Manuel E. Yepe 239
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
President Trump has ordered the NATO countries to increase their arms spending. The reasons for his insistence on doing so are becoming increasingly clear. It has nothing to do with any defense logic. After all, the Secretary-General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we do not see any imminent threat against a NATO ally”. Also, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that “at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20% lower than in 2016”.
Radio Free Europe, the US government’s anti-Russian station, reports repeatedly that Russia has reduced its defense spending.
It has been proven that Russia poses no threat to any NATO country. But even this is considered irrelevant in the context that US arms sales are flourishing and those who carry it out are being encouraged to increase and multiply their business.
On July 12, the second and final day of the recent meeting between the United States and NATO, the British news agency Reuters issued a categorical statement with a clear promotional orientation from Trump: “The United States produces by far the best military equipment in the world: the best planes, the best missiles, the best weapons, the best of all.”
The president then listed by name the major U.S. arms manufacturers: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman.
Trump proudly stated at the NATO conference that the United States has many rich countries as customers, “but we also have some not-so-rich countries and they ask me if they can buy US military equipment and if we can help them, and we tell them that we will help them a little. He added that “poorer countries that want to buy U.S. arms may not have to put cash into their purchases.
That single statement raised the prices of the shares of the three arms manufacturers named by Donald Trump and referred to in the previous paragraph by more than ten dollars.
The State Department, to boost the bonanza, made every effort to facilitate further U.S. arms sales by allowing arms manufacturers to bypass their checks and balances. These had been established to hamper the purchase of weapons from the United States by regimes considered to be of ill-repute in the world who want to buy weapons from the United States to put a fig leaf over some if some of its legal, moral and economic restrictions.
In fact, these regulations no longer apply. On July 13, the State Department announced new measures to “accelerate government approval of proposals from aerospace and defense companies,
Within European NATO, the biggest buyers of US arms are Poland, Romania, Great Britain and Greece, and the quantities involved are colossal.
The message to European NATO is that the US is making every effort to sell weapons and wants to make them see that there is scope to buy more of the “best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” that Trump has to offer.
As journalist Brian Cloughley defined it on July 30th on the Counterpunch and Strategic-Culture websites, “NATO’s gold mine is there to be exploited and, following Trump’s enthusiastic encouragement of the manufacturers of its weapons, it looks like the extraction will be effective. The U.S. Military Industrial Complex will benefit greatly from its President’s campaign to increase the number of weapons in the world.
Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, Director of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the Farnborough International Air Show on July 18 that “defense exports are good for our national security, good for our foreign policy… and good for our economic security. He then proposed that his agency reduce the transportation fees charged to foreign military customers, which would be an important stimulus to the sales of “the best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” so highly valued by Mr. Trump.
This officer, obviously a devoted follower of his President, followed his line of action with dedication, reminding the media that as they have said “administration and our leadership, economic security is national security.”
August 2, 2018.
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Many observers and U.S. allies calculated that in Helsinki President Trump had intended to achieve the re-establishment of a triangulation between the United States, Russia and China. And there were good reasons for that hypothesis.
At a 2015 press conference, Trump advocated the Hanry Kissinger line: keep Russia and China divided so that they can never unite against Washington.
On that occasion, Trump said: “…One of the worst things that can happen to the US is for Russia to get closer to China. We’ve let them join in with the big oil deals that are being made. That’s a horrible thing for our country. We’ve made them friends because of a incompetent leadership.”
In an essay published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on July 23rd signed by Alastair Crooke, a former M16 agent, and British diplomat, there is speculation that perhaps, in Helsinki, Trump was doing something a little less strategic and more realistic – something more along the lines of The Art of The Deal [Trump’s book].
According to Crooke, “Over the decades, we have developed a model of how “people are supposed to behave when they’re not in a good mood. presidents and in the process of policy formulation. Bush and Obama were fully driven through that process. But obviously, Trump doesn’t fit that model. Trump’s process follows the following order:
1) Identify a major target (tax cuts, trade, etc.) balanced trade, a wall, etc..
2) Identify the points of influence in front of anyone who stands in your way (elections, tariffs, jobs, etc.).
3) Announce any extreme threat aggression to your opponent.
4) If the opponent backs down, mitigate the threat, declare victory and come home with a win.
(5) If the opponent responds, Trump applies the principle of double or nothing.
6) Eventually, the escalation must lead to negotiations with the perception of a victory for Trump – even though this is more apparent than real.
If we frame the Helsinki meeting in the context of this perception of Art of the Deal, we get that the divergences of vision between Russia and the United States are so substantial that the common ground is small and there are very few prospects for an ‘overall strategic agreement’.
In fact, President Trump has little to offer Russia: sanctions relief is not in his power (but in Congress’s), and you could not renounce Ukraine, “even if Trump understood that the US and Europe made a bad buy with their coup d’état.”
According to the Russian journalist specializing in the conflict in Ukraine, Rostislav Ishchenko, “We have a situation where both sides, even before they negotiated, they knew they could not reach an agreement and neither could bes even prepared for such a thing (there was no provision for the signature of a document after the negotiations).
At the same time, both sides needed the event to be successful. Trump, obviously, is blackmailing the European Union with a possible agreement with Russia. But I’ll tell you what, Putin also needs to show Europe that there are other fish in the the sea besides them.”
Europe’s position is clear. Not by chance, Trump, in listing Washington’s enemies (the EU, China and Russia), made it clear that he considers Russia to be a smaller problem than the EU because there are practically no economic contradictions with Moscow.
The main “enemy” of the United States is not China, with whom the US has the largest negative trade balance, but the European Union, which Trump defined as the main commercial competitor and which obtains from the relationship with the United States many unjustified economic benefits through political agreements.
With this, Trump solves his political-military contradictions with Russia and, consequently, reduces the value of the EU as an ally of Washington to zero. Recently, after the NATO summit, Merkel began to speak out clearly about Trump’s hostility to Europe. She considers it unjustified because of how much Europe has fought against Russia for the benefit of the interests of the United States.
Europe, which, unlike China, has not dedicated itself to the diversification of its economic ties in the world and which seemed to depend on access to the U.S. market, is not prepared for a strong confrontation with the United States.
Without running the risk of getting ahead of Trump on the issue of the normalisation of relations with Russia, EU leaders were fatally afraid that Trump and Putin, despite the difficulties, might do the impossible and come to an agreement, because both of them proved to be prepared for decisions that could change the world’s destiny in an instant.
July 30, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
It’s Not Trump. It’s the Military-Industrial Complex
It’s Not Trump. It’s the Military-Industrial Complex
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
An interesting controversy has been sparked on the Internet. It’s being reproduced by the conservative publication The American Conservative (TAC), published in Washington DC, on the role of US President Donald Trump in the alleged rapprochement with Russia that culminated with his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Ultra-conservative lawyer and writer Bruce Fein, senior partner at Fein & DelValle, former deputy attorney general and general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission during Reagan’s presidency, assesses Trump’s merits in defending the most reactionary positions and their contradictions with those of Putin:
“President Donald Trump has strengthened, not weakened, U.S. military and economic opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This situation has not been properly clarified and is of the utmost importance. Regardless of the triumphs Trump claims over NATO or Vladimir Putin, the Military-Industrial Counter-Terrorism complex (MICC) governs U.S.-Russian ties as it has for seven decades. The nightmare of the MICC is not to lose a friend, but to lose an enemy, says Fein.
“False information is obsessed with personalities. Authentic information assumes that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, but only permanent interests. The executive branch, in particular, has a permanent interest in exaggerating threats in order to increase its own power and superfluous military spending.
According to Fein, President Barack Obama, in opposition to Russian objectives, refused to provide military assistance to Ukraine, while Trump has authorized the transfer of military weapons to that country. Obama limited the U.S. military mission in Syria to the goal of defeating ISIS or the Islamic State, while Trump has expanded that mission to remain in Syria indefinitely and to influence the outcome of that country’s protracted civil war.
Trump plans to invest $1.2 trillion in upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including low-yield tactical weapons, directed largely against Russia. In a recent report on national security strategy, Trump said Washington will respond to the economic, political, and military challenges posed by China and Russia to U.S. power, influence, and interests by attempting to erode U.S. security and prosperity. “They are determined to make their economies, less free and less fair, to increase their armies and the repression they exert on their societies.
Trump has supported the 30,000-strong NATO rapid response force in the face of a hypothetical Russian attack. He has has called on NATO members to increase their contributions to the alliance from 2 to 4 percent of their GDP.
Trump has stated that the attack on any NATO member will be considered an attack on the United States and will be responded to militarily, without the prior declaration of war required by the Constitution. Not a single soldier out of the more than 50,000 currently on US bases in NATO countries has been withdrawn.
Trump has maintained economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Crimea and new military invasions in eastern Ukraine. He signed the Law to Counter America’s Adversaries through Sanctions, which the Russian Prime Minister called a “large-scale trade war” against his country.
In April, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Trump administration – in consultation with the State Department – sanctioned seven Russian leaders and 12 companies owned or controlled by them, 17 Russian government officials and one Russian state-owned arms trading company and one of its subsidiary banks.
The assets of a sanctioned person or entity are frozen and business with Americans is prohibited.
Trump supported Montenegro’s NATO membership despite its obvious irrelevance to US national security.
Trump’s critics criticize his cowardice toward Putin. They deplore every positive thing he says about Russia and its alleged interference in American politics. But they cannot point to a single thing that the Trump administration has done to diminish Washington’s overwhelming military and economic superiority over Russia or to deter Russian aggression.
“Trump is just the background noise; the enduring script of American national security is written by the Military Industrial Complex with the consent of the American people while its armored knight gratifies him as always with the vicarious thrill of power and domination,” concludes the reactionary Bruce Fein.
July 23, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Sonic Attacks Mystery Revealed
Sonic Attacks Mystery Revealed
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Despite the unknowns, as far as we know, the recent increase in brain injuries suffered by several U.S. diplomats may have been caused not by sonic attacks from host countries, but by their own superiors at the Pentagon or by the CIA running some kind of undercover program to create super spies.
Such is the revelation contained in a study sponsored by the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian-based global think tank that has investigated the background to alleged acoustic attacks on U.S. diplomats, first in Cuba and more recently in China.
The study concludes that speculation Cuban and Chinese state agents may have used some sort of sonic weapon against U.S. diplomats falls further into the realms of fantasy and science fiction. The authorities of both nations deny the existence of such a weapon and any such activity in their territories. U.S. experts who examined their diplomats evacuated from Cuba found no causal explanation.
Significantly, however, the examination by U.S. doctors who studied the Cuban cases revealed that all individuals may have had a common experience related to their brain injuries.
Clearly, instead of speculating on the possibility that a foreign agency might have caused the ailments of US officials, who were known to be engaged in spying under diplomatic cover, they should have focused their suspicions on their own side. That is to say, to have specified whether these individuals had undergone any high-tech training directed by the Pentagon or the CIA.
It has been reported that the Pentagon’s Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigating brain stimulation devices to greatly improve the learning ability of its agents.
Last year, DARPA reported the successful use of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS) devices to increase cognitive skills in experimental monkeys. Subjects treated with such head-hooked devices were reported to show a significant increase in learning and intelligence compared to individuals who did not receive treatment. DARPA reported a 40% increase in learning capacity among macaque monkeys undergoing brain stimulation.
According to one of the program’s leading researchers: “In this experiment, we target the prefrontal cortex of the brain with individualized noninvasive stimulation mounts. That brain region controls many executive functions, including decision making, cognitive control, and contextual memory retrieval. It’s connected to almost every other cortical area of the brain, and stimulating it has widespread effects.
On the positive side, the Pentagon seeks to boost human intelligence and learning, which is nothing new. For decades, U.S. military intelligence agencies, as well as Hollywood in its science fiction films, have cherished the idea of harnessing the human brain and exploiting the increased levels of its intelligence.
But the quest for superior intelligence may well have unintended harmful side effects. Note that the Pentagon researcher cited above said that stimulation of the prefrontal cortex of the brain could have “far-reaching effects. These effects, in addition to increasing intelligence and learning skills, could be lethal, since the area of the target brain of the experiment is crucial for the control of “executive functions”.
The CIA is known to have carried out drug and hypnosis programs such as the famous MK-ULTRA in the 1950s and 1960s aimed at finding “super spies” and “super killers”.
It is also known that the Pentagon, in recent research, has been using electronic brain stimulation devices to improve the cognitive performance of monkeys. It is therefore conceivable that he has also carried out unpublished research experiments on human beings.
At no point during the investigative phase has any information been provided on the work assignments of the “diplomats” concerned in Cuba and China. They don’t even know each other’s identities. They were probably all involved in espionage duties.
It seems unlikely that the Pentagon or affected personnel will publicly declare that they were subjected to any brain stimulation devices. In any case, staff could easily be silenced by career warnings or other repressive, administrative or military methods.
July 19, 2018.
The Sao Paulo Forum’s Great Mission
The Sao Paulo Forum’s Great Mission
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Prevent the release of Lula in Brazil, issue an arrest warrant for Rafael Correa in Ecuador, threaten Cristina in Argentina with jail, round up Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, incriminate Paraguayan Lugo, deploy an offensive at all levels against Nicolás Maduro in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and focus fire on Cuba. In just these four lines, Peruvian journalist and writer Gustavo Espinoza M. summarizes the difficult situation that the Latin American left was going through at the beginning of the 24th meeting of the Sao Paolo Forum that is being held in Havana from 15 to 17 July.The Sao Paulo Forum (FSSP) is a mechanism for bringing together left-wing and progressive political parties and movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a space for convergence, discussion and joint action resulting from the Meeting of Left Political Parties and Organizations of Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place in 1990 under the auspices of the Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil. It was an initiative of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz and the leader of the Workers’ Party of Brazil (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In addition to its plenary meetings, the Forum holds an average of five annual meetings of its Working Group. It organizes conferences, seminars, and workshops on various topics, holds exchanges with political and social forces in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America, and participates in the meetings of the World Social Forum, the Americas Social Forum and the European Social Forum.
The FSSP develops a broad and multifaceted agenda that has embraced issues such as the world capitalist crisis and its impact on Latin America and the Caribbean; the new forms of political, economic, social and cultural domination of imperialism, with emphasis on U.S. imperialism and its projection into the region; the increase in aggression78p-, occupations and foreign military bases; the struggle against colonialism; the construction of new emancipatory paradigms; the promotion of integration, cooperation and coordination in the Caribbean and Latin America, and solidarity with the struggles of its members, as well as with the struggles of those political and social forces in other regions.
The FSSP was formed to bring together the efforts of left-wing parties and movements in the southern hemisphere in the complex international arena following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition, it aimed to counter the consequences of neoliberalism for the peoples of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean through reciprocal support among its members.
At the time of its foundation in 1990, the only member with executive power in a sovereign country was the Communist Party of Cuba. Twenty years later, most of the countries that are members of the Forum have agreed for some period of time, through the ballot box, to exercise government or to be part of official coalitions. Several have also become the first opposing forces in their respective countries.
The election of the revolutionary military man Hugo Chávez in 1998 in Venezuela was the first time that a member of the Sao Paulo Forum came to power.
Then came the triumphs of the Brazilian Workers’ Party in 2002 with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; the Frente Amplio in Uruguay in 2004 with Tabaré Vázquez; the Movimiento al Socialismo with Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2005; Michelle Bachelet of the Partido Socialista de Chile in 2006; Rafael Correa for Alianza PAIS in Ecuador in 2006; Daniel Ortega for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional de Nicaragua in 2006; Fernando Lugo for the Patriotic Alliance for Change (now the Guasú Front) in Paraguay in 2008; José Mujica for the Frente Amplio in Uruguay in 2009; Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front of El Salvador in 2009; Dilma Rousseff for the Brazilian Workers Party in 2010; Ollanta Humala for the Nationalist Party of Peru in 2011; Nicolás Maduro for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in 2013. In 2014, Michelle Bachelet won the elections again and in 2014, Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador won.
These successes, however, were followed by an intense counter-revolutionary offensive that could have ended with the recent electoral victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the head of the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), in alliance with the Labor and Social Encounter parties, which could have been a turning point in continental political events.
With a prestige that rests essentially on his honesty and a program that is in line with “Mexico’s hopes”, as his electoral slogan states, everything suggests that the great victory of Andres Manuel López Obrador has come at the right time to save not only Mexico but Latin America as a whole from the right-wing wave.
The Sao Paolo Forum has the floor.
July 16, 2018.
World Trade War Has Begun
World Trade War Has Begun
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
With a strong response from Beijing to the offensive actions of the United States in the field of markets, the most colossal world trade war in history has been unleashed.
“By imposing tariffs of 25% on hundreds of products imported from China worth US$34 billion a year on Friday, July 6, the United States has violated the rules of the World Trade Organization and launched the largest trade war in the world’s economic history,” a statement by China’s Commerce Ministry declarae.
Beijing claims that it was committed to not firing the first shot, but has been forced to take action in response to the situation created by the United States and has notified the World Trade Organization.
“U.S. actions affect global supply and value chains, but they are also opening fire on everyone, including themselves,” said a spokesman for the Asian nation’s trade ministry.
The Chinese agency has denounced the mercantile “bullying” with which Washington is putting pressure on its trading partners by means of tariff threats that go against the conduct demanded today.
China called on all countries of the world to join forces against trade protectionism and to support multilateralism. The Asian giant claims to have wanted to avoid the trade war that the United States has provoked, but has been forced to fight this war as much as necessary to protect the interests of the nation and its people.
In retaliation, Beijing announced the introduction of an identical tariff rate for the same monetary value for several U.S. goods, some of which would begin to be taxed as of the date set by Washington.
A trade war between the US and China, the two largest economies in the world, could affect not only both nations, but the world economy as a whole, according to a projection by economists at Pictet Asset Management in London, one of Europe’s leading independent asset and wealth managers.
Some of the most immediate effects that are predicted in the war that is just beginning for U.S. consumers are the 25% increase in the price of products imported from China. These include technological products such as semiconductors and chips that are assembled in China, needed for the manufacture of consumer products such as televisions, computers, cell phones and vehicles, not to mention a wide variety of other products, from plastics to nuclear reactors.
Obviously, the US and Chinese economies will be the hardest hit, but they won’t be the only ones.
More than 90% of the products that will be damaged by US tariffs are intermediate productions or capital goods: that is, they are products that are needed to obtain other types of production.
U.S. tariffs will likely impact other goods not necessarily traded exclusively in the United States. In turn, China gets components from many other countries that end up in its finished products so any change in China’s export flow would inevitably disrupt these countries. About 91% of the 545 U.S. products that China, in retaliation, is taxing belong to the agricultural industry sector affect U.S. farmers, President Trump’s stronghold.
Companies such as Tesla and Chrysler, which manufacture in the United States and ship their products to China, will be hit in the automotive industry.
Among the economies that could be most vulnerable to a trade war are those that are most closely integrated into global value chains. This is how the process by which a product, for its manufactur, goes not only along the production line in a nation, but is added in more than one country until it reaches its final result is identified.
Many experts believe that Trump’s punitive measures against China, based on the unfounded allegation that the Asian nation is stealing U.S. technology, will somehow affect the impressive progress of the Chinese economy but will have an even greater negative effect on the lives and finances of U.S. citizens.
It will be necessary to know what are the calculations of profits and losses that can be derived from the trade war against China carried out by Wall Street’s corporate system. The survival of Donald Trump’s regime, with its constant outbursts and upheavals, will probably depend on these calculations.
July 12, 2018.
South Korea Has Been the Most Favored
South Korea Has Been the Most Favored
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The recent easing of tensions between North and South Korea, two countries that are still technically at war, has given new life to the debate on the unification of the two countries, which have been divided and confronted since the 1950s.
In my opinion, the most favored part of the development of the events that led to the meeting of the leaders of the two Koreas was South Korea!
The extensive and intense military presence of the United States in the south of the Korean peninsula has always been the main obstacle to the reunification efforts of the Korean nation.
Thus, the only net loser at the end of these events has been Washington, which has seen its absolute empire on the southern part of the Korean peninsula threatened.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has never given in to Washington’s demands. The South has always lacked sufficient autonomy to assert its interests and rights as a formally independent nation, due to the control exercised by the United States over its defenses and war resources.
This is understood by many observers who believe that Seoul derives the greatest benefits from the events that are taking place because they contribute to the collapse of the pretexts for maintaining the semi-colonial status of South Korea. These are invariably based on the supposed danger that North Korea, a socialist country, will absorb the entire peninsula and, with its independence, benefit the left in the world balance of power.
The North Korean authorities’ demonstration of absolute autonomy and total dominance of sovereignty over their territory, before and during the negotiations with Seoul and the United States, refutes the repeated and absurd accusations by the United States in the Western media that the Pyongyang government is a puppet of Moscow or Beijing.
On the other hand, what the most objective observers wondered was the extent to which the Seoul government could act with the minimum degree of autonomy necessary to take decisions that would make viable, or at least accompany, the profound changes that would result from the rapprochement with Pyongyang in its external relations, which had been so subordinate to those of the United States.
Although the hope of lasting peace is a win-win situation for all parties involved, the most significant change in regional policy so far seems to be the one that affects the characteristics of South Korea’s submission to the US strategy of maintaining the status of two countries at war, betting on an eventual reunification forced by the weapons it leaves to the united Korea, but within Washington’s sphere of control.
When the North Korean Communist leader, Kim Jong Un, and the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, made a commitment to work for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula on April 27 at the House of Peace in Panmunjom, inside the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries, they were smiling and shaking hands. At that moment, the brains of the State Department and the Pentagon were plotting how to restructure the imperialist strategy for the region, to make it compatible with the style of its unpredictable President Trump and his team of hawks, almost all as ignorant as its chief in international politics and diplomacy.
Both Koreas announced that they will work with the US and China to reach an agreement soon for a “permanent” and “strong” peace that will officially end the Korean War, which has lasted from the 1950s to the present with only a single ceasefire in 1953.
They promised to work for an agreement for the progressive reduction of military weapons, to cease hostile acts, to transform their fortified border into a zone of peace and to seek multilateral talks with other countries, in an obvious but omitted reference to the United States, whose military forces are still widely deployed in South Korea.
Kim was the first North Korean leader since the 1950-1953 war to visit South Korea. The scenes of Moon and Kim walking together smilingly contrasted sharply with the tensions generated the previous year by the joint South Korean-U.S. military games and, in response, North Korea’s missile tests and its largest nuclear test, which led to the usual U.S. sanctions and increased fears of a new war on the Peninsula.
Humanity expected a lot from the handshake between the two Korean leaders on the concrete strip that marks the border between the two countries in the demilitarized zone. Unfortunately, the most recent visit by Vice President Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang indicates that Washington plans to make mischief.
July 9, 2018.
Mexico Returns to Its Place in the Vanguard
Mexico Returns to Its Place in the Vanguard
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Mexico and Latin America are partying! Mexico elected a President who can rise to the nation’s role in history!
A broad, overwhelming and unquestionable electoral victory made Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) the next President of the United States of Mexico. His candidacy was put forth by the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), a party he founded and whose most recent national registration, forming the Together We Will Make History alliance, together with the Labor and Social Encounter parties.
His prestige rests mainly on his honesty and his election theme, la esperanze de Mexico (Mexico’s Hope) which has now become a reality.
The popular victory of AMLO in the homeland of the priest Hidalgo, Benito Juárez, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa and Lázaro Cárdenas constitutes a political history of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is is a milestone in the political history of Latin America and the Caribbean. It significantly shifts the balance of power in favor of popular struggles, Latin American unity and the support for progressive governments against neoliberalism.
The rise of a popular government whose foreign policy heralds a constant struggle in defense of sovereignty, independence, non-intervention and peaceful resolution of conflicts. These were given in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace agreed by the the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in its Second Havana Summit, a vital instrument for the defense of peace in the region.
Insecurity and violence; social inequalities and poverty, all linked to rampant corruption and a tense relationship with the United States, are some of the most urgent and arduous challenges that AMLO will have to face. He will take the presidency of Mexico on December 1, after a five-month transition. In addition, the US president has threatened to build a wall on the Mexican border to isolate himself from the world and to have it paid for by the Mexican treasury
With regard to Mexico’s and Latin America’s relations in with their neighbor to the north, this proverb always resonates: “Mexico, so far away from God and so close to the United States,” Today we recall the prophetic study published by AMLO in April 2017 in Le Monde Diplomatique, on the strategy that would lead to Donald Trump to the US presidency and the situation that would be created for Mexico under Trump’s presidency:
“About two years ago, the future president (Trump) and his advisers began to systematically study the mood of the American people. Among the most frequent feelings they cited were: disappointment, irritation, anger, sadness and despair. It was enough to take advantage of this general mood, to articulate it and to push this interpretation forward in the hope that it would permeate the whole society.
“Long before Trump’s inauguration, it was clear that his campaign, the anti-Mexican approach, did not originate in an economic analysis of his country, but rather in an economic one. that was (and still is) in the political interest of taking advantage of nationalist sentiment in the U.S..”
Mexico’s new president-elect promises to cut the “top of its head” off privileges”, ending the “power mafia”, ending the the corruption by example and giving priority to the poor.
This son of merchants, born on November 13, 1953 in Tepetitán, Tabasco, and known by his initials as AMLO, embodies for many Mexicans the desire for change.
He is a mass leader who conveys confidence and trust in his speech. With a single call from him, tens of thousands of fill up the public squares.
From an ideological point of view, he is not easy to pigeonhole, but the media and the people generally think of him as a politician of the left or as an honest politician.
In economic terms, he is committed to the internal market, to set prices guarantees for the countryside and to review the opening of the oil sector to private capital.
In the social area, AMLO seeks to reduce inequalities but steers clear of issues that would fall within a traditional agenda of the left, such as abortion and same-sex marriages.
After having lost in the 2006 and 2012 elections, in the current campaign, he moderated his tone to attract sectors that previously distrusted his progressive preaching but never got past it. of his identification with the humble.
In fact, he proposes a change comparable to the big transformations in history such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910, as part of the political system.
He has declared that he is inspired by the fathers of the homeland, who left lessons on the fight for justice, for democracy, and for national sovereignty.
July 5, 2018.
The US Left Has a Past and a Future
- English
- Español
THE US LEFT HAS A PAST AND A FUTURE
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The United States is an atypical case among the most advanced industrialized societies because it does not have a large, national-level socialist party. The culture of that great North American nation emphasizes individualism and anti-statism. The role of government in society is much smaller than that of government in other parts of the world, for example in Europe.
During the period of the Great Depression and the economic crisis of the 1930s, many American socialists were hopeful that the time might have come to found a workers’ party in their country. But with the rise to power of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and his New Deal coalition, the working class became a prominent force within the Democratic Party itself and the union leaders saw no benefit in trying to pursue their ideas independently.
The unions were actively working to promote voter participation within the bipartisan U.S. context. After the Great Depression, the trade union movement channeled its support mainly to the Democratic Party, which, in turn, developed a policy of broad acceptance of people on the left side of the U.S. political spectrum.
In recent history, in addition to the well-known Democratic and Republican parties, the Reform Party (far right), the Green Party (left), and the Libertarian Party, have been registered for elections in the United States. In the 1992 and 1996 elections, the Reform Party gained notoriety with Ross Perot as its presidential candidate, who was accused by the moderate right wing of having damaged George Bush senior’s re-election with his participation.
In 2000 and 2004, the participation of Ralph Nader of the Green Party, who was blamed by the moderate left for taking votes away from Democratic candidates, was seen to have benefited the Republican George W. Bush Jr.
FDR is credited with this policy of blocking the creation of a great socialist party in the United States by opening the doors of the Democratic Party to trade unions and many progressive people during the Great Depression. That’s why Roosevelt is considered the closest president to socialism America has ever had. Before World War II, Roosevelt had to confront the forces of the right within his own party to advance his transformative purpose in the United States.
Anti-Roosevelt Democrats even formed the American Liberty League in the 1936 presidential election. The then governor of New York and prominent Democratic leader Al Smith urged her to oppose Roosevelt by proclaiming that “America can have only one capital, Washington or Moscow,” meaning that the Roosevelt supporters’ movement had too many communists and socialists in its ranks.
Roosevelt died in 1945 but, at the end of the war, the left-wing political army of trade unionists, intellectuals and black community leaders that had been structured to support Roosevelt still retained great influence within the Democratic Party. Within the Democratic Party, unions such as the United Auto Workers, the International Longshore Warehouse Union, the National Maritime Union, and the United Steelworkers of America had large pro-Communist factions and leaders of that political orientation, including several members of the National Negro Workers Congress and other civil rights groups directly linked to the Communist Party of the United States.
Many Roosevelt Democrats had a very positive appreciation of the Soviet Union and the role it played in the defeat of fascism. They had no objection to aligning themselves with the Communist Party and its political environment on local issues.
In this way, the balance of left and right forces was maintained until, in 1946, the anti-communist Cold War repressive operation under Harry S. Truman, FDR’s replacement, began.
During this period of fascist terror against the left, the first targets of the witch hunt were Democrats who belonged to the populist and pro-Soviet left faction entrenched within the party itself.
Alger Hiss, a State Department official who had played a key role in founding the United Nations, was one of the first to be demonized. He was accused of being a Soviet agent and ended up in prison for perjury. Both Democrats and Republicans were harshly repressed by their own parties during this period.
Now, with the advent of Trumpism, everything seems to indicate that new difficult times are approaching for the workers, professionals and progressive members of the American middle class. July 2, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO
LA IZQUIERDA TIENE HISTORIA Y FUTURO EN EEUU
By Manuel E. Yepe
Por Manuel E. Yepe Exclusivo para el diario POR ESTO! de Mérida, México. http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Estados Unidos es un caso atípico entre las más avanzadas sociedades industrializadas, porque no tiene un partido socialista grande de nivel nacional. La cultura en esa gran nación del norte de América enfatiza el individualismo y el anti-estatismo. El papel del gobierno en la sociedad es mucho menor que el que éstos tienen en otros países del mundo, por ejemplo en los europeos.
Durante el período de la Gran Depresión y la crisis económica de los años 1930 germinó en muchos socialistas estadounidenses la esperanza de que pudiera haber llegado el momento de fundar un partido de los trabajadores en su país. Pero con la llegada al poder de Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) y su coalición del New Deal, la clase obrera se convirtió en una fuerza prominente dentro del propio Partido Demócrata y los líderes sindicales no percibían beneficio alguno en tratar de llevar adelante su ideario de manera independiente.
Los sindicatos trabajaban activamente en la promoción de la participación de votantes dentro del contexto bipartidista de Estados Unidos. A partir de la Gran Depresión, el movimiento sindicalista canalizó su apoyo mayoritariamente hacia el Partido Demócrata que, por su parte, desarrolló una política de amplia acogida de gente situada en la izquierda del espectro político estadounidense.
En la historia reciente se han registrado para las elecciones en Estados Unidos, además de los consabidos partidos Demócrata y Republicano, el Partido de la Reforma (ultraderecha), el Partido Verde (izquierda), y el Partido Libertario. En los comicios de 1992 y 1996, cobró notoriedad el Partido de la Reforma con Ross Perot como candidato presidencial, a quien la derecha moderada acusaba de haber perjudicado con su participación la reelección de George Bush padre.
En 2000 y 2004, fue visible la participación de Ralph Nader, del Partido Verde, a quien la izquierda moderada culpó de restar votos a candidatos demócratas, en beneficio del republicano George W. Bush hijo.
A FDR se le atribuye esa política de haber bloqueado la creación de un gran partido socialista en Estados Unidos, al abrir las puertas del Partido Demócrata a los sindicatos y a mucha gente progresista durante la Gran Depresión. Es por esa razón que se considera a Roosevelt el presidente más cercano al socialismo que haya tenido Estados Unidos. Antes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ya Roosevelt tuvo que enfrentar las fuerzas de la derecha dentro de su propio partido para hacer avanzar su propósito transformador en Estados Unidos.
Los demócratas que se le oponían llegaron a constituir la “American Liberty League” en las elecciones presidenciales de 1936. El entonces gobernador de Nueva York y prominente líder demócrata Al Smith, instó a la oponerse a Roosevelt proclamando que “¡Estados Unidos sólo puede tener una capital, Washington o Moscú!”, significando que el movimiento de los partidarios de Roosevelt tenía en sus filas demasiados comunistas y socialistas.
Roosevelt murió en 1945 pero, al término de la guerra, el ejército político de la izquierda constituido por sindicalistas, intelectuales y líderes comunitarios negros que se había estructurado para apoyar a Roosevelt aun conservaba gran influencia dentro del Partido Demócrata. Los sindicatos afines al Partido Demócrata como el United Auto Workers, el International Longshore Warehouse Union, el National Maritime Union, y el United Steelworkers of America, tenían grandes facciones procomunistas y líderes de esa orientación política, entre los cuales se incluían varios asociados al Congreso Nacional de Trabadores Negros y otros grupos de derechos civiles vinculados directamente con el Partido Comunista de Estados Unidos.
Muchos demócratas de Roosevelt tenían una apreciación muy positiva de la Unión Soviética y del papel que ésta desempeñó en la derrota del fascismo. No tenían objeción alguna a alinearse con el Partido Comunista y su entorno político en asuntos locales.
Así se mantuvo el balance de fuerzas de izquierda y derecha hasta que, en 1946, comenzó la operación represiva anticomunista de la Guerra Fría bajo Harry S. Truman, reemplazante de FDR.
Durante ese período de terror fascista contra la izquierda los primeros blancos de la caza de brujas fueron demócratas que pertenecían a la facción de izquierda populista y pro-soviética afianzada dentro del propio partido.
Alger Hiss, funcionario del Departamento de Estado que había desempeñado un papel clave en la fundación de las Naciones Unidas, fue uno de los primeros en ser objeto de demonización y acusación de ser agente soviético para terminar encarcelado por perjurio. Tanto demócratas como republicanos, fueron duramente reprimidos por sus propios partidos durante este período.
Ahora, con la llegada del trumpismo, todo parece indicar que se avecinan nuevos tiempos difíciles para los obreros, profesionales e integrantes progresistas de la clase media estadounidense. Julio 2 de 2018.
Este artículo se puede reproducir citando al periódico POR ESTO como fuente.
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Trump Administration’s Child Abuse
The Trump Administration’s Child Abuse in the US
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Trump administration is holding 1,500 teens and pre-teens between the ages of 10 and 17 in captivity. Some were captured and separated from their parents along the Mexican border.
This was reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, stating that they were being held in an old abandoned Walmart that was renovated with classrooms, recreation centers and medical examination rooms to house children in federal custody. Children are allowed two hours of free time each day, including one hour of physical exercise and one hour of free time. There are two separate learning shifts due to the high number of children in the institution.
In the old 250,000 square foot supermarket (just over 23,000 square meters) 313 bedrooms were adapted, with no interior ceilings or doors, where children are forced to lie on their beds all the time. Although according to reports from the newspaper, they are being well fed, many of the young people consulted by the media testified that “the food was terrible and everyone was complaining about it”.
It is assumed that most of the teenage children entered the United States alone, but it can be ensured that the younger children were forcibly separated from their parents at the border under the new Trump zero tolerance policy for immigration. It requires a referral to criminal justice of anyone caught illegally crossing the border for, a decision that has resulted in the separation of a large number of children from their families.
“If you cross the border illegally, even if you do it for the first time, we’re going to prosecute you,” Jeff Sessions told the Association of State Criminal Investigation Agencies in May.
“If you are dealing with a child, we will prosecute you, and that child will probably be separated from you, as required by law. If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t take him or her illegally to the other side of the border.
“We’re trying to do the best we can to take care of these children. Our ultimate goal is to reunite the children with their families,” he said. “We are not a detention center. … What we operate are childcare shelters. There’s an extremely big difference.
According to federal officials, in the two weeks following U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement of the separation policy, 638 adults accompanied by 658 children were prosecuted.
It has not been explained whether other centers like these are operating in other parts of the country to imprison children in detention camps> It is known that Jeff Sessions ordered all federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against all women detained for crossing the border illegally.
According to the Associated Press, which analyzed the Department of Homeland Security’s records, 1,995 children were separated between April 19 and May 31 of the year in question because of the new strong immigration policies.
Politically cornered by the widespread outrage that caused the forced removal of thousands of parents and children, Trump signed an executive order on June 21 to put an end to this course of action, which he had previously described as inevitable.
But as those comparisons continued, other signals to the Trump government from international organizations also emerged.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed deep concern about the “cruel practice” of separating children from their parents by force.
“The idea that any state should try to deter parents from migrating by inflicting such abuse on children is inconceivable,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, ZeidRa’ad Al Hussein, said at a session of the Council he heads.
Amnesty International’s director for the Americas, Erika Guevara-Rosas, said that “these acts meet the definitions of torture under U.S. and international law” because of the mental harm they cause to families for coercive purposes.
Trump responded to the allegations with a peculiar defense of his government’s policy, suggesting that adult migrants arrested at the border could be murderers and thieves. He also accused the Democratic opposition of being obstructionist and being primarily responsible for the separation of families in the United States.
June 28, 2018.
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