Granma 299
The CIA and hatred in the social networks
The CIA and hatred as a weapon in social networks
No one who, in the networks, opposes the patterns defended by their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. For this purpose, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morality and the dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
May 4, 2021 23:05:02 PM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Political Action Group (GAP), which is part of the Special Activities Center, a division of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), carries out, among other missions, analyses based on Big Data, processes profiles of subjects of interest and draws up action plans that are sent to the Internet Task Force, in charge of executing them.
Through Big Data, information is obtained that can be used for subversive work, it allows to better organize the forces to mobilize them in the fulfillment of a certain objective and, above all, through the micro-segmentation of the public, they manage, in a particular and specific way, the concerns of each neighborhood, of each family, of each person.
Enemy analysts can build models capable of predicting hidden attributes, including political preferences, sexual orientation, how much you trust the people you relate to, how strong those relationships are, all thanks to the information that users themselves upload to the networks.
In February 2018, following orientations of former President Donald Trump, the so-called Internet Task Force for Cuba or Internet Task Force for Subversion in Cuba was created, subordinated to the gap, which is the same as the CIA.
It is in charge of hiring the so-called netcenters, who execute the campaigns against Cuba, through the recruitment of specialists who, in turn, gather around them dozens of cyber-sicarii. They also have the mission of coordinating the actions of counterrevolutionary platforms and media, and of searching for collaborators on the island, among other tasks.
In cyberspace there is also a sordid specimen, feared by many, the hater. The term, imported from English, refers to those people who are dedicated to harass others through social networks.
They use their victims’ physical characteristics, sexual orientation, race, ideology or religion to carry out their harassment. They use the pain, fears and insecurities of those who take their claims seriously.
Some act out of fun, resentment or envy, but there are others who are true mercenaries, people hired to conduct smear campaigns or character assassinations. That is why they are called cybersicarii.
Character, civic or reputational assassination, as it is also named in the psychological warfare manuals of several intelligence agencies and organizations in the world, is part of the methods used by the US special services to destroy the adversaries of the empire.
The cyber-assassassin seeks to make the person subjected to the aggression feel helpless, think that he is not in control of the situation, wear himself out in useless defenses, become exhausted and try to isolate himself, to get as far away as possible from his harassers. The purpose is to make the victim try to justify herself publicly, and self-censure, which does not necessarily put an end to the attack, and may even intensify it.
They use repeated sending of offensive and insulting messages, highly intimidating, to a given individual, including threats of harm that make the person fear for their own safety; circulate rumors about someone, to break their reputation; manipulate digital materials, photos, recorded conversations, emails, steal passwords to impersonate identity; circulate fake news and cruel “gossip” about their victims; perform economic blackmail… Nothing, no matter how dehumanizing, stops the cia’s hired hands.
When multiple harassers participate in the act of cyberbullying, the action is called mobbing, and is part of the strategy against Cuban Internet users, especially public figures. Hundreds of trolls, digital hitmen, cyber-mercenaries, all trained and paid by the CIA, participate in the attacks, which are perfectly planned and scripted in the U.S. psychological warfare laboratories working for the Task Force.
Revolutionary leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, personalities from different areas of the social, cultural and political life of the country have been subjected to intense attacks of this type.
No one who, in the networks, opposes the bosses who defend their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. To this end, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morals and dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.
The CIA and hatred as a weapon
The CIA and hatred as a weapon in the social networks
No one who, in the networks, opposes the patterns defended by their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. For this purpose, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morality and the dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
May 4, 2021 23:05:02 PM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Political Action Group (GAP), which is part of the Special Activities Center, a division of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), carries out, among other missions, analyses based on Big Data, processes profiles of subjects of interest and draws up action plans that are sent to the Internet Task Force, in charge of executing them.
Through Big Data, information is obtained that can be used for subversive work, it allows them to better organize the forces to mobilize them in the fulfillment of a certain objective. Above all, through the micro-segmentation of the public, they manage, in a particular and specific way, the concerns of each neighborhood, of each family, of each person.
Enemy analysts can build models capable of predicting hidden attributes, including political preferences, sexual orientation, how much you trust the people you relate to, how strong those relationships are, all thanks to the information that users themselves upload to the networks.
In February 2018, following orientations of former President Donald Trump, the so-called Internet Task Force for Cuba or Internet Task Force for Subversion in Cuba was created, subordinated to the gap, which is the same as the CIA.
It is in charge of hiring the so-called netcenters, who execute the campaigns against Cuba, through the recruitment of specialists who, in turn, gather around them dozens of cyber-criminals. They also have the mission of coordinating the actions of counterrevolutionary platforms and media, and of searching for collaborators on the island, among other tasks.
In cyberspace, there is also a sordid specimen, feared by many, the hater. The term, imported from English, refers to those people who are dedicated to harass others through social networks.
They use their victims’ physical characteristics, sexual orientation, race, ideology or religion to carry out their harassment. They use the pain, fear and insecurities of those who take their claims seriously.
Some act out of fun, resentment or envy, but there are others who are true mercenaries, people hired to conduct smear campaigns or character assassinations. That is why they are called cybercriminals.
Character, civic or reputational assassination, as it is also named in the psychological warfare manuals of several intelligence agencies and organizations in the world, is part of the methods used by the US special services to destroy the adversaries of the empire.
The cyber-assassassin seeks to make the person subjected to the aggression feel helpless, think that they are not in control of the situation, wear themselves out in useless defenses, become exhausted and try to isolate themselves, to get as far away as possible from their harassers. The purpose is to make the victim try to justify themselves publicly, and self-censure, which does not necessarily put an end to the attack, and may even intensify it.
They use repeated sending of offensive and insulting messages, highly intimidating, to a given individual, including threats of harm that make the person fear for their own safety; circulate rumors about someone, to break their reputation; manipulate digital materials, photos, recorded conversations, emails, steal passwords to impersonate identity; circulate fake news and cruel “gossip” about their victims; perform economic blackmail… Nothing, no matter how dehumanizing, stops the CIA’s hired hands.
When multiple harassers participate in the act of cyberbullying, the action is called mobbing, and is part of the strategy against Cuban Internet users, especially public figures. Hundreds of trolls, digital hitmen, cyber-mercenaries, all trained and paid by the CIA, participate in the attacks, which are perfectly planned and scripted in the U.S. psychological warfare laboratories working for the Task Force.
Revolutionary leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, personalities from different areas of the social, cultural and political life of the country have been subjected to intense attacks of this type.
No one who, in the networks, opposes the bosses who defend their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. To this end, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morals and dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.
For March 8 (and beyond)
For March 8 (and beyond)
In what way and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and to project?
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
A friend of mine posts on her Facebook wall a comment in which she regrets what she considers to be an example of insufficient diversity in the images that, on the television screen, were used to present (and represent) Cuban women in the celebration of March 8. My friend is black, with a deeply dark skin tone.
Here’s a topic, I say to myself, and then I remember that years ago I wrote an article for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde about the transformations that -in terms of beauty standards- had taken place in the country since the years of my childhood.
The article focused on the perceptions and meanings of black people’s hair and hairstyle and, on this basis, proposed assessments in which racism and freedom, the hidden mechanisms of domination and the battles of the subjects in search of their real emancipation were confronted.
After that I wrote two other articles, which were not published at the time:. The first aimed to analyze the connections between obesity, beauty and social control; the other took as its motif the case of a woman in England who had announced on her personal website that she would stop shaving her legs and who – from then on – began to receive dozens (eventually hundreds) of denigrating messages, some of which contained threats to her physical integrity.
How and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and project? What participation do we have, even those of us who are willing to swear that we are not part of the process, in the infinite number of actions through which this “ideal” of what is supposedly feminine is molded?
This inevitably leads us to understand (and propose for debate) not only the responsibility in the production, distribution, control and consumption of images, but to lead us to a point where we are forced to ask ourselves: What have we done or do? What role do we play in the various forms and scenarios in which actions of micro-oppression of women are manifested?
Another friend tells me about the time when, at the exact moment of wearing a new dress for a night out she was looking forward to, she discovered -just as she arrived at the place- that the rush had made her mix up the ornaments and that she had put on two different earrings. She doesn’t know how much she taught me and I learned from her response when, contemplating her face in the mirror of a bathroom on-site, she said to herself: “it doesn’t matter: you are the fashion”.
I admire that way of not obeying the dictates of a codified norm, which pretends to define what you are in a perverse game, where visuality is supposed to make transparent the moral condition of the person and even her history itself. I admire that inner strength and will to self-affirmation.
A third friend uses her menstrual emissions, exactly that which, in a more evident way, transmits the “weakness” or “flaw” of the woman, to create -with that intimately personal matter- works of art. As in the previous example, the logic that presides over the action is that of the search for and expression of the most absolute freedom.
What is a woman, where is she, what are her limits, how is she represented/presented?
The face perfectly aligned with the Hellenic beauty patterns or the very dark skin accompanied by thick lips and a wide and flattened nose; the youthful figure that communicates agility and the other that moves with effort due to age; the straight hair, the implants, the straightening under the effect of keratin, the hair in the form of “afro”, in the so-called “carreritas” or in long and powerful “drelos”; the thin or overabundant, obese contour; the gesture of a dapper style or with a wider arc in the movement of the hands; the image of a “traditional” femininity (in which ideals of “fragility”, “delicacy” and “sensuality” prevail) or the reverse of the “masculinized” female, which is usually attributed to the lesbian; with tattoos, “piercings”, hair dyed in unusual colors (green, blue, orange): it’s all women.
Peasant women, highly skilled professionals, housewives, workers in an industry or construction site, we need images of the most extraordinary diversity possible to “refresh” our images and approach women, ask questions, get closer to their struggles, offer them solidarity and push together with them the limits of presence, representation and participation in new worlds.
And that is what a Revolution is: a new world.
I end with a personal story. A few years ago my children Kenneth, Karen and I got tattoos. On that occasion the one that my wife dreams of for herself was left pending: the Elvish word for FREE.
Tomasito, Between Books and Battles
Tomasito between books and battles
Tomás Fernández Robaina will receive the Distinction for National Culture today
Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu
March 4, 2021 23:03:32 PM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
One fine day, looking for proximity between home and work, Tomás Fernández Robaina left behind his job as an accountant in a light industry establishment and joined the José Martí National Library. That was not a simple job exchange, but a radical change of life, because it was the beginning of the parallel takeoff of a substantive work in Cuban bibliography, and in the historical research related to the African legacy in national culture and the fight against discrimination because of skin color.
On the verge of 80 years of existence, five and a half decades of which he has spent at the prestigious cultural institution, Tomasito inspires respect and admiration for the impetus and passion he puts into every intellectual endeavor.
Those qualities nurtured the construction of one of his exemplary contributions to the field of island librarianship: the General Index of Periodicals. It was the result,” he recalled, “of an analysis of the indexes that had traditionally been prepared in the Library after the Revolution. As Salvador Bueno’s assistant, looking for information for the work I had to do in view of the popular literacy campaign, I realized that finding information was not very easy, because it was necessary to register a large number of directories. There were so many indexes that had been compiled that we really had to find a new way. I envisioned the project in two ways: to consolidate all the contents of the indexes that had already been compiled, and to begin to compile a repository that would include the contents of all the periodicals that were emerging”.
Having been the compiler of the Bibliografía de estudios afroamericanos (1969) and the Bibliografía de temas afrocubanos (1986) allowed researchers, professors, students and readers in general to have valuable tools of knowledge, and in his personal case, to confront sources that would be extremely useful for monographs and essays.
In 1990, one of his most far-reaching and impactful works, El negro en Cuba 1902-1958, was published. Although the author modestly stated that he was limiting himself to offering notes for the history of the struggle against racial discrimination, the documentation provided and the judgments derived from it, as well as the punctual record of the milestones, turn this essay into an essential reading.
Tomasito’s publications also include Hablen paleros y santeros, Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas, Cuba: personalidades en el debate racial and Identidad afrocubana: cultura y nacionalidad.
A member of the Cuban Association of Librarians (Ascubi) and of the Association of Writers of UNEAC-he is one of the most resolute activists of the José Antonio Aponte Commission-, Tomasito maintains, as a currency, to share what he has, to stimulate the spiritual growth of the new generations and never stop fighting to complete the work of social justice of the Revolution, especially with regard to the conquest of the fullest equality.
Lies, foul language and unimportant things
THOUGHT
Lies, foul language and unimportant things (+Video)
When Trump won the elections for the U.S. presidency in November 2016, Diario de Cuba was among the media outlets that broadcast a video where several Cuban “opponents” show their euphoria over that “resounding victory”
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Illustration: Cubainformación
On the same day that the declarations of Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama were made public, announcing a path towards normalization between the United States and the uncomfortable neighbor located 90 miles from the Florida peninsula, the website Diario de Cuba published false news about the [supposed] sinking, by the Cuban government, of a ship in the bay of Matanzas.
Dozens of people who were emigrating to the U.S. were supposed to have died. In the midst of the announcement made by both presidents, the main information of that day, the “news” of Diario de Cuba passed without pain or glory to the history of falsehoods fabricated by a publication that, since its origin, has received several million dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for propaganda against the Cuban government.
The NED’s web page contains these figures, and the most recent one, published there, establishes the allocation for 2019 at $600,000. The nefarious role of the NED is not communist propaganda, even the not at all leftist newspaper The New York Times has established its condition as a screen for the CIA and its involvement in the financing of coups d’état in dozens of countries.
When Trump won the elections for the U.S. presidency in November 2016, Diario de Cuba was among the media that disseminated a video where several Cuban “opponents” show their euphoria for that “resounding victory”. Their words are eloquent:
(Trump) The man we need to get out of this whole situation (in Cuba).
We dragged all the communists with us.
In Cuba, almost all the people who suffer the consequences of the regime are happy (with Trump’s victory).
Women have suffered a lot during these two years of the reestablishment of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Obama, you are finally leaving.
It was very frustrating to see how the Obama administration was allowing the regime to gain space and leave the Cuban people and their demands aside.
We cannot do it alone (decide Cuba’s fate).
President Obama’s legacy regarding Cuba is not positive.
With the election of Trump, hopes are reborn in those who had lost them.
(With) the arrival of Trump to the White House we can rescue that ally we always had in the struggle for freedom in Cuba.
There is a magnificent juncture for all democratic actors in the region to have a unique triumph, which is to finally and totally overthrow the military dictatorship of the Castro brothers.
Now we have to work with those political actors who are thinking about a real democratization of Cuba.
Mario Díaz Balart, Carlos Curbelo, Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros, kisses, I love you all, gentlemen.
Congratulations from the bottom of my heart, and I say it with total joy, to the Cuban-American congressmen who are doing so much for the freedom of the Cuban people, I love you, I love you all so that you know and continue as you are going.
Such a background of the media, represented by one who wielded a cell phone in the face of the head of the Cuban Ministry of Culture, is a thing of no importance. Together with the correspondent, is shouting in his support someone who, against what he calls “pacification”. He has published in his social networks the need for a more economic blockade and a military intervention against Cuba. This is something that should not fail to be taken into account, because, more important is the way in which the Minister prevented the one paid by the NED from fulfilling his task: to weaken the Cuban position in any process of changing U.S. policy towards Havana, something Diario de Cuba has not ceased to advocate.
Those who say that a minister does not act like that in other countries are right. True: it is the police who “dialogues” -with clubs and water jets- against anyone who protests. Ultimately, it would be an escort who would undiplomatically put an end to any object unexpectedly placed in front of authority.
What would happen if the provocateur is paid by an agency historically associated with the efforts of a foreign government to change the current order in that country? One does not have to be very imaginative to imagine it, especially when every year journalists are murdered in double digits in the “democracies” around us.
That the libertarian correspondent insults, with all the repertoire of foul words in the Spanish language, the Minister that the private media system financed from abroad against Cuba has tried to lynch in the media, is not important either, much less if we take into account that, for this type of behavior, more than one rapper was sentenced to jail where Diario de Cuba has its headquarters: democratic Spain.
It is not very original either. The authorship of the insults belongs to another person who, in the 2016 video we mentioned before, was happy about the triumph of Trump and the anti-Cuban congressmen in Florida, exhibiting the emblem of the mercenary brigade 2506, defeated in Playa Girón, and requesting a tough hand with Cuba, precisely the one who expressed the tolerant phrase “We dragged all the communists”.
The correspondent of another media paid from the United States (ADN Cuba) acknowledges having received between $150 and $200 dollars for reporting from the Ministry of Culture on January 27, another unimportant thing.
This is who defends the model of free, democratic and independent press that Cuba must implement, nothing more: the yellow journalism that puts the superfluous in the foreground and hides the essential. Why be its unwitting victims, or worse, its accomplices, when what is really being demanded is not freedom of expression, but freedom for insults and lies turned into a business with foreign money?
Granma Explains Feminism
SUBHEAD
Feminism
My mother asks me, after reading something someone posted, what feminism is. I explain. She, who is 80 years old, looks at me, and before getting up from the armchair, she tells me in a casual tone: “Son, here, since 1959, we call it Revolution”.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Author: Ernesto Estévez Rams | internet@granma.cu
February 3, 2021 00:02:34 AM
She confessed to me several times that she danced rock ‘n’ roll. The white variant, which was the one that became popular in Cuba, that of Elvis Presley. When she told me that she danced rock ‘n’ roll, she meant that she used to get her hair disheveled dancing to that devil’s music. She spun around, jumped, was lifted up and thrown to land again to the rhythm of the music. A neighborhood policeman, intolerant and arrogant, came with a lemon in his hand, and made the men drop the lemon inside their pants to see if it would roll down one of their legs. If you didn’t fall, you were in trouble. For the ladies, a tape measure with a visible red mark. Measuring the length of the skirt above the knee, if it was below the scarlet line, you were in trouble. Those were times when you couldn’t talk much with the police.
At that time, she sewed with her mother and sisters to earn a living and took a course in interior design as a way to improve her skills. She was the face in the ECLO of an American food brand. Standing up, smiling, she showed the products and offered samples for consumers to taste the wonders of what was advertised. Her luck wasn’t the worst either. If she had been black, she was useless as an image. For those of black complexion, their lucky destiny was to be a maid, or a servant, whatever you prefer to call them.
Then the Revolution triumphed. She enlisted as a volunteer teacher and was a compañero of Conrado Benítez. Despite her youth and inexperience, she was put in charge of several boarding schools. They were entire neighborhoods converted into schools, once run by the bourgeoisie or their cronies. Now, a school for poor women, peasant women, urban women, humble women.
Her sister also enlisted as a literacy volunteer and became a literacy teacher. The other sister, the eldest, the same luck, and what luck! They became teachers, they taught. They learned. She, the director of the school, knew all of La Lisa, La Coronela, Playa. The houses of the officers of the defeated army became schools, she became the teacher of other women. In the photos, the microphone higher than her physical stature. Speaking, guiding, directing, raising her arm in harangue, waving her hand.
She was a delegate, president of the CDR, militia member, company leader, Party militant. She was white, she married a black man from Guantanamo. A black man who fought in the underground, a black man who became a university student. A black man who is still by her side today. He was a teacher, a cane cutter, a company leader, founder of the Party. And along the way, at some point, they had time to have children. They, the two of them, neighbors to anyone, not unlike so many others in the same place, in the same circumstances.
My mother asks me, after reading something someone posted, what is this feminism. I explain. She, 80 years old, looks at me, and before getting up from the armchair, she tells me in a casual tone: Son, here, since 1959, we call it Revolution.
Provocation in its Context
Provocation in its Context (+Video)
It is surprising how dates that have special significance in the collective imagination continue to be used to try to colonize our memory. There must be a limit to the lack of legality, responsibility and decorum with which some want to manage the affairs of the nation.
Author: Karima Oliva Bello | internet@granma.cu
February 1, 2021 01:02:44 AM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Ismael Batista Ramírez
The most recent events in front of the Ministry of Culture are not an expression of the violence of our State against young people with a critical stance, who want to dialogue, although this is how the anti-Revolutionary media present it. Instead, the events manifest the agenda of a group that, although it uses dialogue as a media façade, in reality assumes a frankly sabotaging attitude towards it. Dialogue, in this particular case, has not been the intention of the staging we have seen.
It is, rather, an unjustified siege of a Cuban institution (and its workers) that has created the conditions for dialogue to become viable. It is inscribed, with a markedly provocative character, within a dynamic of events that in recent times have been capitalized by known agents at the service of the outgoing U.S. government for the destabilization of the country, and the deployment of a coup d’état for political change in Cuba.
Two aspects are evidence of the opportunism with which the provocation was projected. In the first place, we are facing the most difficult moment since the pandemic began due to the number of daily infections, while the Cuban State is making commendable efforts to save lives, to create a vaccine that will allow us to be immunized as soon as possible and to carry forward, at the same time, a process of order that was necessary, but which creates a complex socio-economic context.
Secondly, these are acts of provocation that may further complicate the scenario of relations between Cuba and the United States, just at a time when a president has just taken office in the neighboring country who has declared his intention to review the current state of the aggressive policies of the previous administration, aimed at aggravating the economic blockade, genocidal violence perpetrated by the same people who pay some of the protagonists of the provocation we have just seen.
We invite you to weigh all these basic questions and to think about the violence that would be unleashed against our people if we were to allow the plans of those who wish to destabilize the country, assuming such irresponsible positions at a time like the present, to be carried out.
We are also facing facts that have an important symbolic connotation, we cannot ignore that they occurred on January 27, on the eve of another anniversary of the birth of our Apostle. It is surprising how dates that have special significance in the collective imagination continue to be used to try to colonize our memory. There must be a limit to the lack of legality, responsibility and decorum with which some want to manage the affairs of the nation.
Leni Riefenstahl and a final adjustment
Leni Riefenstahl and a final adjustment
Filmmaker Nina Gladitz did not rest in tracking down what she called the sinister side of what was once called “the eye of Hitler”
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Riefenstahl, pampered by Hitler. Photo: Taken from the Internet
“The search for beauty in the image, above all and of all”, was the pretext used by the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl every time she was reproached for having put her talent at the service of Nazism, and especially of Hitler, of whom she said in her memoirs (1987) that, after meeting him in a rally held in Berlin, 1932, “it was as if the earth opened up before me”.
Riefenstahl lived 101 years (1902-2003) and her actions have fueled a debate that involves art and ideology with the social and ethical responsibility of the artist.
Many did not forgive her fabricated naiveté to shake off a stigma that linked her to the crimes of Nazism, but there were those who extended a mantle of benevolence over her by arguing for the transcendence of her documentary, perfectionist and avant-garde work in German cinema.
Today, films such as The Triumph of the Will and Olympia are considered masterpieces of propaganda, based on a renovating formal aesthetic, taking into account the years in which they were conceived, and their capacity to transform reality into “ideological art”, if that is the concept for an ideology of extermination.
The first of these films turns the National Socialist [Nazi Party] Congress, held in Nuremberg in 1934, into an epic event of multitudes and leaders feverish with the word of a Hitler deified in images.
Olympia (1938) takes up again the fervor of the Führer for ancient Greece to link the 1936 Berlin Olympics with a symbolism of the Nazi racial myth, claiming that the proclaimed German civilization, superior in all respects, was the heir to an Aryan culture from classical antiquity.
“She is the only one of the stars who truly understands us”, Goebbels had said of the filmmaker in 1933, shortly after Hitler, a hardened film buff, signed her as the quintessential film diffuser of his party’s ideology.
The same Leni Riefenstahl, beautiful, willing, with a past that linked her to sports and snowy mountain climbing; also a dancer and actress who came to rival Greta Garbo in roles, was considered by Hitler an ideal of classic perfection. He put a lot of resources at her disposal and made her a pampered member of the group formed by the flower and cream of Berlin’s Nazism, who applauded her “neat and moving” style. And while there were those who spoke of a romance, she always denied it: “It wasn’t sexy, if it had been sexy, we would have naturally been lovers”. This did not prevent her from affirming, years later, that the triumph of Nazism had not been a political reaction, but the unusual adoration “of a unique leader”.
Riefenstahl managed to get Hitler to extend a high budget in 1940 to bring Tiefland (Lowland) to the screen, inspired by an opera (1903) by Eugen d’Albert that took place in Spain. The film would not be released until 1954 because, in addition to the author’s pedigree, there was something murky about it that had not been fully unraveled: Where had the gypsies from a concentration camp gone, since extras with a Mediterranean look were needed?
A murmur spread then: after the filming of Tiefland, those extras had been deported to Auschwitz.
Leni Riefenstahl, who after the war was investigated several times, subjected to four denazification processes, and finally exonerated under the ruling that she was only a “sympathizer” of the Nazis, protested against what she called slander and swore that she still had news, and even correspondence, with those gypsies.
In later years she would condemn the barbarism of which, she assured, she had witnessed nothing and used to reply to those who accused her: “my thing was art, to capture an era, a perception of ideology and not unrestricted support. Tell me, where is my fault, I did not throw atomic bombs, I have not denied anyone, where is my fault?”
In 1982, the gypsy nebula was brought to light in a television documentary by German filmmaker Nina Gladitz. The young filmmaker had located the descendants and they claimed that the director of Tiefland treated the extras like servants and then returned them to their origin, the Maxglan concentration camp in Austria, from where they were transferred, and killed, in the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
Leni complained to Gladitz, and although most of her allegations did not come to fruition, she came out saying that she had won the lawsuit. Her work had received by then a kind of rehabilitation, after the documentary Olympia had been shown, in 1972. When the filmmaker turned one hundred years old, she was, for many, more a legend admired for her technical and artistic contributions to cinema than a “circumstantial suspect” of having taken the symbols of Nazism to starry planes.
But the filmmaker Nina Gladitz did not rest in tracing what she called the sinister side of the woman who, at the time, had been called “the eye of Hitler”. A few days ago she published a book in which she exposes the complicity of Riefenstahl, and not only in “the artistic”. Documents show that 40 of the 53 gypsies were killed without the director doing anything to stop it, after having recruited them herself. Also, supported by archival materials, she reveals that the names of important collaborating filmmakers, such as Willy Zielke, who filmed the initial takes of Olympia (and ended up sterilized and mentally ill), were erased from her films, in addition to Leni interceding with Hitler’s top brass to prevent other filmmakers from filming; a behavior of which not a word had ever been said and in which she highlights -among other examples- the elimination of the credits, as co-director in Blue Light, of the Hungarian Béla Balázs.
According to Nina Gladitz’s book, the talented Willy Zielke was taken out of the asylum by Leni Riefenstahl with the aim of turning him into a prisoner-assistant. Shortly before the end of the war, she burned almost all the files she owned in the gardens of her villa. Judging by classified French intelligence materials reviewed by Gladitz, that fire included scenes of the destruction of a Jewish ghetto shot on Hitler’s orders, although no one knows if the film ever materialized.
A definitive adjustment then for the filmmaker who ran to film the Nazi invasion of Poland, where she was photographed in uniform, together with German soldiers and carrying a gun around her waist, and for whom, after the occupation of Paris, she wrote the following telegram to Hitler: “With indescribable joy, deeply moved and full of ardent gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your greatest victory and that of Germany, the entry of German troops into Paris. You surpass all that the human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving facts without parallel in the history of humanity. How can we ever thank you? Congratulating you is too little to express the feelings that move me.”
How was that cable possible, Leni Riefenstahl was once asked, and she, with the unheard of “naivety” that some people still use at times to alternate with their inexplicable ravings, replied: “Everyone thought the war was over, and in that spirit, I sent the cable.”
Family violence: new views
A MATTER OF LAW
Family violence: new views from the legal system
The new Family Code is one of the norms that should be born in line with the constitutional precepts regarding the approach to violence in this area
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
Myths about family violence are as old as each of its manifestations. And they are absolutely false.
That only physical assaults are expressions of violence, and that nothing else occurs in low-income households in marginal places, are some of the most common beliefs.
The reality, however, confirms daily, with sufficient eloquence, that violence can also be psychological, economic, patrimonial and can occur in all types of families, regardless of their economic or cultural level.
“She (or he) asked for it”, “jealousy is a manifestation of love”, “what happens in the family, good or bad, stays in the family”, “the letter with blood enters”, are also phrases that swell the bulky list of myths that, in the opinion of specialists, make the victim responsible, harm her perception of the abuse and neutralize her reaction and denunciation.
For Dr. Yamila González Ferrer, Vice President of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba (UNJC) and of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, “the Cuban Constitution gives the highest rank to the prevention and attention to violence in the family space”.
Both in this area (Art. 85), adds the also titular professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana, and in what refers to gender violence (Art. 43) and against children and adolescents (Art. 84 and 86), the 2019 Magna Carta is located in a remarkable place on a planetary scale in the constitutional approach to this issue.
The Law on Laws, specifically in Article 85, states that: “family violence, in any of its manifestations, is considered destructive of the persons involved, of families and of society, and is sanctioned by law”.
Such projection, González Ferrer considers, is comprehensive of the three scopes in which the violence in the familiar space affects negatively, and that cannot be lost sight of: the individual, the familiar one and the social one. In that same sense, the precept opens its protective fan to all the manifestations in which it can appear.
Nevertheless, the expert clarifies, “except in cases where its scope requires treatment in criminal proceedings, family violence does not usually generate any palpable legal consequence in Cuba today.
“Hence the need to promote the improvement of legal mechanisms and public policies, so that there is no impunity and the highest protection is provided to the victims”.
According to González Ferrer, it is necessary to elaborate new legal provisions and to modify or perfect other existing ones, not only in substantive family matters, but also in contractual, succession, procedural and criminal matters, so that it is possible to develop the constitutional postulates.
The new Family Code, therefore, is one of the norms that should be born tempered to the precepts of the Magna Carta as to the treatment of family violence, as well as to the protection against any of its manifestations.
THE ROOTS OF PAIN
Yamila González, who also coordinates the UNJC’s Gender Justice Project, insists on defining what family violence is, and what its causes and types are, because one must always know the phenomenon in order to face it and avoid it.
According to the professor, violence in family contexts is part of the network of violence that exists in society. It is, in turn, a universal phenomenon, with its concrete historical characteristics and the peculiarities of each family group; it is a social problem that has different causes and dimensions and encompasses all types of existing families.
The very patriarchal structure of the family, recognizes González Ferrer, “makes it one of the most violent social institutions, since it develops asymmetrical power relations through gender and generation, which are the guarantors of the legitimization and reproduction of the patriarchy as a system of domination”.
Based on its interdependence with the environment, “family violence must be understood as a process. It is not casual or established overnight, but has a painful path of formation, which is established in the family climate through an endless cycle of very harmful behaviors for human beings.”
In the opinion of the Vice President of the UNJC, violence is a cultural problem, not entirely legal, so it must act on the social, educational, cultural resources that make it possible, without disregarding the use of law as and when appropriate.
In conceptual terms, she emphasizes, “family or intra-family violence is that which occurs within the family. It refers to any form of abuse that occurs among its members, and implies an imbalance of power that is exercised from the strongest to the weakest”.
The expressions of family violence are the physical, psychic, moral, sexual, economic or patrimonial abuse, either by action or omission, direct or indirect, in which aggressors and victims maintain or have maintained couple relationships, as well as the one that takes place between relatives. The same treatment must be given to acts of this nature committed between people in cohabiting relationships.
In the words of the expert, there are three significant ways in which family violence is expressed, since in the patriarchal, hierarchical family, power is exercised along two fundamental lines: gender and generation.
GENDER VIOLENCE
It is a very particular type of violence, based on a patriarchal culture, rooted in the inequality of power between men and women. It is based on sexist stereotypes, which generate prejudice and lead to expressions of discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.
It can be physical, psychological, sexual, moral, symbolic, economic, or patrimonial, and has a negative impact on the enjoyment of rights, freedoms, and the integral well-being of people.
It occurs in family, work, school, political, cultural, and any other environment in society. Its most generalized, frequent and significant expression is that which occurs against women.
Nevertheless, gender violence against men exists, such as homophobia, for example, when they are attacked for having transgressed gender norms from the canons of hegemonic masculinity; or the mocking and questioning that those who assume co-responsibility for domestic tasks and the care of their children may receive and are then criticized by their relatives, co-workers, or friends.
VIOLENCE AGAINST THE ELDERLY AND THOSE WITH DISABILITIES
It is one that manifests itself against people because of aging, given the decrease in their physical and intellectual capacities, economic and social participation.
Its most common expressions are physical and emotional abandonment, hygienic, medical and food neglect, underestimation, financial and patrimonial manipulation, physical and verbal abuse.
VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
This is what happens with respect to children and adolescents because of their condition as developing persons. Even if it is not directly about them, it is considered direct violence because it affects the adequate development of their personality and the feeling of security and trust in those around them, with transcendence to their social life.
On this sensitive subject, some think that, in situations of violence within the family, if it is not about the person of the son or daughter, there is no significant level of affectation, when the damage derived from living in violent environments is severe for the integral development of their personality and with very negative consequences towards the future.
Whatever the nature of the conflicts, Gonzalez Ferrer says, “their solution should not be managed in a violent way but through communication and negotiation. There is an urgent need for education and a culture of peace, of respect for human rights, based on the need to learn to live and relate in harmony.
Domestic Terrorism?
Domestic Terrorism?
This is like saying “homemade terrorism,” almost always made for export, only this time the three cups of broth were in the halls of the U.S. Congress
January 18, 2021 00:01:54
Photo: Taken from the Internet
This is what Joe Biden called the occupation, by force, of the Capitol in the United States. This is like saying “homemade terrorism,” almost always made for export, only this time the three cups of broth were in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
But this act of “domestic terrorism” had an agitator: Donald Trump, the president who reluctantly leaves the White House chair.
After that disaster, he called them intruders. The fact is that they played their part, or left the script; they no longer serve the game of lies; the change in attitude reminds us of the scene of the president throwing rolls of toilet paper at a Puerto Rican crowd after a hurricane on that neighboring island.
And it all happens in a country that extends the Cesarean finger to give or take life, issue certificates of democracy, or make spurious lists of countries that sponsor terrorism. Now they have no other honorable way out than to tear up the nomination sheet and sign up first.
However, President Trump only uncorked the bottle full of old demons: one of the flags that was carried by the “domestic terrorists” carried the symbols of 19th century slavery and racism.
José Martí, who lived in that country for 15 years, observed with concern the division and hatred. He learned of a marriage that was stoned to death because it was a white woman married to a black man. He saw children selling newspapers in the cold of New York. He saw the struggles between Democrats and Republicans and the role of money in the elections. He felt with pain the separation between rich and poor, and the imperial appetites for devouring other peoples. He did not hesitate to affirm that the United States of America was not the model to follow for the emerging Republics of Our America, since that giant already had feet of clay.
When he prepared for the Necessary War, he knew that this one is not only for Cuba and Puerto Rico, but “to save the already doubtful honor of English America”. Martí was not only a revolutionary for Cubans, he is also a revolutionary for the American people.
The images of the assault on the seat of American democracy confirm the future of José Martí’s thinking, that which opens the door to the spirit of Lincoln and closes the way to the dangers of the adventurer Cutting, the ancient face of those who now feed the supremacy of some men over others.
Many of those who attack Cuba, and tear their clothes in the name of freedom, now keep a strange silence. They turn their faces away, as if this matter were of minor importance, something very domestic that does not deserve to raise its voice, much less to fill its head with ashes.
Only this time, from the pages of Don Quixote, an old certainty jumps out: “The truth thins, but does not break, and always walks on the lie like oil on water”. This is one of the realities that floats: the shamelessness of “domestic terrorism”, made in the very house of the empire.
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Assault on the Capitol: “democracy” in the U.S. again in question
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