Granma 302
Falls Can and Should be Prevented
ALL ABOUT HEALTH
Falls Can and Should be Prevented
Falling is a geriatric syndrome, a disease; when it becomes recurrent it is clearly giving alarm signals that must be paid attent to.
Author: Lisandra Fariñas Acosta | lisandra@granma.cu
October 28, 2018 20:10:34
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
As we age we must adapt to the environment, which is often a challenge for the performance of activities of daily living, crossing streets, transportation, ant the footwear that is used, can cause of fractures on numerous occasions. Photo: Juvenal Balán
“It took human beings about five million years to learn to walk and only 70 years to fall. This, which humorously may be interesting, should not really be allowed, because falling is not a habitual state. Falling is a geriatric syndrome, a disease. In other words, not everyone falls, because there are people who reach the age of 90 without having suffered any event of this type.
This was explained to Granma by the doctor of the Argentine Association of Orthopedics and Traumatology and member of AO Trauma, Emilio Fantin. He emphasized the need to prevent falls in the elderly, an aspect that is not often thought of. For the expert, it is important not only to know what a fall is, but also to understand why we fall and to evaluate the old person who falls.
Participating in the Seminar AO Trauma “Traumatology in the Elderly”, which was held in recent days in the teaching Fructuoso Rodriguez orthopedic hospital, and included recognized experts from this organization, Dr. Fantin commented that if we take into account that 1 to 5% of falls end in fracture and almost all hip fractures are secondary to them, it is vital to talk about this issue.
After a hip fracture, between 20 and 50% of older people fall again within two to six months of the first fall, so that prevention is once again the key. It happens that of those who fall for the second time, approximately 12% have a new fracture and 5% a hip fracture.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are a thousand hip fractures per million inhabitants. If this figure is taken to the aging population, it is considered that a thousand fractures occur for every 100,000 people over 60 years of age, which would correspond to 10% of this age group.
It is estimated that around 12,000 of these fractures occur annually in Cuba, with resulting costs that they imply for the patients, the family, the health system and society in general.
20.1% of the Cuban population is 60 years of age or older, as shown by data from the Center for Population and Development Studies of the National Office of Statistics and Information. According to the latest Population and Housing Census (2012), 40% of Cuban households are inhabited by older adults. In 32% of them reside up to two or three persons of 60 years or more, so it is very likely that an older adult is caring for the other, and 13% of older adults live alone.
WHEN ARE YOU AT RISK OF FALLING?
The fall causes worries from the first moment, but when it becomes something recurrent (two or more falls in the space of a year) is clearly giving alarm signs that should be addressed, warned the specialist.
At the same time,” said the interviewee, “we must pay more attention when patients tell us “I have no strength, I fall, what can I do?
In Dr. Fantin’s opinion, the first thing is to think that falls are not normal events, because the fact of being old does not necessarily imply falling. Why does it happen? It has to do with physiology and physical structure, loss of bone and muscle mass, and functions such as hearing and sight.
But these aren’t the only causes, he explained. As we age, we must adapt to the environment, which is often aggressive in carrying out the activities of daily living. The streets, the transport, the footwear that is used, derive in reason of fractures in numerous occasions.
With respect to the profile of the older adult who falls and fractures, the professor pointed out that generally they are over 80 years old, there is a poor self-perception of their state of health, cognitive deterioration, that is, of the state of consciousness, and many have depression. To this is added the presence of visual and motor deficits, because a large part of this age group needs help to walk, using walkers, canes or someone who accompanies them.
“Even if we investigate, we can find stories of falls that deny us, or do not tell because they are ashamed. It is very rare for an older person to confess to a child who has fallen. They come to the bathroom with the fracture, but they usually fall for longer: in the early morning when they go to the bathroom, for example. Falls can also be related to the consumption of certain medications and polypharmacy, which can cause fragility and gait disturbances due to unbalance,” he said.
When evaluating a patient at risk of falling, the expert commented that intrinsic and external factors must be taken into account, in addition to others that may precipitate this fact, such as alcohol consumption.
Among the intrinsic causes, diabetes is one of the most frequent, followed by the state of consciousness, that is, dementia, delirium, or depression. A third place is given to diseases where muscle mass decreases, and the fourth element is the female sex, since a greater number of falls occur in women than in men.
Regarding external factors, the interviewee mentioned domestic animals, sidewalks, stairs, public transportation and medication.
“More than four drugs a day are considered polypharmacy, and this is a cause of falls, so making adjustments to prescribed drugs is essential. The older adult is given a medication and it is never taken away, they leave it forever,” explained Dr. Fantin.
In addition, the interviewee pointed to osteoporosis, tobacco use (mainly in women) and vitamin D deficiency, as other elements not to be lost sight of. “Older adults don’t sunbathe regularly, and it’s important to get them out in the sun. The amount of ultraviolet light needed to convert vitamin D, either from the diet or as a medicine, is 10 minutes, you don’t have to go to the beach, and you just have to discover your hands and face.
The ideal,” he said, “is to treat these fractures within 48 hours of their occurrence, which has allowed mortality in the world from this cause to decrease from 30 to 10%.
Particular emphasis was made by the expert in post-cause syndrome. “Whoever falls and fractures is afraid of falling again and the great majority does not return to their previous state. Anxiety disorder is very serious, and there is a tendency to the syndrome called immobility, which can even lead to death. For each day of rest, 1% of body mass is lost,” explained Dr. Fantin, who placed great importance on family support.
It is fundamental that prevention also begins at an earlier age, stimulating, for example, exercises such as the use of bicycles, which are less expensive, ideal for recovering muscles, stimulating the semi-circular ducts of the ears and making it easier for people to have balance, concluded the interviewee.
ACCURACY
– AO Trauma is one of the four clinical subdivisions of the AO Foundation (Working Group to Study Fracture Problems) created in Switzerland in 1958. Its purpose was the integrating and aligning of efforts in research, community development, and education in Traumatology and Orthopedics at the global and regional levels.
– According to Dr. Roberto Balmaseda Manent, secretary of the Cuban Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology, it has been particularly useful for the training and improvement of specialists in this branch.
– About 600 professionals from all regions of the country have had the opportunity to be trained step by step in the courses, workshops and seminars that the Society has organized.
Fear of Competition from RT (Russia Today)
Fear of Competition from RT (Russia Today)
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Author: Julio Martínez Molina | internet@granma.cu
25 October 25, 2018
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
“The closure of RT by authorities in other countries is due to fear of competition,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, October 18, during the international discussion forum Valdái, which hosts Sochi.
Russia Today (RT) has been described since its inception, both in the United States and in some nations, as a “hostile foreign power” or “foreign agent on home soil. In fact, on July 17, it was announced that “the Australian Federal Police has opened a preliminary investigation into the chain as a suspected foreign agent.
The real sense of bitterness – or really fear or hatred – towards the Russian platform is that it is one of the few alternative voices charged with providing angles of analysis different from those provided by the mainstream American media. Organs that, no matter how “anti-Trump” they may seem, are part of the U.S.-owned corporate system.
RT represents one of the few media conglomerates on the planet (two others, bridging differences, would be Telesur in Caracas and Hispan TV in Tehran) that, without bowing to the dictates of the American empire, try to offer an objective global perspective of the local, regional and global political reality.
A balanced vision that weighs multipolar power and the sovereignty of peoples; a vision that deconstructs each deception perpetrated by the lie-repeating apparatus at the service of Washington, that gives voice to otherness and positions itself as an independent entity, cannot be well received by the Yankee powers and their European allies or clones.
The witch-hunt against the Russian station is yet another of the fronts of open war against Moscow, in the political, diplomatic and sports spheres…
Not even at the height of the Iron Curtain did American cinema and television produce as much volume of audiovisual material against Russia as they do today.
The order of the White House was and is to export that hatred. Not surprisingly, in 2016, a European Parliament report compared the “danger” of RussiaToday “with that of the Islamic State”.
The Western aversion to the progressive resurgence of the great Eurasian nation in its economic, military, scientific and communicational capacity is expressed in dissimilar ways. Attacking its website is not the least significant.
The increasing number of people who tune into the RT signal in the world puts the Western think tanks and their corporate media apparatus into a warning position. Thus, the rage against the Russian network is not only expressed in the organs of the United States, but also in a good part of the Europeans.
El País, the most read Spanish newspaper in the Spanish-speaking universe, has the challenge of the web as one of its obligatory daily tasks, along with the daily attack on Venezuela.
Korda’s Militia Woman
Korda’s Militia Woman
Granma today commemorates the 59th anniversary of the National Revolutionary Militias with the story of Idolka Sanchez, the militia face Korda immortalized with his lens in 1962.
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Author: Alejandra García Elizalde | internet@granma.cu
October 25, 2018 21:10:37
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
«La Miliciana». Photo: Alberto Korda
In the crowd of that May 1, 1962, a young photographer focused on the still-adolescent face of Idolka Sánchez as she marched in front of the José Martí Memorial in Havana.
She, one of the nearly 2,000 militiawomen of the Lidia Doce women’s battalion, saw him approach, camera in hand. He didn’t seem to care about anything else. It was as if he had seen her from afar and didn’t want to let her go without obsessively capturing her image. He chose her.
“The man whose name, Korda, I had barely heard, was the same man who, in March 1960, had immortalized Che’s face with his mane in the wind, during the burial of the victims of the La Coubre terrorist attack. He ordered her to “put the machine gun up”. His order was followed by several clicks of his camera and, in a matter of seconds, she disappeared.
When she had forgotten the incident, he returned that same morning. Korda wanted to repeat two new shots. She did not want to capture just one face or one image. He was looking for a symbol, and he found it. The next day the photo went from one end of the island to the other on the cover of the Revolución newspaper.
“I felt an emotion that I cannot describe. It was not vanity, but eternal gratitude. I never thought about the transcendence of that image,” Idolka Sánchez Moreno told Granma.
Fifty-six years after that encounter with Korda, the image known as “La Miliciana” endures. The sun on her face, the severe look focused on the horizon, her embrace to the rifle that points to the sky, the beret tilted …
Today, Idolka preserves the late beauty of the 22-year-old girl who was in those early and intense times of Revolution. “I will never forget that it was a beautiful, clear morning, similar to today. I didn’t expect that it would attract the attention of any photographer, being surrounded by so many women. My main interest that day was the possibility of parading in front of the Commander in Chief,” she says.
It would take years for Idolka and Korda to meet again, after “La Miliciana” became an iconic image and adorned banners, postcards, photographic exhibitions, and appeared on the walls of workplaces and embassies. Few people know that she was the young woman in the photo.
“I remember one day, walking with my sister to work, a woman saw “La Miliciana” hanging in the window of an establishment. She, a few steps away, said, without knowing that we were listening: “Look at that, surely she left the country and yet they have her everywhere. My sister confronted her, but finally we decided to continue on our way.
She joined the Militias as soon as they were created: “I came from a family that supported every step of the revolutionaries through the Sierra, and my destiny could not be any other. I studied Law at the University, I have dedicated all my life to my country and today my two children are photographers”, remembers Idolka.
Almost two decades after that May Day, in 1981, he saw Korda again. Muchacha magazine arranged a reunion between him and “La Miliciana”.
“It was very emotional, but I never expected any recognition. That was his work. I was only an occasional model, discovered in the middle of the parade, one of so many young people who proudly wore the most beautiful of all the costumes, that of the militia.
From that meeting in front of Revolution Square on May 1, 1962, Korda once recalled that “I had been looking for hours with my camera in the crowd. The Lidia Doce women’s battalion attracted me and I captured many gestures. But in revealing only one was the indisputable one: the militia woman with the rifle held high and such a decision in her eyes that I said to myself: this is the Cuban warrior, the woman in the defense of the homeland.
Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Alberto Korda (September 14, 1928-May 25, 2001), is one of the great photographers of all time, with a body of work that forms part of the symbolic imaginary of the Cuban Revolution.
“La Miliciana”, the instant that captured the purity and strength of women at an exceptional moment in national history, was one of his most beloved portraits. “It is a photo that will survive us,” said Korda. Future generations will admire our eternally young militia. And so it was.
“I never thought about the transcendence of that image,” confesses Idolka. Photo: José Manuel Correa
Idolka in the meeting with Korda, which was set up by the magazine Muchacha. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.
“I ask the world to do something for us”.
“I ask the world to do something for us.”
Nadia Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize 2018 for her fight against the rape of women in war contexts.
Author: Ana Laura Palomino García | internet@granma.cu
October 23, 2018 20:10:41
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Murad tries to make the world aware of what’s going on with his people. Photo: Patrick Seeger/EPA
“My pain is like a hundred deaths. I sadly sentenced a 14-year-old girl to BBC MUNDO, after living such a traumatic experience as being a sex slave.
My words do not find the way to express in prose so much pain. Her phrase, however, reminds me that her story is multiplied into others, to the shame of humanity.
Nadia Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize 2018 and understands very well the sorrow of this young woman. The recognition is undoubtedly an honor, but this woman bears the cross of having been a sexual slave of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS). Since then, her struggle has not ceased, and she travels the world as an activist against the rape of women in contexts of war.
When collecting the award I remembered that “thousands of women are still imprisoned in the hands of IS mercenaries.” For this reason, “my survival is based on defending the rights of persecuted communities and victims of sexual violence. One prize and one person cannot do it. We need an international response,” she told the Spanish daily El País.
Murad is part of Yazidism, a minority religion that dates back to 2000 B.C. and has its origins in the teachings of Iranian prophet and reformer Zoroastro.
This group within Iraq has been persecuted and its members forced to convert to Islam, or die at the hands of terrorists.
It was from the year 2014, when the Islamic State began the extermination against the Yazidis and Shiites, using all kinds of vexations against them.
The beginning of the end
Nadia’s nightmare began on a normal day, in that place she called home, when IS terrorists came to her village in Iraq and killed most of the men while women under the age of 45 were kidnapped, she confessed to the BBC.
Murad suffered the same fate as almost all of these young women. They were already in the hands of the terrorists and at night the sale of the girls began among the IS terrorists, most of them to be sexually enslaved. This inhumane practice is part of the propaganda to attract more followers to the organization.
“They began to walk around the room, looking at us, while we shouted and asked for compassion. They surrounded the prettiest girls and asked them: “How old are you? They looked at their mouths and their hair. They are all virgins, aren’t they? they asked the guard, who nodded and said, “Of course, like a merchant proud of his products,” Murad recalls sadly for El Diario.
After living hard experiences, she managed to flee from her captors and began a fight without rest, at the risk of her own safety.
This battle, as she repeats in each of her speeches, will not cease until the creation of a specialized tribunal to try those responsible for the crimes committed by terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
Your mission: the freedom of a people
Murad tries to make the world aware of what’s going on with her people. She tells her story over and over again. She does everything she can because her experience is not lived by another adolescent or girl, neither in Iraq nor anywhere else in the world.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has destroyed the lives of some 3,000 Yazidi girls and women, according to El País newspaper. Raped, locked up and sold as simple objects, they try to recover their souls when they manage to escape from their kidnappers.
I will be the last. The history of my captivity and my struggle against the Islamic State is a book written by Murad as a testimony of her experiences. In this way, she aims to reach a wider audience and raise awareness.
She has travelled to different countries in order to meet with the leaders of those nations. However, the response has not been as expected and, while world leaders make a decision, there are still girls and women being kidnapped.
Nadia has urged the international community to “work together with the determination to show that genocidal campaigns will not only fail, but will also hold perpetrators accountable and that there will also be justice for survivors.
But the world becomes blind to these problems. Perhaps this is because there are others that are considered “more important,” such as economic crises or political conflicts between great world powers. Meanwhile, wars, violence and the pains they cause continue waiting for a common effort, for human sensitivity, so that stories like those of Nadia and the thousands of girls turned into sexual slaves are not repeated and we never have to listen again: “I ask the world to do something for us”.
New US Ciber-War Announcements
CONTRaplANO
Donald Trump and the New U.S. National Cyber Strategy
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that on September 20 President Donald Trump signed the new National Cyber Strategy plan that officially authorizes the U.S. government to conduct offensive cyber attacks.U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that on September 20 President Donald Trump signed the new National Cyber Strategy plan that officially authorizes the U.S. government to conduct offensive cyber attacks.
Photo: Internet
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that on September 20 President Donald Trump signed the new National Cyber Strategy plan that officially authorizes the U.S. government to conduct offensive cyber attacks.
“We are going to do a lot of things in an offensive way and I think our adversaries need to know that,” Bolton said at a press conference. This document will contribute to “ensuring a secure internet”; according to Bolton, the competent bodies will now be able to “identify, counter, dismantle, degrade and deter actions contrary to national interests.”
“People who have perpetrated or are preparing to perpetrate hostile actions against us in cyberspace” should be concerned, the National Security Adviser said, emphasizing that responses to these aggressions will not be limited to cyberspace, but also include legislative responses, economic sanctions and military actions.
“The president has decided that the new plan is in our national security interest, not because we want more offensive operations in cyberspace, but precisely to create the deterrent structures that will show our adversaries that the cost is too high,” he said.
The document accuses Iran, Russia, China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), among others, of using cyberspace as an instrument to attack the U.S. And Bolton mentions examples of attacks “perpetrated” by Russia and the DPRK.
Last July, special prosecutor Robert Mueller of the U.S. Department of Justice accused 12 members of Russia’s Senior Intelligence Board (GRU) of “pirating” Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign for the 2016 U.S. elections.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Russian hackers obtained military secrets from Washington, including its unmanned aircraft and critical defense technology. The group of hackers tracked at least 87 people working in sensitive areas of the country’s military sector such as drones, missiles, rockets and poachers, among others.
The Office of Personnel Management, an independent agency of the U.S. government, reported that hackers have made several attacks on major U.S. websites, including the Pentagon’s computer network, the Twitter and YouTube accounts of U.S. Central Command (Uscentcom), and that pirates stole access data from millions of U.S. officials, including employees of the Department of Defense.
Moscow refutes these accusations and considers it an invention. The Russian government has repeatedly said that the accusations are “absurd” and represent an attempt to divert attention from U.S. domestic affairs and its responsibility for attacks on installations, companies, military and civilian units, public and private services in Russia, Iran, the rpdc and China.
The Russian Chancellery reiterated the call to “organize a meeting of the bilateral cybersecurity working group to examine these problems with the participation of specialists from Russia and the U.S.”.
Who’s Attacking Whom
The United States Government, its intelligence services and institutions, companies linked to the military-industrial complex, have been developing a strong offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran for a decade.
In 2010, a cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear power plant caused damage to the plant’s cooling system, which could have led to a serious incident with unforeseeable consequences. This is considered to be the first computer attack to cause damage to the physical world.
Various sources claim that the Stuxnet virus affected the centrifuges of the Iranian nuclear system. Once inside the plant, the pressure of the centrifuges increased until they failed without being detected, confusing the technicians who believed it was a physical failure. The intention was to sabotage and delay the development of the Iranian nuclear program; today there are elements to consider that the US and Israeli special services were involved in the attack.
Although it may seem like a matter of science fiction, in addition to attacks on infrastructures, cybercriminals can directly attack human life, pacemakers can be hacked that have a wireless function and end the life of an “enemy”, declared sources close to the company.
According to the CBS 60-minute program, in 2007, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, during George Bush’s term in office, his doctor ordered that the wireless function of his pacemaker be deactivated for fear of being hacked and killed.
FireEye, a research company in areas related to cybersecurity protection, is closely linked to cia through Robert Bigman, ex ciso (director of information security) of this agency, with whom it has signed numerous contracts for investigations into the use of malware, zero-day exploits (cyber attacks that occur on the same day a vulnerability is discovered in the system) and apt tactics (technical solutions to the Advanced Persistent Threat, apt).
FireEye has been singled out as possibly responsible for manufacturing fake attacks with the aim of singling out Russia and Iran as cyber-crime countries.
Russia was accused in 2017 of carrying out a global cyberattack that caused billions of dollars in losses in Europe, Asia and America. “The attack spread rapidly around the world”; in a communiqué the United Kingdom accused Russia of being behind this cyber aggression, an accusation that was supported by the White House.
“This has nothing to do with Russia,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said immediately during a visit to China. “Microsoft said it directly, that the source of the virus was the intelligence services of the United States.
Now that “we realize that a genie has come out of the bottle (…) he can turn against his parents,” “(…) it is necessary that the issue be addressed immediately on a serious political level,” Putin added.
Microsoft’s legal director, Brad Smith, noted that the event occurred because the National Security Agency (nsa) developed a way to penetrate Windows operating systems that ended up in the hands of pirates.
The “terabyte of death” and other cuties
The U.S. Department of Defense has repeatedly announced that a major cyber attack of unknown magnitude could occur at any time on a global scale. Pentagon spokesman Alan R. Lynn said that a few years ago receiving a one- or two-gigantic attack was an important issue.
“We are currently facing 600 gigabyte cyber attacks and cyber offensives that we could not even imagine before,” he said.
The Pentagon speaks of an eventual massive effect of one terabyte (one thousand gigabytes). “It’s only a matter of time before such an attack occurs,” warned Lynn.
On 12 May last year, the extortionist WannaCry virus infected 200,000 users in more than 150 countries. WannaCry is a computer program whose purpose is to “hijack” files from a computer and then “ransom” them from users in exchange for money.
“The size of the attack makes us think that it may not be lone wolves,” blogger José Luis Camacho told Russia Today, arguing that attacks of this magnitude require significant funding.
Part of the code of this virus corresponds to an NSA “cyberweapon” called EternalBlue, according to Bleeping Computer. With this tool, the attack takes advantage of a well-known security breach in the Windows operating system that makes it possible to take control of a computer.
Approved Plan Justifies Cyber Attacks Against Alleged Opponents
Trump repealed the so-called “presidential directive 20,” a confidential document signed by Obama and made public in 2013, when former NSA analyst Edward Snowden exposed 1.7 million files on U.S. espionage programs.
That regulation forced the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to obtain approval from other government departments before launching cyber attacks. Now that door has been left open and the Pentagon receives the authorization to act aggressively, leaving behind, according to Bolton, “the defensive position maintained until now.
The document legalizes hacking and cyber-attacks against other nations. What then can be expected of experts in manufacturing pretexts, false flag attacks, self-aggressions, simulated attacks or permitted aggressions in order to achieve dark purposes, as some point out that what happened on September 11, 2001?
The new plan opens one more scenario of danger for world peace, humanity must close ranks to stop the war madness from extending to cyberspace.
Cuba promotes the peaceful and legitimate use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the opportunities that cyberspace offers for the development and well-being of humanity.
PSOL will support Haddad in run-off
PSOL will support Haddad in the run-off election
As Brazil celebrates its second round of presidential elections, the parties begin to announce their alliances
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October 9, 2018 14:10:33
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Brazilians will vote this Sunday, Oct. 28, to elect the president for 2019-2023.
The Socialism and Freedom Party announced on Tuesday that it will support the presidential candidate of the Workers’ Party, Fernando Haddad, for the second round of elections to be held on October 28.
“To defeat Bolsonaro and defend rights, in the second round the PSOL defends the vote for Haddad and Manuela. AgoraÉHaddad”, says the publication in the party’s social networks.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s representative at the polls will have to face the utlraderechista Jair Bolsonaro in the next election day. After the vote on Sunday, October 7, Bolsonaro got 46 percent of the votes, while Haddad got 29.3 percent.
To advance towards Brazil’s presidency, candidates will have to resort to political alliances with other parties.
Meanwhile, former Democratic Labour Party candidate Ciro Gomes, who received 12.5 percent of the vote, said he would not support Bolsonaro.
After the support of this party, Haddad called for a united front for democracy. Photo: (Source: Telesur)
Chucho Valdés, Always Ours
Chucho Valdés, Always Ours
Dionisio de Jesús Valdés Rodríguez, known as “Chucho” Valdés, celebrates his 77th birthday and continues to give glory to our country.
Author: Ricardo Alonso Venereo | venereo@granma.cu
October 8, 2018
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Photo: Ismael Francisco
If Bebo Valdés is of Cuba, so is his son Dionisio de Jesús Valdés Rodríguez, known as “Chucho” Valdés, who, this October 9, the date of his father’s centenary, will be 77 years old. Both were born in the municipality of Quivicán: both of us.
A friend recently told me: Bebo and Chucho Valdés put this town, in the province of Mayabeque, into the category of Grammy town. How many towns in the world, with an average of 20,000 or more inhabitants, have Grammies that add up to those two? Together they total eleven awards between Grammy Latino Awards and the Latin Grammys.
And, if the father is an obligatory reference in the history of Cuban music, the son is no less so. He is a pianist, composer, music teacher, musical arranger and director. His work is distinguished by its Cuban nature and by his being among the best jazz musicians in the world. As a pianist, he also ranks among the best. He is a master in all genres, both jazz, classical music and popular dance music.
With Irakere, considered by many to be the most important Cuban music group of the second half of the 20th century, which Chucho founded in 1973, he patented a label very hard to beat in contemporary and future Cuban music. Here are his songs Misa Negra and Bacalao Con Pan (Black Mass and Cod with Bread). In 2002, together with Leo Brouwer, he won the first National Music Award. In 2006 he was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). He has been granted a Doctor Honoris Causa by prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, the University of Victoria in Canada, and by the University of the Arts (ISA). He also holds the Félix Varela Medal of Cuba, the keys to the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison and Nevilly in the United States and Ponce in Puerto Rico.
His time at the world’s greatest jazz festivals has been overwhelming. With his new group, The Afro-Cuban Messengers, “Chucho” Valdés continues to give glory to our country.
Bebo Valdes is Of Cuba
Bebo Valdés is Of Cuba
It cannot be otherwise for the one who played a very important role in the crystallization of the orchestral style with which vernacular music reached its purest expression around the middle of the last century.
Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu
October 8, 2018 20:10:13
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Bebo Valdés (1918 – 2013). Photo: Taken from the Internet
It cannot be otherwise for the one who played a very important role in the crystallization of the orchestral style with which popular music reached its purest expression around the middle of the last century.
Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro is from Cuba. Not even the decades in which he lived far away, first in Sweden and later in Spain, did he cease to be ours or to promote Cuban music. One hundred years after his birth on October 9, 1918 in Quivicán, Bebo Valdés is from Cuba.
It cannot be otherwise for those who played a very important role in the crystallization of the orchestral style with which popular music reached its purest expression around the middle of the last century. At the same time, he contributed substantial values to the development of the Cuban descarga [jam session], the most imaginative and endearing variant of the criollization of jazz.
Between Dámaso Pérez Prado, Chico O’ Farrill and Armando Romeu, plus Benny Moré’s genius as a free and unique electron. Without any academic training, he molded a band tailored to his desires. Bebo occupies a place to which, time and time again, it will be necessary to return to find the keys to the height reached by insular music and its continental projection in the 1950s.
Bebo’s trademark was the Sabor de Cuba orchestra, with which he worked on the Tropicana cabaret, alternating with that of Armando Romeu, between 1949 and 1957; They recorded memorable sessions, as well as accompanying leading Cuban and foreign figures, including Rita Montaner and Nat King Cole.
In 1952, he created the batanga rhythm, whose renovating approaches were not deciphered by the record and entertainment industry, but whose traces became a reference for much of what has happened since then in the evolution of both Cuban jazz and timba. By the way, the initial recordings of the new rhythm included Benny Moré, who had just returned from Mexico and had not yet assembled his portentous giant band.
He ended up in Mexico in 1960, where he collaborated for a while with Chilean Lucho Gatica, whom he knew from Havana. Then he settled in Europe. He left his family behind and founded another in Sweden. He never understood the changes that took place in his native country. But not even in the days of making a living in Swedish restaurants and discos did he stop thinking about music in Cuban terms. So much so that, at age 76, as someone said, he reinvented himself when he was called to record in New York.
That’s the Bebo who begins to ride again, in the airs of Latin jazz, albums like Bebo Rides Again, and movies like Calle 54, his fabulous union with singer Diego el Cigala and the reunion with his son Chucho Valdés in the album Juntos Para Siempre.
But I would like to point out what researcher Rosa Marquetti has said: “It would be a capital mistake to reduce the importance of Bebo Valdés in Cuban music, to the international boom that reached its revival with the album Lágrimas Negras (Black Tears). In any case, his world recognition achieved in the last decade of the twentieth century was a deserved culmination of a career that crosses a century and more in Cuban music.
He has his own outstanding place among the best orchestra conductors, composers and pianists of transcendence, and is one of the most creative arrangers in the entire history of our music.
That is the Bebo who, in his centennial year, I would like to remember, and that, without a doubt, over and above the anecdotal, legitimately belongs to us.
Jim Carrey and the “Yes” to Socialism
FROM THE LEFT
Jim Carrey and the “yes” to socialism
The words of the famous American actor Jim Carrey, in which he advocates socialism, have given a lot to talk about on social networks on the Internet and in the mainstream media for several weeks. The supposed defenders of “freedom of expression” have unleashed all sorts of attacks against him.
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Author: Jorge Ángel Hernández | internet@granma.cu
October 7, 2018 20:10:40
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Photo: socialismoweb.wordpress.com
Throughout its history, the democracy of political parties has proclaimed its defense of freedom of expression. It appears as a citizen’s right in all constitutions. To make matters worse, it has been used with great manipulative intelligence since the Cold War.
Thus, a pattern of appreciative judgment has been achieved that, as the 21st century goes by, accuses the emerging socialisms of being dictatorships as it assumes that capitalism guarantees freedom.
The reality is quite different, since the contradiction with which public opinion is pressured imposes a terrorist response, even to the most advanced models of socialism, without ruling out public condemnations based on diverse judicial subterfuges; practices completely normalized today that impose a condemnation of socialism historically and towards the far future. In other words, to infinity and beyond.
This has been done in South America, even with center formations that only apply measures of humane capitalism, such as the Argentina of the Kirchners.
Suddenly, the well-known actor Jim Carrey said on HBO: “We have to say yes to socialism -“to the word and everything”-and the true reactions which that freedom of expression have generated.
Fox’s review starts by discrediting him as a confessed Hollywood destroyer. It artificially superimposes on Carrey’s declaration, Fox’s own claim that Venezuelan socialism is a failed system, in which thousands of people suffer the worst living conditions on a daily basis.
The Fox reporter who assumes these words is not aware of the plans for housing, health, education, culture nor, of course, of the terrorist interference and mercenarism – in successive boycotts of the national economy and in real and concrete attacks – with which they have tried to besiege Bolivarian socialism.
If you look at it, Carrey’s focus does not delve into socialism itself, but calls for resistance to the insanity of the regime in power in the U.S. It takes as a formula the very system of political parties of U.S. democracy. It is a call to shake off the predetermined aggressiveness between Republicans and Democrats in the United States.
But the reaction has been brutal: exercising freedom of expression, in the context where the actor usually operates, could cost him his career, among the brightest and best paid in the film industry today, if he depends on this terrorist machinery of information. This is how many Venezuelan bigots manipulate and respond wherever the news appears.
For the democracy of political parties, led by the American one, the word -and only the word-, “socialism” represents the satanic in all dimensions.
Carrey has made it clear in his comments that whoever uses it must apologize, that it is vetoed from the supposedly democratic vocabulary. And that is what those who hijack the idea of freedom of expression to make it a hostage and client of their own oppression immediately bet on.
McCarthyism is still alive and those who dare to cross the fine line of censorship will have to face terrorist smear campaigns and the manipulation of justice.
For this reason, we must not only say yes to the word “socialism,” but to everything else that the system proposes and facilitates in the emancipation of the classes that are still oppressed by capital. Jim Carrey is absolutely right. (Taken from La Jiribilla)
“A pattern of appreciative judgment has been achieved that, advancing in the 21st century, accuses emerging socialisms of dictatorships.
“Exercising freedom of expression, in the context where the actor usually operates, could cost him his career, among the brightest and best paid in the film industry today, if he depends on this terrorist information machinery.
Cuban poet, narrator and essayist. Villa Clara, 1961. Collaborator of several press media. Directed the culture magazine Umbral, by Villa Clara. He received the Distinction for National Culture in 2004.
Photo from La Jiribilla:
Jim Carrey: “Let’s stop apologizing.” Photo: Internet
Last Tango in Paris: Truth or Lie?
SPECTATOR’S CHRONICLE
Last Tango in Paris: Truth or Lie?
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972) has been shown again these days at the Yara cinema as part of a series entitled Placeres y Angustias de la Carne (Pleasures and Anguishes of the Flesh), and with it comes “the latest” -which is really not so new-, related to one of the most controversial films in the history of cinema.
Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
September 2, 2018 18:09:42
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
An image from the film.
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