Translations 329
Roger Calero: Immigrant, Radical and Worker
Roger Calero: Immigrant, Radical and Worker
From the perspective of a worker living in the United States, I learned to admire the Cuban cause much more…
By DUNIA TORRES GONZÁLEZ
August 8, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
From the left: Róger Calero was recently in Havana, this time on behalf of Editorial Pathfinder, to present Farrell Dobbs’ Burocracia Teamster. (Photo: Jonathan Silberman/Militante).
Roger Calero was recently in Havana, in March 2019, at the Museo de los Trabajadores Palacio de los Torcedores, this time on behalf of Pathfinder Publishers to present Teamster Bureaucracy, by Farrell Dobbs (Missouri, 1907-California, 1983), and In Defense of the North American Working Class, by Mary-Alice Waters (1942), two publications that write about the labor movement in the United States. Calero is a union activist and correspondent for The Militant newspaper…
I was happy to know much more about his work, which made me admire the Cuban cause with greater fortitude. I remember the first time we met: Roger Calero and his compañeros, came to Santiago de Cuba to find out about the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. He wanted to help. Later, in a room in San Carlos de la Cabaña, at the 2014 Havana International Book Fair, our first conversation began.
“I’m not that important,” he said, but he agreed to tell me about how he got involved in political activities. His story shows us that other face of the situation of immigrants in the United States, which has nothing to do with the “American dream”. He proudly repeated, “I’ve been a militant for 20 years”.
“Many families risk their children’s lives [trying] to reach ‘the promised land’. For the past 25 years, I have been living in the United States. I witnessed the early years of the Nicaraguan Revolution. I was very impressed. When I moved to the U.S., I learned about the real life of the workers. As a child, you can imagine what the movies convey, what is beautiful, everything in quotation marks… that fetishism of merchandise, that you have to have it, but reality immediately won out. When I started school I realized what the place of each social class was,” he said on that occasion.
From 1990 to 1991, the world witnessed a sad event: the Persian Gulf War, between Iraq and an international coalition of 34 nations led by the United States. His experience tells us: “At that moment thousands of workers showed their opposition. It was time for me to get involved in a conscious way in the political activities and that’s what I did.”
A few years later, in 1994, the California State government passed Proposition 187, a legislative proposal submitted for elections that denied undocumented immigrants social, medical, and public educational services. This was the background to many laws that were imposed by both the Bush and Obama administrations.
This situation provoked great mobilizations among immigrant workers: there were student strikes, work stoppages in which I had the opportunity to participate and help organize. That’s when I came into contact with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
His working life was no less intense. In 1999, when he moved to Minnesota, he had the opportunity to participate in the struggle for unionization in a slaughterhouse: “Between 500 and 600 cows a day were being slaughtered. The employers’ desire for enrichment increased the pace of work. The number of cows, then, was 800 a day. They were the same working days and the same staff, but with a significant change in production.
“This created extremely dangerous conditions for repetitive operations during the eight hours of work. Once again the answer was not long in coming. Among the workers who reacted were Latinos, Somalis, African-Americans… who joined together to organize a union. This fact was a little symbolic, typical of what is happening in the United States today,” he said.
“There is nothing that any Democrat or Republican politician says that can be believed regarding unemployment, working conditions and minimum wages, because the evidence shows the opposite. When you lose your job, the average amount of time between that day and the day you start your new job is 40 weeks. This puts us in a difficult situation because rents do not wait, health insurance does not wait, food does not wait. In a matter of a week or two, you could be losing your apartment.
He later told about the work of The Militant, a weekly newspaper of the People’s Party. They go to working-class neighborhoods, door-to-door, with astonishing results: “The workers are reading not only what is happening in the United States, but also the world. The crisis has been creating uncertainty; but at the same time, interest in our work. Two or three years ago, current readers would not have been interested in the issues we are defending today.”
From the left in the United States, they continue to be part of the class struggles, they did what they had to do in the battle for the liberation of Antonio, Ramón, René, Gerardo and Fernando: “On many occasions we have been blocked from entering the penitentiaries; but immediately we have received the response of the organizations defending constitutional rights, democratic rights and prisoners. This is how they try to limit the spaces that workers and trade unionists need to be able to organize…”.
On that day, Mary-Alice Waters reaffirmed Calero’s words, in the José Lezama Lima room, when she spoke about the work they do in U.S. prisons and support for solidarity campaigns with Cuba.
Calero proudly said some words that I still remember: “This is the story of many workers, but not as happy as mine, because now I know the objective of my struggle.”
Trump Attacks Four Congresswomen
Trump’s Attacks on Four Congresswomen Because of Their Ancestry Repudiated
July 15, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Trump generates a wave of outrage: absolutely racist and anti-American. It’s not something you should hear from the President of the United States.
Trump Rejected As Anti-American and Racist.
Regeneration, July 15, 2019. A few hours ago, Trump attacked four congresswomen who lead the popular opposition to his government. It’s a series of Twitter messages where the U.S. president tells them to “go home.
Trump doesn’t say names, but it’s very clear who the attack is aimed at.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response from New York:
It is important to keep in mind that the words of today’s President, who tells four congresswomen of color to “return to their own country,” are the distinctive language of white supremacists.
Trump is comfortable leading the Republican Party into racism, and that should worry all Americans – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Racist and anti-American.
For her part, Senator Harris pointed out that the subject is old-fashioned and is still heard in the streets, but it is not something that should be said by the president of the United States.
“It’s absolutely racist and anti-American. And it’s an old trope – going back to where you came from that, you know, you might hear it on the street, but you should never hear that from the president of the United States,” Harris told the media.
Trump Against U.S. Congresswomen
“Return to your crime-infested countries,” wrote the U.S. president.
The response was not long in coming from dozens of Internet users, from citizens to politicians and the media.
“Attitudes such as these would be scandalous in any country in the world, but apparently, the American president acts outside of civility and proper political behavior,” postulates an American citizen.
The U.S. president does not name any particular person.
But among those mentioned would be Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent.
White nationalism, xenophobia and chauvinism. Disgustin.
Among the reactions, there is no hesitation in describing Trump’s statements as “despicable” and “repellent.”
What is certain is that three of the attacked congresswomen were born in the United States and one of them arrived at twelve years of age.
In this sense, they accuse the statements of “unmasking once again their white nationalism, xenophobic and chauvinism .
-It’s disgusting,” she points out.
Women’s collective opposing the object of the attack on Trump
Trump would have dedicated this diatribe to the female collective known as ‘The Squad’:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman from New York. Born in New York, of Puerto Rican descent.
Just like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, from Michigan, born in Detroit, has Palestinian parents.
In the case of Ilhan Omar from Massachusetts , who arrived as a refugee from Somalia at the age of twelve. And she was the first Muslim woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 2016.
Finally, Ayanna Pressley, from Massachusetts, an activist woman of black descent.
The politics of division is how this Administration works. We are here to serve our country. Our families are here. Our children are here. We are here. I’m with my sisters.
Trumps’s Imperialist Policy Tools
Trumps’s Imperialist Policy Tools
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Donald Trump’s foreign policy is largely based on the use of the tools at the Empire’s disposal: economic terrorism, threats of war, diplomatic pressure, trade wars, etc. But by resorting to them, Washington isolates itself internationally from its traditional allies and raises tensions on the world chessboard to an unprecedented level.
This is how Professor Federico Pieraccini sees it in an essay published on May 25 by the Strategic Foundation entitled Shielding the World From US Chaos Is No Easy Task.
The blockade against Cuba has been maintained for 60 years, with more or less intense stages of sharpening, together with threats of war against Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of Korea, Syria and Iran that are repeated daily, economic sanctions involving tariffs are, in many ways, comparable to declarations of war, and can be directed against friendly countries or allies of the United States.
China and Russia fight by diplomatic, economic and sometimes military means to promote the emergence of a multi-polar world. They offer Washington’s enemies some kind of shield with which to resist the scandalous attacks of the Trump administration. Beijing and Moscow project their resistance with a view to their long-term goals, given that in the short term they face the implacable hostility of Washington and its lackeys.
The fate of the new multipolar world order depends on how effectively China and Russia can weather the storm that Washington unleashes.
Washington’s European allies are punished for importing Iranian oil, cannot participate in Syria’s reconstruction, are induced to abandon joint projects with Russia (Nord Stream II); are asked to reduce China’s technological imports, and not to get involved in the world’s largest project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
All these demands come at a time when Donald Trump continues to undermine the current globalist world order that his allies had come to rely on to maintain the status quo. U.S. allies are obligated to comply with Washington’s requests, even if it damages their commercial interests and, in the medium and long term, has serious consequences.
This is the main reason the European countries want to diversify their trade and de-dollarize their economies.
With a US administration fragmented into several factions, constant changes in strategy and approach that end up weakening Washington’s international stature, the Pentagon’s military planners fear an open conflict with Iran or Venezuela, more than anything else, for purely propagandistic reasons.
Washington’s formidable firepower would probably be able to defeat any defense Tehran or Caracas could offer, but at what price? The myth of the invincibility of U.S. weapons is being challenged by Moscow’s defensive capabilities deployed in Syria and Venezuela. These same capabilities are readily available to Tehran should Washington decide to attack the Persian country.
But the likelihood of such a war is decreasing and Pentagon military planners fear a much worse scenario for the United States because Iran is three times bigger than Iraq and it would need about 1.2 million U.S. troops to occupy the country permanently.
Iran, moreover, is one of the world’s top 15 powers and Washington for the first time would face a high-capacity opponent, something that Americans have been trying to avoid for decades. They fear revealing the vulnerability of their weapons systems as a result of corruption and misguided strategic decisions. Pentagon planners have no intention of revealing their military vulnerabilities in a war with Iran.
The loss of U.S. military prestige would also demonstrate to countries that have hitherto been under Washington’s control that this dog barks rather than bites, making it even more difficult for the United States to intimidate countries with the threat of future military force.
What seems so difficult for Trump to understand is that his foreign policy is slowly eroding America’s superpower status. Since Trump is not really committed to any war, this will only lead to a humiliating setback.
A commitment to no more wars could be one of the last electoral promises to which Trump wants to remain true.
July 24, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Bucanero and Cristal at Way-Too-High Prices
Bucanero and Cristal at High Prices in Private Sector, But Gone From State Stores
By Tay Beatriz Toscano Jerez
July 17, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
At 200% of your selling price, maybe 250% of your cost price. For someone who didn’t invest a drop of sweat in producing them. Only in Cuba. Photo: September 5.
Surely the high temperatures of these days has evoked thoughts of having a beer to cool off. Perhaps you have decided to have a family reunion and, why not, taste a Bucanero or a Cristal. If you don’t change your brand (and quality), you have a very difficult time.
For some time now, it has been difficult to find the two emblematic beers produced domestically in the chain stores. However, in the private gastronomic establishments, restaurants, bars and/or cafés they are can always be found without problems and at a price that sometimes (according to “cache”) doubles their original price.
It’s really incredible: at 200% of their selling price, perhaps at 250% of their cost price. For someone who didn’t invest a drop of sweat in producing them. Only in Cuba.
What is the source of supply for those private “paladares” if, for example, in the TRD Caribe chain, only two boxes per person are sold (if the regulations were really complied with)? How many times should the waiting lines be or how many should accompany the owner of the restaurant in order to have a sufficient quantity to maintain their supply in a constant manner?
It is worth looking at this phenomenon, especially because it advocates not raising prices and because it causes equitable access to products of all kinds. Let’s remember that the country has already implemented measures of various kinds, including setting up a store for self-employed workers.
For none of us, it is a secret that there are not a few citizens whose livelihood depends precisely on being aware of how much is on sale in the CIMEX stores and the former TRD stores, in order to access as much as possible and then make a profit. Logically, however, they are not “fortune-tellers” nor do they have a particular information system that knows where things are and when.
They have their information system and their source of supply in the stores themselves. If not, how is it possible that they are almost always the first to acquire from an affordable price for the beers that have motivated this comment?
If not, the press will continue to denounce and, unfortunately, things will remain the same. This generates discredit, and not only in us journalists.
This can’t be the never-ending story. Nor does it deserve the disdain or lack of attention of all those who – in acting jointly – can and should close the way to this issue. Far from becoming a solution, has today become a problem since, on the one hand, access to beer is limited and on the other, it impacts strongly in the pocket of those who like the refreshing drink.
It is therefore imperative to enforce what has been ordered; to follow that skein that seeks to suffocate the normal course of the country’s economic and commercial processes and, let us reiterate, the pockets of the people.
It is clear that under no circumstances will the steep rise in prices be allowed; neither of the beers, nor of any other product necessary for everyone. It must not be done by the state or private sector. That is also a way of thinking as a country, thinking like Cuba.
Offended Reps Respond to Trump
Offended Congresswomen Respond to Trump
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Despite the attempts by the occupant of the White House to marginalize and silence us, know that we are more than four people.”
“We follow the mandate to defend and represent those ignored, excluded and abandoned. Our squad is big. Our squad includes anyone who commits to building a more equitable and just world. This is the work that we want to go back to . Given the size of this squadron and this great nation, no one will be able to silence us.”
That’s how the four U.S. congressmen responded: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, to the campaign of racist epithets launched against them by President Donald Trump who has offended simultaneously with his orders to armed agents to terrorize immigrants in the United States. and communities across the country.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, paraphrasing Trump’s campaign slogan promoting his re-election, accused him of trying to “make America white again (instead of powerful)”.
Trump had tweet with irony: “How interesting to see the “progressive” Democratic congresswomen, who come from countries where the governments are a complete and total catastrophe telling us, with screams and aggressively, how we should exercise our government in the States Why don’t you go back to those places that you’ve completely come to? less and crime-ridden where they come from to help fix the situation, Trump asks them the same way.
“Go back to where they came from? Let it be known that three of the congresswomen attacked by the President were born in the United States. Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez, is a native of the Bronx, in New York. She is the youngest woman elected to Congress; Ayanna Pressley, born in Cincinnati, is the first congresswoman to be born in Cincinnati. She is an African-American) representing the state of Massachusetts. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit is Palestinian-American; together with Ilhan Omar, they are the first two Muslim women to occupy seats in the Congress”.
Omar has been a U.S. citizen for more than a year. Melania, Trump’s third wife and current first lady, is a native of Slovenia.
Trump’s racist tweets have come to unite the fractured Democratic Party and quickly activated a demonstration of support for the four brand-new congresswomen, now collectively being called called “the squad.” Although it was the first formal reprimand of the House of Representatives Representatives to a president in office in more than a century, we must bear in mind that Pelosi blocked a more serious motion that tried to censure Trump.
Trump redoubled his verbal attacks against the four congresswomen whom he accused of being socialists and communists. These were typical attacks of the era of the McCarthyism. This should come as no surprise to anyone, as the first Trump’s attorney was Roy Cohn, who served as a lawyer for Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, at a time when he destroyed thousands of lives with his policies of anti-communist persecutiopn.
Probably, the use of racist rhetoric to ignite your white electoral base is one of Trump’s campaign strategies. In his book “Black History of the White House,” American University Profesor Clarence Lusane wrote, “For many Americans, the ‘white’ of the White House has implied a great deal. more than the color of the mansion; it has symbolized the tonality and the source of dehumanizing cruelty, domination and exclusion that have defined the long narrative of white people’s relationships with people of color in America.”
Last week, the four congresswomen who so clearly challenged Trump gave a press conference, in which they denounced the racism experienced by them and people of color in the United States. in general, noted the president’s policies on the detention of immigrants, family separation and the threatening raids of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A major article by journalists and activists Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan was published on the DEMOCRACY NOW website on July 19 with the title “President Trump redefines the concept of the White House”, provides important elements of analysis of the crucial racial conflict undercurrent that is resurfacing with his “cheerful” twitter and his band of jackals.
June 22, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as a source.
Thousands protest U.S. anti-immigrant raids
Thousands protest against anti-immigrant raids in U.S.
July 14, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Protests for raids against undocumented immigrants. Photo: EFE
Thousands of people crowded Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago on Saturday to protest the undocumented raids ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Artemio Arreola, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), told Efe that the rally held in front of the Mayor’s office could surpass the organizers’ initial estimate of 10,000 people.
Demonstrators unfurled posters reading “close the concentration camps,” referring to facilities where immigrants, particularly children, are held at the border.
Also, “stop deportations now,” while a large sign hanging from the Daley Center building, where the Cook County courts operate, says, “End detentions, welcome immigrants.”
In a rally held in the plaza, Democratic Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, urged listeners to “tell this racist president that he has to stop the criminalization of the desperate.
The District 4 representative, which includes Latino neighborhoods such as La Villita and Humboldt Park, called Trump’s policies “cruel and inhumane.”
Other speakers demanded the “immediate cessation of attacks on immigrant families” and the “oppressive immigration policies” of the government.
Arreola said Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot did not participate in the protest, and toured several neighborhoods.
Among the participants were several local politicians and councilmen, but some well-known figures from the pro-immigrant struggle were absent, such as Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin.
“We didn’t invite Durbin because the organizers feel he hasn’t faced Trump’s attacks hard enough to get the resources to build the border wall,” Arreola said.
The legislator participated Friday night in a meeting of Communities United, a community group in northwest Chicago.
He said it is “shameful” that the United States has come to the point of rejecting “people who are simply asking for an opportunity to have a better life, and to be part of the future of the country.”
Protests against the raids, which would begin tomorrow in Chicago and nine other cities across the country with large concentrations of immigrants, began Friday night with Liberty Lights vigils in other Illinois cities, including Aurora, Galena, Waukegan and Oak Park.
Prior to today’s rally in the plaza, representatives of the Asian American Immigrant Association met at the Chicago Cultural Center, and other groups held events in neighborhoods in the city’s northwest and southwest.
Due to the heat of 32 degrees Celsius 1, the Municipal Transportation Company parked several air-conditioned buses near the plaza so demonstrators could cool down.
Protests for raids against undocumented immigrants. Photo: EFE
Protests for raids against undocumented immigrants. Photo: EFE
- 6 Fahrenheid ↩
Cubans Benefit from New Chinese RR cars
Cuban population benefits from new Chinese cars
July 15, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
With 13 new and modern cars from China, this weekend the train Havana-Santiago was inaugurated, a service that will benefit the transportation of passengers from the west to the east of the country.
The team’s debut took place this Saturday when they left the La Coubre terminal in the Cuban capital at 4:15 p.m. to complete a route that concluded this Sunday at 9:15 a.m. at the Senén Casas Regueiro Railway Station in Ciudad Héroe.
This destination, one of the most requested by the population has filled with joy and satisfaction to all passengers to be able to enjoy the comfort of the new cars. In this sense, Alexis Guevara, said that the itinerary was very good and said that it is necessary to take care of this new investment made by the Cuban State.
Luis Roberto Rosés Hernández, director of the Business Unit of the Passenger Train Base of the Union of Cuban Railroads (UFC), said that although there were technical defects in the locomotive, the number of services and people to be transported will be doubled with this step.
The executive specified that the capacity of the previous trains was about 450 passengers in a formation of six cars. Now in each trip there will be 776 passengers in 12 of those modern Chinese vehicles.
Rosés Hernandez also cited as other novelties the possibility that the population can purchase tickets 30 days in advance when previously could only book five days.
The reactivation of the national services has been preceded by intense months of work in the commercial, operational and technical areas of the Cuban Railway Union. For this reason, the delivery of each railway worker is imposed in order to improve every day the attention to the passengers who benefit from our means of transport, he concluded. (Text and Photos: Yordanis Blanco Calderín )
The Effectiveness of Capitalist Propaganda
The Effectiveness of Capitalist Propaganda
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
When the propaganda of capitalism calls on third-world nations to implement or expand market policies, or to shy away from socialist policies of common benefit, no one knows whether it is a mockery that reflects how much the intelligence of peoples is undervalued or an invitation to become accomplices of the minority segment of the world’s population that exploits the majority.
The manipulation of the media by the empire -including on the Internet- has led most of the citizens of the United States, and of the countries within its sphere of influence and control, to call “democracy” a system as undemocratic as the one presided over by Washington, although Wall Street and the military and industrial complex at the Pentagon’s axis are in fact ruled by it.
The dictatorship that the United States exerts today on the world with the support of the opulent classes of the other countries of the planet, now goes through moments that denote precariousness.
Extreme poverty, marginality, the lack of opportunities for education and decent work, the disintegrating emigration of the family with its sequels of violence and drug addiction, all result from a capitalist system that has been unable to give answers to the pressing problems capitalism has created. The individualistic ethic in which capitalism is rooted is the nourishing mother of all the worst of today’s human societies: corruption, the illegal appropriation of things, speculation, banditry, the exploitation of the work of others, the privatization of social spaces and other “beautiful” things.
According to updated data from the United Nations, there are 7.545 billion people on this planet, of which more than 20 million are chronically malnourished; 2 billion do not have access to medicines; nearly 900 million do not have drinking water; more than 900 million lack housing or live in precarious housing; 1.6 billion do not have electricity; 2,500 million lack drainage systems or sewers; 770 million adults are illiterate; 18 million die each year from poverty (the majority are children under the age of 5); more than 200 million children and young people between the ages of 5 and 17 work in conditions close to slavery as soldiers, prostitutes, servants or in other dangerous or humiliating tasks.
If capitalism could exhibit a world of progress, freedom and justice, it would be easy to sell the system all over the world and have the Third World accompany it in this crisis. But with so much horror in its offerings, every day must spend more and more to sell capitalism as the system the world needs.
Only through lies and the threat of weapons, both fed with gigantic financial resources to the detriment of the real interests of humanity, does this hegemony continue…
See how, in order to obtain military domination, in the midst of the global crisis of capitalism, Washington maintains close to a thousand military bases around the planet. And it wages bloody wars to maintain its occupation of third world countries for the sake of its geopolitical objectives and the strategic interests of the big oil corporations.
But it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to understand that a system that generates so much injustice among human beings and is inept at managing their relations with nature is sustainable for much longer. It is not known if humanity has time to repair, for the sake of its survival, the disaster provoked in the environment by the voracity that moves capitalism, a system that cannot be humanized, because its intrinsic nature is inhuman.
Putting social and solidarity ahead of the greed imposed by capitalism -because it needs them to exist- is the only way humanity can save itself on the basis of its most precious aptitude, intelligence, when applied to its survival instinct.
It has already been announced that the next U.S. crisis will be caused by the health gap between rich and poor. This has widened in the last two decades, according to a study by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) that shows a “dramatically alarming” lack of progress in health equity in the last 25 years in the USA. Income inequality is the root cause of health inequality, as the costs of health care and a healthy lifestyle are high. The more than five million people examined make this study meaningful.
The root cause of income inequality has been the result of the extreme monetary policies of central banks, which have fuelled asset price bubbles that only enrich those who own them. With home ownership at 1960s levels, and more than 50% of citizens not owning shares, this research suggests that failed policies have led to the implosion of the middle class.
July 5, 2019
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Palestinians Reject Trump’s Bribe
Palestinians Reject Trump’s Bribe
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisor and son-in-law offered $50 billion in future investments as a bribe to obtain Palestinian surrender. That was his mysterious and hyper-publicized “deal of the century.”
For decades, U.S. diplomacy has failed completely to resolve this bitter dispute. It was therefore naïve to hope that the Trump administration could succeed. Most likely, its errors and biases would only worsen this historic conflict. So it has been that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and chief adviser to President Donald Trump on Middle East affairs, attempted last week to sell his “Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement” project.
The core of the proposal turned out to be an alleged foreign investment plan for that amount in exchange for Palestine’s acceptance of permanent occupation of its ancestral lands. Kushner renamed it such an offer as the “opportunity of the century.”
In his bid formulation speech at a conference in Bahrain, Kushner claimed that political peace depends on a viable economic plan and prosperity depends on a political solution to decades of injustice against the Palestinians.
Prominent Irish international affairs expert Finian Cunningham (b. 1963) has revealed in an essay published by the Strategic Culture Foundation that, like his father-in-law in the White House, Kushner comes from a real estate environment before Trump named him his chief assistant on the Palestinian-Israeli question. For the past two years, Kushner has been working on a “master plan” to end the eight-decade conflict. Trump has described his son-in-law’s peace plan as the “deal of the century.”
In Bahrain, the Trump administration took the first step in advancing its peace plans. The childlike Kushner presented his vision of business and investment as the supposed key to peace. He invited the audience to “imagine” the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza full of business and commerce. If the Palestinians accepted Kushner’s vision, that corporate “promised land” would become real.
What this boils down to is for Palestinians to accept the current status quo of Israel’s illegal occupation and renounce their historic claims to state sovereignty. In addition, the $50 billion in investments Kushner had in mind are not existing funds but only promises of potential investment, which may never materialize.
Like his father-in-law in the White House, Kushner comes from a real estate environment. Before Trump named him principal advisor on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, for the past two years, Kushner has been working on a “master plan” to end the eight-decade old conflict. That conflict has been at the heart of most other disputes and tensions in the region. It was Trump who called his son-in-law’s peace plan the “deal of the century.
In Bahrain, the Trump administration made the first advance of its peace plans. Kushner invited the audience to “imagine” the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza full of businesses and commerce. The corporate “promised land” would come if the Palestinians accepted Kushner’s vision.
What this boils down to is for Palestinians to accept the current status quo of Israel’s illegal occupation and renounce their historic claims to state sovereignty. Add to that that the $50 billion in investments Kushner has in mind are not existing funds but promises of potential investment that may never be fulfilled.
Nowhere in the Trump administration’s “deal of the century” is there any attempt to redress historical violations of Palestinian national rights. There is no mention of the right of return of millions of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war established by the state of Israel. Nor does it mention the right to return land annexed during the 1967 war. The illegal occupation is simply a fact on the ground that must be officially recognized as Israeli territory, according to the Trump administration.
During a recent interview in the United States, Kushner stated that “the Palestinians were not yet ready for self-government. The alleged mediator predicts that there will be no Palestinian state, Palestinians must accept their status as an occupied people while allowing the State of Israel to continue annexing more and more Palestinian ancestral lands.
Kushner is believed to have personal investments in the construction of new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. It is not surprising, therefore, that his so-called “deal of the century” is a shallow business plan, devoid of deep historical and political considerations, while Palestinians are expected to give up their historic rights to the land.
July 5, 2019
Originally published in the newspaper ¡POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
Women the Third Age of Their Sexuality
Everything about health
Women and the Third Age of Their Sexuality
Countless myths have historically reinforced stigmas about sexuality after people reach the sixth decade of life and come to consider themselves as adults and older adults.
Author: Lisandra Fariñas Acosta | internet@granma.cu
July 7, 2019 20:07:50
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
It is essential that the family accept the sexuality of the elderly. Photo: Dunia Álvarez Palacios
Countless myths have historically reinforced stigmas about sexuality after people reach the sixth decade of life and come to see themselves as adults and older adults.
These myths, in the case of women, “conceived under the stereotype of mother, woman as a function of the family”, have hindered their enjoyment of sexuality, and which increases in the so-called third age.
This is what Dr. Beatriz Torres Rodríguez, president of the Cuban Society for the Multidisciplinary Study of Sexuality (Socumes), said at the recently held XVII Congress of the Cuban Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, addressing this issue.
“Women are prepared to attend to and satisfy the needs of others. Socially, there is a predominant belief that her sexual capacity and desire are less than those of men, and that female love is romantic and must have an erotic passivity,” the specialist said.
This is accompanied by other myths such as that only in youth you enjoy a good sexuality and that women in old age do not have an active sexual life, and are not interested in engaging in some romantic relationship, said the expert.
When talking about women’s sexuality in old age, many times we only think about the following aspects: fragility and loss of pubic hair; the vaginal mucosa dries up and atrophy, thus diminishing its secretion and facilitating infections; the vulva, labia minora and clitoris decrease in size, there is a shortening and narrowing of the vagina; the ovaries decrease in size, and the cervical mucus is thick, scarce and cellular; the breasts become flaccid as a result of the atrophy of the tissues and the lack of hormonal secretion.
For the psychologist, it is essential to take into account what older women think and what is meant by geriatric sexual health.
The latter is “the psychological expression of emotions and commitments that requires the greatest amount and quality of communication between partners, throughout existence, in a relationship of trust, love, ability to share and pleasure, with or without intercourse,” according to specialized literature.
This concept is fundamentally based on an “optimization of the quality of the relationship” (more than in quantity), said Dr. Torres Rodriguez.
For the interviewee, several elements cannot be lost sight of: self-perception of sexual attractiveness is a very important social factor.
“The climacteric anticipates the “feeling of old age” in many women. A large number of women mistakenly believe that once their reproductive function is over, sexual function is also lost,” she said.
Added to this is the fact that older people find it very difficult to consult medical science professionals, because there is a general lack of training in areas of sexuality and, even more so, in the sexuality of older people. Hence, the role of health professionals in general and family physicians, as well as specialists in Geriatrics, as key health providers at this stage must become essential.
It is essential that the person is cared for from a holistic point of view and that, for example, sexual dysfunctions are taken as seriously as high blood pressure or diabetes.
Studies carried out in our context have shown that, contrary to what many people think, a considerable part of dysfunctions in old age have their origin in ignorance, false expectations, feelings of being handicapped and other phenomena. These, although they play an important role in the appearance of dysfunctions, are relatively easy to combat and prevent by means of adequate information and discussion.
According to epidemiological studies, the fact of losing one’s partner is one of the most important determinants of the cessation of sexual activity.
“Traditionally, there has been a strong social tendency to consider negatively the establishment of new affective relationships, and even new marriages in widows, which further limits their sexual activity,” said the psychologist.
In general, it is essential that the family accept the sexuality of the elderly, consider the possibilities of second and third marriages, and respect the privacy of the parents and grandparents.
Older women’s sexuality as an indicator of quality of life, especially perceived quality of life, requires a better understanding of all factors affecting it. One of the most important is mourning, for the body, for sexual and social losses.
But what does old age really imply or limit? On the subject, the experts William Masters and Virginia
Johnson, who are dedicated to the study of human sexual response, argue that the elderly can have sex at any age.
An international survey of 1126 elderly people, conducted by the University of Michigan, showed that 30% were sexually active and showed that sexual dysfunction is not inherent in aging.
Hence the need to influence the understanding of the sexual changes that occur in old age and the negative influence that myths and beliefs have on the enjoyment of sexuality in women over the age of 60. “Sexuality is not only for young people,” explains Dr. Beatriz Torres Rodríguez.
Promoting knowledge about the rights of the elderly to enjoy their sexuality and promoting public policies that do not only correspond to the health sector is essential. The idea is to encourage spaces for socialization, recreation and growth in these stages of life, without neglecting family education in these areas.
IN CONTEXT:
- Cuba, with 20.4% of its population aged 60 and over, according to data from the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI), is experiencing an accelerated process of demographic aging.
- Data from the last Population and Housing Census show a high incidence of single-person households, where there is a significant presence of older adults.
- In 40% of Cuban households, there is an elderly person. In 32% of them reside up to two or three persons 60 years old and over, so it is very likely that an older adult is caring for the other (especially women).
- The high prevalence of fragility, disability and dependence of older adults leads to a growing demand for care and social protection.
- In addition, current and future trends indicate that levels of demographic aging and declining population will continue to be reinforced.
- Considering the three fundamental demographic variables and their influence on aging, the decisive effect of (low) fertility, the much smaller effect of mortality and the non-negligible and probably substantial influence of external and internal migrations for the country and for some regions is confirmed.
- As a perspective of the demographic dynamics between 2011 and 2025, Cuba’s population will have decreased in absolute terms, almost 26% of its population will be 60 years old and over, with a high absolute growth of 80 years and over. By 2030, there will be 3.3 million people aged 60 and over, with direct impacts on the family and labor resources.
- “One of the most depressing circumstances for older adults is loneliness. This situation becomes more evident with the loss of marital ties (in the case of women they face greater widowhood than their male peers),” said Dr. Torres Rodriguez.