Translations 242
NATO’S Cruel 70-Year History
NATO’S Cruel 70-Year History
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The ultra reactionary American writer, columnist, politician, and radio commentator Patrick (Pat) Joseph Buchanan recalled, on January 18th in his column widely circulated in several countries, that on this date, seventy years ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. He did so with a memorable quotation from the undisputed French leader General Charles De Gaulle who said in 1966, when he was ordered to leave his headquarters in Paris: “Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.”
“NATO this year celebrates a major birthday. The young girl of 1966 is no longer young. The alliance is 70 years old.
“And under this aging NATO today, the U.S. is committed to treat an attack on any one of 28 nations, from Estonia to Montenegro to Romania to Albania, as an attack on the United States.
The time is ripe for a strategic review of these war guarantees to fight a nuclear-armed Russia in defense of countries across the length of Europe that few could find on a map.”
“Apparently,” Buchanan writes, “President Donald Trump, on trips to Europe, raised questions as to whether these war guarantees comport with vital U.S. interests and whether they could pass a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Trump even raised this issue in front of Europeans and suggested that the establishment, frozen in the realities of yesterday, should study the matter in the light of current events and ought to be made to justify these sweeping war guarantees.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, Germany joined NATO, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, the USSR was divided into several nations and Leninism expired in its place of origin.
As the threat that had led to NATO disappeared, many argued that the alliance created to deal with that alleged Soviet threat should be allowed to fade away, and Europe should now provide for its own defense.
It was not to be. The architect of Cold War containment, Dr. George Kennan, US Ambassador to Moscow, warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics would prove a “fateful error.”
Soon afterwards, the doctrine of “containment” became official U.S. policy, and even Kennan himself, whose policies he had helped launch, started criticizing them.
Before the end of the year 1948, Ambassador Kennan was convinced that negotiations could be initiated with the Soviet government, but his proposals were rejected by the Truman administration.
“But Kennan was right,” says Buchanan. “America is now burdened with the duty to defend Europe from the Atlantic to the Baltic, even as we face a far greater threat in China, with an economy and population 10 times that of Russia.”
“And we must do this with a defense budget that is not half the share of the federal budget or the GDP that Eisenhower and Kennedy had.”
“Trump is president today because the American people concluded that our foreign policy elite, with their endless interventions where no vital U.S. interest was imperiled, had bled and virtually bankrupted us, while kicking away all of the fruits of our Cold War victory,” says Buchanan
“Halfway into Trump’s term, the question is whether he is going to just talk about halting Cold War II with Russia, about demanding that Europe pay for its own defense, and about bringing the troops home — or whether he is going to act upon his convictions,” says Buchanan.
Celebrated as “the most successful alliance in history,” NATO has had two histories.
The capitalist version is that in 1948, Soviet troops, occupying eastern Germany all the way to the Elbe and surrounding Berlin, imposed a blockade on the city. The regime in Prague was overthrown in a Communist coup. In 1949, Stalin exploded an atomic bomb equal in power to the ones that the United States – inhumanly and unnecessarily—had exploded in two densely populated Japanese cities causing a still uncalculated number of victims.
As the U.S. Army had gone home after V-E Day, Washington formed a new alliance to supposedly protect the crucial European powers and make sure that all of them remained at its service.
What remains of NATO today is twelve nations that, with more or less consistency, serve the interests of the greatest superpower which has not yet stopped aspiring to be the only one.”
January 21, 2019.
AMLO Practices what he preaches
AMLO Practices what he preaches
Published: Tuesday 25 December 2018 | 07:39:10 pm.
By Marina Menéndez Quintero
marina@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The new President of Mexico delivers… and makes the most of the time. He could be seen as the other side of social plundering, which in other Latin American countries means the return of the ultra reactionary and extremist right.
The Mayan train will touch every ruin of the ancestors, and will bring tourism, estimated in those areas at about ten million visitors, to each place. He is confident that it will help create new jobs.
His awareness of the need to mitigate the differences between the north and south of the country was also reflected in next year’s budget, which prioritizes the south-southeast as “an act of justice, because it has been the most abandoned region of the country and its time has come”.
He also thought of the workers and decreed a minimum wage increase of 16 percent, convinced that if there are no revenues there is no internal market or income. In addition, he said, people will earn a decent wage, and an historic debt will be settled with the worst paid workers.
The increase is 50 percent in the border areas with the United States, a difference that may be due to the desire that their nationals stay in Mexico and not emigrate to the neighboring nation.
Precisely, the most transcendent action of these first days, because of the repercussions it must have for his country and Central America, is perhaps the materialization of his approach to stop illegal migration, and the decision by his own citizens and those of neighboring countries to go to another country.
Five billion dollars will be dedicated in 2019 to productive projects in Central America. He has already presented the plan to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he would analyze the project. Hopefully he will support it… and forgets the wall. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is also being consistent in this regard.
Certainly, the doors of social development may be opening for Mexico after being closed for dozens of years, including the recovery of an economy where the neoliberal model had almost reprivatized its main conquest, won by Lazaro Cardenas when he nationalized oil.
The announced creation of a National Guard is in the works and almost ready to be submitted to popular opinion. This body will henceforth be in charge of the security of all Mexico, and leave the army and the rest of the armed forces, for other types of orders.
In order to make sure that his mandate will be enough, AMLO, who insists that he will not lrun for president again, works 16 hours a day so that his term will be doubled and six years will produce twelve years’ worth of work completed, as he said just two days ago to journalists. But time is time, and in real life he only has a six-year term.
Knowing that whoever comes after him can upset everything again, he wants to have a Constituent Assembly and, in fact, has already issued decrees so that each vindicatory step that he is taking is written in ink and in the form of laws.
He is today the opposite side of the right-wing and neoliberal processes that feed on the Argentine population under Cambiemos and Mauricio Macri and, above all, on the hardships and vicissitudes that arelikely to fall on the people of Brazil when, on January 1, the intolerant and reactionary Jair Bolsonaro takes over.
Let’s hope that the Mexican opposition, respectful until today of the popular roots that demonstrated AMLO’s crushing triumph at the polls, does not trip him up or boycott him. And also that the mafias that up to now have profited from public money do not turn against him.
Let Andrés Manuel López Obrador do his job. And may he help our sister nation of Mexico get safely into 2024. That could be a good wish for Latin America on the coming New Year’s Eve.
Bolivia: An Example of Economic Stability
Bolivia: An Example of Economic Stability
Published: Thursday 17 January 2019 | 10:12:09 am
By Hedelberto López Blanch
hedelberto@opciones.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Who would have thought, 13 years ago, that with the arrival of indigenous president Evo Morales Ayma to the presidency of Bolivia, that this country, for the first time in its history, would begin a straight line period of political stability, economic impulse and social development that has benefited the vast majority of its inhabitants.
Skeptics and right-wing forces in Latin America still don’t want to understand, but as Evo recently stated, his country’s economic stability is an example for the world to follow.
During 2018, Bolivia consolidated its position as one of the countries in Latin America with the most advances in the economic-social sphere, after reaching a growth of 4.7 percent and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 40 billion dollars.
It is extremely important that when aggressive neoliberal and privatization policies are imposed in Latin America, promoted from the United States with the backing of several international financial organizations, Bolivia’s Minister of Economy and Public Finances, Mario Guillén, says that the nationalization of natural resources has been the fundamental pillar to understand the success of his country’s economic model.
Guillén added that this model allowed the State to appropriate the economic surplus, whose resources are invested in the construction of a productive-based economy and redistributed through population bonuses, public investment, wage increases and cross-subsidies to eradicate poverty and reduce the gaps between rich and poor.
In this way, domestic demand was boosted, which in a context of international economic crisis of high volatility and uncertainty has become the main engine of economic growth.
And notice the relevance of the system adopted, since in 2005, four out of every ten people lived in extreme poverty, without satisfying their basic food needs, but today this index has reduced by half, that is, only two out of every ten people still live in these conditions.
When Evo took began of the first term in 2006, the characteristics in Bolivia were citizen political insecurity, with great poverty, lack of education and attention to the health of the people, while the economy suffered indiscriminate looting.
From that year on, a series of measures were taken to nationalize productive, mining and service companies and wealth, and a stage began to leave behind more than two centuries of exploitation by foreign governments and transnational companies with the consent of the Creole oligarchies.
Previously, its main energy products and public companies created by the 1952 revolution had been privatized or sold at auction prices. This process increased between 1985 and 2005 during the neoliberal governments. During that period, the State ceased to control 70 percent of the productive activity and its main industry, Yacimientos Petrolíficos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), received royalties of only 18 percent from the transnationals.
By May 1, 2006, the hydrocarbon industry was nationalized and a retention policy was established for the sector, divided into 50 percent royalties, seven percent in recoverable profits from operating companies, YPFB, and payment of taxes and patents. In this way it was ensured that the State and the people obtained an income in the first six years of $12,424 million dollars, an average of 2,000 million dollars annually.
In addition, in these 13 years, the recovery of wealth and resources was promoted as an act of social, economic and political justice. This allowed poverty to be reduced and the family economy to be revitalized; a modernization of transportation was carried out with the launch of the longest cable car in the world. It has seven lines, 20 kilometers of travel and 125 million passengers transported since its inauguration, contributing additionally to the development of tourism.
One of the first tasks undertaken by the Plurinational State was to implement a program to eliminate the extreme ignorance of millions of Bolivians, with the help of Cuban and Venezuelan specialists. In 2010, UNESCO declared the country free of illiteracy.
There are many benefits and one of the main ones is that at the regional level Bolivia is no longer one of the poorest countries. The urban open unemployment rate fell substantially, from 8.1 percent in 2005 to 4.5 percent in 2017. GDP grew since 2006 at an average rate of 4.3 per cent, while social programmes were broad and varied.
The progress made by the Plurinational State in just 13 years is instructive. It would be prudent for other poor countries in Latin America to stop looking north and begin to adopt economic and social policies that help their citizens, as Bolivia has done.
The U.S. War Against The Weak
The U.S. War Against The Weak
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
War Against the Weak is a well-documented book of more than half a thousand pages, written by Edwin Black. It describes a criminal operation planned by the United States from the beginning of the twentieth century and put into practice between the 1930’s and 1960s with the purpose of creating a dominant superior race.
That U.S. campaign, virtually ignored in the world today because of the media cover up to which it has been subjected, served as a model for the Holocaust of the Jewish population carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Characters and institutions in politics and the economy that today are presented as respectable champions of democracy and respect for human rights, were involved in this genocide.
The book tells us that, in the first six decades of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Americans labeled as feeble minded –because they did not conform to Teutonic patterns– were deprived of their right to reproduce.
Selected in prisons, asylums and orphanages because of who their ancestorswere, their national origin, ethnicity, race or religion, they were sterilized without their consent, and prevented from procreating and getting married. They were separated from their partners by governmental bureaucratic means.
This pernicious white collar war was conducted by philanthropic organizations, prestigious professors in elite universities, wealthy businessmen, and senior government officials who formed a pseudoscientific movement called Eugenics Its purpose, beyond racism, was to create a superior Nordic race that would impose itself at global level.
The eugenics movement gradually built up a national legal and bureaucratic infrastructure to cleanse the United States of the “unfit.” Intelligence tests colloquially known as “IQ measurements” were invented to justify the exclusion of the “weak-minded”, who were often nothing more than shy people or persons who spoke another language, or who had a different skin color.
Forced sterilization laws were enacted in some 27 US states to prevent the persons so detected from reproducing. Marriage bans proliferated to prevent race mixing. Numerous lawsuits, whose real purpose was to impose eugenics and its tactics in everyday life, reached the Supreme Court of the United States.
The plan was to immediately sterilize 14 million people in the United States and several million more in other parts of the world so that, at a later stage, they could continue eradicating the rest of the “weak” and leave only the purebred Nordics on the planet.
In the 1930’s, some 60,000 people were coercively sterilized. and an incalculable number of marriages were banned by state laws stemming from racism, ethnic hatred and academic elitism, covered with a mantle of respectable science.
Eugenics, whose objectives were global, was spread by U.S. evangelists to Europe, Asia and Latin America forming a well-woven network of movements with similar practices. By means of lectures, publications and other means, they kept its advocates on the lookout for opportunities for the expansion of their ideas and purposes.
Thus it arrived in Germany, where it fascinated Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. German National Socialism transformed the U.S. search for a “superior Nordic race” into what was Hitler’s struggle for a “dominant Aryan race.”
Nazi eugenics quickly displaced American eugenics because of its fierceness and speed, as well as by the scientific rationality applied by the murderous doctors of Auschwitz. The process had been previously rehearsed at the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenic Labs on Long Island, New York, with the financial support of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Harriman foundations in whose laboratories the eugenics experiments, that culminated in Auschwitz, began.
When the extermination of Jews was described as genocide in the Nuremberg Trial, the U.S. institutions linked to the practice of eugenics, it was renamed “genetics” and continued its sinister projects for more than a decade.
Edwin Black’s book, a jewel of investigative journalism, provides the reader with the possibility of seeing the common kinship and features of this tragic history with the circumstances the U.S. population faces today.
For electoral purposes, from the beginning of his election campaign, Donald Trump raised the “America First” slogan, backed up with many of his own manifestations of xenophobia, rejection of immigrants and proven identification with white supremacists. He did this within the scenario of deep political fragmentation of a country whose ruling elite has been able to keep the population focused on the naïve alternative between Democrats or Republicans.
Any similarity is pure coincidencidental!
December 31, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in PDF
In the course of next week, Correos de Cuba will put on sale in all its units and newsstands, the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba that was approved in the Second Ordinary Session of the IX Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the price of one peso in national currency.
Correos de Cuba will put on sale in the course of next week in all its units and press stands, to the extent that it is available in the provinces, the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba that was approved in the Second Ordinary Period of Sessions of the IX Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power.
The document will have a 16-page tabloid format and will be marketed through the national postal network at the price of one peso (CUP).
As reported, the new constitution will be submitted to popular referendum for ratification on February 24, 2019.
Institutional Communication Direction
Correos de Cuba Business Group
5 January 2019
Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in PDF
This note translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
WASHINGTON WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DEAL WITH TWO COLD WARS
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Patrick Joseph Buchanan is an American writer, broadcaster and political commentator characterized –because of his ideological orientation—as fascist and ultraconservative. He began his political career with Richard Nixon and then went on to work as senior advisor to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
He ran several times for the presidency of the United States. In 1982, he began working on the TV show Buchanan-Braden sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and became a main voice with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News until 2012, when he was kicked out for racist.
With such a resume, one understands why Pat Buchanan asks, on December 18, on his official website, “Could the United States carry out a Cold War containment policy against the other two existing military powers, while maintaining its defense commitments with dozens of countries around the world? And if we could, how long could we keep on doing it, and at what price?
His doubts are based on three arguments:
“Firstly: because we have repeatedly intervened militarily in the Middle East where no vital U.S. interest was in danger, and got trapped in the eternal war of that Muslim region.
“Secondly: for having extended NATO’s alliance to Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic, thus triggering a Second Cold War with Russia.
“And thirdly: because the United States had been supporting China for decades, before acknowledging that it was turning into a superpower whose ambitions in Asia and the Pacific could only be achieved at the expense of countries friendly to the US.”
The question now being asked by Buchanan is different: Can the United States carry out a Cold War containment policy against the other two great military powers of our time, while maintaining its Cold War commitments to dozens of countries all over the world? And, if so, for how long can we keep on doing it, and at what price?
“Very late has the American establishment become aware,” says Buchanan, “of the historical madness of having accompanied China on the world stage trying to buy their lasting friendship with the sale of trillions of dollars of our trade surpluses from Bush to today.”
For Buchanan, the problem lies in the fact that China has not reciprocated properly to US courtship, and not in the impressive boom that the Asian giant has been achieving without the suffocation it had experienced at the hands of the West until the end of the Cold War.
“Beijing has reaffirmed its sovereignty over the South China Sea. It has built air and missile bases on half a dozen islets in dispute; and has warned U.S. ships and airplanes to stay away.
“China has built and leased ports and bases from the Indian Ocean to Africa. It lent billions to poor countries in Asia and Africa, such as the Maldives, and then when these nations could not fulfil with the debts contracted, China demanded compliance with the commitments undertaken as a basis to build their facilities.”
China has sent hundreds of thousands of students to colleges and universities in the United States, and Buchanan says that many of them have devoted themselves to espionage.
Buchanan accuses China of all the evils the capitalist system has been facing on a global scale. He says Beijing kept its currency below its market value to maintain its trading advantage and attract U.S. corporations to China where, he thinks, they’re pressured to transfer their technological secrets to China.
Among other things, he blames China for taking part in the cyber theft of millions of personnel files of U.S. federal applicants and employees and the credit card and passports numbers of millions of US hotel guests the world over for years; and even for the cyber-security beaches that facilitated the theft of data on the United States F-22 and F-35 aircraft, information which is believed to have played an important role in the development of the fifth generation of Beijing combat fighters.
For decades,” says Buchanan, “we have been funding the development of a China whose ambition is to drive us out of East Asia and the Eastern Pacific, and replace us as the first power in the world.”
However, Washington’s commitment to China has failed and has the US facing a new adversary with a population and an economy ten times larger than those of Russia
.
December 20, 2018.
This article can be reproduced quoting journal POR ESTO as its source.
The Decline of U.S. Supremacy
The decline of United States Supremacy
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
A CubaNews translation edited by Walter Lippmann.
There was a moment, between the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the beginning of the Great Recession of 2008, when, in the great United States, optimism about the global spread of US-style liberalism reigned.
It was believed at the time that the United States could use its economic, military, and political superiority to shape a new world order in which their manipulated versions of democracy, human rights, economic interdependence among nations and long-lasting peace would prevail.
During those years, many new members were admitted to NATO and the European Union.
The perspective that Boris Yeltsin’s Russia would become a neoliberal “democracy,” was considered a close possibility. And it was thought that China would be a “responsible” player in the international community.
But now, “we live in a completely different time,” says Stephen Walt in his new book entitled “The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy”, where he analyzes the spirit of today’s times.
The forecasts on the dissipation of the pre-eminence of the United States have become routine. Anti-liberal — left and right wing– parties and movements (many of the latter xenophobic) — have emerged all over Europe. Britain’s departure from the European Union is near.
Globalization is facing a violent reaction and intolerant nationalism is moving forward from Brasilia to Budapest.
Walt’s assessments about the US foreign policy after the Cold War, describe it as “visible failures without great achievements” and consider that, regarding both the general condition of the world, as well as Washington’s status within it, have declined significantly and steadily between 1993 and 2006.”
The liberal internationalist agenda is attractive, but according to Walt it is based on three erroneous assumptions.
(1) The first is that other countries would embrace liberalism mirroring the US style, despite the world’s political and cultural diversity.
(2) The second — which is widely shared by those responsible for U.S. foreign policy and influential members of the media, academia, and think tanks– is that the US could successfully promote democratic policies all over the world thanks to unipolarity. The democracy-building programs of alleged non-governmental organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the US National Fund for Democracy and the International Republican Institute arose from this belief. And when tougher measures are required, the foreign policy establishment considers that the U.S. military strength can defeat despotic regimes, win hearts and minds, and impose democratic policies.
(3) The third assumption underlying liberal internationalism is that the end of the Cold War will end up rendering the political balance of power obsolete, along with spheres of influence, and the nationalism based on blood, soil and faith.
For Walt, these assumptions constitute a fundamental misunderstanding of the forces that shape the world and, therefore, will inevitably lead to failure.
He believes that the madness and fiascos of the last twenty-five years have been a result of the blind commitment of this endogamy system with liberal internationalism: a vision of the world that unites Democrats and Republicans and Liberals and Conservatives alike, and that was adopted by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
During these three presidencies, the supposed leader was the United States, which, for reasons of principle and self-interest, had to use its unequal power to spread liberal values all over the world. In practice, this meant designing a world in which the majority of the world’s countries — ideally all—would embrace the US pattern of “democratic” ideals, human rights, global governance, markets and rule of law.
Such an international order would not only preserve the preponderance of the United States but would also be safer. Such a belief has been fundamental for the credo of liberal internationalists because “democracies” do not make war against their peers nor do they massacre their citizens or produce bloodshed and agitation that can culminate in civil wars and broken states.
Despite the billions of dollars spent on its promotion, the US model “democracy” failed in 27 states between 2005 and 2015.
December 6, 2018.
Endgame for the Planet
Endgame for the Planet
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
A CubaNews translation, edited by Walter Lippmann.
In a few years, it’s metastasized to every continent. Its fervent advocates and ill-informed supporters call it populism or nationalism. In Italy, Germany or Spain in the 1930s, they called it by its name: Fascism. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany and Franco in Spain were bloodthirsty tenors of the symphony orchestra of capitalism.
By the time when, in 1945, Russia and the Western allies put an end to the collective psychosis induced by fascism, between 68 and 80 million people had already been killed in the world.
This is how French journalist, analyst, and filmmaker Gilbert Mercier recounts it in a work — published on the News Junkie Post website –devoted to the analysis of this surprising political phenomenon that has been spreading out throughout several countries, to the shame and fear of human kind.
“Neo-fascists have wrapped themselves in the flag of populism and nationalism and have falsely convinced their supporters that they are the champions of the struggle against globalism, elitism and the corruption of the neoliberal political system.
However, they are ferocious defenders of the capitalist dogfight, and its abject systematic exploitation of the working class. They enthusiastically support the global military-industrial complex, as well as the meaningless capitalist exploitation of natural resources through deforestation and mining.
For the neo-fascists, just as for the capitalists, wealth has to be concentrated in fewer hands, and their money must circulate across borders without restrictions, even though ordinary people can’t do this with theirs.”
Some of its leaders, like Trump and Bolsonaro, were elected mainly
on the false premise and racist notion of cultural war and clash of civilizations. That is, the mythical threat that, in an already multi-ethnic world, immigrants and outsiders –often with darker skins or with another religion– represent a present danger to the host countries.
Neo-fascists have been erecting mental walls of hatred in Europe and America.
The global proliferation of neo-fascism is a new way of ideological globalization; and global capitalism is counting on it.
For example, once it became evident that Bolsonaro would be elected president of Brazil, that country’s stock market rose by 13% in two weeks, while the main international markets were dropping.
Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has already put Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in the neo-fascist hit-list of his agenda. He called these countries the “troika of tyranny”.
Bolton is counting on Colombia and Brazil as the new regional fascist accomplices of U.S. imperialism to enforce a resurrected Monroe Doctrine.
In the United States and Brazil, the evangelical Christian vote was a paramount factor in the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro.
“The born-again Christian fundamentalists in the United States are concentrated mainly in the former Civil War Confederate states of the South.”
These evangelical fundamentalist communities, to a great extent, reject evolution, secularism, and the reality that climate change is human-made. Many in these communities believe that the US should be a Christian state. These fundamentalists are the most reliable voting block for Trump, just as they were for George W. Bush.
Behind the curtains, very well-financed right-wing fundamentalist think-tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, have been moving the world’s threads since the early 1970s.
Bolsonaro in Brazil was raised as a Catholic, but he became an Evangelical
This could be interpreted as a foresighted opportunistic and cynical political move. It was the evangelical voting bloc that gave him the advantage over his opponent during the presidential elections in October 2018.
The emergence of global fascism offers a gloomier perspective for the survival of humanity. Like Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, neo-fascists deny climate change. The latter could design a dangerously destructive strategy for the Amazon, which can be considered the breathing lung of the Earth because of its ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
The super-rich who control global capitalism will give free rein to their fascist substitutes to increase and use a mass military-police force to repress the billions of people who become climate change refugees and victims of the ecological collapse.
Despite its predictions –handled discreetly by the Pentagon — that climate change is becoming a national security problem; climate change will be the endgame for capitalism. All the gold and diamonds in the world will neither stop the storms, nor protect the atmosphere from the deadly rays of a scorching sun.
December 10, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
9th Symphony or Human Rights
The Ninth Symphony or Human Rights
by Francisco Rodriguez Cruz, aka, Paquito
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Almost coinciding with the celebration on December 4 of the ninth anniversary of my blog, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Association (Ilga) has just given me the surprise of posting in its official pages an interview where I am presented as a defender of human rights in Cuba.
Sometimes one is afraid of the use of terms whose political manipulation in relation to our country leads us to murky and ungratifying stories with which on many occasions they tried to tarnish, and even attack, what was done by the Cuban Revolution in terms of equality of rights and social equity.
However, it is possible and very desirable to defend human rights in Cuba, because we also have a long way to go on that essential path. To do so implies a critical stance towards what has been achieved and what we lack, and when we do it with total honesty, it means that we are uncomfortable people both for the system’s propagandists at all costs, whether out of conviction or for the safeguard of some privileges, and for the recalcitrant enemies of socialism, who disguise their not at all altruistic interests with the labels of opponents or dissidents.
And this distancing does not imply any intermediate positioning. I don’t believe in centers or neutrality. Centrism and extremism are in politics only ways of masking or procuring benefits, most of the time with motivations in the individualistic background. Like everything else in life, these are statements that may require nuances. Nothing is absolute, especially in matters of subjectivities and filiations.
As I reached 48 years of age with nothing material to safeguard, I am free to say what I think and to do what I want, with all the responsibility that I am able, based on what I feel and believe to be fairer, to contribute to the collective well-being of LGBTI people and also of my homeland in its broadest sense. It’s my very particular idea about being a militant and a communist.
That’s what the nine years of this blog are all about. Thank you, Ilga, again. I will try to be consistent with this new label that I am given and that I consider being still very big: defender of human rights in Cuba.
Here’s the video:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpYhjb4v1JU&feature=youtu.be
Who is Paquito?
Photo by Jose Goitia
I am Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, also known as Paquito, from Cuba; I am a Marti follower and 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 and am 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…
AMLO in the Zócalo
- English
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Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo — In a festival attended by nearly 160,000 people, López Obrador already mentioned, as president, his 100 government commitments. December 1, 2018.
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Video in Spanish
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo — In a festival attended by nearly 160,000 people, López Obrador already mentioned, as president, his 100 government commitments.
Here in the Zócalo of Mexico City, the country’s main public square, after receiving the cane of command from the native peoples of our great nation, I reaffirm the commitment not to lie, not to steal and not to betray the people.
Today I spoke in Congress about the old regime and the new policy to carry out the Fourth Transformation of public life in Mexico; now I want to express what we have already done and are about to begin; what we could well call, a modernity forged from below and for everyone.
I reaffirm our commitments, punctually:
First of all, we are going to give special attention to the indigenous peoples of Mexico; it is an ignominy that our indigenous peoples have lived for centuries under oppression and racism, with poverty and marginalization on their backs. All government programs will have as their preferred population the indigenous peoples of the country’s diverse cultures.
All Mexicans will be served regardless of beliefs, classes, organizations, sex, parties, economic or cultural sectors, but the principle will be applied that, for the good of all, the poor come first.
The children’s rooms of the former Ministry of Social Development will be maintained and the CENDIS promoted by the Labor Party will be regularized; both programs will have guaranteed resources in the budget and will become part of the Welfare and Public Education Secretariats.
Primary and Secondary students from low-income families will receive educational scholarships. All students of high schools, technical schools, vocational and public high schools, will receive a scholarship of 800 pesos per month.
Three hundred thousand young people, in conditions of poverty, who enter or are studying at universities, will be entitled to a scholarship of 2400 pesos per month.
In 2019 will be operating 100 public universities, with careers according to each region of the country to provide quality education and without tuition payment to 64,000 students at the higher level.
Mexico’s cultural heritage will be protected. Artistic training will be promoted from basic education and support will be given to creators and cultural promoters.
Scientific and technological research will be promoted; students and academics will be supported with scholarships and other stimuli for the good of knowledge. Conacyt will coordinate the National Plan for Innovation for the benefit of society and national development with the participation of universities, peoples, scientists and businesses.
The so-called Educational Reform will be cancelled, the right to free education at all levels of schooling will be established in Article 3 of the Constitution, and the government will never again aggravate teachers.
Today begins the plan to support the victims of the earthquakes with work, housing and public services. This includes a program of construction and reconstruction of schools, health centers, public buildings and temples that are part of the country’s cultural heritage.
Also today begins a program of urban improvement in marginalized neighborhoods of the northern border: Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Rio Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros.
The right to health will become a reality. The purpose is to guarantee free medical attention and medicines to Mexicans; we will begin in the Social Security medical units located in the poorest areas of the country and little by little the program will be expanded until we manage, in the middle of the six-year period, to establish a first class health system, as in Canada or in the Nordic countries.
The salaries of high officials will be lowered and the salaries of grassroots and unionized workers who earn less than 20,000 pesos a month will be increased proportionally.
The pension will be increased for older adults throughout the country; that is, 1,274 pesos per month will be given to each one. One million poor disabled people, especially children from marginalized towns and colonies, will also receive this support.
Two million 300 thousand unemployed young people will be hired to work as apprentices in productive activities in the countryside and the city, and will earn a salary of 3 thousand 600 pesos per month.
This month we begin the construction of concrete roads in forgotten municipalities of Oaxaca, Guerrero and other states. These roads will be built with workers from the same communities to achieve a multiplier effect: the budget will remain there, the economy will be reactivated from below, jobs will be created with fair wages and works will be done for the benefit of the people.
Small farmers, ejidatarios, communeros or small landowners will receive a six-monthly economic support for the planting of food.
Next year, this program will be applied free of charge in support of all peasants in the state of Guerrero and we will expand it in the rest of the country. In addition, soon we will have enough raw material and will start operating the fertilizer plant in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
The small producers of corn, beans, rice, wheat and milk will be bought at guaranteed prices in warehouses or warehouses of Diconsa and Liconsa.
Fishing activities will be encouraged to improve the lives of coastal and riverine communities. Tuna and sardine fishermen will receive a fair price for their products.
Preparations have already begun to plant one million hectares of fruit and timber trees over the next two years, with the goal of producing food, reforesting, improving the environment, creating 400,000 jobs, and rooting people in their communities of origin.
Diconsa and Liconsa will join forces in a single company to supply and distribute food for popular consumption. It will be called Mexican Food Security (SEGALMEX). In the warehouses, stores and dairies of this new agency, a basket of basic foods will be distributed at low prices to combat malnutrition and hunger of the people.
Interest-free loans will be granted to ejidatarios, communeros and small landowners for the acquisition of heifers, cows and stallions.
The artisans, owners of workshops, shops and small businesses, will also receive cheap credits by word of mouth, without so much paperwork and waste of time.
The tax charged to companies for mineral extraction will be transferred to the mining communities.
The price of gasoline, gas, diesel and electricity will not increase, only the inflation component will be applied; in other words, there will be no gasoline.
The support granted by the government to the people will be delivered directly, without intermediaries, to avoid “moches”, corruption and political manipulation. That is why a house by house census is being carried out to identify each beneficiary, give them a card and have them withdraw their support.
The Banco del Bienestar will be created so that poor people, even in the most remote villages, can collect government aid and receive remittances and other income in the same account, as well as maintain their savings with yields and security guarantees.
The increase in the budget to finance the welfare programs will be obtained from savings for not allowing corruption and governing with Republican austerity.
Taxes will not increase beyond inflation and no new taxes will be created. Nor will we increase public debt. We will not spend more than what enters the public treasury.
We will be respectful of the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico and its policies to avoid inflation or devaluations.
A strict policy of republican austerity will be applied. There will be no cronyism, nepotism and influence, none of those scourges of politics. The payroll and assets of public officials and their close relatives will be transparent; we will make few, very few trips abroad and only for justified reasons; new vehicles will not be purchased for officials; only officials responsible for security tasks will have escorts; there will only be three advisors per secretariat; there will be no private medical care, nor exclusive savings banks for officials.
No computer systems will be purchased in the first year of government.
Private secretaries will only be available to the members of the enlarged cabinet.
Trusts or any other mechanism used to hide public funds and evade legality and transparency will be cancelled.
All duplicate structures and programmes (major officials, press offices, publications, legal ombudsmen, procurement, internal comptroller’s office and others) are eliminated and these functions or programmes will be centralised in a single unit or coordination, dependent on the secretariat related to the matters in question.
Government advertising expenditure will be reduced by 50 per cent.
Officials from the Treasury, Communications, Energy and other agencies may not live together in parties, meals, sports games or travel with contractors, large taxpayers, suppliers or investors linked to the public function.
No public official may occupy at home workers at the service of the State, if it is not allowed or has no authorization to do so.
No official, without cause of emergency, may order the closing of streets, the stopping of traffic, or the passing of stops or parking in prisons.
No merchandise existing in public warehouses will be purchased in sufficient quantity.
No offices will be remodeled, and no luxury furniture will be purchased.
Only secretaries and undersecretaries will have the support of chauffeurs.
Unless fully justified, the police and military of the different corporations will not be at the service of civil servants or individuals.
Items for costumes or any protocol and ceremonial expenses dedicated to the President, his close collaborators and relatives will be eliminated.
The assets of the offices at the disposal of public servants will be taken care of to protect the collective patrimony.
Unnecessary expenses abroad will be avoided. The only government offices will be embassies and consulates. There will only be one federal government delegation in the states and all offices will save electricity, water, telephone services, internet, gasoline and other supplies paid for by the treasury.
Citizens will be treated with kindness in public offices and elsewhere, humbly accepting that they are the principals of us, the public servants.
Government purchases will be made in a consolidated manner; through convocation and with citizen observation and the UN transparency office.
Government works contracts will be carried out with the participation of citizens and UN observers.
The hiring of law firms to prepare bills, development plans or any type of analysis, recommendations, reports and other documents that can be prepared with the work and professional capacity of public servants will not be authorized.
The federal government will be decentralized and the secretariats will be located in different states of the republic, because the whole country is Mexico. This process will be carried out on a voluntary basis, without affecting workers in the service of the State; on the contrary, they will have opportunities for the acquisition of housing, education for their children, medical care and social security.
There will be an authentic rule of law. No one will be allowed to violate the Constitution and the laws, and there will be no impunity, privileges or privileges.
Impunity will end; Article 108 of the Constitution will be amended to judge the incumbent President for any crime he commits, just like any other citizen.
Corruption, theft of fuel, illegal carrying of firearms, falsification of invoices for tax evasion, electoral fraud, vote buying and the use of budget to favor candidates and parties will be prohibited and will become a serious crime without the right to bail.
There will be no budget items available to deputies or senators. There will be no more shameful practice of so-called “moches”.
No public official may receive gifts worth more than 5,000 pesos.
In commercial or financial relations with international companies, preference will be given to those originating in countries whose governments are characterized by their honesty and punish without any tolerance bribery or corruption.
As of today, the doors of Los Pinos are open, which has ceased to be the official residence of the president to become a space dedicated to recreation, art and the culture of the people.
The Presidential General Staff became part of the Secretariat of Defense; in the same way, the Cisen disappears. There will be no espionage of opponents or citizens and the successor office will have as its only task to do intelligence work to ensure peace and preserve national security.
The presidential airplane and the entire fleet of airplanes and helicopters that were used for the transfer of high public officials are for sale.
The ex-presidents will no longer receive a pension, nor will civil or military public officials be in their service.
There will be no street inspectors to be supervising commercial, business or service establishments. We are going to trust the citizens and a surveillance program will be implemented by lottery. Bribery or biting will be avoided, we will give confidence to citizens, who under protest of telling the truth will act with rectitude and fulfill their responsibilities.
We reiterate: we are not against those who invest and generate jobs and are committed to the development of Mexico, but against bad wealth.
Tourism will be fostered to boost development and create jobs; also, starting this month, an urban improvement program will begin in the marginalized neighborhoods of five tourist centers: Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco and Solidaridad.
The President of the Republic, in accordance with the law, is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will never give the order that the Army or Navy massacre the people. The war will end; we will build peace and seek brotherhood among all Mexicans.
Today, the amnesty process began to release political prisoners or victims of reprisals by caciques, officials or governors of the former authoritarian regime. The criminal charges fabricated against activists and social fighters will be dropped. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of making this determination a reality.
The disappearance of the young people of Ayotzinapa will be thoroughly investigated; the truth will be known and those responsible will be punished.
Freedom of expression will be respected; the government will never apply censorship to any journalist or media.
The Attorney General’s Office will, in fact, have absolute autonomy; it will not receive a slogan from the President of the Republic and its practices will adhere to the principle of liberal law, according to which, “outside the law, nothing and above the law, no one.
We will maintain respectful relations with the Legislative Power and with the Judicial Power and the Executive Power will cease to be the power of the powers.
Since last night the Civil Protection Plan came into effect; the ABC for floods, fires, earthquakes and other disasters.
Foreign policy will be based on diplomatic caution and the principles of self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, peaceful resolution of controversies, legal equality of states, cooperation for development, friendship, peace, defense of human rights, protection of the environment and respect for the rights of migrants; ours, Central Americans and those of all countries and continents.
The relationship with the U.S. government will be one of respect, mutual benefit and good neighborliness. It is time to shift the bilateral relationship toward development cooperation. Creating jobs in Mexico and Central America is the alternative to migration, not coercive measures.
As we promised, the 50 consulates that Mexico has in the United States are going to become ombudsmen for the defense of migrants. We are going to defend the human rights of our countrymen.
Mexico’s rebirth will be achieved by making progress a reality with justice and a way of life based on love for family, neighbor, nature, country and humanity. We will promote material well-being and the well-being of the soul.
The free expression of ideas and religious beliefs and the freedom of the press will be guaranteed. We stand for dialogue, tolerance, diversity and respect for human rights.
We will convene teachers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and professionals from other disciplines, as well as religious, freethinkers, respectable elders and citizens in general for the celebration of a congress in which a Moral Constitution will be drafted, which will help to strengthen national, cultural and spiritual values.
We will also preserve our historical memory. We will promote the reading in general and particularly of history, civility, ethics; we will never forget where we come from; that is why our original cultures, historical transformations and the sacrifice of our heroes will be exalted; for example, next year, 100 years after the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, his name and his motto “Earth and Freedom” will be remembered in all the government’s stationery.
Friends:
I invite all of us to help make these commitments a reality and that each year, here in the Zócalo, we review them one by one and know if they have already been fulfilled or are still pending.
Let’s discuss in all the public squares of Mexico whether we are moving forward or not, with the purpose of providing transparency and ending corruption and impunity. Let’s analyze in the houses, streets and squares if the economic and social situation of our people improves or worsens and let’s always take among all the agreements that best suit society and the nation.
Let’s not stop meeting: let’s always maintain communication. There will be no divorce between the people and the government. I need them because, as Juarez said, “with the people everything, without the people nothing”. Don’t leave me alone because without you I am worth nothing or almost nothing; without you, the conservatives would easily overwhelm me. I ask for your support, because I reiterate the commitment not to fail you; dead first than betraying you.
But above all, let us act with optimism and joy because we have the enormous joy of living in interesting times; we are before a stellar moment in history because together we begin to build the justice and happiness that our people deserve and a new life for our great nation.
The President of the Republic, in accordance with the law, is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will never give the order that the Army or Navy massacre the people. The war will end; we will build peace and seek brotherhood among all Mexicans.
Today, the amnesty process began to release political prisoners or victims of reprisals by caciques, officials or governors of the former authoritarian regime. The criminal charges fabricated against activists and social fighters will be dropped. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of making this determination a reality.
The disappearance of the young people of Ayotzinapa will be thoroughly investigated; the truth will be known and those responsible will be punished.
Freedom of expression will be respected; the government will never apply censorship to any journalist or media.
The Attorney General’s Office will, in fact, have absolute autonomy; it will not receive a slogan from the President of the Republic and its practices will adhere to the principle of liberal law, according to which, “outside the law, nothing and above the law, no one.
We will maintain respectful relations with the Legislative Power and with the Judicial Power and the Executive Power will cease to be the power of the powers.
Since last night the Civil Protection Plan came into effect; the ABC for floods, fires, earthquakes and other disasters.
Foreign policy will be based on diplomatic caution and the principles of self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, peaceful resolution of controversies, legal equality of states, cooperation for development, friendship, peace, defense of human rights, protection of the environment and respect for the rights of migrants; ours, Central Americans and those of all countries and continents.
The relationship with the U.S. government will be one of respect, mutual benefit and good neighborliness. It is time to shift the bilateral relationship toward development cooperation. Creating jobs in Mexico and Central America is the alternative to migration, not coercive measures.
As we promised, the 50 consulates that Mexico has in the United States are going to become ombudsmen for the defense of migrants. We are going to defend the human rights of our countrymen.
Mexico’s rebirth will be achieved by making progress a reality with justice and a way of life based on love for family, neighbor, nature, country and humanity. We will promote material well-being and the well-being of the soul.
The free expression of ideas and religious beliefs and the freedom of the press will be guaranteed. We stand for dialogue, tolerance, diversity and respect for human rights.
We will convene teachers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and professionals from other disciplines, as well as religious, freethinkers, respectable elders and citizens in general for the celebration of a congress in which a Moral Constitution will be drafted, which will help to strengthen national, cultural and spiritual values.
We will also preserve our historical memory. We will promote the reading in general and particularly of history, civility, ethics; we will never forget where we come from; that is why our original cultures, historical transformations and the sacrifice of our heroes will be exalted; for example, next year, 100 years after the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, his name and his motto “Earth and Freedom” will be remembered in all the government’s stationery.
Friends:
I invite all of us to help make these commitments a reality and that each year, here in the Zócalo, we review them one by one and know if they have already been fulfilled or are still pending.
Let’s discuss in all the public squares of Mexico whether we are moving forward or not, with the purpose of providing transparency and ending corruption and impunity. Let’s analyze in the houses, streets and squares if the economic and social situation of our people improves or worsens and let’s always take among all the agreements that best suit society and the nation.
Let’s not stop meeting: let’s always maintain communication. There will be no divorce between the people and the government. I need them because, as Juarez said, “with the people everything, without the people nothing”. Don’t leave me alone because without you I am worth nothing or almost nothing; without you, the conservatives would easily overwhelm me. I ask for your support, because I reiterate the commitment not to fail you; dead first than betraying you.
But above all, let us act with optimism and joy because we have the enormous joy of living in interesting times; we are before a stellar moment in history because together we begin to build the justice and happiness that our people deserve and a new life for our great nation.
Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico!
Discurso íntegro de Andrés Manuel López Obrador en el Zócalo
Discurso íntegro de Andrés Manuel López Obrador en el Zócalo — En un festival al que llegaron cerca de 160 mil personas, López Obrador mencionó, ya como presidente, sus 100 compromisos de gobierno. 1 de diciembre de 2018.
Video en español
https://youtu.be/-FQMk6OlBbg
Aquí en el Zócalo de la Ciudad de México, principal plaza pública del país, luego de recibir el bastón de mando de los pueblos originarios de nuestra gran nación, reafirmo el compromiso de no mentir, no robar y no traicionar al pueblo.
Hoy hable en el Congreso sobre el antiguo régimen y de la nueva política para llevar a cabo la Cuarta Transformación de la vida pública de México; ahora quiero expresar lo que ya hemos hecho y estamos por iniciar; lo que bien podríamos llamar, una modernidad forjada desde abajo y para todos.
Reafirmo nuestros compromisos, puntualmente:
En primer lugar, vamos a darle atención especial a los pueblos indígenas de México; es una ignominia que nuestros pueblos originarios vivan desde hace siglos bajo la opresión y el racismo, con la pobreza y la marginación a cuestas. Todos los programas del gobierno tendrán como población preferente a los pueblos indígenas de las diversas culturas del país.
Se atenderá a todos los mexicanos sin importar creencias, clases, organizaciones, sexo, partidos, sectores económicos o culturales, pero se aplicará el principio de que, por el bien de todos, primero los pobres.
Se mantendrán las estancias infantiles de la antigua Secretaría de Desarrollo Social y se regularizarán los CENDIS promovidos por el Partido del Trabajo; ambos programas tendrán recursos garantizados en el presupuesto y pasarán a formar parte de las secretarías de Bienestar y de Educación Pública.
Los estudiantes de Primaria y Secundaria que provengan de familias de escasos recursos económicos recibirán becas educativas. Todos los estudiantes de los Colegios de Bachilleres, escuelas técnicas, vocacionales y preparatorias públicas, recibirán una beca de 800 pesos mensuales.
Trescientos mil jóvenes, en condiciones de pobreza, que ingresen o estén estudiando en universidades, tendrán derecho a una beca de 2400 pesos mensuales.
En 2019 estarán funcionando 100 universidades públicas, con carreras acordes a cada región del país para atender con educación de calidad y sin pago de colegiatura a 64 mil estudiantes del nivel superior.
Se protegerá el patrimonio cultural de México. Se impulsará la formación artística desde la educación básica y se apoyará a creadores y promotores culturales.
Se promoverá la investigación científica y tecnológica; se apoyará a estudiantes y académicos con becas y otros estímulos en bien del conocimiento. El Conacyt coordinará el Plan Nacional para la Innovación en beneficio de la sociedad y del desarrollo nacional con la participación de universidades, pueblos, científicos y empresas.
Se cancelará la llamada Reforma Educativa, se establecerá en el Artículo 3º de la Constitución el derecho a la educación gratuita en todos los niveles de escolaridad y el gobierno no agraviará nunca más a maestras y maestros.
Hoy comienza el plan para apoyar a los damnificados de los sismos con trabajo, vivienda y servicios públicos. Esto incluye un programa de construcción y reconstrucción de escuelas, centros de salud, edificios públicos y templos que forman parte del patrimonio cultural del país.
También hoy comienza un programa de mejoramiento urbano en colonias marginadas de la frontera norte: Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa y Matamoros.
Se hará realidad el derecho a la salud. El propósito es garantizar a los mexicanos atención médica y medicamentos gratuitos; comenzaremos en las unidades médicas del Seguro Social ubicadas en las zonas más pobres del país y poco a poco ser irá ampliando el programa hasta que logremos, a mediados del sexenio, establecer un sistema de salud de primera, como en Canadá o en los países nórdicos.
Bajarán los sueldos de los altos funcionarios y aumentaran proporcionalmente los sueldos de los trabajadores de base y sindicalizados que ganan menos de 20 mil pesos al mes.
Se aumentará la pensión a los adultos mayores en todo el país; es decir, se le entregará a cada uno, mil 274 pesos mensuales. También recibirán este apoyo un millón de discapacitados pobres, en especial, niñas y niños de pueblos y colonias marginadas.
Dos millones 300 mil jóvenes desempleados serán contratados para trabajar como aprendices en actividades productivas en el campo y la ciudad, y ganarán un sueldo de 3 mil 600 pesos mensuales.
En este mes iniciamos la construcción de caminos de concreto en municipios olvidados de Oaxaca, Guerrero y otros estados. Estos caminos se van a construir con trabajadores de las mismas comunidades para lograr un efecto multiplicador: el presupuesto quedará allí mismo, se reactivará la economía desde abajo, se crearán empleos con salarios justos y se harán las obras en beneficio de los pueblos.
Los pequeños productores del campo, ejidatarios, comuneros o pequeños propietarios recibirán un apoyo económico semestral para la siembra de alimentos.
Iniciará un programa de entrega de fertilizantes cuidando que no se dañen los suelos, en beneficio de productores agrícolas; el año próximo, este programa se aplicará de manera gratuita en apoyo a todos los campesinos del estado de Guerrero y así iremos ampliándolo en el resto del país. Además, pronto tendremos materia prima suficiente e iniciará la operación de la planta de fertilizante de Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
A los pequeños productores de maíz, frijol, arroz, trigo y leche se les comprarán estos alimentos a precios de garantía en almacenes o depósitos de Diconsa y Liconsa.
Se fomentará la actividad pesquera para mejorar la vida de las comunidades costeras y ribereñas. Los pescadores de atún y sardina recibirán un precio justo por sus productos.
Ya comenzaron los preparativos para plantar en los próximos dos años árboles frutales y maderables en un millón de hectáreas, con el objetivo de producir alimentos, reforestar, mejorar el medio ambiente, crear 400 mil empleos y arraigar a la gente en sus comunidades de origen.
Se unirán Diconsa y Liconsa en una sola empresa para el abasto y la distribución de alimentos de consumo popular. Se llamará Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana (SEGALMEX). En los almacenes, tiendas y lecherías de esta nueva dependencia se distribuirá una canasta de alimentos básicos a precios bajos para combatir la desnutrición y el hambre del pueblo.
Se otorgará créditos a la palabra y sin intereses a ejidatarios, comuneros y pequeños propietarios para la adquisición de novillonas, vacas y sementales.
Los artesanos, dueños de talleres, tiendas y pequeñas empresas, también recibirán créditos a la palabra, baratos y sin tantos trámites y pérdida de tiempo.
Se transferirá a las comunidades mineras el impuesto que se cobra a las empresas por la extracción del mineral.
No aumentará el precio de las gasolinas, el gas, el diésel y la luz, solo se le aplicará el componente de inflación; es decir, no habrá gasolinazos.
Los apoyos que otorgue el gobierno al pueblo se entregarán de manera directa, sin intermediarios, para evitar “moches”, corrupción y manipulación política. Por eso se está levantando un censo casa por casa para identificar a cada beneficiario, entregarle una tarjeta y que él mismo retire sus apoyos.
Se creará el Banco del Bienestar para que la gente pobre, hasta en los pueblos más apartados, pueda cobrar la ayuda del gobierno y en esa misma cuenta pueda también recibir remesas y otros ingresos, así como mantener sus ahorros con rendimientos y garantías de seguridad.
El incremento del presupuesto para financiar los programas del bienestar se obtendrán de ahorros por no permitir la corrupción y gobernar con austeridad republicana.
No aumentarán los impuestos más allá de la inflación y no se crearán nuevos impuestos. Tampoco aumentaremos la deuda pública. No gastaremos más de lo que ingrese a la hacienda pública.
Seremos respetuosos de la autonomía del Banco de México y de sus políticas para evitar que haya inflación o devaluaciones.
Se aplicará una estricta política de austeridad republicana. No habrá amiguismo, nepotismo e influyentismo, ninguna de esas lacras de la política. Serán transparentes la nómina y los bienes de los funcionarios públicos y de sus familiares cercanos; haremos pocos, muy pocos, viajes al extranjero y solo por causa justificada; no sé comprarán vehículos nuevos para funcionarios; únicamente tendrán escoltas los funcionarios responsables de tareas de seguridad; solo habrá tres asesores por secretaría; no habrá atención médica privada, ni cajas de ahorro exclusivas para funcionarios.
No se comprarán sistemas de cómputo en el primer año de gobierno.
Sólo tendrán secretarios particulares los funcionarios integrantes del gabinete ampliado.
Se cancelarán fideicomisos o cualquier otro mecanismo utilizado para ocultar fondos públicos y evadir la legalidad y la transparencia.
Se suprimen todas las estructuras y programas duplicados (oficialías mayores, oficinas de prensa, publicaciones, defensorías jurídicas, compras, contraloría interna y otras) y estas funciones o programas se centralizarán en una sola unidad o coordinación, dependiente de la secretaría relacionada con los asuntos en cuestión.
Se reducirá en 50 por ciento el gasto de publicidad del gobierno.
Los funcionarios de Hacienda, Comunicaciones, Energía y otras dependencias, no podrán convivir en fiestas, comidas, juegos deportivos o viajar con contratistas, grandes contribuyentes, proveedores o inversionistas vinculados a la función pública.
Ningún funcionario público podrá ocupar en su domicilio a trabajadores al servicio del Estado, si no lo tiene permitido o no cuenta con autorización para ello.
Ningún funcionario, sin causa de emergencia, podrá ordenar cerrar calles, detener el tráfico o pasarse los altos o estacionarse en lugares prohibidos.
No se comprará ninguna mercancía que exista en los almacenes públicos en cantidad suficiente.
No se remodelarán oficinas, ni se comprará mobiliario de lujo.
Sólo tendrán apoyo de choferes los secretarios y subsecretarios.
Salvo plena justificación, los policías y militares de las distintas corporaciones no estarán al servicio de funcionarios o particulares.
Se eliminarán partidas para vestuario o cualquier gasto de protocolo y ceremonial dedicado al Presidente, a sus colaboradores cercanos y a familiares.
Se cuidarán los bienes de las oficinas a disposición de servidores públicos para proteger el patrimonio colectivo.
Se evitarán gastos innecesarios en el extranjero. Las únicas oficinas del gobierno serán las embajadas y los consulados. Solo habrá una delegación del gobierno federal en los estados y en todas las oficinas se ahorrará energía eléctrica, agua, servicios telefónicos, de internet, gasolinas y otros insumos pagados por el erario.
Se tratará con amabilidad a los ciudadanos en las oficinas públicas y en cualquier lugar, aceptando con humildad que ellos son los mandantes de nosotros, los servidores públicos.
Las compras del gobierno se harán de manera consolidada; mediante convocatoria y con observación ciudadana y de la oficina de transparencia de la ONU.
Los contratos de obra del gobierno se llevarán a cabo con la participación de ciudadanos y de observadores de la ONU.
No se autorizará la contratación de despachos para elaborar proyectos de ley, planes de desarrollo o cualquier tipo de análisis, recomendaciones, informes y otros documentos que puedan elaborarse con el trabajo y la capacidad profesional de los servidores públicos.
Se descentralizará el gobierno federal y las secretarías van a estar ubicadas en distintos estados de la república, porque todo el país es México. Este proceso se llevará a cabo de manera voluntaria, sin afectar a los trabajadores al servicio del Estado; por el contrario, tendrán oportunidades para la adquisición de viviendas, educación para sus hijos, atención médica y seguridad social.
Habrá un auténtico estado de derecho. A nadie le estará permitido violar la Constitución y las leyes, y no habrá impunidad, fueros ni privilegios.
Se acabará la impunidad; se reformará el Artículo 108 de la Constitución para juzgar al Presidente en funciones por cualquier delito que cometa, igual que a cualquier ciudadano.
Estará prohibido y se convertirá en delito grave, sin derecho a fianza, la corrupción, el robo de combustible, la portación ilegal de armas de fuego, la falsificación de facturas para la evasión fiscal, el fraude electoral, la compra de votos y el uso de presupuesto para favorecer a candidatos y partidos.
No habrá partidas en el presupuesto a disposición de diputados o senadores. Se acabará la vergonzosa práctica de los llamados “moches”.
Ningún funcionario público podrá recibir regalos cuyo valor exceda los 5 mil pesos.
En las relaciones comerciales o financieras con empresas internacionales se dará preferencia a aquellas originarias de países cuyos gobiernos se caractericen por su honestidad y castiguen sin tolerancia alguna las prácticas de sobornos o de corrupción.
Desde hoy están abiertas las puertas de Los Pinos, que ha dejado de ser la residencia oficial del presidente para convertirse en un espacio dedicado a la recreación, el arte y la cultura del pueblo.
Ya el Estado Mayor Presidencial pasó a formar parte de la Secretaría de la Defensa; de la misma manera desaparece el Cisen. No habrá espionaje a opositores ni a ciudadanos y la oficina sucesora tendrá como única encomienda hacer labores de inteligencia para garantizar la paz y preservar la seguridad nacional.
Está en venta el avión presidencial y toda la flotilla de aviones y helicópteros que eran utilizados para el traslado de altos funcionarios públicos.
Ya no recibirán pensión los expresidentes, ni tendrán a su servicio funcionarios púbicos sean civiles o militares.
No habrá inspectores de vía pública para estar supervisando a establecimientos comerciales, empresariales o de servicios. Vamos a confiar en los ciudadanos y se implementará un programa de vigilancia por sorteo. Se evitará el soborno o la mordida, otorgaremos confianza a los ciudadanos, quienes bajo protesta de decir verdad actuarán con rectitud y cumplirán con sus responsabilidades.
Reiteramos: no estamos en contra de quienes invierten generan empleos y se comprometen con el desarrollo de México, sino de la riqueza mal habida.
Se fomentará el turismo para impulsar el desarrollo y crear empleos; también, desde este mes, iniciará un programa de mejoramiento urbano en las colonias marginadas de cinco centros turísticos: Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco y Solidaridad.
Se construirá el Tren Maya para comunicar por este medio de transporte rápido y moderno a turistas y pasajeros nacionales en los estados de Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán y Quintana Roo.
Se creará un corredor económico y comercial en el Istmo de Tehuantepec que comunicará Asia y la costa este de EU. Se construirá una vía ferroviaria para contenedores; se ampliará la carretera; se rehabilitarán los puertos de Salina Cruz y Coatzacoalcos; se aprovecharán petróleo, gas, agua, viento y electricidad de la región; se instalarán plantas de ensamblaje y manufactureras, y habrá subsidios fiscales para promover la inversión y crear empleos.
Vamos a destinar mayor inversión pública para producir con urgencia más petróleo, gas y energía eléctrica y así enfrentar la crisis que dejaron los políticos neoliberales y los responsables de la llamada reforma energética. Llamo a los técnicos y obreros petroleros, en activo o jubilados, para actuar con patriotismo como se hizo en los tiempos del general Lázaro Cárdenas, y a que volvamos a rescatar la industria petrolera nacional.
Se rehabilitarán las seis refinerías existentes y se iniciará, en unos días más, la construcción de una nueva refinería en Dos Bocas, Paraíso, Tabasco, para lograr que en tres años se produzca en México toda la gasolina que consumimos.
Se detendrá el plan de desmantelamiento de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad; ni una planta más será cerrada, por el contrario, se modernizarán las existentes y se le dará atención especial a las hidroeléctricas para producir más energía limpia y de menor costo. Impulsaremos el desarrollo de fuentes de energía alternativas renovables, como la eólica, la solar, la geotérmica y la mareomotriz.
Protegeremos la diversidad biológica y cultural de México. Impulsaremos prácticas agroecológicas que aumenten la productividad sin dañar a la naturaleza. No se permitirá la introducción y el uso de semillas transgénicas.
No usaremos métodos de extracción de materias primas que afecten la naturaleza y agoten las vertientes de agua como el fracking.
No se permitirá ningún proyecto económico, productivo, comercial o turístico que afecte el medio ambiente. Se evitará la contaminación del suelo, agua y aire y se protegerá la flora y la fauna. No se privatizará el agua.
Habrá cobertura universal en telecomunicaciones y se conectará al país con internet utilizando la infraestructura y las líneas de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad. Este servicio será gratuito en carreteras, plazas, escuelas, hospitales e instalaciones públicas.
En tres años quedará solucionado en definitiva el problema de la saturación del actual aeropuerto de la Ciudad de México; para entonces ya estarán funcionando las vialidades, dos pistas nuevas y la terminal de pasajeros en la base aérea de Santa Lucía, con lo cual se salvará el Lago de Texcoco y nos habremos ahorrado 100 mil millones de pesos.
Desde el 1 de enero se creará la zona libre en los 3 mil 180 kilómetros de frontera con Estados Unidos; es decir, el año entrante en esa franja de nuestro país se impulsarán actividades productivas, se promoverá la inversión, se crearán empleos, bajará el IVA del 16 al 8 por ciento y el Impuesto Sobre la Renta será del 20 por ciento. Costarán lo mismo los combustibles de este y de aquel lado de frontera y aumentará al doble el salario mínimo.
El salario mínimo nunca se fijará por debajo de la inflación, como llegó a suceder en el periodo neoliberal.
Se reformará el Artículo 35 de la Constitución para quitar todos los obstáculos y candados en la celebración de consultas ciudadanas, a fin de que el pueblo tenga siempre el derecho a participar en las decisiones de interés público.
Cumpliré el compromiso de someterme a la revocación del mandato; el primer domingo de julio de 2021, habrá una consulta para preguntarle a los mexicanos si continúo en la presidencia o si renuncio, porque como lo creo y lo he dicho muchas veces, el pueblo pone y el pueblo quita, el pueblo es soberano.
No habrá divorcio entre el poder y el pueblo, nunca perderé la comunicación con ustedes, con la gente; estaré cinco días a la semana en municipios y estados del país recogiendo los sentimientos del pueblo y resolviendo problemas y evaluando el avance de los programas de desarrollo y bienestar.
Todos los días, a partir del lunes próximo, desde las 6 de la mañana encabezaré en el Palacio Nacional, la reunión del Gabinete de Seguridad para garantizar la paz y la tranquilidad a los mexicanos.
Se creará, si lo aprueban el pueblo y el Congreso, una Guardia Nacional para garantizar la seguridad pública en el país.
Se van a constituir 266 coordinaciones de seguridad pública en todo el país atendidas por la guardia nacional para proteger a los ciudadanos que son víctimas de asesinatos, secuestros, robos y otros delitos.
El presidente de la República, de conformidad con la ley, es el Comandante Supremo de las Fuerzas Armadas, y nunca dará la orden de que el Ejército o la Marina masacren al pueblo. Se acabará la guerra; construiremos la paz y buscaremos la hermandad entre todos los mexicanos.
Hoy inició el proceso de amnistía para dejar en libertad a presos políticos o víctimas de represalias de caciques, funcionarios o gobernantes del antiguo régimen autoritario. Se cancelarán las acusaciones penales fabricadas en contra de activistas y luchadores sociales. La Secretaría de Gobernación tiene a su cargo hacer realidad esta determinación.
Se investigará a fondo la desaparición de los jóvenes de Ayotzinapa; se conocerá la verdad y se castigará a los responsables.
Se respetará la libertad de expresión; nunca el gobierno aplicará censura a ningún periodista o medio de comunicación.
La Fiscalía General contará, en los hechos, con absoluta autonomía; no recibirá consigna del Presidente de la República y sus prácticas se apegarán al principio del derecho liberal, según el cual, “al margen de la ley, nada y por encima de la ley, nadie”.
Mantendremos relaciones respetuosas con el Poder Legislativo y con el Poder Judicial y el Poder Ejecutivo dejará de ser el poder de los poderes.
Desde anoche entró en vigor el Plan de Protección Civil; el ABC para los casos de inundaciones, incendios, temblores y otros desastres.
La política exterior se sustentará en la cautela diplomática y en los principios de autodeterminación de los pueblos, no intervención, solución pacífica de controversias, igualdad jurídica de los estados, cooperación para el desarrollo, la amistad, la paz, la defensa de los derechos humanos, la protección del medio ambiente y el respeto a los derechos de los migrantes; los nuestros, los centroamericanos y los de todos los países y continentes.
La relación con el gobierno de Estados Unidos será de respeto, beneficio mutuo y buena vecindad. Es momento de cambiar la relación bilateral hacia la cooperación para el desarrollo. Crear empleos en México y en Centroamérica es la alternativa a la migración, no las medidas coercitivas.
Como nos comprometimos, los 50 consulados que México tiene en Estado Unidos se van a convertir en defensorías para la defensa de migrantes. Vamos a defender los derechos humanos de nuestros paisanos.
Se logrará el renacimiento de México haciendo realidad el progreso con justicia y una manera de vivir sustentada en el amor a la familia, al prójimo, a la naturaleza, a la patria y a la humanidad. Promoveremos el bienestar material y el bienestar del alma.
Se garantizará la libre manifestación de ideas y de creencias religiosas y la libertad de prensa. Estamos por el diálogo, la tolerancia, la diversidad y el respeto a los derechos humanos.
Vamos a convocar a maestros, antropólogos, psicólogos, sociólogos, filósofos y profesionales de otras disciplinas, así como a religiosos, librepensadores, ancianos respetables y ciudadanos en general para la celebración de un congreso en el cual se elabore una Constitución Moral, que ayude a fortalecer valores nacionales, culturales y espirituales.
Asimismo, vamos a preservar nuestra memoria histórica. Se promoverá la lectura en general y particularmente de la historia, el civismo, la ética; nunca se olvidará de dónde venimos; por eso se exaltarán nuestras culturas originarias, las transformaciones históricas y el sacrificio de nuestros héroes; por ejemplo, el año próximo que se cumplen 100 años del asesinato de Emiliano Zapata, en toda la papelería del gobierno se recordará su nombre y su lema “Tierra y Libertad”.
Amigas y amigos:
Les invito a que ayudemos todos convertir en realidad estos compromisos y que cada año, aquí en el Zócalo, los repasemos uno por uno y podamos saber si ya se han cumplido o siguen pendientes.
Discutamos en todas las plazas públicas de México si avanzamos o no, con el propósito de que haya transparencia y acabar con la corrupción y la impunidad. Analicemos en las casas, calles y plazas si mejora o empeora la situación económica y social de nuestro pueblo y tomemos siempre entre todos los acuerdos que más convengan a la sociedad y a la nación.
No dejemos de encontrarnos: mantengamos siempre la comunicación. No habrá divorcio entre pueblo y gobierno. Yo les necesito, porque como decía Juárez “con el pueblo todo, sin el pueblo nada”. No me dejen solo porque sin ustedes no valgo nada o casi nada; sin ustedes, los conservadores me avasallarían fácilmente. Yo les pido apoyo, porque reitero el compromiso de no fallarles; primero muerto que traicionarles.
Pero por encima de todo, actuemos con optimismo y alegría porque tenemos la dicha enorme de vivir tiempos interesantes; estamos ante un momento estelar de la historia porque entre todos empezamos a construir la justicia y la felicidad que nuestro pueblo se merece y una nueva vida a nuestra gran nación.
¡Viva México! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México!
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