Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
CNN journalist Jim Acosta is in the news because he had an incident with U.S. President Donald Trump during a press conference at the White House. Acosta first asked about President Donald Trump’s description of the caravan of Central American immigrants seeking to enter the United States as an “invasion”. Acosta accused Trump of demonizing them and in the exchange, a White House intern tried to remove the microphone but that time Acosta resisted and asked a second question about “the Russian investigation.”
As a result, Jim Acosta was expelled from the press conference and his White House credential was withdrawn. This has generated thousands of news dispatches. What none of those reports has remembered is that, when Jim Acosta was in Havana, “embedded” in the delegation headed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama who visited the island, he had another tense dialogue. That one was with Cuban leader Raul Castro, but no one tried to take his microphone or put him out of the room:
Jim Acosta: “Why do you have Cuban political prisoners and why don’t you release them?”
Raul Castro: “Give me the list of political prisoners now to release them. Or give me a list of names if there are political prisoners. And if there are those political prisoners, before nightfall they are going to be released.
Needless to say, Acosta did not turn in any lists, but no one expelled him from Cuba because of it.
CNN’s concern, and that of the American press in general, for political prisoners and liberties, and also its hostility toward Donald Trump, is a little selective. During his visit to Israel, which coincided with the numerous and harassed demonstrations by Palestinians in support of their prisoners in Israeli jails, nothing was asked of the Israeli President or said in those media about political prisoners in Israel.
As for the “invasion” of Central American emigrants, mainly Hondurans, neither Acosta nor CNN, nor any U.S. media has alluded to the responsibility of the United States for the state of poverty, social crisis and violence faced by the countries of the so-called Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras), who have been devastated by decades of dirty war and neoliberalism encouraged by Washington.
Particularly in the case of Honduras, when it began a path to address social needs, integrating into the education and health programs of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) was impacted in 2009 by the military coup that began the U.S. counteroffensive in Latin America aiming to re-establish its hegemony in the region. That was led by Barack Obama’s White House, who by the way has been the U.S. president who has deported more immigrants than any other in history.
In Honduras, 15 journalists were murdered after that coup supported by the United States.There is even a video in which the murder of an informant is ordered, after the uncomfortable question to a powerful businessman linked to the coup plotters (see 10:25 minutes of the documentary The Deadliest Place in the World for a Journalist: which has been on the Internet since October 2011), but neither Democrats nor Republicans demonstrated on the matter, much less CNN nor any US corporate media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=633&v=dvg1JcvC3KM
One thing that Trump, Jim Acosta, Barack Obama, CNN and all the “free press” agree on is that the United States, unlike Cuba, is a country with democracy and freedom of expression, but more and more common things happen there in the countries classified as “banana republics,” a term coined in his volume of stories Cabbages and Kings by the American writer O. Henry to refer to Honduras, something that is the result of repeated military interventions and economic looting, along with the export of violence, armed gangs and corruption, as well as the export of violence, armed gangs and corruption.
But what is happening in Trump’s United States, with scandals over the president’s relations with prostitutes, dismissals of officials for spurious motives, and even brothel owners who win elections even after death, surpasses novels like The Autumn of the Patriarch or the Resource of the Method. Of course, these are conclusions too deep to be told by Jim Acosta or CNN, and, if they were to be addressed, it would be to say that it is the exceptional result of the management of an irresponsible madman, never of a system where he sends the money and thanks to which a tycoon who runs a country as if it were his company was able to become President.
CubaNews translation edited by Walter Lippmann.
JANUARY 29, 2018 / from LA PUPILA INSOMNE
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Antonio Guerrero, a member of the group of comrades Heroes of the Republic known as The Five, referred in his Facebook profile to the post of Raul Capote on the same social network entitled “I AM IN THE CANDIDATURE”. It is not surprising that those who rushed to take advantage of the words of the wife of one of our heroes to attack the legitimacy of the ongoing electoral process in Cuba, against the intention of that comrade, now keep silent on both Tony’s words and those of another Hero of the Group of Five, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, which we published before.
“SELFISHNESS IS THE STAIN ON THE WORLD AND DISINTEREST ITS SUN ” JOSÉ MARTÍ
Capote, the last time we met I told you about my limitations to get into the networks [the internet]. I have read your writing and here I am trying to publish something. I AM ALSO AMONG THE CANDIDATES. “The well-told truth, said in time dissipates, as if they were smoke, its enemies.” And I continue with the Apostle. “The duty of a man is where he is most useful.” And “[it] must be fulfilled simply and naturally”. If everyone does their part “nothing can defeat us”.
And what I think is essential to Marti’s thoughts: “If I ever was of any use, I can’t remember: what I want is to be of more use”.
Eternal glory to our National Hero José Martí!
Fools like Silvio and his song.
Faithful always to Fidel and the Revolution.
EVER ONWARD TO VICTORY!
LONG LIVE FREE CUBA!
Words from Raúl Capote on his Facebook profile to which Tony refers:
In the candidacy for the ANPP there are those who have to be. There are the workers, the peasants, the students, the humble citizen and the brilliant professor, the heroes and the unknown, working men and women, the Chinese, the black, the mulatto, the white… a broad spectrum of Cuban society.
That the modest and unknown student, almost adolescent, is there, is good; that the peasant from way out in the mountain, the self-employed, our next-door men and women, women of the neighborhood, very, is very, very good.
There are the non-state sector, health, research, education, as well as the peasant and the cooperative member, workers of culture, the media, the military, sports, religious institutions and social organizations.
We are not going to vote for an assembly only of generals and doctors, there are the people, the free country represented in all its dignity.
Of the 605 Parliament candidates nominated on January 21, 47.4% are delegates from constituencies; therefore, all municipalities in the country will have representation in Parliament with at least two deputies, and one of them of municipal origin.
Women represent 53.22%, which places us as the second Parliament in the world with the largest female participation, “The vote of an entire people, of all the constant and visible entities of the Cuban people that can speak frankly, is an honor such that it anoints the one who receives it, cleanses his heart of the passions that could disturb him, and magnifies, as if by divine dispensation, the sworn forces over all the obligations of the earth, taking it to the first and foremost one: to build man a safe and decorous house on the independent soil of the homeland”. (Jose Marti)
Our democracy, new, sincere and truly popular, is based on Marti’s principle, With all and for the good of all; and it needs, given the danger of the greater war that is being waged against us, the unity of the revolutionaries. Such is the main legacy of Fidel, UNITY UNITY UNITY
Comrades all, let us all vote for all. I am also among the candidates, not in name but worthy and fully represented.
This is an English translation of a posting on Iroel Sanchez’ blog, La Pupila Insomne.
January 29, 2018
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
On Saturday, January 27, [2018] I posted a comment on Raúl Capote Fernández’s Facebook profile to which Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, replied as follows:
“Certainly, brother Iroel, anyone who has an honest opinion has the right to express it, but it’s outrageous to see the way some opportunists who never raised their voice in defense of The Five when it was most needed are now throwing up their hands in horror to ‘defend us’ by adding fuel to the fire…”
This was Gerardo’s reply to my comment:
“Right this minute I can’t but remember that the owner of the journal OnCuba described as ‘unfortunate’ musician Francis del Río’s demand of freedom for The Five on Miami television. ‘It’s like going to a synagogue to speak ill of the Jews”, the said owner remarked at the time, putting Southern Florida’s filthy media on a level with a temple, and stating the journal’s view that Alan Gross was the ‘U.S. contractor imprisoned in Cuba for acts against the law’—it could be assumed that he drove through the red light or a ‘Stop’ rather than being involved in U.S. Cuba policy of subversion. Our heroes, however, were serving ‘harsh sentences’—never unjust ones—‘because they were working for the Cuban State Security apparatus.”
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