Manuel E. Yepe 239
Putin Warns Against DPRK Hysteria
Putin Warns Against Hysteria About DPRK
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited for CubaNews by Walter Lippmann.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned at the opening of the high–level segment of the Ninth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit against “military hysteria” around the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. He said it could lead to a “planetary catastrophe” and called it “useless and ineffective” to impose new sanctions against Pyongyang such as those recently announced by Washington.
Such a position raises the prospect of another dangerous confrontation between Moscow and the United States, whose president called for “the strongest possible sanctions” by the UN as a sign of rejection of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test. It was carried out in early September, according to according to a statement from Radio Havana Cuba quoting as its source the French Press Agency (AFP).
Putin, who participated in the summit recently held at the Xiamen International Convention Center in China, told reporters there that “Russia condemns these exercises in North Korea, but considers that the use of sanctions of any kind in cases like this is always useless and ineffective. ”
“A military hysteria has no meaning … because it can lead to a planetary catastrophe with a high number of victims,” warned the Russian president.
Following Pyongyang’s sixth most powerful nuclear test so far, the United States, its European allies and Japan have announced that they are negotiating new UN sanctions against North Korea.
However, the position of China and Russia –both with veto rights in the Security Council – has not been sufficiently clear.
The North Koreans “will not give up their nuclear program if they do not feel safe. For this reason, we must try to open a dialogue between the parties concerned, “Putin said.
The Russian president believes that “military hysteria does not make sense, because it is a road that leads us to a dead end.” Putin adds to the position of China, which advocates a “peaceful solution” to the North Korean crisis and wants to resume negotiations with the government of Kim Jong–Un.
By contrast, US President Donald Trump, who pledged last month “fire and fury” if Pyongyang continues its threats against Washington, considered last week that, from now on, “any appeasement talk no longer works” with North Korea.
In response to the North Korean nuclear test, South Korea began ground maneuvers with live fire. The South Korean navy had done the same thing a week earlier, hoping to dissuade Pyongyang from any alleged provocation at sea.
US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced in New York that a new sanctions package would be presented by Washington –the eighth– will be negotiated in the coming days before being voted on by the Security Council on Nov. 11,.
At the beginning of August, the last resolutions sanctioning Pyongyang –each more severe than the previous one– were unanimously adopted by the 15 members of the Security Council.
According to diplomatic sources, the new measures being negotiated this week could affect oil, tourism, remittances to the country by North Korean workers abroad and other diplomatic decisions.
The hydrogen bomb that Pyongyang announced it had tested on Sunday, had a power of 50 kilotons, five times more than the previous North Korean test and three times more than the US–launched bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, according to South Korean sources.
North Korea is now capable of transporting an atomic bomb in a missile capable of reaching US territory, although, according to Washington, its experts have not confirmed this prediction with absolute certainty.
North Korea has never succumbed to the intimidation of the US and this has generated prestige and admiration for its proven intransigence and resilience in circumstances that have led many other governments of the world to indignant capitulation.
Pyongyang is proud to have survived as an independent nation with a communist orientation in a global context as extremely dangerous as its own. It attributes the success of its national security program –in large measure– to the fact that it includes possession and development of a small nuclear arsenal that serves a deterant. This is because of the possibility that Washington, through its participation in and monopoly of the atomic bomb, could launch another war like the one it carried out on Korean territory, in the 1950s of the last century.
September 6, 2017.
Soviet October in the Yankee Imagination
Soviet October in the Yankee Imagination
By Manuel E. Yepe
Exclusive to the daily POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited for CubaNews by Walter Lippmann.
A century after the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the current validity of the ideas of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 can be seen in the orientation of the struggles waged by the peoples of the whole against capitalist exploitation.
October cleared the roads to human liberation that Marxism had identified and discovered in other new ways. It led the nation to achieve great successes in economic, politics, culture, social justice and defense, to make backward Russia a world power in a short time.
October allowed the efforts and sacrifices of the peoples of the Soviet Union to reach the level of economic, military and scientific development that brought about a bipolarity of the world in which the nations of the planet could rest their hopes of progress. The United States was no exception.
In January 1919, Lenin invited the left wing of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) to join the newly-created Communist International in Moscow. In the spring of that year this wing took control of the whole party displacing its previous leadership, which was smaller and of social-democratic orientation.
From its origins, the SPA suffered attacks from several state governments and from the US federal government itself. It feared a repeat of the revolts that were taking place on European soil. In the United States, between the end of 1919 and January 1920, the “red terror” led the United States Attorney General to order the arrest of thousands of communists, with the Sedition Act of 1918 as a legal basis.
During the Great Depression of 1929, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) multiplied its pacts with small union groups. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president also meant the renewal of the unions and increased in them the influence of the CPUSA.
During this period, the CPUSA was distinguished by its defense of the Second Spanish Republic, a victim of the Francoist uprising that led to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Leftists from all over the world joined to defend the Republic, providing funds for medical care and in many cases volunteering in the International Brigades. The CPUSA provided the first members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which, in addition to supporting the Republican government of Spain, was the first military force made of US-made military force in which blacks and whites were integrated in the same ranks, with the same rights and obligations.
When the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) was formed in 1919, the Washington government had long suppressed the Socialists because they had opposed American intervention in World War I and made a campaign against military service. As of January 1920, the new target of persecution was the communists who began to be massively imprisoned. The CPUSA was forced into hiding and had to change its name several times to avoid arrest of its cadres and militants.
In the 1930s, the FBI persecuted Nazis and Communists under suspicion that they intended to launch an armed revolt against the federal government. In 1940, laws that made it illegal to hold a favorable opinion to overthrow the government came into force.
In 1941, when the United States was about to enter the world war in Europe and Japan, the Roosevelt government accused 29 members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), then political allied with the Fourth International, of sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government. The FBI raided the offices of the SWP and formed a grand jury for the trial. The accused used the process to proclaim their socialist principles from the dock, rejected the imperialist war and refuted the presentation of the socialist revolution as a conspiracy or coup.
The United States’ entry into World War II in December 1941 forced an alliance with the Soviet Union that enabled the recruitment of communist militants into the US military. At the end of the Second World War, in 1945, and the beginning of the Cold War against the USSR, the official US “truce” with the CPUSA ended and an anti-communist psychosis was exacerbated by the alleged discovery of “Soviet espionage networks” and the denunciation of a growing power of the communists in the industrial trade union sector. Then came the McCarthy or witch-hunt period, one of the most shameful episodes in the legal history of the United States, which included the political murder of the couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government a hate crime that still cries out for justice.
August 31, 2017.
Chavismo is the Bolivarianism of the 21st Century
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Anti-Chavism has become the ideology of the ultra-right in the region because Chavismo, from its inception, changed regional geopolitics, changed the political world of Latin America and the Caribbean and impacted many other regions of the world. Chavismo is the new Bolivarianism of the 21st century.
The revolutionary forces that emerged from the leadership of Comandante Chavez succeeded in articulating the progressive, advanced and revolutionary forces of the entire continent to become a worldwide reference for the possible changes and changes that Latin America and all of humanity needed .
Such are some of the concepts raised by Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, in his replies to an interview conducted in Caracas by the celebrated Venezuelan journalist and political scientist José Vicente Rangel.
The Latin American right, so widely-publicized and subordinated to US imperialism, long ago adopted as its central banner the defeat of the Bolivarian revolution.
Anti-Chávez, anti-Bolivarian and anti-Venezuelan campaigns became the axis of the speech of this right-wing, which, by the way, has arrived at government with a rather meager vote. In Argentina, it barely achieved a thirty-one percent vote to choose the president of that nation; Or, as in the case of Brazil, avoided electoral confrontation and opted, instead, for a covert coup in which the OAS and the corporate media served, in silence, as an accomplice.
That right has reached political power in some key Latin American countries, fueled by anti-Bolivarian, anti-Chavez doctrine … and much fear, almost terror, by the force of ideas and the example emanating from the Bolivarian revolution.
“I hope that the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), with its great power, will give me special support for the fight against corruption, which is a pending bill that we have.
“We will need it, not only from the punitive point of view, also in the educational, cultural and moral aspects. We will continue to insist on building a society with values of respect, honesty and transparent practice in the management of public affairs.
“It is a great battle, we can not guarantee that we will win it in months or years, it is a battle that will take us a long time, but Venezuela has in me a President committed to the end in the fight against corruption and those who are corrupt.
Maduro showed that Venezuelans today have been lucky enough to live the total bankruptcy of the model of oil dependence protected by the socialist Chavez social model.
He recalled that many experts predicted that the oil model would begin to decline in 2030, 2040 or 2050. But, thanks to the “miracle” of the revolution, it happened that it had taken place suddenly and the country went from one day to the next to receive, from 120 dollars a barrel to 20 dollars, “and here nobody lacked school, work, income or food with the problems that had to be faced. We do not stop building housing, we do not stop building public works
Fundamentally, we made guts heart and I believe that we made a social miracle of salvation of the country. That must be recognized, we made a social miracle of salvation of the country. In the midst of bankruptcy. “Maduro stressed that after having overcome the three demons (the bankruptcy of the oil dependency system, the international financial and commercial war and induced inflation) we will have a people protected by a social system that will support economic recovery.
“We must be clear that we have a correct strategy and policy. The strategic engines of our Bolivarian Economic Agenda (the industrial engine, agri-food, petrochemical, tourism, socialist communal economy, heavy industry, etc.) are the correct strategy for economic independence and development of the potentialities to get rid of oil, which is the most important thing we are doing.
“The Constituent Assembly arrived and peace was made. And I have a great faith in the full exercise of our national sovereignty, without accepting blackmail or pressure from anyone in the world, and less from North American imperialism. The Constituent Assembly will put order in justice, in institutionality, in the state and in the economy,” said Maduro. He predicted that Venezuela will end the year 2017 with a good level of general recovery of society, the country, politics and peace, said the President reflecting the optimism with which Venezuelans are proud, proud of their history and confident that they will still need to wage many battles for independence, because that is the cost of the privilege of having a country with so many resources that excite imperialist greed.
August 23, 2017.
A complete and excellent translation of Jose Vicente Rangel’s interview with Maduro:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Venezuelas-Maduro-Speaks-on-Chavez-Trump-and-Opposition-20170824-0009.html
Venezuela Rejects Violence…and Wins
Venezuela Rejects Violence…and Wins
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive to the daily POR ESTO! Of Mérida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
For US imperialism and the continental right, July 30th in Venezuela should be a conclusive political lesson. It should also be a lesson for the organizers of the media campaigns against popular processes. Their reliability has been demonstrated by the mass exercise of their rights by a mature and determined population who rejects them.
The election on that day of the members of the Constituent National Assembly (ANC), according to the Constitution and the laws of the country, involved an enthusiastic participation of more than 8,090,230 Venezuelans –41.53% of the electoral roll– who said yes to Constituent Assembly and the Bolivarian revolution.
The President of the United States threatened the Venezuelans with an increase in economic sanctions. The election would certainly take place, no doubt assuming that the people, intimidated, would repudiate the democratic act and refrain from participating in it.
But, on the contrary, Trump’s threats and terrorist actions against the voters stimulated their attendance because patriotic motivation was added.
The Bolivarian government called on democratic and peace-loving people to be alert to this new interventionist escalation of US imperialism. They called for a categorical rejection of the violent, fascist, racist and criminal actions of the Venezuelan opposition who are so afraid of this democratic, legal, sovereign, peaceful and civilized act .
For his part, the angry American president, who has been forced to move all his chips at the same time to coincide with other serious clashes unleashed separately against Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This has led Washington to impose sanctions on Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, according to a statement from the US Treasury Department.
The statement specifies that all assets of President Maduro which are or may be under US jurisdiction will be frozen. In addition, US citizens will be prohibited from any agreement with Maduro. He, in turn, has reiterated that, as President of Venezuela, he does not have to answer to anyone but Venezuela’s women and men.
The Venezuelan president has described the day [of the election] as the “biggest” of the Bolivarian Revolution and has based its success on the option that made the peace proposal his banner of struggle in such complex circumstances.
Maduro stressed that, until the last moment, he kept the doors open for the Venezuelan opposition, which did not cease to call for violence and destabilizing actions on election day. He revealed that a delegation of his government had been meeting for several weeks with opposition leaders. Among these he mentioned the President of the Parliament, Julio Borges, to try to add them to the constituent assembly initiative. “Two weeks ago I proposed to the opposition that they register for the Constituent Assembly. But they did not accept,” said the leader.
“In the last six weeks, there have been direct talks between the delegations of the Democratic Unity Roundtable and a delegation presided over by Jorge Rodríguez, Delcy Rodríguez and Elías Jaua,” head of state Nicolas Maduro announced Saturday.
To reach an agreement to publish a statement approved by all parties of the MUD,” said the First Minister. He added that the leadership of the right “wanted to be registered before the National Electoral Council (CNE) for the elections of governors and governors. I called on them to get into the Constituent Assembly and they were afraid.” The meetings held were kept hidden at the request of the opposition sector.
President Maduro spoke at Bolívar Plaza in the city of Caracas, after the National Electoral Council (CNE) issued the first bulletin with results. The Venezuelan president stated that the Constituent National Assembly had been born amid great popular legitimacy. “Not only does the Constituente have power, but it has the strength of legitimacy, the moral force of a people who heroically, warlike, came out to vote, to say: we want peace and tranquility,” said Maduro.
“The newly-elected Constituent Assembly had the support of a people who were not intimidated by the destabilizing climate that the Venezuelan opposition intended to create. It is the largest vote that the Revolution has had in all electoral history. The one who has eyes that sees and the one who has ears that hear,” said the president.
July 31, 2017.
Tourism and the Cuban Military
- English
- Español
Tourism and the Cuban Military
By Manuel E. Yepe
Exclusive to the daily BY THIS! Of Merida, Mexico.
Http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Marcel Hatch, an American resident in Cuba, tells us that he owns a tourism agency that brings visitors to the island. Marcel and his agency and have a long history of more than 20 years of solidarity with Cuba. His agency helps US citizens travel to Cuba and overcome obstacles which have been raised by President Donald Trump and Republican Senator Marco Rubio (a fierce anti-Cuban who has never been to the island). These roadblocks rest on the fact that, in the imagination of ordinary American, a reference to “military” is fundamentally chilling.
This is because, inevitably, a nexus of similarity is established with the terrifying role played in the world by the Pentagon as an instrument of the superpower to secure and expand its global hegemony. As a terrifying offensive organization of covert operations operating in hundreds of territories to suppress by any means the opposition to American expansionism. It’s also an administrative body that sucks up most of the taxes paid by American workers. The US military, in turn, has a budget greater than the sum of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the majority of the nations of the planet.
For the average American, the armed forces mean billions of dollars in devastating weapons with state-of-the-art technology and highly qualified personnel at the disposal of the nation’s President. He, in turn, has several generals and a military industry which decides which nations will survive, which will perish or be subject to invasions, blockades, and intimidation, and as a result, which will be condemned to suffer famine, impoverishment and epidemics.
It must be remembered that on January 17, 1961, in his farewell address, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower advised Americans to take care of the power acquired by what he called the “military-industrial complex.” He noted that the United States had gone “from lacking an army and a defense industry to having an Armed Forces with more than three and a half million people employed to protect its security at a cost greater than all business profits of Their big corporations together. “
His warning had a profound impact coming from a military president who had experienced -even in the exercise of the nation’s first office- the ability to exert pressure that the Pentagon and the war industry had acquired “with strong influence in each city hall, state legislature and federal office of the nation.”
“The Cold War imposed the need to dispose of those resources,”Eisenhower said, “but we can not overlook the serious implications of granting so much power to the military.”
Thus, with such a background, for many Americans, the very idea of supporting the military is disgusting and frightening. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, it is evident that the Cuban army is seen by its people as its main defensive tool for protecting citizens from external threats, and to ensure that national sovereignty resides in the island’s people.
The recent directives emanating from President Trump have not completely reversed the modest advances made by former President Obama’s policies a few days before his term comes to an end, but one that forbids US citizens and companies from participating In direct financial transactions with entities or subsidiaries that “disproportionately benefit” the Cuban military.
It is a fact that, when the Cuban military is not involved in defense tasks, responsibly and conscious of its role in society, it is involved in civilian objectives and in protecting the infrastructure and development of the country. In the past, in response to calls for help from people struggling for independence, Cuban civilians and military have come to their solidarity support.
“It is natural, therefore, that in times of relative peace, the uniformed people – as Camilo Cienfuegos, one of their initial leaders called it – put their organizational and administrative resources at the disposal of the national economy. This is, in my opinion, the case with their active participation in tourism and many other social and productive activities,” Hatch emphasizes.
Cuban society highly values the concepts of unity and equality. It is understandable that, with a capitalist perspective as exaggerated as that of the American establishment, it is embarrassing to explain the civic-military harmony that strengthens the Cuban nation in all areas, and that is why Cubans feel so proud of their military.
July 21, 2017
Spanish
Por Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusivo para el diario POR ESTO! de Mérida, México.
Me comenta Marcel Hatch, un norteamericano residente en Cuba propietario de una agencia de turismo que lleva visitantes a la isla y tiene un largo historial de más de 20 años de solidaridad con este país, que las trabas para dificultar los viajes de ciudadanos estadounidenses a la isla que han planteado el Presidente Donald Trump y el senador republicano Marco Rubio (feroz anticubano que nunca ha estado en Cuba), descansan en el hecho de que en el imaginario del estadounidense común la referencia a “militares” es fundamentadamente escalofriante.
Ello ocurre porque inevitablemente se establece un nexo de similitud con el papel aterrador que juega en el mundo el Pentágono estadounidense como instrumento de la superpotencia para asegurar y ampliar su hegemonía global; como terrorífica organización ofensiva de operaciones encubiertas que opera en cientos de territorios para suprimir por cualquiera medio la oposición al expansionismo norteamericano, y como cuerpo administrativo que succiona la mayor parte de los impuestos que abonan los trabajadores estadounidenses que a su vez dispone de un presupuesto superior a la suma mayor que la sumatoria del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) de la mayoría de las naciones del planeta.
Para el común de los estadounidense, las fuerzas armadas significan miles de millones de dólares en armas devastadoras con novísima tecnología y personal altamente calificado a la disposición del Presidente de la nación, quien cuenta con varios generales y una industria militar que deciden cuáles naciones sobrevivirán, cuales perecerán o quedarán sujetas a invasiones, bloqueos e intimidaciones, y como resultado de ello, cuales serán condenadas a sufrir hambrunas, empobrecimiento y epidemias.
Hay que recordar que el 17 de enero de 1961, en su discurso de despedida, el entonces presidente Dwight D. Eisenhower aconsejó a los estadounidenses cuidarse del poder adquirido por lo que bautizó como “complejo militar-industrial”. Señaló que Estados Unidos había pasado, “de carecer de un ejército y una industria de la defensa, a disponer de unas Fuerzas Armadas con más de tres millones y medio de personas empleadas para proteger su seguridad a un costo mayor que todos los beneficios empresariales de sus grandes corporaciones juntas”. Su advertencia tuvo profundo impacto por provenir de un militar devenido Presidente que había experimentado -incluso en el ejercicio de la primera magistratura de la nación- la capacidad de ejercer presión que el Pentágono y la industria de la guerra habían adquirido “con fuerte influencia en cada ayuntamiento, legislatura estadual y oficina federal de la nación”.
La Guerra Fría impuso la necesidad de disponerle esos recursos-justificó Eisenhower- pero no podemos pasar por alto las graves implicaciones derivadas de la concesión de tanto poder a los militares.
Así, con tales antecedentes, para muchos estadounidenses la sola idea de apoyar a los militares es algo repugnante y aterrador. Pero, en marcado contraste, es evidente que el ejército cubano es visto por su pueblo como su principal herramienta defensiva para la protección de la ciudadanía de las amenazas del exterior, y para asegurar que la soberanía nacional resida en el pueblo de la isla.
Las recientes directivas emanadas de las orientaciones del Presidente Trump no han hecho retroceder totalmente los discretos avances aportados por las políticas del ex presidente Obama pocos días antes de concluir su mandato, pero entre ellas destaca una que prohíbe a los ciudadanos y empresas de Estados Unidos participar en transacciones financieras directas con entidades o subsidiarias que “beneficien desproporcionadamente” a los militares cubanos.
Es un hecho cierto que, cuando los militares cubanos no están involucrados en tareas de la defensa, responsablemente y por conciencia de su papel en la sociedad, se involucran en objetivos civiles y en la protección de la infraestructura y el desarrollo de su país. En el pasado, atendiendo a reclamos de ayuda de pueblos en lucha por su independencia, civiles y militares cubanos han acudido en su apoyo solidario.89d
“Es natural, por tanto, que en épocas de paz relativa, el pueblo uniformado -como lo llamara Camilo Cienfuegos, uno de sus jefes iniciales- ponga sus recursos organizacionales y administrativos a disposición de la economía nacional. Tal es, a mi juico, el caso de su activa participación en el turismo y en muchas otras actividades sociales y productivas”, enfatiza Hatch.
La sociedad cubana valora altamente los conceptos de unidad e igualdad. Es comprensible que con una óptica capitalista tan exagerada como la del “establishment” estadounidense, resulte embarazoso comprender la armonía cívico-militar que fortalece a la nación cubana en todos los ámbitos, y que los cubanos se sientan tan orgullosos de sus militares.
Julio 21 de 2017.
Venezuela on the Cuban road
- English
- Español
Venezuela on the Cuban road
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive to the daily POR ESTO! Of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Venezuela may be marching along the Cuban road, according to congressmen” is the title given by NBC-News to Suzanne Gamboa’s article dated Washington D.C. On July 19, 2017, citing words from New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, a vehement promoter of the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for more than half a century.
“Castro has condemned his own people to poverty, hunger and immense suffering, while accumulating wealth and power,” this corrupt politician declared, without blushing. He’s had a criminal trial for corruption pending since 2015 that has seriously disturbed his political career in U.S. The trial against Menéndez is scheduled for the period in which the election process will take place that will elect his replacement in a Senate seat the Democratic party does not want to lose. This has led Menéndez to conceal, as far as possible, his legal situation.
Many of the members of the US Congress who are now focusing their attention on the situation in Venezuela are of Cuban descent. It is not that they were born on the island but that they were formed in the heat of hatred for the island’s national independence and socialism. The extreme right of the United States and the oligarchies across the continent have played a key role in this struggle. Many are from Florida, Texas and New York, where the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants can be found.
Another American politician who has a leading role in the development of the current US right-wing campaign against Venezuela because of it’s winning back positions won in recent decades by the continent’s anti-imperialist left. That is Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.
Rubio played a significant role in the maneuver of the Venezuelan pro-imperialist opposition –which ended in failure two weeks ago– to call on Venezuelans to participate in an illegal “plebiscite”, which –except in the extremely pro-imperialist milieus– was totally obscured by the effort by the Venezuelan government which confirmed broad popular support for the process of choosing the Constituent Assembly on July 30.
Marco Rubio gained notoriety for his participation in the show recently starring President Trump in Miami to announce the implementation of new US government provisions against Cuba.
He gave those of Cuban for several years to take financially approve the U.S. establishment’s multi-million dollar campaign of hatred against Cuba. With this, he moved up in the ranks of his party and gained strong economic support until arriving at the first ranks of national policy like the “Cuban-American of extreme right”. He was among the possible Republican candidates for the presidency and lost in a hard race against the current president, Donald Trump.
Rubio had a serious setback when, at a certain moment in the representation of a false native identity, it was discovered that not only had he not been born in Cuba, but that he had not even been in his alleged country of origin.
Marco Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, in May 1971, when the Cuban revolution had been in power for more than a decade. His parents were Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in 1956, under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and were naturalized as US citizens in 1975.
From a Catholic family, Rubio made an abrupt switch of faith. After his first Catholic communion in 1984, and his marriage, also Catholic, he became a Mormon, soon afterwards became a Catholic again and later he went to the Baptist church until he returned to Catholicism.
Rubio is in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In 2010, he won a position in the United States Senate as a favorite candidate of the Tea Party movement, a political formation that is located to the right of the political spectrum, but is not formally linked to the Republican party.
His candidacy for the Senate has been tarnished by unfinished investigations into embezzlement of Republican party funds.
He competed for the Republican presidential nomination during the 2016 primaries, until he finally decided to withdraw from the race because of his defeat by politician and tycoon Donald Trump in Florida, the state from which he is a senator.
It is quite logical that in the struggles for its definitive independence there are many similarities between the current political processes of Venezuela and Cuba, as well as between the independence aspirations of all the Latin American countries that have in common the objective of liberating themselves from the condition of semicolonies of the United States.
July 28, 2017.
VENEZUELA POR LOS CAMINOS DE CUBA
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/ Exclusivo para el diario POR ESTO! de Mérida, México.
“Venezuela pudiera estar marchando por los caminos de Cuba, según congresistas” es el título que dio NBC-News al artículo de Suzanne Gamboa fechado en Washington D.C. el 19 de julio de 2017, citando palabras del senador por Nueva Jersey del partido demócrata en el Congreso federal estadounidense Bob Menéndez, vehemente impulsor del genocida bloqueo que hace más de medio siglo impone Estados Unidos contra Cuba.
“Castro ha condenado a su propio pueblo a pobreza, hambre y sufrimiento inmenso, mientras que ha acumulado riqueza y poder”, declaró sin ruborizarse este político corrupto que tiene pendiente desde 2015 un juicio criminal por corrupción que le ha perturbado seriamente su carrera política en Estados Unidos. El juicio contra Menéndez está programado para el período en que tendrá lugar el proceso electoral que elegir a su sustituto en un curul senatorial que el partido demócrata no quiere perder. Ello ha llevado a Menéndez a ocultar, en lo posible, su situación jurídica.
Muchos de los miembros del Congreso estadounidense que están centrando hoy su atención en la situación en Venezuela son de ascendencia cubana. No es que sean nacidos en la isla sino que se han formado al calor del odio a la independencia nacional y al socialismo que contra Cuba han proyectado durante muchos años la extrema derecha de Estados Unidos y las oligarquías de todo el continente. Muchos son de la Florida, Texas y Nueva York, donde puede encontrarse la mayor población de inmigrantes venezolanos.
Otro político estadounidense que lleva voz cantante en el desarrollo de la actual campaña de la derecha estadounidense contra Venezuela por recuperar posiciones ganadas en décadas recientes por la izquierda antiimperialista del continente es Marco Rubio, senador republicano por el estado de la Florida.
Rubio desempeñó un relevante papel en la maniobra de la oposición pro imperialista venezolana -terminada en fracaso hace dos semanas- de convocar a los venezolanos a participar en un ilegal “plebiscito”, que –salvo en los medios extremadamente pro imperialistas- fue totalmente opacado por el ensayo convocado por el gobierno venezolano que confirmó el amplio apoyo popular al proceso de constitución de la Asamblea Constituyente de julio 30.
Marco Rubio ganó notoriedad por su participación en el show protagonizado recientemente por el Presidente Trump en Miami para anunciar la implementación de disposiciones gubernamentales estadounidenses nuevas contra Cuba.
Se las dio de cubano durante varios años para aprovechar financieramente la multimillonaria campaña de odio contra Cuba del “establishment” estadounidense. Con ello avanzó en las filas de su partido y obtuvo un fuerte apoyo económico hasta llegar a los primeros planos de la política nacional como “cubanoamericano de extrema derecha”. Fue así que llegó a situarse entre los posibles candidatos republicanos a la presidencia y perdió en dura liza contra el actual presidente Donald Trump.
Rubio tuvo un serio tropiezo cuando, en determinado momento de la representación de una falsa identidad natal, se descubrió que no solo no había nacido en Cuba, sino que ni siquiera había estado alguna vez en su presunto país de origen.
Marco Rubio nació en la ciudad de Miami, en el estado de Florida, en mayo de 1971, cuando ya la revolución cubana llevaba en el poder más de una década. Sus progenitores eran inmigrantes cubanos que salieron de Cuba en 1956, en plena dictadura de Fulgencio Batista, y se nacionalizaron estadounidenses en 1975.
De familia católica, Rubio ha hecho un abrupto recorrido de fe. Tras su primera comunión católica en 1984 y su matrimonio también católico, se hizo mormón, luego nuevamente católico y después se convirtió a la iglesia bautista hasta que volvió al catolicismo.
Rubio se ubica en el ala conservadora del Partido Republicano. Obtuvo en 2010 un puesto en el Senado de Estados Unidos como candidato favorito del Movimiento Tea Party, formación política que se sitúa a la derecha del espectro político, pero no está vinculado formalmente al partido republicano.
Su candidatura para el Senado se ha visto empañada por investigaciones aun inconclusas sobre malversación de fondos del partido republicano.
Compitió por la candidatura presidencial republicana durante las primarias de 2016, hasta que decidió retirarse definitivamente de la contienda a causa de su derrota frente al político y magnate Donald Trump en Florida, el propio estado por el que es senador.
Es absolutamente lógico que en las luchas por su definitiva independencia se manifiesten muchas similitudes entre los procesos políticos actuales de Venezuela y Cuba, al igual que entre las aspiraciones independentistas de todos los países de América Latina que tienen en común el objetivo de liberarse de la condición de semicolonias de Estados Unidos.
Julio 28 de 2017.
A Tradition of Slander Against Russia
A Tradition of Slander Against Russia
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Exclusive to the daily Por Esto! of Merida, Mexico. http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
A rich journalistic work by Edward S. Herman, was published by Monthly Review in its July-August 2017 issue. It provides abundant information about the campaign to demonize Russia that has been a central goal of the New York Times (NYT) and the United States media as a whole for a century.
False news about Russia is a tradition that goes back, at least, to the period of the October 1917 Revolution. In a study of New York Times and the mainstream US media (MSM) coverage, of the Russian revolution, the then-prestigious journalists Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, both conservatives, wrote in March 1920 New that, “from the point of view of professional journalism, the disclosure about the Russian revolution has been little What a disaster “.
Lippmann and Merz showed the strong editorial bias in the news as evidence that the editors wanted the defeat of the Communists. In pursuit of that impression, they denounced atrocities that had not happened and predicted the imminent collapse of the Bolsheviks at least 91 times. There was an uncritical acceptance by the official parties, and confidence in the statements of some unidentified “higher authorities”.
This lying manipulation of the news became usual practice in the NYT between 1917 and 1920 was often repeated in subsequent years. The Soviet Union became the enemy target until World War II, and the NYT was always hostile to Russia. At the end of World War II, and since the Soviet Union was an important military power that would soon be a rival of the United States in the use of nuclear energy for military purposes, the Cold War began.
According to Edward S. Herman, Professor Emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, “Anti-communism became the American religion and the Soviet Union began to be accused of aspiring to conquer the world and in to be in need of containment. With this ideology set out and well-established by US plans for its own global expansion, the Communist threat would now serve to justify the sustained growth of its military-industrial complex and its repeated interventions to counter the alleged aggressions of the so-called “evil empire”.
One of the first and most flagrant cases of lies about this type of Russian threat was used to justify the overthrow of Guatemala’s legitimate progressive government in 1954. This was conducted by a mercenary army funded, organized and led by the United States that invaded the country from Nicaragua, then ruled by the dictatorship of the Somozas, who were faithful servants of the United States.
Herman explains that “the action was prompted by the reforms of the government of Jacobo Arbenz which had the audacity to pass a law that allowed the formation of trade unions, and planned to buy (based on their tax declarations) and distribute to farmers some untilled land that was owned by United Fruit and other large landowners. The United States, which had supported the previous dictatorship of Jose Ubico during its 14 years, could not withstand this democratic challenge. The elected government, led by Jacobo Arbenz, was immediately accused of a series of evil deeds, and harassed for having favored taking the Guatemalan government down the Moscow road.
After Arbenz’s overthrow, a right-wing dictatorship faithful to Washington’s dictates in the country was installed. Historian Ronald Schneider, after studying more than 50,000 documents seized from purportedly-communist sources in Guatemala. He demonstrated before a court that, not only had the Communists never controlled the country, but the Soviet Union was too preoccupied with its internal problems to care about Central America.
In 2011, more than half a century later, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom had to apologize for the “great crime of the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government in 1954 …”. However, there has never been an apology or even recognition by the United States of its role In the great crime, nor by the NYT’s editors for their complicity. During the war against Vietnam, there was an infinite number of false and misleading news stories in the NYT, as in the American press in general, whose editorial lines were systematically supportive of the politics of war.
The situation recently created around alleged links with Russia in the Trump campaign indicates that the Pentagon, the CIA, the liberal Democrats and the rest of the members of the war party have won a major skirmish in the fight for or against permanent war, says Herman.
July 20, 2017.
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/fake-news-on-russia-and-other-official-enemies/
At What Moment is Venezuela in Its Struggle
At What Moment is Venezuela in Its Struggle
By Manuel E. Yepe.
Manuel E. Yepe
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The opposition, for its part, called for a plebiscite for the same first Sunday July 1. However it is illegal because it does not have the endorsement of the CNE, the only body legally authorized to carry out any electoral process in the country. It has a subversive character, and was designed to prevent the electoral process for the Constituent Assembly. Neither in the national constitution nor in any other Venezuelan law is the plebiscite a method of popular consultation.
But at what point is the struggle to consolidate the Bolivarian revolutionary process initiated by Hugo Chávez in the interest of the full assumption by the Venezuelan people of sovereignty over the natural wealth, history and future of that Caribbean and South American nation?
The National Directorate of the Bolivar and Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ) of the Socialist Party [the PSUV: Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela] in a communiqué made public on July 3 in progress declares that the conflict in Venezuela is at a new level, not because of the will of the revolution, but because it was imposed by the coup plan in progress after two months of unsuccessful coup attempts.
The strategy is drawn up by the US State Department, the US Defense Department’s Southern Command headquartered in Miami and the Venezuelan economic and political right. To date, it has been observed using the deployment of different putschist weapons: the communicational, the psychological, the international, the economic, the institutional, and violence. They have tried and advanced each of them, as part of the fourth generation war, which combines the different forms of war. His greatest weakness has always been the lack of popular support.
It is in the institutional environment in which more work and beat today, betting on eventual fractures in the Chavista block.
Given its lack of popular support, the right has opted to implement several tactics at a time. One is to push the economy to raise prices, shorten and attack points of food supply and transportation in order to deepen the economic difficulties of humble people to push it to plunder.
Another is based on deploying clashes to siege entire cities for several days, leaving behind a trail of death, destruction, looting, fire, terror and other images that hit the social fabric, reports the CRBZ.
The radical aspect of the right-wing war is explained by the despair and the class character of the conflict. They seek desperately to regain political control and to lapse the historical project that is the Bolivarian revolution.
“Faced with this scenario, it is essential to maintain the unity of Chavismo, to defend the revolution not only from the State, but also from the popular protagonism, involving people in the organized protection of institutions, territories, hospitals, food centers. To ensure that doctors, workers, comuneros and neighbors, take care of their spaces so that the right does not destroy what the people have built in the exercise of participatory democracy and safeguard their conquests for so many years.
The other great purpose of Chavismo is to arrive on July 30, having started a process of participation and debate around the National Constituent Assembly. “We must activate assemblies in the territories, recreate politics from the grassroots, listen to criticism, build spaces for exchange that are not only to applaud leaders and repeat the same. That exercise will allow us to call the vote to the majorities on July 30 and have better conditions to face the next steps. “
Chavismo proposes to provide urgent answers to the material demands of people: gas, price stabilization, supply, drugs. And not from an electoral perspective, but from the imperative need to respond to needs that multiply in the territories and that are breeding ground for discontent, abstention and depoliticization.
“We are in a decisive month,” the Chavistas reckon, “the right, by US design, will do everything possible to attempt its final assault. The revolution has the strength to resist and keep moving forward. It is necessary to use all those forces, in particular that of the protagonism of the people “.
July 17, 2017.
From Machistas to Anti-Homophic Vigilantes
From Machistas to Anti-Homophobic Vigilantes
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive to the daily POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
Political organizations and religious institutions of all kinds, tones, and colors have tried to legislate about what have been (or are) the most appropriate “carnal relations.”
An investigative work on homosexuality in several countries, by University of New Mexico professor emeritus of sociology, Nelson Valdés, states that the Bolsheviks in Russia criminalized homosexuality for a short time in 1922. But it has been a general rule that both communists, socialists and capitalist parties always avoid defining guidelines on sexual orientation.
Valdés points out that in the United States, the change came just on December 6, 2011, when US foreign policy manifested itself in defense of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender “rights” in some countries of the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then announced a global LGBT policy, although she acknowledged that she was talking about this subject “knowing that my country’s record on human rights for homosexuals is far from adequate.”
Until 2003, it was a crime in the United States to be LGBT. Many homosexuals in the United States suffered violence and harassment. For some – among them many young people – harassment and exclusion continue to be daily realities. “Hence, as in all nations, we have a lot of work to do to protect human rights in our country,” Secretary of State Clinton said in a December 2011 statement.
His new international policy promised to open the borders of the United States to give aid and protection to the LGBT refugees and asylum seekers … as long as they came from those countries of which Washington demands regime change.
Practically, the United States had only added one more pretext for its intrusion into the internal affairs of those countries that defied American power.
Shortly afterward, in the mid-1970s, the media “influenced” by Washington within their own nation and around the world unleashed a great campaign on the alleged discrimination against homosexuals in Cuba.
Simultaneously, a media crusade was initiated to demonstrate that “the roots of homophobia in Cuba were in the revolution of Fidel Castro and the new Cuban communist leadership.” In 2000, the Cuban leader admitted his personal responsibility for not having promptly corrected the phenomenon, derived from the stubborn policies of years before the revolution.
Until 1973 homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and other related professions throughout the hemisphere shared similar attitudes. Homosexuality was considered until very recently a “deviation” and prohibited in the majority of the states of the United States. For its part, Cuba had inherited a macho culture because of long-standing attitudes, both in Spain and in the African cultures that contribute to its national identity.
However, in the last two decades, says Professor Nelson Valdes, the changes on issues of sexual identity and gender have been extraordinary. The Cuban media has played a systematic and concerted role in the education of the general population. Cinematography has been at the forefront in discussing these issues. In the last 13 years, Cuban television has more explicitly explored issues related to alternative sexual behavior.
The openness to openly gay behavior has not been limited to Havana alone. Homophobia is clearly in decline throughout the island as evidenced by the fact that gay and lesbian candidates are being elected to public office. A well-known foreign observer has pointed out that, in this area, “Cuba is much more liberal than the United States and Europe.”
What remains to be addressed is how it has been possible for a country characterized by such macho tendencies so entrenched in institutions, politicians, and national culture to have changed so much in the relatively short period of half a century and now that homophobia has become the enemy.
Indeed, the mainstream media and political and social leaders in the country have openly attempted to positively influence the population, in which some of the older people have tried to cling to the sexual and gender roles learned before the triumph Of the Cuban revolution.
Valdes highlights as a great achievement that Cubans have overcome the idea that machismo, manhood, and masculinity are the expressions of what defines a revolutionary. But, in my opinion, it is the awareness of the necessity of national unity for the defense of the revolution that has played an essential role in such a transcendental task for the progress of the human condition.
July 6, 2017.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Vicious Cyber-War Against Venezuela
Vicious Cyber-War Against Venezuela
By Manuel E. Yepe
The psychological warfare being waged by the oligarchic opposition in Venezuela –following the strategic and tactical objectives of US imperialism– has strong support in a well-organized Twitter operation that promotes protests from the Miami-based DolarToday platform. This is described in a research article published by the well-known specialist Erin Gallagher.
DolarToday is a US website based in Miami that, according to Wikipedia, “is more known for being an exchange rate reference to the Venezuelan bolivar” and “monitoring the Venezuelan economy.”
Currently, with no other reliable source other than the black market exchange rates, these rates are used by Reuters, CNBC, and several media news agencies and networks.
The Economist states in its defense that the rates calculated by DolarToday are “erratic”, but that they are “more realistic than the three official rates” released by the Venezuelan government. It maintains that it is not true that the rates published by DolarToday are manipulated in order to undercut the Venezuelan government.
The DolarToday website has been denounced by the Venezuelan State for setting a parallel dollar artificial price marker (black market). It has also been the target of a lawsuit by the Central Bank of Venezuela for falsifying the country’s exchange rates.
In 2013, President Maduro accused the website of “fueling an economic war against his government, and manipulating the exchange rate.”
“DolarToday is also promoting opposition protests in Venezuela. Its tweets are being boosted by automated accounts that exhibit repetitive, bot-like characteristics and are using a social media management tool called IFTTT (If This Then That) to automate their tweets”, says Erin Gallagher.
“What immediately caught my attention in the #TeamHDP hashtag data were the shared networks between the influencers (real persons of high credibility),” explained the specialist.
Trolls and bots carry out coordinated attacks to create false trends, congest or disrupt networks, and disseminate misinformation. Sometimes they succeed having a respected media –by neglect or mistake– disseminate their fake information and misleading headlines.
“Bots” are automated systems or programs –that can be run on home computers or on sophisticated servers—which use non-existent Twitter accounts to repeat a certain phrase hundreds or thousands of times. Thus they can turn those phrases into “trends”; that is to make them appear among the 10 or 20 topics that Twitter considers the subjects most discussed in recent hours.
Bot experts disguise themselves as “digital marketing companies”,create dozens or hundreds of fake Twitter accounts, and then use “bots” so that these accounts simultaneously tweet certain content, including headlines from news sites.
Because many journalists in the print media, radio and television use Twitter trends to determine what topics to deal with in their media, whoever dominates Twitter trends can get to determine the topics most talked about in the country’s media.
Gallagher says it is relatively easy to discover the use of these systems: when you enter a tag on Twitter and then click “Most Recent”, you will notice that there are hundreds or thousands of accounts tweeting exactly the same phrase.
This is not the first time robotic cyber actions have been observed in Venezuelan networks. Mexican researchers from the platform “LoQueSigue” used, in 2014, bots with the hashtag #PrayForVenezuela, which denounced “the violence, the repression and the supposed “censorship” of the protests in Venezuela,” which became a worldwide trend.
In addition, NoBotsPolitico of Spain documented fake accounts that supported the protests in Venezuela until June 2014, then remained silent for eight months, but went back to tweeting propaganda against Podemos in hashtags related to the 2015 elections in Spain.
Bloomberg published a feature on an investigation of March 2016 titled “How to Hack an Election” about the Colombian hacker Andrés Sepulveda, who worked with a team of hackers to manipulate information about the elections in Latin America. Sepulveda is currently serving 10 years in prison for crimes such as abusive access to computer networks, violation of personal data, espionage, and the use of malicious software during the 2014 election in Colombia.
It is not difficult to guess who controls the automated accounts that support #TeamHDP. The counterrevolution will someday have to answer for so much crime against the Venezuelan people.
June 26, 2017.
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
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