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Joe Biden measures for his first days in office
Joe Biden prepares measures for his first days in office
In a memo circulated among the major U.S. media, Biden’s advisors describe such executive actions as an urgent readiness to address the most serious crises in the nation’s modern history
Author: Digital Editor | internet@granma.cu
January 17, 2021 10:01:43
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: EFE
Amidst preparations for the inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is today preparing a set of urgent measures for the first 10 days of the administration.
In a memo circulated Saturday to the major U.S. media, Biden’s advisers describe such executive actions as an urgent readiness to address the most serious crises in the nation’s modern history.
Ron Klain, the incoming chief of staff to the next White House chief, wrote in that document that the orders will focus on ‘the Covid-19 health crisis, and its resulting serious impact, climate change and racial equity.
The official said the provisions will be accompanied by a ‘strong’ legislative agenda and are intended to provide relief to the millions of Americans struggling with these serious issues.
He added that the president-elect will take steps not only to reverse the worst damage of Republican President Donald Trump’s administration, “but also to begin to move our country forward.”
The new head of state will begin implementing the measures on Wednesday, the day he takes office, with what Klain said would be about a dozen executive orders on the issues mentioned.
The president-elect also plans to bring the country back into the Paris climate change agreement and undo the ban on travel to the United States by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, a measure implemented by Trump.
Biden will also issue a provision for mandatory use of masks as a requirement for staying on federally owned land or facilities and on interstate travel, and will also extend a pause on evictions and mortgages.
He even plans to take steps to mitigate the spread by expanding Covid-19 testing, protecting workers, and establishing clear health standards.
The White House will spend the remaining eight days instructing its cabinet to push for economic assistance to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and to take executive action on issues such as reunification of children separated from their families after crossing the border, among others.
The effort comes as the Senate prepares for President Trump’s second impeachment, in the early days of the Biden administration.
Although the transition team has not outlined many components of its upcoming legislative agenda, the next White House chief implemented a $1.9 trillion plan to combat the damage from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, a top priority for the new administration.
(Source: Prensa Latina)
Hitler returns from the afterlife
Hitler returns from the afterlife
One of the last crimes of the multimillionaire Donald Trump has triggered worldwide and domestic condemnation, at the same time as it once again proves those who warned that Hitler was back because of the racist, ultra-right-wing, xenophobic, nationalist and isolationist positions of Trump were right
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
An angry crowd caused disorder in the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6. Photo: EFE
Five fatalities, at least a dozen injured police officers, 70 people charged, more than 125 files opened, rewards of up to $50,000 for information about fugitives from justice, damages in the millions for the multiple destructions inside the facilities of the U.S. Congress, a newly-militarized city with more than 25,000 troops and walled up in the face of new threats, are the results of the quantitative analysis of the scandalous assault on the Capitol on January 6.
One of the latest crimes of billionaire Donald Trump has triggered world and internal condemnations, while giving reason, once again, to those who – since his unexpected electoral victory in 2016 – warned that Hitler was back due to his racist positions, ultra-rightists, xenophobes, nationalists and isolationists of the new president, who associated him so much with the fascist, that he also made intentional use of lies to trap the will of millions in Germany and try to bring the world to its knees.
A January 14 Los Angeles Times editorial reflected that, although Trump has never really led the far right, it fell in love with him after finding common ground in his rhetoric, which explains why 74 million supported him in 2020 after seeing his “authoritarian impulses” on display for four years in office.
One week after what many have called “a historic act of domestic terrorism,” media around the world are alternating news of the global pandemic’s resurgence and its current increased threats. These are impacting Americans with record numbers of 4,300 deaths a day, and with the horrors surrounding the acts of violence that shook Washington and U.S. democracy, following the president’s call to prevent, by force, the legislative recognition of Joe Biden’s triumph as president-elect.
While the sessions in Congress for the second impeachment against Trump are taking place in a Capitol that looks like a military camp, with soldiers sleeping in hallways, rooms and staircases, police closures are proliferating throughout the city, in response to indications, detected by the FBI, of new armed rallies before Joe Biden’s inauguration, not only in Washington, but in all 50 states.
The proclivity to allow disorder and let it go has generated suspicions and accusations. It was clear in recent days that the mobilization would attract thousands of people, the security apparatus was surprisingly small. Some wondered whether it was “mere incompetence or a strategy” that was premeditated. Then came the version that when the Capitol Police asked for help from the Department of Defense, led by people with no credentials other than their total loyalty to Trump, it imposed severe restrictions on the mission of the District National Guard, which had no riot gear or ammunition.
Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy alleged that Congress did not ask for riot control assistance and was concerned about the image that the presence of uniformed personnel in the building might convey, despite the fact that, until then, President Trump had not shaken his hand in sending in the military when those protesting are Black Lives Matter supporters.
This time the Pentagon took almost three hours to authorize the deployment of riot police and National Guard reinforcements,. While congress members and senators were being evacuated, the building ended up being taken over by the rebels. Among the garbage and the disorder caused, racist insignias and symbols appeared next to Trump’s hats and flags, and a large gallows with the rope prepared: “Let them cut off their heads,” read a banner, according to local correspondents.
OLD SUSPICIONS
Two months before the Trump’s coup against Congress, US columnist and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Paul Krugman, analyzed in his commentary The United States: A Failed State, the possible impact of Trump’s electoral failure. He predicted “that we are in serious trouble. Trump’s defeat would mean that, for the time being, we would have avoided falling into authoritarianism; and yes, the risks are that great, not only because of who Trump is, but also because the modern Republican Party is that extreme and undemocratic.”
Krugman denounced, during the 2020 election campaign, the Republican strategy based on false conspiracies and trying to scare voters by talking about bad things that are not happening, through “damn lies and Trump rallies.”
The day after the election, another New York Times commentator, Thomas Friedman, wrote an article entitled In the Election, There Was a Loser: America, a view that held that “we have just lived through four years of the most divisive and dishonest presidency in American history, one that attacked the two pillars of our democracy: truth and trust. Donald Trump has not spent a single day of his term trying to be the president of all the people and he has broken the rules and shattered the norms in a way that no president has dared; like last night, when he falsely warned of electoral fraud and called on the Supreme Court to intervene and stop the vote, as if such a thing were even remotely possible.
Using the social network platforms, the stands as President and the freedom of expression as an alibi, Trump and his serial manipulators fomented hatred, attempted against migration, undermined confidence in the democratic processes and fed populism and authoritarianism, taking advantage of the macabre techniques of Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda of Adolph Hitler’s Germany. Goebbels used the media to offer biased information, to multiply invented, unreal things, and to make people believe them as unquestionable truths, to expand, to inflame and to manage the genocidal Nazi ideology. More than seven decades later, Trump’s media terrorism took advantage of the fact that today lies reach further, faster and more people than ever before, with technologies.
The end? A broken country, a questioned democracy, a diminished, isolated international authority; a polarized, nervous, fractured society, which appeals more and more to drugs and medicines in the face of so much stress. It is no less concerned with the violence and terrorism generated by the hatred engendered and fueled by Trump, who lived by the lie. The fascists of yesterday and today confirm that delirium is also a deadly virus.
Related information
Showcases of “democracy” with which the United States has pretended to give lessons to the world are broken.
If the Capitol Assailants had been Black?
TODAY IN HISTORY
What if the assailants at the Capitol had been African Americans?
In the 1940s and 1950s, the segregationists adopted the flag as the emblem of their battle to prevent movements that emerged to advance the rights of African Americans. In essence, it represents the racist southern culture
It was not by chance that a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump, all of them white-skinned, razed the Capitol’s fences, pounced on the police guarding the building and, with little resistance, forcibly entered the compound. Nor was it by chance that one of them walked through the corridors waving an enormous “confederate” flag.
This was possible because hours earlier, Trump had incited them in the Save America march, to support him in a desperate and last attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s already recognized victory.
It was, moreover, a racist assault. No African Americans participated in that violent demonstration, and the Confederate flag, a historic symbol of racism and the defense of slavery in the United States, was flown for several hours without being stopped by any police officer.
Photo: Reuters
Some of the leaders of the demonstration, identified as members of extreme right-wing conspiracy theory and white supremacist organizations, are trying to distance themselves from the vandalism, claiming that the destruction was caused by anti-fascists.
But the police have already located and arrested Jacob Anthony Chansley, known as Jake Angeli, who is considered the “shaman” of the QAnon. Members of the QAnon movement, which appears to have begun in October 2017, consider Trump a hero.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after a march in support of the outgoing president. Photo: Reuters
Its militants believe an unfounded theory. They say that President Trump is waging a secret war against pedophiles from the elite of the U.S. government, business and media who worship Satan, and that one day there will be a reckoning among political figures like former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In this case, Jake Angeli is the man photographed inside Congress with his face painted and dressed in a bearskin and horns on his head. In addition, he carried a spear with an American flag tied to the blade, and who calls himself “The Wolf of Yellowstone.”
Richard Barnett, a follower of President Trump, is also in custody. He is pictured sitting in the office of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after a march in support of the outgoing president. Photo: Reuters
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after a march in support of the outgoing president. Photo: Reuters
Adam Johnson, who was photographed taking Pelosi’s lectern, also remains in police custody.
WHAT IF THE ASSAILANTS AT THE CAPITOL HAD BEEN AFRICAN-AMERICANS?
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, an international and decentralized movement originating within the African American community, stated:
“When African Americans protest for our lives, we often encounter National Guard troops or police armed with assault rifles, shields, tear gas, and combat helmets.
“When whites attempt a coup, they run into a small number of agents who can’t do anything and who even take selfies with the terrorists,” they said.
A statement on Twitter was written by Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States:
“To those who criticize others as unpatriotic for simply kneeling in protest, to those who wonder why we even have to remember that Black lives matter, it has become painfully clear that some Americans are, in fact, allowed to degrade the flag and symbols of our nation. What do they have to say now?”
What do Joe Biden and Donald Trump think about January 6?
NBA legend LeBron James was blunt in his denunciation:
“We live in two Americas. “If people like me – African Americans – had stormed the Capitol, what would have been the result? I think we all know. We know what would have happened to them if they had approached the Capitol, let alone entered the offices and the hallways.”
Photo: Reuters
Florida Senator Marco Rubio released a video on Friday comparing the attack on the Capitol by supporters of President Donald J. Trump with protests by Black Lives Matter, the racial equality and justice movement.
Rubio said the invasion of Congress was similar to the protests the left had been “justifying” last summer in cities across the United States following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who died in Minneapolis police custody.
So far, more than 80 people have been arrested and four died in the assault on the Capitol. Police found 11 Molotov cocktails on an Alabama man.
THE CONFEDERATE FLAG CARRIED BY THE CONGRESSIONAL ASSAILANTS
Between 1861 and 1865 a civil war developed in the United States that confronted the southern states (Confederates) that defended, contrary to the foundations of the northerners whose leader was Abraham Lincoln, the maintenance of slavery in the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.
After the defeat of the Confederate states, the banner carried by their troops in the civil war reduced its public presence but reappeared in the mid-twentieth century with racial segregation.
The first Confederate flag was composed of two red bars and a white one in the middle, with a blue box in the upper left that had a circle formed by stars. However, its successor, the red one, which contains a blue cross with white borders and stars, was the one that became popular. It was the symbol of the Battle of Virginia.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after a march in support of the outgoing president. Photo: Reuters
In 1863, the Confederate Congress recognized the Northern Virginia flag as its official symbol.
The descendants of Civil War veterans placed it on the nation’s monuments, so it gradually became an icon of Southern culture
In the 1940s and 1950s, segregationists adopted the flag as the emblem of their battle to prevent movements that emerged to advance the rights of African Americans. In essence, it is the representation of Southern racist culture.
Some time ago, the U.S. Navy decided to ban this flag from all Navy facilities, including ships, planes and submarines.
Sources: (not translated)
El significado sureño y racista de la bandera ondeada durante el asalto al Capitolio en EEUU. Publicado en Yahoo Noticias el 7 de enero de 2021.
La herida racial vuelve a sangrar en el asalto al Capitolio. Publicado en El Periódico el 8 de enero de 2021.
Toma del Capitolio, ejemplo de desigualdad racial. Publicado en Sun Sentinel el 7 de enero de 2021.
¿Qué significa la bandera confederada y por qué causa polémica en EU?. Publicado en Vive USA el 12 de junio de 2020.
Biden and Trump on January 6, 2021
What do Joe Biden and Donald Trump think about the violent demonstrations in Washington? ( + Photos )
U.S. lawmakers were meeting Wednesday to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election amid protests by Trump supporters both outside and inside the Capitol
Author: Digital Editor | internet@granma.cu
January 6, 2021 19:01:25
Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump called on his extremist supporters to stop violent demonstrations in Washington, but insisted there was “election fraud.:
“I don’t want anyone to be hurt (…) I love you, you are very special, but go home. I know you are hurt. We have an election that was stolen from us, and you know it, especially from the other side,” said Trump according to Telesur TV.
The outgoing president warned that this is a very difficult time, “there was never a time like this, where something like this happened, that something was stolen, from everyone, from you, from me, from the country. It was a fraudulent election”.
Trump’s call came after a group of extremists stormed Congress to prevent certification of Biden’s election victory. At that time, the congress members left the Capitol in the custody of the authorities.
Photo: Internet
On Wednesday, president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, repudiated the violent invasion by supporters of Donald Trump in the Capitol that caused the cancellation of the certification of the votes.
Photo: Internet
“Attacking the capitol, destroying the US Senate, endangering security. This is not a protest, it is an insurrection … I call them mafiosi, they are not attacking democracy,” Biden said.
The president-elect rejected the position of Trump’s fanatics who attacked the certification of last November’s votes, “we are seeing a small number of extremists who are dedicated to breaking the law. This is chaos and it must end now,” he added.
“The job in the coming years is to restore democracy, honor and respect. Solve the problems by looking at ourselves without stoking hatred,” the new White House tenant said.
Finally, he urged all leaders to work together to recover democracy in the country of the North, “democracy is fragile and to preserve it we need people of good will, courageous leaders, who are not dedicated to power, but to the common interest,” he concluded.
U.S. Congress meets Wednesday to certify Biden’s victory
U.S. lawmakers were meeting Wednesday to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election amid protests by Trump supporters both outside and inside the Capitol itself.
A session that, every four years, goes unnoticed by most people has as an ingredient this year the announcement of some Republican senators and representatives, who have pledged to support President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the result through a formal sessional objection, in an attempt that is almost certain to fail.
The two houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, in a joint session this Wednesday will open sealed certificates from all 50 U.S. states containing a record of their electoral votes.
Photo: Internet
Photo: Internet
Under the U.S. system, people cast their votes for “electors,” who in turn formally vote for candidates weeks after the election, which occurred on December 14, when Biden received 306 votes under the electoral college system, compared to 232 under Trump.
Photo: Internet
Protecting Family Caregivers
The Other Side of Dependency:
Protecting Family Caregivers
Demographic aging is a phenomenon that poses multiple challenges at all levels, which are common to all societies
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Coronavirus, Ayestaran Street
Three-quarters of the elderly population in Cuba, who are in care, receive informal support, and it is the family that contributes most to this, and of these three quarters, 85% of the informal care is provided at home Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus
Demographic aging is a phenomenon that poses multiple challenges at all levels, which are common to all societies.
According to an article by the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, Cuba has been ranked, after Uruguay, as the country with the second-highest number of elderly people in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2015.
The statistics also reflect that in much of Europe, North America and in some Latin American countries, there is a considerable increase in the number of older people, even those over 85.
Added to this, is the number of people in a situation of disability, as well as the increase in the chronicity of illnesses, particularly neurodegenerative ones, factors that lead to an increase in the number of people dependent on care.
However, the analyses of the phenomenon of population aging have always weighed, more or less correctly, the approaches from the vantage point of those who receive care, and never, or almost never, “which is not the same, but it is the same”, from that of the caregivers.
The current legislation, according to Dr. Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, president of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba, does not contain any reference to the subject. Hence, this is probably one of the novel aspects to be incorporated in the new Family Code, which could be presented to the National Assembly of the People’s Power this year.
Afterward, there will be the popular consultation, discussion with the deputies and final approval, in a referendum, of the resulting text, as dictated by the Eleventh Transitory Provision of the Constitution.
OF CARE AND CAREGIVERS
Although dependency is not a new phenomenon, says Perez Gallardo, “the convergence of different factors such as demographic aging, increased life expectancy and changes in family structure, have led to it becoming a phenomenon that requires urgent and appropriate responses from political, technological, social, health, psychological, family, economic and, of course, legal.
The dependent person, he explains, requires assistance from others for a prolonged period, that is to say, it is not a question of attention for a passing illness, but it implies the need of assistance for those activities of the daily life. This care, constant and lasting, over a long period of time, has been called long-term care, and it involves the provision of assistance with progressive intensity.
Nor can it be lost sight of, in Pérez Gallardo’s opinion, that chronic illnesses and disabilities can be accompanied by functional and cognitive limitations that end up preventing people from enjoying an independent life.
In situations of this nature, family care generally takes on a more prominent role. The key, warns the professor at the University of Havana Law School, lies in the physical and emotional availability of a person to devote himself or herself regularly to the care of that family member, even to the point of giving up or reducing his or her productive or working capacity in order to satisfy the demands of the recipient of his or her services.
In Cuba, according to Dr. Leonardo Pérez, three-quarters of the elderly population in care receive informal support, and it is the family that contributes most to this. And of those three-quarters, 85% of informal care is provided at home.
INFORMAL CAREGIVERS PROTECTED?
Family caregivers, says the President of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, are also called informal caregivers because, unlike professional caregivers, the former are engaged in care for a circumstantial reason, without specialized knowledge and without compensation.
Professional caregivers, on the other hand, are hired and receive financial compensation for their service. Informal caregivers, on the other hand, do so out of altruism, based on the moral duty they owe to their family members, who in many cases are their own parents.
Moral duty which, by the way, and as a lag in a patriarchal and androcentric society, is usually attributed to women, either as daughters, wives or sisters. It has even been assumed as “logical” that it is the children’s wives who take care of their in-laws, especially when they did not have female descendants.
Without a doubt, summarizes Pérez Gallardo, there are many and varied risks that the caregivers assume, because this activity implies, in the personal order, resignation to an adequate life. In the social order, it implies isolation and, in the professional order, loss of their productive capacity and even abandonment, total or partial, of their life project.
For this reason, he emphasizes, “it is necessary to regulate the rights of family caregivers so that the legal system can make them visible, based on the recognition of their autonomy and dignity, as well as the condemnation of any form of manifestation of family or gender violence against them.
“There is an urgent need for legislation that recognizes the right to their own care, to dedicate time to personal activities, to be treated with respect and to receive the due support of the rest of the family members. It is about protecting, from the Law, the other side of the care”.
The protection of caregivers, acknowledges the professor, “should not only be transversal in the field of public law, but also from the private law, capable of providing useful tools to compensate the asset imbalance associated with the performance of the work of caregiving.”
In the words of Pérez Gallardo, “it is necessary to focus on those people who, as caregivers, have been left socially and economically unprotected after the death of the care recipient. To this end, the rules of both family law and inheritance law can be important instruments.
“It would be worthwhile to think of alternatives that, without diminishing altruism, affection, solidarity, dedication and love, encourage care, compensate for silence, emotional and physical overload and facilitate an equitable and fair redistribution of the inheritance”.
In that sense, he points out, “the freedom to bequeath can be a useful alternative and within everyone’s reach. Nobody better than the one leaving [material resources] to compensate the efforts of the caregiver. And, in the absence of the exercise of the power to bequeath, it will be up to the legislator, as they see fit, to establish the best correlation between participation in the inheritance and care for that person in the twilight of life”.
The Chinese model, he suggests, “could be a mirror for the succession rules, from the establishment of more and more flexible rules in the legal succession, suitable to give an answer to the dissimilar social equations that this 21st century has been establishing, in pursuit of a distributive justice in favor of the caretakers”.
IN CONTEXT
The constitutional text, proclaimed on April 10, 2019, establishes in Chapter III Families, of Title v Rights, Duties and Guarantees that
The State, society and families, as far as each one is concerned, have the obligation to protect, assist and facilitate the conditions to satisfy the needs and raise the quality of life of the elderly. Likewise, to respect their self-determination, guarantee the full exercise of their rights, and promote their social integration and participation.
The State, society and families have the obligation to protect, promote and ensure the full exercise of the rights of persons in a situation of disability. The State creates the conditions required for their rehabilitation or the improvement of their quality of life, their personal autonomy, and their social inclusion and participation.
Why No Social Outbursts in Cuba?
FROM THE LEFT
Why are There No Social Outbursts in Cuba?
Despite the intense propaganda to which the US allocates tens of millions of dollars each year, the results are overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades
Author: Iroel Sánchez | internet@granma.cu
November 2, 2020 02:11:30
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Young people
Photo: Taken from Karla Santana’s Facebook profile
A Brazilian friend who, as a journalist, was in Cuba for a few days, told me of her amazement at how all the Cubans she spoke to know who Bolsonaro is, who Dilma is and who Lula is, which was not the case in other Latin American countries she had visited recently.
The exceptional interest with which Cubans follow international events is something very particular that often goes unnoticed by those of us who live on the island. The social upheavals in Haiti, Chile, Panama and Ecuador, the conflict of powers in Peru, the endless repressions and assassinations of social leaders in Honduras and Colombia, the inherited ungovernability that forced the Mexican government to release a drug trafficker, the unjust imprisonment suffered by the leader of the Brazilian left to prevent his safe electoral victory and the elections in Bolivia and the United States, or Washington’s constant aggressions against Venezuela, can be topics of conversation anywhere in Cuba, from a corner where dominoes are played to a university classroom.
Of course, these conversations do not avoid the serious difficulties that the Cuban economy is going through, against which every week new US government sanctions are announced, nor any of the deficiencies in services with which the citizenry clashes. In these, the impact of the economic blockade can be mixed with bureaucratic laziness and cause discomfort and dissatisfaction.
However, this mixture of economic warfare with internal shortcomings does not cause social upheavals, and when the system – single-party socialism – has been put to the test at the ballot box, as in the recent constitutional referendum. This is so, despite the intense propaganda to which the US spends tens of millions of dollars each year and a well-funded “Cuba Internet Task Force”. The results have been overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades.
The explanation for the dominant media machine is that the mix of “intense regime repression” and “Cuban relaxation” prevents an outbreak. But in the history of Cuba –from Weyler’s reconcentration to Machado’s dictatorship to Batista’s– no regime based on repression has ever managed to remain in charge of the country for a long time, despite a “relaxation” in which corruption was the dynamic of the functioning of politics and the economy at all levels.
On the contrary, if instead of February 2019, the electoral consultation were to take place now, in the midst of an intensified blockade, the percentage of approval would probably exceed that obtained then, and that would be the result, without a doubt, of the combination of three conjunctural and two structural factors.
Conjunctural factors:
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The intensification of the U.S. government’s aggressiveness strengthens patriotic sentiment and national unity.
The political effectiveness of the Cuban government, convincingly explaining the relationship of shortages with the increase in aggression, and the way in which the strategy to confront the US sanctions seeks to lessen their impact on the daily life of the people.
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The international situation with visible failure of neo-liberal policies and discrediting of the formulas of bourgeois democracy
Structural:
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The massive political culture among Cubans, established for 60 years by Fidel Castro’s teaching, about the nature of imperialism and the project of social justice and national sovereignty of the Revolution.
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The link between the revolutionary leadership and the people, continued by the leadership of Raúl and supported by Díaz-Canel, which has reinforced the perception that the government listens to the people and works for them.
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No Latin American country, of those who right now repress social protest with gunshots and gases and/or openly violate the rules of formal democracy that they themselves defend, has been subjected to economic warfare, to multi-million dollar financing to create an artificial opposition and, much less, to permanent global media and academic lynching of their leaders and their political and social project.
But in spite of all that, it must be recognized that there are dissatisfied people in Cuba, and many of those dissatisfied people are going to Miami. The accumulation of almost six decades of migratory privileges, together with the development of educational capabilities and the state of health brought about by Cuban socialism, make them very competitive with respect to the rest of the non-native communities, but they do not make them freer. More than one million Cubans in the US suffer serious limitations in their relations with their families in Cuba thanks to Trump’s measures; however, there is no news that this causes significant protests there.
Nor do we read anywhere that this public absence of disagreement is attributed to corruption and the repressive practices, not at all democratic, that the ruling class on the island until 1959 seems to have implanted in Miami during its already long stay in that city. This is not to disregard the uplifting example offered by a system that today puts Donald Trump and Joe Biden in competition, in corruption and insults.
2500+ French defy coronavirus restrictions
France: More than 2,500 people defy coronavirus restrictions at illegal holiday
France introduced fairly strict rules in mid-December to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., as it has been one of the European countries most affected by the pandemic, reporting more than 2,600,000 cases of COVID-19 and at least 64,892 deaths
Author: Web Editor | internet@granma.cuJanuary 3, 2021 09:01:14
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Getty Images
The French police intervened in an illegal New Year’s Eve party held at an industrial warehouse in Lieuron, northwest of the country, where about 2500 people broke the health restrictions imposed by the coronavirus, reports the BBC news portal Mundo.
Some of those attending the massive celebration came from Spain and the United Kingdom.
At least three police officers were injured. A statement from local authorities details that the police faced “fierce hostility from many in attendance.
The organizers of the event were identified, and participants were fined as they left the site.
MORE THAN 1200 FINES ISSUED FOR VIOLATING SANITARY MEASURES
More than 1,200 fines were issued for failing to observe curfew, not wearing a mask and attending an illegal meeting, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on a tweet.
He reported that the police seized trucks, sound equipment and power generators at the scene, and that they were investigating the events.
The authorities reported that they had opened a cordon sanitaire around the party and urged all those who attended the event to remain isolated for seven days.
One of the participants, who identified herself as Jo, told AFP that “very few had respected social distancing” during the time of the event.
Another interviewee said that the party was “very well organized” and that there were even food stands inside.
The Ministry of the Interior organized an emergency meeting and later all the party’s vehicle exits were blocked while the police tried to control the situation.
FRANCE INTRODUCED A CURFEW FROM MID-DECEMBER
France introduced fairly strict rules in mid-December to curb the advance of the coronavirus, including a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
More than 100,000 police officers were deployed throughout the country to enforce the curfew and break up the holiday season.
The French police are ordered to end the underground parties as soon as they receive a complaint, and are also tasked with fining participants and identifying the organizers.
France has been one of the European countries most affected by the pandemic, registering more than 2,600,000 cases of COVID-19 and at least 64,892 deaths.
The most dangerous professions
The most dangerous professions in the world in 2020
None of the murdered, disappeared, assaulted, or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
January 4, 2021 23:01:57
Julian Assange resists the oppression of journalism professionals committed to the truth Photo: reuters
According to the barometer of press freedom violations, website of the NGO, Reporters without Borders (RSF), 51 journalists were killed in 2020 and 400 were imprisoned. The source itself stops to list arbitrary detentions, disappearances, torture, mistreatment and other methods, country by country.
The subject of the moment draws attention, that of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who suffers a marked deterioration of his health in the prison where he is held, in Great Britain, for which the judge in the case, Vanessa Baraitser, accepted the diagnosis of the psychiatrists and ruled to prohibit the transfer to the U.S., due to the high risk of suicide.
The same judge described the judicial process as defective and punitive, but did not grant him bail, since the Australian journalist faces charges in the U.S. country for the leaking of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
The other side of the story is the proposal by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who asked for Assange’s freedom and offered his country to grant him political asylum.
However, RWB does not refer to the case, but marks Cuba in black along with other countries, symbolized as the worst violators of that freedom, although none of its figures include the Cuban archipelago.
The explicit contradiction in the information on the RSF website demonstrates the double standards and political intent with which this data is measured and the information is manipulated with the aim of demonizing the Cuban Revolution.
On the other hand, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported, on December 23, that 59 journalists were killed in 2020, four of them women. There is a difference of eight between the two reports.
According to UNESCO data, during the last ten years, 888 journalists and media workers, that is, one every four days, were killed.
These crimes continue to be committed with total impunity, according to the report on the safety of journalists, published in November by the UN agency, which shows that in 2020 there were no consequences in 87% of the cases.
The agency reflected the increase in harassment and attacks on information professionals, for example, in the attacks they suffered during the coverage of protest demonstrations in Chile, where 90 attacks were reported, and the case of the Black Lives Matter mobilizations, where up to 500 different attacks against the press occurred.
The document of the multilateral organization detailed that, in the first half of the year, press workers were attacked in 125 protests held in 65 countries.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations recently asked all the governments of the world to release, immediately, the journalists who have been arrested for carrying out their professional work. “Many have been subjected to harassment, acts of intimidation, sanctions, killings and also arbitrary arrests. We know that prisoners, detainees and prisoners, in general, are very vulnerable to the rapid spread of the virus,” said António Guterres.
It should be noted that none of these murdered, disappeared, assaulted or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban. The last journalist murdered in the Greater Antilles fell victim to Fulgencio Batista’s police in 1958.
Health workers, the most dangerous job in 2020
Although practicing journalism remains an extremely dangerous profession, in the year that ended, health workers contributed, through their dedication and courageous stand in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the greatest number of victims.
At least 7,000 of them have died from COVID-19 in the world, with Mexico being the hardest-hit country, according to a recently released study by Amnesty International.
Behind Mexico, the study places the United States (1,077 deaths), United Kingdom (649), Brazil (634), Russia (631), India (573), South Africa (240), Italy (188), Peru (183), Iran (164) and Egypt (159). Cubans did not add to this last statistic either.
It is not a matter of informative curiosity, a simple coincidence or mere chauvinism on our part, it is a reality marked by results, it has to do with the culture of socialism that places human being in first place, in the center of all priorities.
Sources: RT, RSF Barometer and reports from the UN.
Winner of the impossible
Winner of the impossible
During this very tense, very difficult year, in which we had to face COVID-19 and an unprecedented imperial offensive, Fidel has been accompanying us
Author: Abel Prieto | internet@granma.cu
December 30, 2020 22:12:20
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
During this very tense, very difficult year, in which we had to face COVID-19 and an unprecedented imperial offensive, Fidel has been accompanying us.
Cuba’s response to the pandemic, here and in other countries around the world, is admirable. As Díaz-Canel has reiterated, in that victory, Fidel’s strategic thinking in the field of medicine and science, his extreme sensitivity to the most vulnerable and his intimate conviction that nothing is worth more than the life of a human being, carried decisive weight.
We owe to Fidel the large-scale training of doctors and nurses with different professional backgrounds and ethics, the early creation of a health system that reached every corner of the island and every one of its inhabitants, the internationalist collaboration that began in 1960 and has its maximum expression in the ELAM and the Henry Reeve Contingent, and the foundation and development of cutting-edge scientific centers in a small Caribbean country. It has also been essential the participation, from the neighborhoods and communities, of the organized and conscious people, protagonists in all the battles fought by the Revolution under its guidance.
Our enemies wanted to suffocate us with the ruthless reinforcement of the blockade and the economic war, and they have managed to make the daily life of the population very difficult. But they have not been able to break the trust of the Cubans in those who lead us, working day and night so that Cuba can move forward, without anyone being left helpless.
Raúl reminded us, at Fidel’s funeral, that “his authority and his close relationship with the people were decisive for the country’s heroic resistance during the dramatic years of the special period”.
In 2020, together with Raúl and other figures of the historical generation, there have been Díaz-Canel and many paintings of younger generations, very close to the people, who maintain that “intimate relationship”. Our Party and our Government have gained more authority and prestige in the face of the complexity of the challenges, precisely when the enemies have insisted on achieving the opposite.
This year there was, not by chance, an escalation of terrorist and subversive actions, with the support of the hegemonic media, the so-called “independent media” and social networks.
Some of these projects tried to acquire “artistic” clothing to enhance certain mercenaries. This was a mistake. The thinking tanks of the counterrevolution forgot that Fidel himself designed an inclusive, anti-dogmatic, unitary cultural policy, based on permanent communication with creators, which was capable of rectifying errors and misunderstandings and of laying the foundations for a rational link between authentic intellectuals and artists and the Revolution.
The campaign against the Henry Reeve Contingent also failed. No lie, no insult, has been able to stain the very high moral example offered by our doctors.
Fidel was the main forger of the new consciousness that would germinate after the triumph of 1959 among the Cuban people, which was anti-imperialist, patriotic and –at the same time– generously internationalist and in solidarity. He contributed with his word and his example to bring about the unity of the nation and its spirit of resistance.
An expert in foreseeing dangers and traps, and in dismantling all deceptions, Fidel showed us (as Raúl also said) that it is possible to overcome “any obstacle, threat or turbulence, in our firm determination to build socialism in Cuba, or what is the same, to guarantee the independence and sovereignty of the homeland!”
Cintio Vitier saw, in the Cuban struggle for their definitive emancipation, so many times failed, a permanent duel against “the Impossible”. And he saw “with the glorious day, January 1st, when a ray of justice fell upon all”, the defeat of that ominous fatalism that seemed to condemn us to ignominy.
1959 was, according to Cintio, “the most beautiful year, the decisive one of our life”. “Other battles were beginning; but since then the becoming has roots, coherence and identity. (…) And everything that seemed impossible was possible”.
Front page of Granma:
http://www.granma.cu/file/pdf/2020/12/31/G_2020123101.pdf
http://www.granma.cu/file/pdf/2020/12/31/G_2020123101.pdf
Cyber-business media against Cuba
Media dependent on cyber-business against Cuba
They are classified as independent or alternative. But it is enough to go after the route of money that encourages and articulates them to know on whom they depend and to which editorial line they respond…
Author: Walkiria Juanes Sánchez | walkiriajuanessanchez@gmail.com
December 28, 2020 20:12:52
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Granma
A media network is trying to legitimize the US hegemonic vision of democracy and freedom in Cuba. With their annexationist strategy, they constantly intoxicate the social networks with distorted information about almost everything that happens on the island.
They call themselves “independent or alternative”, but it is curious that all those who run CiberCuba, ADN Cuba, Cubanos por el Mundo, Cubita Now, Cubanet, Periodismo de Barrio, El Toque, El Estornudo and YucaByte, among others, live abroad, mostly in the United States, and their communication strategies are the formula for the political design that prevails in that country.
Maykel González, from the subversive site Tremenda Nota, publicly stated that, during his stay in the U.S., specifically in the state of Ohio, he attended an academic program with professors from the University.
“There was a contact with officials in charge of attending the press at the State Department, I had a private appointment with State official Priscila Hernandez,” Gonzalez said.
The June 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba records the main subversive lines against the Greater Antilles, including the promotion of press projects. Since then, all the administrations after President George W. Bush adjusted their media design to each context.
The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of that nation, finance this media machinery that has benefited from the more than $500 million that the White House has allocated in the last 20 years for subversion in Cuba.
In order to receive the funding expeditiously, several of these counterrevolutionary digital publications have been registered in other countries as non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Such is the case of the sites El Toque, through the collective Más, based in Poland, and El Estornudo, created in Cuba, and later legalized in Mexico as an NGO.
Carlos Manuel Álvarez, director of El Estornudo, arrived in Cuba on November 24 to join the San Isidro media show.
Abraham Jiménez Enoa, who was a participant in that same website, expressed that he does not know how much the total financing of the “media” is, because everything is done from the outside. “The collaborators that make the magazine charge for work, with a fixed salary of 400 CUC. Until I left, El Estornudo was financed by the NED and Open Society,” said Jiménez Enoa.
These so-called alternative and independent media disqualify themselves when it is revealed where their livelihood comes from, even though sometimes they try to divert attention from the origin of the money.
The researcher of the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies, Yazmín Vázquez Ortiz, explained that financing, training and technical assistance are pillars, from which the conditions that exist in the societies that can be the object of intervention are taken advantage of, to promote resistance movements that can foster the change that the U.S. wants.
Those who lead and collaborate in these spaces do so through organizations based in U.S., European or Latin American territory.
The deputy director of this same Center, Olga Rosa González Martín, pointed out that since they operate as a private organization, they receive private funds, which can come from any individual, from any corporation at the international level, making it more difficult to link an entity with a specific government, and with its foreign policy objectives in a given country.
The Institute of Peace and War Journalism, Factual, Distintas Latitudes, Swedish Human Rights Foundation, Editorial Hipermedia, Diario de Cuba, Cubanet, Sergio Arboleda University, and many others, function as contractors for these mercenary press projects.
José Jasán, from the subversive site El Toque, stated that “the most acceptable thing for ‘the company’ is that by going to train a group of Cubans, it gives them the opportunity to pay them directly.
Elaine Díaz Rodríguez, from Periodismo de Barrio, said that they went to international cooperation. “At first, it was financed with the savings I was able to take to Cuba from the Lima Scholarship, and later we were able to carry out a pilot project with the Swedish Foundation for Human Rights. We achieved an alliance with the Norwegian Embassy, through which we are here,” she said.
In this design, the Cuban-American Aimel Ríos Wong stands out from NED. As Head of the Cuba Program, he distributes the funds approved to dismantle ideological and cultural paradigms from outside and inside the Island.
Maykel González, from the subversive site Tremenda Nota, commented that Ríos Wong called him, went out to “take a walk in Washington”, and recognized him as someone who has made himself present, who has been in constant dialogue with the actors, both from journalism and from civil society.
“We are working with about $7,000 for a quarter, from which we do the planning of the work, and it is allocated by all the fees we have to pay,” said Maykel Gonzalez.
As a strategy, they select their future leaders, train them, reward them, finance them, stimulate them, make them visible, bring them together, empower them, guide them, and give them spaces and stands.
“What they say is: no, but nobody tells me what I have to write, nobody tells me what the editorial line of my page is or of the articles I write. They don’t have to tell you, you already have that line assumed, you get funding, because you already said those things, and you know that if you don’t say them and don’t follow that anti-government line you’re not going to receive the funding,” noted Javier Gómez Sánchez, a specialist in audiovisual media.
As the computerization of the country has advanced, said Gómez Sánchez, people have been having greater access to the Internet, and this war has been increasing and organizing, because their possibility of reaching certain sectors of the population with this type of media manipulation has increased.
Dr. Ernesto Estévez, member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, reminded that this phenomenon is something that has been working for many years, with the aim of reversing the Cuban Revolution, of making a capitalist restoration.
Public sources of the US government itself show the increase of these funds during the last years, just when the Cuban State is advancing in the transformations of the new economic and social model.
This is confirmed by a call from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to fund proposals related to civil and political rights in Cuba, amidst the provocations put forth in recent days.
Together with the imposition of restrictive economic measures and the complex epidemiological scenario of COVID-19, the enemy media lined up to discredit the Cuban government’s management and delegitimize the social system.
“It has to do with the fabrication of opinion matrixes, which have two essential characteristics: first, they are created to manage the discontents that exist, related to certain issues, and to direct them against the government, socialism, and the political system; and second, to try to promote in Cuba a liberal thought, based on liberalism, which is the ideology of capitalism,” exposed the psychologist Karima Oliva Bello.
In the communicational framework, there are the so-called influencers with hypercritical tendencies, created to generate empathy and ideological tendencies in thousands of followers, through social networks.
The enemy press projects, in this scenario, are identified as instruments of the US Government in its unconventional war strategy against Cuba.
Whoever consumes the news published by the subversive media could come to believe that Cuba is a country that is collapsing. However, this is a nation that is living a different reality.
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