Canada Involves Itself in Lies Against Cuba

By Manuel E. Yepe

http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico. 

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.

The Ottawa government, which maintains cordial relations with Cuba despite the enormous pressure against the United States, seems to have given in to the manipulations led by Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He is presented as an exile from Cuba – a country where he was not born and has never visited – to carry out an agenda of dissimulations and lies to Havana´s detriment.

Senator Marco Rubio aspires to be Donald Trump’s replacement in the U.S. presidency. His promoters have prepared an anti-Cuban program for him that is based on the calculation that the next president of the United States will be Latino and Republican. Rubio’s family fled Cuba, it is true, but this happened in 1956, during the bloody tyranny of Fulgencio Batista imposed by the United States in 1952 through a coup d’état and was deposed in 1959 by the popular revolution. He was born in Miami and has never set foot in Cuba. Calling Marco Rubio as Cuban is like defining Donald Trump as European.

Canada established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1945 and maintained them uninterruptedly after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Cuba was the first country in the Caribbean region with which Canada exchanged diplomatic missions.

Cuban-Canadian ties were particularly warm in the 1970s and 1980s, during the government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, since November 2015.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Fidel Castro had a very close relationship of friendship, solidarity and respect. This was symbolized by the fact that, at the death of the Canadian leader in 2000, Fidel Castro was one of his pallbearers at the state funeral.

In 1994, a joint venture was formed between the Cuban Nickel Union and the Canadian company Sherritt International, which operates a mining and processing plant in Moa, on the eastern tip of the island. A second joint venture, Cobalt Refinery Co. Inc. was established in Alberta, Canada, to refine nickel. All together, there are 85 Canadian companies and subsidiaries of various profiles in Cuba.

Canada has consistently criticized the blockade against Cuba and has strongly opposed the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act.

In 1996, the Godfrey-Milliken Bill was introduced in Canada’s Parliament in rejection of the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act. It was a law that would have trained some three million Canadians of British Empire loyalist descent who fled the U.S. revolution to demand retribution for property and land confiscated by the U.S. government in the late 16th century as a result of that revolution.

Such a law would have placed a financial burden of many trillions of dollars on a number of large and medium-sized economic entities in the United States, given the current valuation of expropriated property.

The Godfrey-Milliken bill did not become law but resulted in an amendment to the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act that effectively neutralized any attempt to impose the Helms Burton Act on Canadians and Canadian entities.

The Canadian government also imposed a $1.5 million fine on any Canadian entity that contributed in any way to the implementation of the Helms Burton Act in Canada.

Canada has also protested against the presence of U.S. agents at Canadian airports trying to catch U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba as tourists in defiance of U.S. blockade laws.

Canada has operated an embassy in Havana since 1945. Cuba has its own in Ottawa and consulates in Toronto and Montreal.

Marco Rubio has declared himself the architect of the current stage of U.S. aggression against Cuba. He´s also the inventor of the hoax of sonic attacks on U.S. diplomats on the island. In this capacity, he advises on the drawing up of lists of Cuban persons and entities that Washington sanctions as violators of the provisions of the U.S. blockade.

It is not easy to understand why the government of Canada, the nation that is the biggest source of tourists to Cuba, could have aligned itself in a campaign against Cuba that has as its axis someone with such a fuller trajectory.

To disavow for security reasons the travel to Cuba of the relatives of Canadian diplomats accredited to the island is extremely strange considering that there has never been any report of a fact indicative of insecurity against any Canadian among the millions who, many years ago, enjoyed the goodness of the Cuban climate and the sincere affection of its people.

April 23, 2018.

Diaz-Canel could be first Cuban president to speak of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The new president of the Council of State and Ministers, Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez would be able to be the first Cuban president to publicly recognize the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.

Taken from Cubadebate

In his career, which we commented on extensively when he became the country’s first vice president in 2013, we can highlight facts such as the unconditional support he gave to the El Mejunje Cultural Center since he was a leader of the Communist Youth and later as the first secretary of the Party in Villa Clara.

Ramón Silverio, founder of this inclusive project, always highlights Diaz-Canel’s defense of the place, at a time when it was more difficult to do so, in the 1990s. “He always knew how to cope with the pressures of those who disagreed with the activities for the LGBT community, which were undoubtedly the ones that bothered me,” he told me that time.

In the foreground of the photo, Díaz-Canel appears first from left to right, next to Mariela Castro Espín, at the 2013 Gala.

For two consecutive years – in 2012 and 2013 – Díaz-Canel participated in the Cuban Gala against Homophobia and Transphobia at the Karl Marx Theatre, which makes him the highest ranking state and political leader who has supported the Cuban Days against Homophobia and Transphobia.

But perhaps the most significant event that demonstrated this new Cuban President’s understanding of the issues of diversity and sexual rights occurred during the debate on the Labor Code in December 2013.

As first vice-president, on that occasion, he recognized the political significance of the proposals made by Deputy Mariela Castro to add to the bill important issues such as non-discrimination based on gender identity, in addition to the explicit mention of sexual orientation that it already contained.

Photo: Byron Motley.

In mediating the controversy, Díaz-Canel also suggested that a parliamentary committee be charged with drafting a final version of the law that would take into account all the positions, in order to reach a consensus on the technical arguments, which were allegedly prejudiced, of some parliamentarians.

At that juncture, Diaz-Canel’s comments received the support of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and the approval of Parliament, which finally allowed the new law to be endorsed by majority vote, which, unfortunately, would later enter into force without incorporating the term gender identity.

The close link the current president had with the entire intellectual and cultural sector in its broadest sense, with young people, creators, the work of the media and information and communication technologies, undoubtedly brought him even more information on the problem of discrimination based on homophobia and transphobia.

It will even be easier for Díaz-Canel to address any of these issues in official contexts, when appropriate and necessary, because we must not forget that Raúl would probably find it embarrassing to intervene or advocate in public for a cause that is not only further away from his training, sensitivity and knowledge, but that has also been led his own daughter Mariela for more than a decade.

It is quite possible that this crucial moment will come with regard to the debates that will have to take place in order to bring about the announced constitutional reform. To these very important purposes we will also have to add the necessary modernization in relation to such sensitive issues as the family and marriage, in order to implement the policies already approved by the Communist Party of Cuba through legislation.

The already imminent XI Cuban Day against Homophobia and Transphobia will be, then, a good opportunity to see the progress and obstacles that we still have to face in terms of accompaniment and political will, in this fight for non-discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

April 19, 2018.

Who is Paquito el de Cuba?

I am Paquito, from CUBA; I am a Marti follower and a an author; I am a communist and gay journalist; I am a convinced and superstitious atheist; I am the father of a son whom I have adored and have been a partner for fifteen years with a seronegative man who loves me; I have been an AIDS patient since 2003 andam a survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for more than twelve years; I am a university professor and a student of life; a follower of Cuban economic issues and a passionate devourer of universal literature; an incontinent and belligerent moderate; a friend of my friends and a compassionate friend of my enemies; often wrong and never repentant; a hardened and eternal enthusiastic optimist; alive and kicking; in short, another ordinary man who wants to share his story, opinions and desires with you…

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.

Happy Confirmation of Democracy in Cuba

By Manuel E. Yepe

http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico. 

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.

The Cuban electoral system confirmed its democratic character through the exercise of the popular consultative procedure that elected Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez as head of state and government. Cubans will now place their hopes in him to continue the island’s revolutionary process, a paradigm of ideas and struggles for socialism and the independence of the nations of Latin America.

“I’m not here to promise anything, like the Revolution never did. I have come to fulfill the program that we have imposed on ourselves with the guidelines of Socialism and the Revolution”, the new President emphasized about his main work objectives.

Díaz-Canel had been First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers. Together with him, engineer Salvador Garcia Mesa was proclaimed 1st Vice-President. Before that, Esteban Lazo had been re-elected President of the Mational Assembly.

On April 18, the National Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba (ANPP) was constituted in its nineth term session. It elected, from among its 605 newly-elected deputies, the members of its highest body, the Council of State. The latter, in turn, chose the new president of the Republic of Cuba at its first session, succeeding Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, who had been in charge of the nation’s government since 2008.

Initially, Raúl took up the position through normal succession when President Fidel Castro Ruz fell ill. It was his responsibility to replace Fidel in accordance with his duty as First Vice-President, a position that had been legally assigned to him by the National Assembly of People’s Power in the past.

During those two consecutive presidential terms, Raúl was elected and re-elected President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers by the will of the citizens expressed at the polls. However, on the second occasion, the Cuban revolutionary leader announced his decision not to run for re-election.

Raúl Castro had been, since the beginning of the insurrection against the Batista tyranny, the second figure in the leadership of the revolution. His performance at the head of the government earned him an increase in prestige as a leader, which was already great due to his brilliant performance at the head of the country’s defense.

No one questions that Raúl’s enormous authority and popularity would have enabled him to continue in the presidency for a third term, but Raúl Castro himself had advocated the need to renew the leadership of the revolution and the government, which, in the eyes of the people, turned compliance with his decision not to continue in office into something like paying a debt of gratitude to its President.

On the morning of April 19, marking the anniversary of the first defeat of U.S. imperialism in America at Playa Girón, Miguel Díaz-Canel delivered his first speech as President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers,

“With this legislature,” he stressed, “the culmination of the election process of the last few months, which the people have carried out conscious of its historical importance, and without any campaigning, corruption or demagoguery. Citizens have distinguished humble, hard-working and modest people as their genuine representatives. They will participate in the approval and implementation of approved policies.

He added that anyone who wants to see Cuba in all its diversity can observe it in its National Assembly.

He stressed that he assumes responsibility with the conviction that all revolutionaries, from any trench, “will be faithful to Fidel and to Raúl, the current leader of the revolutionary process.

He then stressed, as another inherited achievement, that “unity has become invulnerable within our party, which was not born of the divisions of others, but out of the unification of those who sought to achieve a better country”.

“Raul remains at the forefront of the political vanguard. He continues to be First Secretary of the Party as a reference point for the revolutionary cause, teaching and always ready to confront imperialism, like the first, with the rifle at the time of combat.

He highlighted Raúl’s revolutionary and political work, his legacy of resistance and in the quest for the nation’s improvement, his statesmanship, building consensus and leading the process of implementing the Party’s guidelines. He also mentioned how Raúl had supported the efforts to bring about the return of the Five Heroes that Fidel had predicted.

This session of the Ninth Session of the National Assembly was closed by Raúl with a vibrant and historic speech outlining many of the most urgent tasks facing the new Cuban President.

April 19, 2018.