry, 92% of energy and 74% of automobiles”.
Beijing is the largest shareholder of the country’s 150 largest companies.
The state National Commission of Development and Reform is in charge of industrial planning. The Commission uses a variety of means to foster Chinese industry in key sectors, and develops plans to give preferential treatment to Chinese companies in strategic areas.
Beijing is counting on state-owned companies to become leaders in semiconductors, electric vehicles, robotics and other high technology sectors and finances them by means of subsidies and funding by state-owned banks.
The Planning Commission also guides the development of steel, photovoltaic energy, high-speed trains and other critical industries.
Beijing has closed the door to foreign ownership in sectors it considers strategic or vital to national security. These include “finance, defense, energy, telecommunications, railways and ports”, as well as steel.
All the steel companies are state owned and are all financed by state owned banks.
In total, China has restricted or closed foreign investment in 63 sectors of its own economy, such as stem cell research, education and training, satellites, prospection and exploitation of numerous minerals, the media, as well as research institutes in the humanities and social sciences.
January 24, 2019.
A FORECAST OF DONALD TRUMP’S FIASCO IN VENEZUELA
A FORECAST OF DONALD TRUMP’S FIASCO IN VENEZUELA
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In late November, President Donald Trump announced that Washington had withdrawn its recognition of Nicolas Maduro as the President of Venezuela, and has now given it to the Head of the National Assembly in contempt, José Guaido.
In this way, the United States will openly support the regime change in Caracas This has been the dream of the Neo-cons for a long time and can become a nightmare for Trump.
“Why does the American President act like this?” Ronald “Ron” Paul wonders on his blog. Paul, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, member of the Republican Party and former representative to the House in the U.S. Congress, who holds the largest record of conservative votes for a representative in Congress since 1937.
He has been called the “intellectual godfather” of the Tea Party. He has achieved notoriety for his libertarian positions on many political issues, often clashing with the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties. Paul has run for the Presidency three times: in 1988 as candidate of the Libertarian Party, and in 2008 and 2012 as a Republican.
“According to the U.S. State Department, the Administration is acting to help enforce the Venezuelan Constitution… As if the Administration were so anxious to enforce its own Constitution!” Paul ironically wrote on January 29.
It’s also ironic that Trump — a president who has spent his first two years in office fighting accusations that a foreign country interfered in U.S. elections– not only meddles in a foreign election, but also grants himself the right to appoint the president of a foreign country.
“How would we react if the Chinese and the Russians decided that President Trump is not upholding the U.S. Constitution and recognized Nancy Pelosi as President of the United States?” asks Paul.
Even those who would like to see a change of government in Venezuela should reject any notion that such change must be “helped” by the United States. According to news reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in Venezuelan internal affairs that in fact he urged Guaido to name himself president and pledged America’s support. This is not just foolish but also very dangerous. A Venezuelan civil war would result in massive death and even more economic misery.
Regime change has long been the U.S. policy for Venezuela. The United States has been waging an economic war against it practically since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was first elected in 1998. The objective of the U.S. sanctions and other measures against Venezuela and other countries targeted by Washington’s is to make life so miserable for the average citizen that it would make them stand up and throw out their leaders. But, of course, once they do, they must replace those leaders with someone approved by Washington.
“Remember,” writes Paul,” after the “Arab Spring” in Egypt, when the people rose up and overthrew their leader, the “wrong” candidate was then elected. The army moved and deposed the elected president and replaced it with one approved by Washington. The then Secretary of State, John Kerry, called that “restoring democracy.”
“It’s tragicomic,” says Ron Paul, “that Trump appointed the convicted criminal Elliot Abrams, as his key person to “restore democracy” in Venezuela. Abrams played a key role in the Iran-Contras scandal and became one of the main architects of the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. His role in the promotion of the horrible violence in Latin America in the decade of the 1980’s should disqualify him from returning to any public office.
“Instead of this coup d’état, a better policy of ours to relate to Venezuela in the last 20 years should have been one of commitment and trade. If we really believe in the superiority of a free market system, we must also believe that we can only preach by example, not by forcing our system on others,” stresses Paul.
Just four months ago, President Trump said at the UN that he respected “the right of every nation to practice its own customs, beliefs and traditions. The United States cannot tell others how to live, work or worship. In return, we should only ask respect for our sovereignty.”
“Unfortunately, it seems that these were just empty words. We know from what happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. that this will not end well for Trump… or for the United States. We must leave Venezuela in peace!” concludes Ron Paul whom no one can accuse of being a defender of Socialism.
January 31, 2019.
U.S. PLANS AGAINST CARACAS ARE WORSE
U.S. PLANS AGAINST CARACAS ARE WORSE
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Contrary to what Venezuelans believe, the objective of the United States is not to overthrow President Maduro but to apply in the “Caribbean Basin” the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski doctrine, and to destroy the state structures in the countries of the region. This requires the elimination of Nicolas Maduro, but also of Juan Guaidó”.
That’s how Thierry Meyssan, founding president of the Damascus-based Voltaire Network, and a brilliant specialist on Middle East topics, sees it.
This scheme was already used in 2011 to make the internal issues that took place in Syria appear as an external aggression perpetrated by an army of mercenaries.
In the case of Venezuela, the Organization of American States (OAS) — known around the world as the Yankee Ministry of Colonies, and whose Secretary General immediately recognized Guaidó as President – undertook the role that the Arab League had in the case of Syria. The role of the so-called Friends of Syria’s (which in fact were of Washington’s) was played by the Lima Group, also under U.S. control.
Burhan Ghalioun, an old collaborator of the American National Endowment for Democracy ( NED), played the part of leader of the opposition in Syria. He was soon replaced by another little character, who, in turn, was replaced by another, then by another, and again for yet another; so many times that no one remembers their names anymore. You can assume that Juan Guaidó will be quickly discarded in the same way.
But the Syrian scheme of the United States worked only in part because: in the first place, Russia and China opposed it in the UN Security Council repeatedly; secondly, because the Syrian people supported their government and gave evidence of exceptional resistance; and, finally, because Russia managed to support and equip the Syrian Arab Army in time for its confrontation with NATO and the foreign mercenaries.
It is known that Washington, knowing that the Pentagon will not be able to continue using the jihadists to weaken the Syrian state, is now proposing to place the Syrian case in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Department who, in turn, will do everything possible to prevent the reconstruction of the Syrian country and state.
The idea is for the self-proclaimed Interim President Guaidó to head a parallel administration that focuses its objective on: obtaining oil money in various lawsuits; “settles” the territorial dispute with Guyana; “satisfactorily” negotiates the question of refugees; “agrees” with Washington on all the foreign policy issues, and manages to imprison in the United States the Venezuelan Chavista leaders under various pretexts.
Based on the experience of the last eight years in the Middle East, what is happening in Venezuela cannot be compared with what happened in Chile in 1973. The United States was then trying to control the Americas and close the way to all forms of Soviet Union influence. They wanted to exploit the natural riches of that part of the world, leaving the least possible control in the hands the national governments… at the lowest attainable cost.
Today, on the contrary, the United States persists in considering the world as uni-polar. It has no friends or enemies. According to its vision, every population integrated into the globalized economy or living in a territory that has natural resources that the United States wants to control (not necessarily exploit immediately), these must be under the shared control of the Pentagon in the nations where they are located.
Therefore, Washington is trying to prevent the proper functioning of the state structures of those countries.
“It is possible that Juan Guaidó believes he is really capable of solving the crisis and serving his country by proclaiming himself interim president. But in fact it would actually have the opposite effect, because it would create a situation similar to a civil war. He, or his successors, will ask for help from Brazil, Guyana and Colombia, which will deploy “peace keepers” with support of Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. And the violence would continue until entire cities are in ruins.
It doesn’t matter if the Venezuelan government is Bolivarian or liberal, whether their relations with Washington are good or not. The goal is not to achieve a “regime change” as in Syria, but to weaken the Venezuelan state as much as possible. That process would begin in Venezuela and immediately extend to other countries in the region –such as Nicaragua– until there remains no real political power in the region as a whole”, predicts Thierry Meyssen.
“This situation is very clear for many Arabs whose countries already fell into that trap. But now, it does not seem to be seen with enough clarity in Latin America”, warns the expert.
“Of course, it is also possible that Venezuelans may become aware of the manipulation, put aside their divisions and save their country,” concludes Meyssen.
January 28, 2019.
Vertigo in its place
Vertigo in its place
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo. Photo: Movie still
Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
January 25, 2019 21:01:41
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Last December, the film’s 60th anniversary was celebrated with great fanfare, and Kim Novak, the leading actress, she retired from a ranch in Oregon in her retirement ranch in Oregon.. From there she didn’t go out even to look for gold nuggets in a cinematographic world that, in the 50s and 60s of the last century, had kissed her feet. She was, however invited to participate in the 2014 Oscar ceremony, a sort of tribute, she believed, like the one offered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Just a few minutes on the stage of the so-called Mecca of cinema that cost her the most bloody jokes and mockery in various media, because of the plastic surgery that made the two characters she played in Vertigo, at 25 years of age, look very remote.
Television and social networks were filled with images of the actress and comments, such as those leaked by Donald Trump, who was not president at the time, although he had already given signs of what Twitter unleashed would become in his hands: “Kim should sue her cosmetic surgeon,” wrote the magnate.
Before returning to her ranch, Novak defended herself on Facebook: “…I’m not going to shut up in front of tyrants. You can’t let people destroy your life. You have to stand up against them.¨
Known for not giving interviews, the actress agreed a month ago to a request from an AP journalist. The pretext was impossible to ignore. Vertigo, the film that launched her career, was 60 years old and in 2012 had moved from first place in the preference of critics and historians over the mythical Citizen Kane, after 50 years of the film of Orson Welles reigning in the polls conducted by the prestigious British magazine Sight and Sound.
An ascent in which the indisputable quality of the film mediated, unusual for the Hollywood of the 50s, the love story marked by the obsession of a man (James Stewart) who intends to resurrect the woman who fascinated him, and the unparalleled performance of Kim Novak (beautiful and sensual, but nothing outstanding until then in the field of acting).
It´s producers weren´t enthusiastic, and so it competed without pain or glory at the 1958 San Sebastian Festival, it was considered below Psycho and other Hitchcock films. However, step by step it opened the way to the reign of myths thanks to its values, and also to the music of Bernard Herrmann. It´s a film that today – dozens of books and studies conceived in its favor – is considered one of the most significant in the history of cinema.
In the AP interview, Kim Novak revealed that she identified so much with the character In Vertigo because it was exactly what Hollywood was trying to do with her: turn her into what she wasn’t (another platinum blonde who competed with Marilyn Monroe and was a worthy successor to Rita Hayworth).
It is known from François Truffaut’s famous interview with the suspense magician, that Hitchcock insisted Novak had not been well on her role, to which the Frenchman responded categorically that Vertigo was she. And he didn’t lack reasons, especially when you consider that the actress played two totally different characters. However, when referring now to Hitchcock, Kim Novak has words of praise for the director who, according to Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie), was nuts about blondes and sexually harassed her to the point of threatening to ruin her career.
Also with Kim Novak?
He never behaved that way with me, she responded sharply. And she added: “Others did. And, although she didn’t offer names, she said that the reports of harassment and sexual assault that flourish in Hollywood today were always like that, only now they have lost their fear and are beginning to talk.
The passionate mission of continuing to invent our own model of socialism
The passionate mission of continuing to invent our own model of socialism
Cuba will live a moment of great expectation, on February 24th, when it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.
Author: Ariel Terrero | internet@granma.cu
January 24, 2019 21:01:43
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
CAPTION: The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy is a key to ensuring effective decentralization. Photo: Freddy Pérez Cabrera
Cuba will live a moment of great expectations, when, on February 24 it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.This is logical, after creating these expectations among the discussions in nation as a whole, seasoned with the controversial passion that identifies Cuba. But I don’t believe that the conquest of votes is the most thorny challenge posed by the Law of Laws. Not by a long shot. The big challenge comes later.
Society and its institutions will have to legislate and implement the changes and ordinances assumed under the new Constitution. They are not a few. The complex goals it proposes, to broaden the transformations of the economic, social and political model of Cuban socialism, and to deepen the process of its updating…, which has not advanced at the speed that we Cubans dreamed of when we began it more than a decade ago.
The great challenge will come with legistion, which must be much more intense than what has been achieved so far. This is so that the other branches of the legal system start from the foundation of the Magna Carta. One of those branches is the law on companies, which has not yet seen the light of day although it was promised for 2017. It is fundamental to give solidity to a scenario that bets on the coexistence between multiple economic actors, who begin to discover the benefit of alliances between presumed antagonists – in tourism and agro-industries there have been successful experiences.
Several chapters in the new law point to a reordering of government and business administration structures. These favors a more radical decentralization of this country, accustomed for decades to a rigid verticality of economic and government organizations. Perhaps the most daring change is the redesign of territorial structures to give greater prominence to municipal administrations and local development management.
The Constitution also bases the path towards an economy on a diversity of forms of ownership. State enterprise, the main actor of the socialist economy, will share legal and legitimate space with cooperatives, mixed forms and private entities, among others.
The great challenge will not be so much the acceptance of that diversity or the liberation from the cursed aura of words such as private and market. The idea that non-state forms are also a vital link in the chain of production, services and the market has gained social consensus. This aspiration, however, stumbles in an environment lacking optimal conditions for the coexistence of dissimilar forms of property.
More important and difficult than the entry of private companies into the scenario is the granting of autonomy to state-owned companies, which is proposed in Article 26 of the new Magna Carta. Although State business organizations have advanced along this path, they still carry insufficiencies that, together with financial deformations such as the monetary and exchange duality and other trade anomalies, place these entities at a disadvantage compared to non-state rivals.
With better wages and fewer bureaucratic and financial ties, cooperatives and private companies come out on the market under better conditions than state forms. In contrast, these are left with advantages to access technologies, wholesale offers and resources from external markets, but they do not manage to take advantage of them in all their dimension due to the confluence of economic limitations, clumsy interpretations of planning and the subjection to a Cuban currency overvalued at the official exchange rate, among other obstacles.
To which side would the teeter-totter of property forms be inclined in this context? Difficult answer. Risk can inhibit central decisions and state disadvantage would then threaten non-state expansion, especially for small and medium-sized private enterprises that have entered the Cuban economy with a mask of cooperatives or self-employed workers.
The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy, which was symbolically incorporated with popular debate into the constitutional project, constitutes an old aspiration of society and is a key to guaranteeing effective decentralization into enterprises and budgeted units of the State.
The Demonization of Russia by The United States
The Demonization of Russia by The United States
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 original Cold War there was a certain balance between the contending parties.
This led independent observers to believe that the Soviet Union, decimated in World War II, was so keen on maintaining peace that Washington could achieve an advantageous agreement for the West and avoid the possibility of nuclear war without making too many concessions.
However, U.S. diplomacy and propaganda had become fixated on a campaign to demonize Russia. This considerably diminished following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But in very recent times it has been revived due to the visceral hatred of Democratic Party supporters towards Trump, after Hillary Clinton’s humiliating defeat in the 2016 presidential election.
The Democratic Party leaders blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on the interference in US elections by Vladimir Putin. This was a justifying argument to be fed to Democratic followers, ashamed of their terrible performance against a “minor” opponent like Donald Trump, at the time considered an upstart in “major politics.”
Irish journalist Bryan MacDonald, in a recently published article, analyzed the presidential race of Vladimir Putin and the reasons for his growing popularity in Russia.
Firstly, he considers that Putin’s victory in the most recent elections was involuntarily facilitated by the West.
Western leaders and opinion makers in Washington believed that sanctions and economic pressure would encourage Russians to become more active against Putin. But they couldn’t have been more wrong.
In this respect, Alexey Pushkov, representative of the Council of the Russian Federation notes that: “Putin’s demonization by the West has had the opposite effect in Russia: citizens have rallied around their top figure in an unprecedented way. The results of the elections confirm this”.
It is fitting to recall that in 2011 and 2012 there were demonstrations in Moscow organized by a group that was baptized as the “Moscow elite” against President Putin.
Western media correspondents accredited in the Russian capital, with little knowledge about the situation in the rest of the country, made their readers and/or viewers believe that something substantial was taking place, when the reality was much less dramatic.
Although the Kremlin suspected interference, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, had really very little influence on these events.
The situation was totally different from what had occurred in 2013 and 2014 in the Ukraine, when the United States openly intervened in support of the street protests against the Russian Government.
Another fact that illustrates this point was the vicious campaign of attacks against Russia in connection with the case of the former double agent Sergei Skripal.
In the words of Andrei Kondrashov, spokesman for the Putin’s election campaign in Moscow: “Voter turnout was eight to ten percent higher than we expected, because the United Kingdom, pretending otherwise, pressured us right at the precise moment when we had to mobilize to go out and vote.”
Kondrashov, ironically, thanked the British Government for that result. The accusations made by London against Moscow in relation to the poisoning of the former double agent Skripal helped bring about the surge in the number of voters who participated on the March, 2018 presidential elections in Moscow.
The spokesperson said that the high turnout at the polls was proof of the way Russian people reacted when their country was accused “out loud and without evidence.”
The dispute around the attempted murder of agent Sergei Skripal with poison gas increased electoral turnout by several percentage points, according to the spokesman. At the end of the day, Putin was the ample winner of the contest.
Russians are fully aware that the campaigns against their country and the demonization of their president require a strong citizen response. They generally support the status of Crimea and resent the anti-Russian hysteria in the West.
In fact, it is precisely this negative image of Russia, broadcast in the West, that has determined the repeated success of Putin in various electoral consultations.
For years it has been more than evident that the foreign policy of the United States should draw lessons from these procedures which have been proven to be counterproductive in other parts of the world.
An extreme example of this is the genocidal siege policy held for 60 years against Cuba. A policy almost unanimously rejected by the world community of nations.
January 17, 2019.
Mariela Castro’s comments on local Cuban TV
Mariela Castro’s comments on local Cuban TV last night about tornado damages and the recovery efforts
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Yesterday in the program #LibreAcceso de #CanalHabana, which every Wednesday at 8:30 PM is hosted by journalist #BárbaraDuval, the Vice President of the provincial government, #TatianaVieraHernández reported accurate data on the recovery of Havana after the tornado that severely affected the municipalities of Regla, Diez de Octibre and third Guanabacoa. With slight damages East Havana, Cerró and Maranao.
Food, water and other necessities are provided free of charge to the affected population.
The sale of food and water at very low prices are for all people in the neighborhoods where electricity and water services have not yet been restored. However there are others who do not have these difficulties but who can also benefit from these services.
There are 6155 people protected in the homes of relatives and friends for the total loss of their homes. Of this total, 258 are in Protection Centres or in adapted premises until their homes are built.
The Technical Evaluation Commissions have worked day and night to create the Technical Sheets and lists of materials for the reconstructions. They have already evaluated more than 95% of the houses damaged and totally destroyed. As of this morning, 40% of these people had already obtained the first materials assigned for their homes through different types of facilities or free deliveries, as the case may be.
There are 2006 houses affected. Of these, 205 with total collapses; 913 with partial collapses; 379 with total roof collapses; 217 with partial roof collapses.
We invite you to get informed and participate in a humble and supportive way, respecting the organizational procedures of the provincial and municipal governments.
The Cuban press is reporting that some people arrive in these neighborhoods and, without agreeing with the municipal government, distribute material aid to those who do not need it, who in some cases resell it.
In Ciudad Libertad there is a warehouse in front of the Rectorate of the Universidad Pedagogica, where the collection of donations is very well organized, the information that is offered to donors and forms are filled out where the necessary information is given for its general delivery or to the people who wish to benefit.
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