Granma 187
Rosa Luxemburg: A Rose Plucked by Betrayal
FROM THE LEFT
A Rose Plucked by Betrayal
The death of Rosa Luxemburg marked the final step of world social democracy towards treason; it was not only a crime committed with full consciousness of its historical significance, but orchestrated in pursuit of a class hegemonism of the German workers bourgeoisie and big capital, allied after the defeat in the First World War.
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Rose was plucked, but not hope. Photo: rosalux.org.ec
The death of Rosa Luxemburg marked the last step of world social democracy towards treason. It was not only a crime committed with full consciousness of its historical significance, but it was orchestrated in function of a class hegemonism over the German working class by the bourgeois workers and big capital. They were allied after the defeat in World War I, to build a new right-wing order, the hard state of National Socialism (Nazi), which would lead Europe towards its dissolution as the center of the world.
In the cold dawn of January 15, 1919, Red Rosa wrote her last lines on the problem of the Revolution on the continent. And, although with pessimism, she referred to the hope that the masses would one day awaken from the nationalist and revenge lethargy hovering over the humiliated Germany of the time, and so the Revolution would show its true strength by saying: “I was, I am and I will be.”
POLAND
Being born in a country occupied by Russians, Germans and Austrians made Rosa Luxemburg look at the national question with distrust. The most “revolutionary” she heard from many of the insurgents against foreign power was based on the restoration of the Polish feudal state of the 15th and 16th centuries. At that time it represented in Europe one of the purest reminiscences of the landowner’s system of servitude. That political creature, impervious to the ideas of the French Revolution, was devoured by three modern and authoritarian states that contained the nascent germ of capital.
For Rosa, then, the national question was a setback and she based her appraisals on the need to internationalize the socialist and workers’ underground movement, as a way to quickly win the emancipation of the oppressed classes. Living later in Germany, a country that based its strength as capital on the unity built by Bismarck, convinced her that nationalism only engendered steps backward on the road to a Revolution that, given the state of things at the end of the 19th century, seemed imminent.
In fact, in Germany the Social Democratic Party became the strongest and most numerous left party in the world, generating expectations in all revolutionaries. The very advance of this force in parliament provoked the removal of ultra-conservative and monarchical elements from the public sphere. But it also favored the establishment of pacts between that left and the central power of the State. It was the beginning of the historical betrayal of social democracy from Marxist socialism.
Rosa, who never felt Polish – much less German – encouraged this powerful left to extend eastwards, capturing countries under the aegis of old feudal empires, such as Russia. She saw in the mass movement of 1905 against the Tsar the beginning of the end of the crowned heads and the other European Caesars. However, the pragmatism of leaders and ideologues of social democracy, such as Karl Kautsky, would clash with Luxembourg’s theory of socialism as a new culture, whose idea is placed beyond nationalism.
For Kautsky, the struggle against capital was one of “attrition,” inasmuch as strikes were only intended to move power momentarily, but never to bring about its downfall, and the young socialist movement “would not know what to do with the vacuum of authority.” But she [Rosa] saw in this what it was: an unprecedented concession to conservative power by the leadership of a party that was beginning to abandon its foundations, while reviewing Marx’s thesis 11 on Feuerbach (Transforming the World). Historical facts demonstrated the lucidity of the Polish revolutionary, as opposed to Kautsky’s reformism, in heated and dangerous polemics.
THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC VOTE IN FAVOR OF THE EMPIRE
Many of those who, at the height of the 21st century, are surprised by the anti-popular cutback policies applied by the non-Marxist European left, forget that this betrayal began a long time ago. Perhaps it is not a bad memory, but a voluntary forgetfulness in order not to recognize the cynicism with which the revolutionary question has been handled since then by elements [who have] sold out to the interests of capital.
Marx warned that the original accumulation product of the plundering of the third world gave the European workers (a part of them) the possibility of becoming bourgeois and, therefore, defending interests far from total emancipation, guided only towards a nationalist, local question of the selfish improvement of their living conditions. The European worker will thus support not only a conservative pseudo-socialism, but also the hard fascist who guarantees a middle-class standard of living, as we are seeing in today’s Europe.
That is exactly the explanation of German social democracy, the model on which that same continental tendency was built during the Cold War (1945-1991), as a wild card against the Marxist socialism of Eastern Europe.
Social democracy should not surprise us, because since the beginning of the First World War, the budget for the Army was approved in the German parliament. [It was] the same [army] that would kill workers and peasants of the other rival imperialist nations of Europe. That fact marked Rosa Luxemburg’s distance when she founded the Spartacus League, the germ of the German Communist Party, which would be hated by social democrats, ultranationalists and monarchists alike.
The German failure in the trenches, which showed the impossibility of the “confluence” project. It put the country on the verge of total civil war, with revolutionary forces ready to drive for power. However, years of social-democratic government and conservative trade unions that agreed with the existing powers prevented the necessary unity of action.
A poster placed in every corner of Berlin appealed, in those hungry early morning hours of December 1918: “Whoever wants bread, let him bring the head of Rosa Luxemburg”. The black legend of Nazism began by blaming the revolutionary socialists for national disaster, as it would later do with the Jews. Worst of all, this poster was sent to hang by the president of the Republic and leader of the social democratic party, Rosa’s former comrade.
Days later, a group of Freikcorps (antecedents of the Nazi SS assault troops) advanced on a lonely 47-year-old woman, who had her skull smashed with rifle butts, and then threw her blood-dripping body into a Berlin canal. A Spartacist comrade sent an obituary to Lenin, leader of Bolshevik Russia, saying that she “took her revolutionary condition to the extreme.’
The Rose was uprooted, but not hope, much less History.
Banish Indiscipline, Mobilize Consciousness
Banish Indiscipline, Mobilize Consciousness
Putting indiscipline at bay is not only necessary, but imperative. Let us integrate that team called consciousness, which demands shame and good judgement.
By Madeleine Sautié | madeleine@granma.cu
August 3, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Image by Bansky
There was a day when Havana, still in the early stages of the pandemic’s de-escalation, awoke to the happy news that no new positive cases were being reported. Spirits, then, shot up, since the expected zero marked the result of a country’s enormous effort, say, among many workers, that of its doctors, in the first place.
Today, the faces are not the same, and concern is growing at the same time as the numbers and the courage to give so much. Unforgivable are the failures which, due to irresponsibility and disbelief, have modified the results we’ve achieved. Example: insolent disregard for a health system and the management of the Cuban state, applauded for the efficiency of its task, even by those who insist on seeing the erasures in an increasingly admirable health scenario.
Then comes the “must do”, the “have to take action”, as if banishing disobedience was only the business of a few. It is no secret that the legal provisions and police authorities have – as they have done from day one – a great weight in the fulfillment of the guidelines.
However, it is unthinkable that the solution lies only in the application of fines or in ensuring that the law enforcement officers are where every [act of] indiscipline is. It is enough to look out on the balcony, or to walk through our streets, to see, in a perfectly peaceful environment, where the police do not have to be, two or three people talking, one almost on top of the other, without nasobucos! -Will there really be a policeman for each of these cases?
There are two sides to this. On the first side, there are those who protect themselves and their family, compañeros and neighbors through good hygiene practices and distance, those who contribute to the dissipation of the virus; those who reverence with discipline the vigilance of the health personnel and value the happiness of living in Cuba, when the world suffers daily from overwhelming scenes.
The others, the ones who barely inform themselves, the irreverent ones who are aware of their own danger and that of the others; the ones who allow themselves to be spoken to from upstairs, and without nasobucos; the ones who know how to be attended to if the virus knocks on their door; the ones who are more bored than anyone else, who need to attend the party that another sorry person prepares.
Putting indiscipline at bay is not only necessary, but imperative. Let’s join that team called conscience, which calls for [both] shame and sanity.
Cimex Closes Ranks Against Coleros
Cimex Closes Ranks Against Coleros, Resales and Hoarding
By Yaditza del Sol González
August 3, 2020
The Cimex Corporation has designed a series of supervision and control measures to confront resellers and hoarders, among which is the provision of supervisors to commercial units with sale of products that generate hoarding behaviors
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
From hand to hand, like a chain, prices are multiplied to the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Photo: Osval
There have been many warning calls on the subject because, when it comes to coleros, resellers and hoarders, we are in the presence of a problem that affects almost all of us and undermines the efforts that the country is making to guarantee the population basic items, in the midst of a complex economic situation.
It is almost always the same faces, which repeat over and over again in the waiting lines, and end up buying three or four times what should have been a single purchase, and then reselling that merchandise at an exorbitant price. Then there are those who mark and sell the shifts and shamelessly profit from the need of others.
The subject even takes on other nuances, if we talk about those who go directly to the sales floor or warehouse, without waiting, and avail themselves of dissimilar items -frequently the most demanded items such as food and toiletries- and pay at the checkout without there being any regulation of their purchase. Of course, this is always done in complicity with some staff of the establishment itself.
Other examples and situations could be used in this way, but in the end the bill is the same: it is an illegal activity, which must be stopped without any passivity. However, for this to happen, it is not enough just for the population to denounce it, it is also necessary for the forces of law and order to act, and above all, for the shops and businesses where these events take place.
For this purpose, the Cimex Corporation has designed a series of supervision and control measures to confront resellers and hoarders, among which is the provision of supervisors to commercial units with sale of products that generate hoarding behaviors.
Likewise, it was determined to apply integral controls to branches and territorial complexes with demands and complaints from the population, as well as the training of personnel working directly in commercial units and administrative areas, according to information published by Cimex i\on its Facebook account.
On the other hand, it is forbidden in retail marketing to reserve shifts and goods in sales and warehouse floors for customers, to sell goods outside the established hours in the units, to disclose any information about the products in the warehouse and the internal working procedures, and to receive goods without the corresponding invoices.
Failure to apply price circulars in a timely manner, selling items to customers with blank properties and warranties and without the presentation of an identity card, and the purchase by workers of products in the commercial units where they work are also part of the prohibitions applied.
LETTERS: Unedited machine translation
José Luis said:
1
4 August 2020
03:02:47
As a Cuban, a patriot and a revolutionary, I say the following: we continue to beat around the bush. These measures are more of the same. They will not solve anything as long as the macabre mechanism of the colors is perfectly greased for years. Colero-store-warehouses-retailers. Everyone communicates, calls each other on the phone, receives commissions and a long list well known by the people and the authorities themselves. What do I propose? In view of the current situation, so serious that the country is going through from the economic point of view, with a coronavirus, blockade, etc., cholero, store workers, etc., that their participation in these acts of CORRUPTION, which has no other name because of its profound damage to the social fabric, to the people, be proven, sanctions of more than 10,000 Cuban pesos and/or a minimum of 2 years in prison, WITH INTERNATION. It is over.
LICF responded:
August 6th, 2020
09:10:50
I am a salaried worker, although with a decent salary, I never go to a line because everything is sold during working hours. And my 73-year-old mother, although apparently strong, where I detected diabetes a few years ago, sometimes goes to the queues. By necessity not by choice I agree with you: (Colero-store-stores-retailers) you have to act, but he lacked that all the staff of the store or establishment also wet with the mojito. That is, with the dividends. But I do not agree with the statement: “they say they are going to kill everyone who drinks aguardiente, it is a good thing that they are going to leave Cuba without people”. If I ever hear that phrase or a similar one, I should think that many of those coleros have no work relationship and therefore live off that commission, then I would better say or advise the country’s top management to place them all in agriculture, whether they are coleros of working age, salesmen and storekeepers, and why not managers and administrators who allow this, that and the other. As there will be food in Cuba if this is implemented. I believe that work in agriculture will teach them and give them a chance to claim their rights.
Mila said:
2
4 August 2020
05:23:50
Have you already forgotten about e-commerce? In the midst of the resurgence that is emerging e-commerce is no longer mentioned and no longer exists, on the platform tuenvio and there is never anything and in the delivery of Havana 1 month ago the stores do not open, those who can not make endless queues and resolved to buy by that route can no longer do so. Can anyone explain what is happening?
jrosell said:
3
4 August 2020
06:52:38
It should also analyze the delays in dispatching the products, prioritize the sale of the most demanded, enable the largest number of boxes to speed up the dispatches, comply with the schedules for the start of work, speed up the dispatches from the stores to the points of sale, give priority and follow up the use of the POS by the administrations, eliminate the request for the identity card to make the payment by card (these have the personal data in the banks), look for alternatives so that the queues are not so many hours under the sun, among others.
augusto said:
4
4 August 2020
08:12:28
These are the real culprits of the misery that our people are suffering, the sluts and resellers, by giving them a hard blow we will solve all the problems.
José Manuel Alcalde Lanuza answered:
August 6th, 2020
08:06:21
The basic problem is scarcity. If there were no shortage, there would be no resellers. They are an effect, not the cause.
Lina answered:
August 7, 2020
02:54:20
They are the guilty ones, besides the workers of the store who warn them about the products and keep the goods for them.
Oscar Ramos Isla said:
5
4 August 2020
08:22:07
The control does not depend on the situation caused by the coronavirus or any other abnormality. The control is permanent because that is where the quality of the services and the gratitude of the customers are obtained.
Oscar Ramos Isla said:
6
4 August 2020
08:31:05
Technologies can be the perfect ally for resellers not to take advantage of the needs of the Cuban people.
LICF responded:
August 6, 2020
09:32:24
Identity card in hand national database means interconnected between them and a software programmed for when a citizen buys here today tomorrow in another store wherever it is within our island the system will give him denied until the next 1, 2 or 3 months depending on their acquisition also in that database can be implemented the number of supply book to which they belong and according to the amount of consumers would be the amount of product to purchase. Think that I am not eternal and perhaps one day I will be infarmed with so many irregularities in the system.
Anabel-pinar said:
7
4 August 2020
08:56:37
It’s about time! Here in Pinar del Rio until mid-June we used the supply notebook to control the purchase of products, and the truth is that it had a 99% acceptance rate, since we entered phase 1 and eliminated that way it has been a chaos, the coleros have their stores, they do not move to others and even if you arrive early you will always be above 100. It is incredible how many times you ask some worker for the products that are expected to see if you are interested and “they never know” ahhhhh look for the first ones in the queue that even prices know; these measures are very good, I just think that they should be changing the supervisors because in the long run… They can fall into the same vicious circle. They need to uproot this and design tougher measures and laws against them.
ANA said:
8
4 August 2020
08:57:03
Good morning, this topic makes me feel important in the effort that the country is making in the economic plan, on the other hand, I work until 6 pm in Havana, where there is a regular store known as “Los Frailes”, IT HAPPENS THAT THE MERCHANDISE ARRIVES, AFTER 2 HOURS, IF HE UNDERSTANDS THAT DAY THE CHARACTER WHO GIVES THE TICKETS, HE DOES OR NOT, THIS CAUSES THAT AFTER 2 HOURS THERE WAS GATHERED WHAT IS MOST VALUABLE AND SHINES FROM THE OLD HAVANA, THIS IS ALLOWED BY THE STAFF OF THAT DISASTROUS STORE, WHICH MAKES HOARDING A DIARY IN THOSE CHARACTERS. IT IS THE MANAGEMENT OF THE STORE, THE GOVERNMENT OF HAVANA, AND THE POLICE WHO ONLY SHOW UP IF SOMEONE CALLS, WHO IS GIVING THE POSSIBILITY THAT THESE UNFORTUNATE EVENTS OCCUR.
arelys hernandez alaonso said:
9
4 August 2020
09:04:04
Good morning I think it would be good to publish a phone number to call to inform the place that this is happening. It is the only way to end with these who do not work because most do not work live from it.
Elizabeth Cruz said:
10
4 August 2020
09:07:32
I’m not a Cimex worker, but I have a doubt: if workers can’t buy in the store where they work, how can they manage to acquire the products they need so much, if they stay all day working?
Leanny said:
11
4 August 2020
09:11:08
Very good measures that could facilitate access to products in these stores and in others to the ordinary people. But I would like to give 1 observation, because the chain insists in affecting its workers, as it is possible that a worker cannot buy in his work place the products that he needs for his house (I insist for his house, without hoarding or another type of corruption action) that for me is to throw away the couch, I believe that it would be beneficial for its workers who many times work in unsatisfactory conditions, lack of air conditioning in shops that are designed to work with them and they are only informed que¨ there is no budget for reparaciones¨, many times there is a lack of workers to cover the staff, they have carried out their functions in the middle of a pandemic without being provided with means of protection or at least not in the necessary quantities, etc. , because prohibiting them from buying (regulated) what they need (or they are not citizens of this country of ours). Greetings.
jrosell said:
12
4 August 2020
09:29:15
They should also close ranks with store administrations to improve treatment, improve salaries, be more efficient, educate and use technology to speed up payments and queues.
mili said:
13
4 August 2020
09:48:37
Really the coleros and resellers are a worse pandemic than the covid. But we allow it, because in a queue everyone knows who is for what from the dispatcher to the policeman guarding the queue and we let them in. Cuba is a unique country in many things from the health and education benefits, etc. to the coleros and resellers, which we know are a plague for which there is no insept for the moment. And as a unique country we have to act, we are the only country that has a supply card, why don’t we use it? Among the people around me at work, my neighbors, in the streets, everybody is asking for it, because not now that this pandemic has affected the whole world, since before, since always, the one who works is at a total disadvantage with the one who does not work, the one who goes out to work from Monday to Friday at 6 or 7 in the morning and comes back at 5 or 6 in the afternoon, how does he stock up on what is necessary? But now that everything is supplied by the snacks, it is a problem with no solution, because you have to be on the street and to buy a simple soap or detergent package of which you can not do without sometimes sadly you have to resort to resellers, because the one who does not work has all the time to make the queue, in my modest opinion if we normalize the products of first need, where are they going to resell? Let us not deceive ourselves that in this beautiful country which I love and will always defend, everything is known and everything is possible.
Lad said:
14
4 August 2020
09:54:57
Very good measures. But I think the measure that workers cannot buy where they work is exaggerated. That should stimulate a lot the work taking into account that they don’t have good salaries unlike many people think. To that you add that most of them work 3 days and rest one. Seriously, that day is going to be spent looking for supplies. The most responsible for the store workers to hoard are the managers and salesmen who allow them to do so. Those who think otherwise do not know how a store works. Pq when the manager is right there is no invention.
Rodolfo Rodriguez said:
15
4 August 2020
10:01:05
At last there is a plan from the state side to control the illicit business, which as they say also happens inside the store with the conspiracy of the employees. On the other hand, in Holguin, village brigades have been formed to fight the coleros. The coleros from inside and outside are nothing but vile criminals who take advantage of the situation of shortage that the people suffer and create chaos. They are enemies of the people and as such they must be treated with the maximum rigor of the law and above all those from within.
JOSE CARLOS GARCIA JACOMINO said:
16
4 August 2020
10:47:10
NOW THEY NEED TO COMPLY… THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT MONTHS AGO.
Zulema said:
17
4 August 2020
10:46:51
I thought all that was forbidden since many years ago!
hgm He answered:
August 4, 2020
15:27:36
Of course it is long suspended, in fact it is in the regulations of the cimex, as the supervisors do that work systematically, it is not new
Georgina said:
18
4 August 2020
10:58:45
All this is very good and it’s time to finish with what is doing so much damage to the town, I want to take this opportunity to highlight the work of the organizers of the queue of The Rock, on Sunday I went at 6 and 15 and they were already giving shifts, I took the 51 and went home, returned at 9, began a little late 9 and 25 and at 10 and 5 I went with my package of breast seemed incredible to see those young people as they had everything under control, No fuss, no muss, no mess, everyone in place with their nasobuco and everything super fast, but in Gy 25 you can’t buy anything there, those who organize favor the mess because (at the entrance of the store, far from where you make the queue) accumulate elderly people, Others who say they have treatment for cancer or that they are operated on, in short, another line that causes displeasure and encourages those who have no scruples to slip in and make fun of other old people who get up early and mark their lines, there is always a riot and even the police do not keep their distance and pray, I say this so that they take into account and take measures as in other places, They also treat the people badly when they complain and on one occasion a black woman who supposedly organizes told a lady that she had asked for something to drink a cup of chlorine, hopefully they will put young people like those of La Roca in that place, the neighbors and population that we cannot buy in spite of living in front of it we will be grateful.
Elena said:
19
4 August 2020
10:59:17
I believe that we must continue to close ranks, because it is difficult to end the evil from the roots, now for example they have taken over Tuenvío.cu, it is simply impossible to access the network, only a small group of chosen people can do it.
Angel Rodolfo Diaz Cadalso said:
20
4 August 2020
11:09:40
The streets belong to the revolutionaries, the country belongs to the true Cubans and we cannot allow unscrupulous elements to pretend to profit from the needs of the population. If anything can be done in Cuba, it is to fight in an organized way all the germs that attempt against the social welfare. We are an organized people, with a single party and a government with its ear to the ground supported by all the revolutionaries who number in the millions. The unity of our people makes us invincible. We will resist and we will win. We are Cuba, we are continuity. Always until victory.
Our Women
Our Women
In keeping with these times, more than 130,000 women have joined the urban agriculture movement and the medical brigades that have gone out to fight the pandemic in other nations, 61% of whom are women.
By Yenia Silva Correa
August 5, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Rodríguez Robleda, José Raúl
From economic and productive work, continuation of the work to support the fight against the pandemic and stops to pay homage and recognition, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) is promoting a group of activities to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the organization, which will take place on August 23.
With strict adherence to the health measures required by the complex epidemiological situation caused by COVID-19, it was reported this Tuesday, through a press conference, that the program on the occasion of the event will have the communities as its setting.
Teresa Amarelle Boué, Secretary General of the organization and member of the Political Bureau, reminded [everyone] that the main challenge that the new coronavirus represents today does not diminish the protagonist [leading role, wl] of Cuban women in the other challenges they lead. These include “maintaining what has been conquered in terms of gender equality, that there are no setbacks in the midst of the new forms of economic management that the country is promoting, the situation of the aging population and how to perfect the protocols of action to confront gender violence in our country.”
JOY AT NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
Excited, after the news of being the vanguard of the country, the FMC of Santiago de Cuba dedicated to the FMC’s founder, Vilma Espín, the condition received.
“We could not go to Segundo Frente, to pay her any other tribute than this one, obtained in the midst of the current complexity”, declared Elena Castillo Rodríguez, provincial secretary.
In addition to the leading role played on the health front, she highlighted the massive incorporation of food production in agriculture and on industrial estates, the demand for discipline in public spaces, the active promotion of electricity saving, and the implementation of more than a hundred training programs for women who are not working.
George Stinney, Condemned
George Stinney, the Boy Condemned to the Electric Chair
George Junius Stinney Jr. was convicted in March 1944 of the murder of the two girls, ages 11 and 8, in a speedy trial by a jury of white men. George was executed in the electric chair on June 16 of that year.
By Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
August 4, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
George Junius Stinney Jr: was convicted in March 1944 for the murder of two girls aged 11 and eight Photo: ABC
A boy looks scared into the camera of the Clarendon police photographer. After long hours of brutal interrogation, he had just confessed to a crime he had not commit.
Whoever pressed the shutter of the camera captured the pure image of fear and innocence; George Stinney’s police photo is not just any photo.
Stinney was a boy from Alcolu, Clarendon, a small town in South Carolina. His life was the life, you might say, of an African-American boy in that region.
George was tending the family’s cows with his sister Amie that day when two white girls, Mary Emma Thames and Betty June Binnicker, approached them to ask about some medicinal plants they were looking for. George and Amie did not know the plants, so the girls went on their way.
Hours after the meeting, the girls’ parents, concerned, went out to look for them. George offered to help when they passed by his family’s farm and told the parents about the conversation he had with the girls.
The bodies of the girls were found near a Missionary Baptist church, showed signs of sexual abuse and had been killed using a 25 kg wood.
The police arrested George and took him in for questioning, in a process that involved many irregularities, physical abuse and psychological torture. The child was not represented by any lawyer and was not allowed the company of his parents, despite being a minor, he was only 14 years old.
They said that he had confessed to the crime, but no evidence of the confession was ever produced, it was the word of the police against that of the black child. His sister–witnessing that Stinney had been with her all afternoon, so she could not commit the crime–was threatened and harassed, so she had to flee the area in the face of the real possibility of being lynched, as some villagers had promised to do.
George Junius Stinney Jr. was convicted in March 1944 of the murder of the two girls, aged 11 and 8, in a speedy trial by a jury of white people. George was executed in the electric chair on June 16 of that year.
In 2014 the case was reviewed and justice ruled that the boy had not received a fair trial and he was found not guilty. The problem is that this verdict came 70 years too late.
Palo Alto, an Unreleased Monk Album
Palo Alto, an Unreleased Album by Thelonious Monk Will be Presented on July 31
The musician is considered one of the revolutionaries and geniuses of post-World War II jazz music.
By Ricardo Alonso Venereo
July 29, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Album cover Photo: Taken from the Internet
Palo Alto, an unreleased album by American jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk (Rock Mounty, 1920 – Weehawken, 1982) will be presented next July 31, on digital platforms, 52 years after his songs were actually recorded in a concert that the artist gave in 1968 in a high school in the city of Palo Alto, California, which at the time, helped “temporarily unite a city divided by racism.”
Coincidentally, the release of the album, which under the label ¡Impulse! Universal Music, will also be released on CD and vinyl. (The latter in a special edition that will include a replica of the original poster and handheld program.). It had been scheduled to be released before the current epidemiological situation in the world. It serves to show us today how identical some things are to 1968, the year of the assassination of Black leader Martin Luther King and when racial conflicts between whites and Blacks stirred up American society at the time.
“With Palo Alto, Monk’s music once again becomes balm for a wounded society that resists understanding that we all vibrate to the same beat and rhythm,” says the important Californian cultural promoter Danny Scher, This album is largely due to the current atmosphere in that country as a result of the death of the African-American George Floyd.
“The performance is one of the best recordings I’ve ever heard of Thelonious,” said T.S. Monk, son of the star, after listening to the recording that,15 years ago ,Danny Scher found, and which he put in his hands through saxophonist Jimmy Heath. He was one of the greats of the be-bop era, after he finished producing an unreleased album by Monk and Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in 2005.
The pianist with tenor saxophone Charlie Rouse, one of the members of his quartet Photo: Taken from the Internet
Although it is acknowledged that Monk’s best performances have always been live, it is also stated that there are numerous documented concerts and tours of the pianist, which are of great value and this recording is an example of this. Here the band really sounds very relaxed and inspired, but also because this era of Monk in concert is not particularly documented, which makes this album the last official live performance of Monk’s classic quartet with Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley.
It is claimed that when this concert took place the group had just recorded the legendary album Underground and the band’s days were about to come to an end, but in 1968 they were still sounding full of life, starting with Charlie Rouse, who plays superb solos in this concert. Gales and Riley also shine with their own light. And, of course, Monk, who among other pearls leaves here a version of Don’t Blame Me, truly anthological.
Other themes collected in Palo Alto are Don’t Blame Me and Ruby My Dear; the dynamic and lively Well You Needn’t, at 13 minutes and with solos by all the components or the abrupt end with Rudy Vallée’s classic: I Love You (Sweetheart of All My Dreams).
The magnificent human story behind this album, only 47 minutes long, is profusely detailed in the excellent notes signed by Monk’s biographer, Robin G. Kelley.
Thelonious Monk is considered one of the revolutionaries and geniuses of post-World War II jazz music.
I’m Not Who You Think
spectator’s chronicle
I’m Not Who You Think
By Rolando Pérez Betancourt
July 12, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
After 35 years of sustained triumphs in various films, French actress Juliette Binoche is once again shining in her latest film, which will soon be shown on Cubavisión.
I’m Not Who You Think (Safy Nebbou, 2019) is the story of a divorced, 50-year-old literature professor with two children who uses the tricks of Facebook to create a profile that turns her into an attractive 24-year-old blonde.
The causes and consequences of this change will be the main theme of this romantic drama with a thriller-like twist. It’s conceived in the midst of human relationships conditioned by technology and the masks that encourage so-called catfishing, or [creating a] non-existent identity in social networks with the aim of attracting unwary people.
In days of unbridled love passions on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, director Safy Nebbou waves the trump card of Binoche and squeezes it into the role of a middle-aged woman trapped in the obsession of feeling wanted. Why not fall in love with a young man much younger than she? And the protagonist embarks on the adventure, even if she ends up in the hands of a psychiatrist. This is a resource that is used from the beginning to weave the threads of the story in two stages and thus expose the intimate worlds of a woman who, after the divorce, was exposed to the risks of depression.
The film takes a critical look at the lies and manipulations of social networks and is a treat for viewers to reflect on issues such as the fear of growing old, the age difference when it comes to love, and whether it “looks good” for a mature woman to go crazy with love (and delude herself into madness), as she would have done in her twenties.
We will then see an exceptional Juliette Binoche fall silent, when a young lover tells her that she could well be her mother; chat in the solitude of her home, pretending to be the little girl she is not; fall into the chaos of uncertainty and moral collapse; shine like a sun and explode into childish euphoria when she feels wanted.
The film is all of her, and also a story of loneliness on days when it seems that everyone is connected.
Iván Cepeda: “Cuba was Impeccable”
Iván Cepeda: “Cuba as a Guarantor was Impeccable”
By Enrique Moreno Gimeranez
July 15, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Iván Cepeda Castro was representative to the House (2010-2014) and senator (2014-2018 and 2018-2022) for the Alternative Democratic Pole. From 2012 to 2016, he served as facilitator of the peace process between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and had similar responsibility in the dialogues between the executive and the National Liberation Army (ELN) between 2014 and 2018.
Iván Cepeda has dedicated himself to the defense of human rights and the search for peace in Colombia Photo: Juvenal Balán
For more than 20 years, he has devoted himself to the defense of human rights and the search for peace in Colombia. It has not been an easy road. Because of his work for justice for the victims in his nation, he has received countless threats against his life, had to remain in exile for several years and faced political persecution.
Iván Cepeda Castro is a man of principle who dreams and acts, as a citizen and a politician, for a better country. Representative to the House (2010-2014) and Senator (2014-2018 and 2018-2022) for the Alternative Democratic Pole, he served between 2012 and 2016 as a facilitator of the peace process between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and held similar responsibility in the dialogues between the executive and the National Liberation Army (ELN) between 2014 and 2018.
Therefore, his views acquire special relevance to deepen in several issues related to the peace process in his nation. He kindly responded to Granma on different topics of current Colombian politics, of notable regional and global interest, taking as a starting point his assessment of Cuba’s role during the dialogues between his country’s executive and the FARC-EP…[sic]
“In each and every circumstance, Cuba’s role was fundamental, decisive, indispensable, because it created the necessary environment and context for the dialogues. A role that has been especially careful, respectful at all times of the Colombian State and its government and, of course, also of the delegation of the FARC-EP. The role of guarantor has been carried out with scrupulous care to avoid crossing that line where one begins to intervene in the dialogues, to try to guide them, or to break the independence that each of the parties must have.
“Cuba’s work as guarantor was impeccable, both in contributing to the solution of the problems inherent to the talks, facilitating the dialogues, fundamentally the rapprochements at the most difficult moments of the debate that took place at the Table. Also, at the most critical moments, with events outside the talks, the dynamics of the confrontation that continued in the country and another series of issues such as the fierce opposition of sectors that were not prone to dialogue, arose in Colombia.
“In all those moments of tension, in all those moments of difficulty in which dialogue was in serious danger, the work of Cuba and also of Norway was definitive; both teams of guarantors dedicated to seeking, precisely, to resolve the problems. This has also been the case in the implementation of the agreement, in which Cuba – together with Norway and also the United Nations Verification Mission – has played a central role”.
-More recently, the Cuba also played the role of guarantor in the peace dialogue between the Colombian Government and the ELN. What is your opinion of Cuba’s role in this process?
-It has also been fundamental in the dialogue processes that have taken place in relation to the ELN. A process which has allowed, for the first time in the history of the rapprochement with the ELN, the concretion of a negotiation agenda and also the beginning of the development of the points contained in that agenda.
“Unfortunately, the current Colombian Government has not had a congruent attitude towards such an effort. It has ignored the role of Cuba as a guarantor country in this context, ignoring the Protocol of Rupture that had been adopted and denying, not only the specific role of Cuba as a guarantor country, but also the role of guarantors in general in any peace process.
“The attitude of the Colombian Government towards these dialogues and towards the specific episode of this protocol is an attack, an aggression against the principle of legality of peace dialogues in any circumstance”.
-A few voices in the current Colombian government have deployed a series of hostile actions against Cuba…
-The Government has not only ignored this debt of recognition and gratitude towards Cuba with regard to its contribution to the peace process but has also taken an openly hostile attitude towards Cuba’s role in the international context and, in particular, with regard to peace in Colombia.
“It is part of a conception of International Relations that this government has developed, totally folded and absolutely subordinated to the interests of a radical and extremist sector of the White House policy today and that, fundamentally, obeys the electoral dynamics and the debts that Donald Trump has with a Republican political sector in the state of Florida.
“This is what, unfortunately, has led Colombia to assume the sad role of a kind of battering ram in US policy towards Cuba, Venezuela and the region in general”.
-In this sense, among the latest events in his country is the arrival on Colombian soil of the U.S. Security Force Assistance Brigade.
-Colombia becomes the platform and the laboratory of an aggression policy of the current US Government towards countries in the region. It is evident that it is serving as a leading government in the policy of aggression towards Venezuela and Cuba. “We are now witnessing what is called this “by invitation” military intervention, that is, the presence of an elite brigade of the U.S. Army Southern Command in our territory. This could easily become a scenario of international confrontation, of a multinational nature, in which not only would Colombia and the U.S. military forces be involved against Venezuela, but also, eventually, in a confrontation with other world powers such as China and Russia. It is clear that this scenario is highly dangerous and the policy of the current Colombian Government is being applied to it.
-The work of the High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, was questioned by you and other legislators during a debate on Political Control in the Second Committee of the Senate at the beginning of June. Can you give us more details on this?
-We argued in the debate on Political Control that High Commissioner Miguel Ceballos has produced a radical transformation in the responsibility he has in the Government. He should be the official in charge of peace policy and we see that his entire management has been oriented precisely in the opposite direction: in generating obstacles, difficulties and problems to make the implementation of the Peace Agreement already achieved practically impossible. In addition, in preventing the development of a peace process with the ELN and, within that function, of course, in having contributed to the aggression against Cuba. In particular, having actively promoted, as he himself accepts, the inclusion of Cuba in the list of those called by the United States countries that do not cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
-On 15 June, you and other congressmen also welcomed, through a statement, the decision of the Government of Iván Duque to maintain and consolidate diplomatic relations with Cuba?
-It is very positive that, in statements made by government officials, the status of Cuba as a guarantor country has been ratified, but we consider that to be insufficient. The problem that generated the lack of knowledge of the Protocol of Rupture of the conversations with the ELN must be left resolved. So that work of Political Control, which we exercise as congressmen, is going to continue and we are going to develop new actions seeking that the Colombian Government responds in an integral and full way to its commitments.
– What actions could the Government of Iván Duque undertake in support of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace?
-The only way for the current Government to straighten out the course of the country, after such an erratic and unfortunate leadership as it has had in these two years, is to move towards a serious peace policy, which includes the full implementation of the Peace Agreement, the resumption of the dialogues with the ELN and the promotion of a radically different international policy, oriented towards cooperation, integration and towards that objective of making our region a Zone of Peace.
From the “Monkey Trial” to Our Times
From the “Monkey Trial” to Our Times
In July 1925, 95 years ago, in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” was held. It all began with the arrest of teacher John Scopes, who was accused of explaining to his high school students Darwin’s Origin of Species.
By Abel Prieto Jiménez
July 17, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The same irrational obstinacy of Darwin’s deniers reappears in Trump’s dismissive attitude towards science and scientists and in his erratic and criminal response to the pandemic. Photo: AFP
In July 1925, 95 years ago, in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” was held. It all began with the arrest of teacher John Scopes, who was accused of explaining to his high school students Darwin’s Origin of Species.
He had violated a Tennesee law that forbade “the teaching of any theory that denies man’s Divine Creation as it is in the Bible, and replaces it with the teaching that he is descended from an order of lower animals.”
Many local people demonstrated in the streets with signs and shouts in favor of their religious values and against Scopes and Darwin himself, whom they saw as representatives of the Devil.
From the caricatured simplification of the thesis of evolution (“we are descended from the monkey”), the name with which the trial passed into history was born. It received great publicity in its time and ended up being presented as a duel between two sides, “creationists” and “evolutionists”, and between two prestigious lawyers.
The press in the North showed the clash between a world view that was typical of “deep America”, closed in itself, rural, moralistic, anti-scientific, very religious, and another “free thinker”, open to the debate of ideas and the advances of science.
Scopes was finally found guilty; although he was only sentenced to pay a fine and did not go to prison, as the prosecutor and the extremist sectors of the people wanted.
A theatrical piece based on the trial was released years later, and from it several versions were made for film and television. The sympathies in these plays tend to be on the “liberal” side, although, as in the U.S. entertainment industry, there is no serious investigation into the real causes of the conflict.
Within the questionable and undemocratic US electoral system, “Deep America” contributed decisively, in 2016, to Trump’s victory.
In that space, more cultural than geographical, analysts locate the “hard” electoral base of the ultra-right, associated with the stereotype of the white, Protestant, sexist, homophobic, illiterate, racist, hunter and gun lover, attached to Republican politics, the most conservative morality and the traditional concept of the family. With an exalted and messianic image of his country, he lacks curiosity about universal culture and that which thrives in New York and other US cities with a cosmopolitan vocation.
Joe Bageant wrote an incisive, exceptional book, Chronicles of Deep America, in which he characterizes the scam of the Yankee model and denounces the decline of the Empire on a planet controlled by corporations. His description of “that provincial America,” inhabited by churchgoers who “fanatically listen to the pastor explain the infallibility of the Bible in relation to all known matters, from biology to baseball rules,” and “are not even able–and do not care much about–to put Iraq or France on the map, assuming they have one, is very valuable.
Many believe that Trump is addressing this hard core of voters most of the time, in his speeches, in his tweets, in his permanent show.
The same irrational obstinacy of Darwin’s deniers reappears in Trump’s dismissive attitude toward science and scientists and in his erratic and criminal response to the pandemic.
Trump has also exceeded the political use of the Bible. On June 1, he ordered the removal of anti-racist protesters to walk through a park to St. John’s Church and “hold up a Bible in front of the cameras, like some kind of championship trophy,” as one journalist ironically put it.
Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, said: “It was traumatic and deeply offensive. Something sacred was misused for a political gesture.
Last Friday, in Florida, at the Doral Jesus Church Worship Center, a refuge for terrorists, in a shameful rally where he avoided talking about the health catastrophe, Trump mixed internal and external enemies under the “caused” word socialism. The Democrats, he said, are standing alongside those who are knocking down statues. And he accused them of wanting to do the same with the statues of Jesus Christ.
An evangelical Christian of Cuban origin went so far as to say that Trump is “God’s chosen one” to stop the communist threat in the United States.
Let us remember that in the 2016 campaign this “chosen one” used inquisitorial language to refer to Sanders and Hillary Clinton: “He made a pact with the devil. She is the devil.” This is the kind of medieval insult used in 1925 by the people of Dayton to attack Scopes and Darwin.
The pandemonium virus
The pandemonium virus
Our greatest threat is not pandemic, but “pandemonium”. Among the meanings that appear in the Grande Dicionário Houaiss of Portuguese is the following: pandemonium is an “association of people to practice evil or to promote disorder and confusion”
Author: Frei Betto | internet@granma.cu
July 15, 2020 00:07:24
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Aerial view of tombs in el cementerio Nossa Senhora Aparecida, in Manaos, Brazil. Photo: AFP
The Brazilian news program prioritizes the advance of the pandemic and the ineffectiveness of the federal, state and municipal governments. Allegations of corruption, such as the purchase of overcharged respirators and misappropriation of public funds, follow one another. What each of us fears most, even those who for reasons of survival are forced to disregard confinement, is contracting the virus in a lethal way.
Is it true that our greatest threat of genocide is COVID-19?
I don’t think so. Our greatest threat is not pandemic, but “pandemonium”. Among the meanings that appear in the Grande Dicionário Houaiss of Portuguese is the following: pandemonium is an “association of people to practice evil or promote disorder and confusion”.
The main evil that threatens the Brazilian nation today is the government of Bolsonaro, who suffers from thanatomania, an obsession with death. A person suffering from phallic obsession embodied in weapons, who defends torture and exalts torturers and paramilitaries, certainly does not feel the slightest concern for the growing number of victims of the pandemic, whether 60 000 or 600 000, because she is psychologically blocked from warning the other. He only manages to see himself and the extent of himself, as his children.
It is the syndrome of depersonalization, a disorder that leads to insensitivity and makes feelings just work in the head, that is, one reasons about them without managing to experience them.
A person who likes to shoot so much and brags about his good aim doesn’t have to care about a wave of lethality, as long as he doesn’t get it. Since he cannot follow through on his manifest desire to “kill 30,000”, as he has said, he is pleased to see the number of dead multiplied daily by the COVID-19.
His only concern is that the pandemic will seriously affect the economy and, consequently, his chances of re-election, which psychologically can be understood as perpetuation. He acts as if he were invulnerable. He escaped an alleged stabbing attack, so it will not be a “crack” that will bring him down. That is why he does not respect confinement or social isolation, goes out on the streets without a mask, does not avoid crowds and does not care about personal detachment.
It is this sense of impunity and immunity that must have crossed Nero’s mind when he saw Rome devoured by fire. Hugging his lyre, he was convinced that the fire would not reach his palace.
More serious than the virus is this government negligence. Because, in addition to thousands of deaths from the pandemic, it produces victims of the economy: the 13 million unemployed and the 120 million Brazilians, of the 150 million over 16 years of age who earn less than two minimum wages a month. That’s not counting those who will be affected by the recession caused by COVID-19.
The “pandemonium” virus spreads the specter of symbolic death, by giving free rein to police violence and the arms trade; undermining culture and respect for human rights; weakening education; and encouraging deforestation and the invasion of indigenous lands.
This “pandemonium” virus, which lives in the Alvorada Palace and has been carrying out its lethal work since the Planalto, is the most serious threat to democracy and the Brazilian nation.