Manuel E. Yepe 239
Hawks and Doves in the US Since Covid-19
Hawks and Doves in the US Since Covid-19
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
April 15, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Finding the right balance between public security and personal freedom after COVID-19 “will require a review of everything we in the United States say we need to do in the interest of our security, which should involve moving away from militarized approaches to global problems to many other instruments of American power and influence.
This is what Christopher A. Preble, Vice-President of the CATO Institute for Defense and Foreign Policy in Washington DC, reflects in an article published in the magazine “Responsible Statecraft”, on the possible implications of the COVID-19 outbreak on the future of US foreign policy.
Among the responsibilities of many U.S. government officials is the identification of national security threats and prioritizing, among many options, the appropriate tools to address them.
Those who advocate increases in Pentagon spending – the so-called hawks in the language of the day – are likely to argue that resources should not be cut to the military to free up more resources for public health.
“We will soon be back to normal,” they will say from their perspective, “it would not be wise to redirect our national security strategy and spending to address one particular type of threat, at the expense of all others.
This is not exactly how politics responded after 9/11, but, in that case, the military eventually emerged victorious. In fact, anyone who opposed the militarized approach (that of the doves, who see the fight against terrorism as primarily an intelligence and law enforcement problem) was attacked by the hawks for not taking the threat seriously enough.
“Only a war would be enough; anything else would be naive, or even insensitive: a sign of indifference to the inevitable suffering of future victims of terrorist attacks.
That perspective, set a few days or weeks after 11 September 2001, has persisted. Even today, proposals to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, for example, are met with serious warnings that this will increase the risk of future terrorist incidents in the United States. We are told that “only a continued, indefinite US military presence can manage this risk and the best we can do is to manage that danger.
Will such arguments survive the current crisis here at home? What politician will argue that Americans would have to die from COVID-19 today to ensure that other Americans are not killed by a terrorist in the future? And, will it be true that such military personnel so willing to “help” other countries are necessary to save our own?
The suggestion seemed absurd for generations, because the danger was not near, not even on the horizon. Now, it’s here.
If before it was considered naive to doubt that terrorism would represent a very serious threat to public security in the future, and skeptics were considered dangerously out of touch with reality, then the suggestion was not accepted,
Will the claims of the traditional defense hawks now come under greater scrutiny, without any senator or representative asking, for example, how that ship, tank or missile might function against a deadly pandemic?
In the post-September 11 era, a few dared to question whether the enormous expenses we had incurred amounted to unnecessary overreaction. But most Americans literally fell into that line.
The disease and its aftermath should provoke strong debate about how to preserve America’s national security.
In a peculiar twist, those who call for more spending to defeat the diseases could be called the hawks of the pandemic, while those who argue against it (and prefer that most resources stay in the military) become the doves.
The suggestion might seem odd, and the terms hawk and pigeon belong to more than just spending priorities. Because, even if the coronavirus didn’t change everything, it would necessarily change many things.
The senior leader of the Washington DC-based CATO Institute for Defense and Foreign Policy concludes that “finding the right balance between public security and personal freedom after COVID-19 will require Americans to review all the things we have to do to keep ourselves safe and to move away from a militarized approach to global problems.
And Yet, It Moves
And Yet It Moves (eppur si muove)
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
February 23, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
I will take the liberty of dedicating my column in POR ESTO today to transcribe some paragraphs of an article by the Cuban journalist living in the United States, Domingo Amuchástegui. He describes the current state of relations between Washington and Havana, which I consider to be extremely objective in assessing the current situation in Cuba, as well as the Cuban-Yankee dispute.
Its title, “Eppur si muove”, which is very significant, is a phrase attributed to the famous Renaissance astronomer Galileo Galilei when he was facing the Holy Inquisition, clinging to the defense of its truth. Today, Trump is for Cuba something worse than an Inquisition that Cuba challenges by demonstrating its ability to survive.
“Three years of economic warfare on the part of the Trump administration have caused considerable damage to the Cuban economy, not only to the public sector, but also to the private sector and generally to the common people.
“The Trump administration still has an abundant arsenal of possible aggressions and sanctions that, if effective in the coming months, would result in devastating damage”. Among them, Amuchástegui cites the following: the reinstatement of Cuba to its unilateral and arbitrary list of countries that are punishable as terrorists; the total breaking-off of diplomatic relations that are almost non-existent; the suspension of the few remaining commercial flights to Havana; the complete suspension of the sending of remittances by Cubans in the United States; the total suspension of their trips to Cuba; the increase in the number of actions legal and financial sanctions against potential private investors and government cooperation projects from third countries; sanctions against third countries receiving Cuban medical missions and, of course, a naval blockade against merchants, cruise ships and others boats from any country bound for Cuba.”
Amuchástegui points out that the merit of having survived does not diminish in any way the critical situation in which the Cuban economy finds itself, determined to survive in the face of so many excesses, but it must be recognized that the island is experiencing modest advances.
“Cuba closed 2019 with 4.3 million visitors, despite the disappearance of American travelers and cruise ships. There was a 9.3% decrease in total visitors compared to 2018. Canadians, with more than one million tourists, continue to be in first place, and Cuban emigration, which brought 624,000 visitors (88.6% of them living in the US), is in second place.
The latter is distinguished by longer stays than regular tourism. That averages 11.2 days per stay and is the carrier of abundant merchandise and appreciable amounts of cash. These are then channeled into the domestic market through their families and friends. They cover both for stay expenses and investments in small businesses, accommodations in private homes and loan operations to Cuban entrepreneurs for tens of thousands of dollars. This last type of relationship with visitors does not represent any expense for the State’s tourism industry (which entails a net profit) and is the carrier of many remittances that are impossible to calculate due to their informal nature.
Cruise activity has begun to revive with the arrival of European cruise companies along with an increase in airlines, mainly Canadian and European (including Turkey and Russia), organized by a variety of tour operators.
Progress is being made in the creation of a second Special Development Zone in Ariguanabo (the first is Mariel), which will articulate the export capacity of important scientific institutions such as the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Center for Molecular Engineering, several drug factories, the University of Computer Science and others. The construction of numerous hotels and infrastructures throughout the country is continuing apace.
The presence of foreign capital and its contribution in terms of business management is not only limited to the tourist area. Sherrit (Canada), Imperial Tobacco (UK), Pernod-Ricard (France), Diageo (UK), Unilever (UK-Netherlands), Nestlé (Switzerland), banking operations run by Sociéteé Genérele (Fr), BBVA (ESP) and others have been, and continue to be, important economic partners of Cuba, some of them for decades. This presence has begun to increase since the inauguration of the Special Development Zone in Mariel, with 50 projects underway, 27 of which are now fully operational.
An important British project for the promotion of renewable energies has been completed, represented by the bioelectric plant attached to the Ciro Redondo sugar plant in the province of Ciego de Avila at a cost of 180 million (with financing from China, which continues to be the main source of financing for solar energy projects in Cuba).
February 21, 2020.
Big Losers at the Super Bowl
Big Losers at the Super Bowl
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
There could only be one winner in the Super Bowl of American football, a game held in Miami, Florida, on February 2 this year between the San Francisco Lakers and the Kansas Chiefs. However, the biggest losers were, as always, the hundreds of girls and boys – some as young as 9 – who are bought and sold for sex during the course of the great game of football that ends the season of this extremely popular sport in the United States.
This evil practice has become the fastest growing business in American organized crime. Child sex trafficking is the most lucrative commodity traded illegally, after drugs and guns.
Children are targeted and sold for sex every day in the United States,” says John W. Whitehead, founder and current president of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. John Ryan, speaking on behalf of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has reported that “adults buy children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
According to research by USA TODAY newspaper, not only are girls vulnerable to these predators “60% are female and just under 5% are male and transgendered, but about 36% of the children caught in the U.S. sex industry are boys.
The newspaper notes that every two minutes, a child is brought into the sex industry. On average, over a five-year period, 6,000 children are raped by adult men.
It is estimated that at least 100,000 young boys and girls are bought and sold for sex in the United States each year, and up to 300,000 children are at risk of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcibly abducted, others are runaways seeking refuge, and the rest are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
The rape of children has become a big business in the United States of America. It is basically an industry that revolves around cheap sex with girls and very young women sold, on average, for between $50 and $25 each to adult men, while their manipulators make between $150,000 and $200,000 each year.
This is not a problem that is limited only to the big American cities, their suburbs and towns across the country. According to Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: “The only way not to observe it in any American city is simply not to look for it.”
And don’t be fooled into thinking this is only a concern in low-income communities or among immigrants, says Whitehead.
“There are an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 underage sex workers in the United States. Don’t think of them as girls who volunteer to be sex slaves either. They are being lured, forced and trafficked. In most cases, they have no choice and in every transaction, there is a rape.
To avoid detection (in some cases with the help or instigation of the police) and to meet the demand from male buyers of sex with women, pimps, gangs and crime syndicates have made sex trafficking a highly mobile enterprise. Trafficked girls, boys and women are constantly being moved from city to city, state to state and country to country.
Sex trafficking is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated business that operates in cities large and small. In the United States alone, it raises more than $9.5 billion a year by kidnapping and selling young girls for sex.
The girls who are bought and sold are getting younger and younger. The average age of those trafficked is 13, which means that there are 10-, 9-, and even 8-year-olds.
For every 10 women who are rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are caught by traffickers.
But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young meat? Who buys a child for sex?
Catholic and Protestant churches have been singled out in recent years for harboring these sexual predators. Twenty years after the clergy sexual abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, hundreds of sexual predators – priests, deacons, monks and lay people – are still turning up.
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
*This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO! as the source.
Terrorism is the Opposite of Revolution
Terrorism is the Opposite of Revolution
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
I have written a great deal about the desirability and necessity of the international community’s categorical definition of the term terrorism. Since there is no universally-accepted definition
of the term for use by international humanitarian law, and no such formulation has been reached in international bodies, apparently, because of the impossibility of doing so without including the terrorist actions of nation-states.
In 1937, the League of Nations referred to terrorism as: “Any criminal act directed against a State, intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of private persons, a group of persons or the general public. In 1988, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution reiterating that “…criminal acts directed or calculated to provoke a state of terror in a group of persons or in particular persons in the general public, for political purposes, are unjustifiable in all circumstances, whatever the political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other considerations that may be invoked to justify them”.
Dictionaries more or less agree in identifying terrorism as “the systematic use of violence, or threat of violence, against individuals or larger groups, to achieve a political objective whose scope often transcends boundaries national.”
Although it is common to specify that it refers to actions carried out by non-governmental groups, there is also admitted, as another concept, that of “state terrorism”. This is is that exercised by a government against communities under siege or that it seeks to conquer, or against its own subjects as a means of subjecting them to its excesses and arbitrariness.
It has become a tradition, and it is still a systematic practice today, that the great powers and tyrannical governments, use their vast media resources to make the term “terrorists” be applied to the methods of struggle chosen by revolutionaries and patriots in their emancipatory clashes.
The U.S. superpower has imposed the label “terrorist” on the fighters who have made their actions felt. Its immense media power describes as terrorism the actions of the patriotic resistance, whose clear military inferiority is imposed to organize in secret or irregular units that fight outside the universally accepted military parameters when facing the superior armed forces of the invader or occupier.
Hence the need to avoid this trap by clearly distinguishing revolutionary methods of struggle from terrorist methods. On the basis of my own personal experience, as a combatant in the ranks of the insurrectional movement that defeated the dictatorship that ruled Cuba until the last day of 1958 and took power on a day like today in 1959, I perceive several clear differences:
Revolutionary methods are identified with the aspirations of the people while the terrorists are almost always strongly rejected by the population. This is because the former seek to innovate the scenario and the asymmetrical conditions of the struggle in order to raise the combative morale of the people. They also promote the incorporation of new armies, to ridicule the unpopular repressive forces of the tyrannical regime.
Their goal is to call the world’s attention to the revolutionary war being waged and to denounce the anti-popular character of the oppressive government. Revolutionary forms of underground struggle are intended to increase the support of the people for their cause and therefore are not intended to provoke panic but to promote the adherence of the people. Terrorist procedures are typical of the gangs of drug criminals, mafias, extreme right-wing paramilitary organizations and, in general, mercenaries at the service of powerful economic interests.
They seek to impose their authority on the basis of the population’s fear of the cruelty of their actions. These may take the form of threats, warnings or they may be directly punitive. They do not aspire to attract the people to their cause but to impose their authority on the basis of fear, on fear.
Terrorism generates panic and causes suffering and death to innocent people. Revolutionary methods engender admiration for the selflessness of those who carry out the actions and call for struggle and sacrifice for a just cause that identifies with the aspirations of broad sections of the people,
During the insurrectionary uprising in Cuba against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista supported by Washington, along with the guerrilla warfare that was being waged in the mountains, another very risky underground struggle was being fought in Cuba in the urban areas of the country that contributed decisively to the popular triumph of 1959.
The main actors in the urban revolutionary struggle were combatants from the same revolutionary organizations as when the war ended in the fullness of a process of unification of their ranks. These were the July 26th Movement led by Fidel Castro; the clandestine members of the Revolutionary Directorate created by the University Student Federation and led by its president, the architecture student José Antonio Echevarría, and the forces of the Socialist Youth, the formation of the People’s Socialist Party (Marxist-Leninist), many of whose members supported the line of armed struggle before this was the main form of combat drawn up by the national leadership of the PSP.
These three major political formations arose separately, but were united as the identity of their revolutionary objectives became more and more evident and as the awareness of the advantages that such unity brought to the struggle grew. They acted in a growing number of cities, carrying out political propaganda to promote the patriotic armed struggle. They carried out armed propaganda that included detonations with explosives, sabotage of production and services. They interrupted communications and transportatipm to harm the economic activity of the big businessmen who were unaware of the patriotic effort against the dictatorial regime. They collected resources through voluntary contributions of economic funds to supply the guerrilla fronts and urban combat activity, This was done taking care that the contributions were not contaminated with ill-gotten money. They collected taxes from entities located in areas that were being liberated and directly confronted the armed forces of the police and the army, among many other functions.
It was certainly an extremely dangerous activity for revolutionaries, and not only because of the brutal retaliation by the police forces against the tyranny that included barbaric torture of those we captured. In addition, this was also because of the risks involved in handling explosives.
The underground fighters had to mourn the deaths of some of their bravest and most determined comrades in arms or explosives handling accidents. But there were never, to my knowledge, cases of civilians (non-combatants) being killed or injured because of their own irresponsibility, thanks to their belief that it was a matter of principle to avoid actions too risky for non-combatants.
That is why it is advisable to be wary of information linking popular resistance movements anywhere in the world to terrorism. In each situation, it’s necessary to examine each case in the light of the motivations and objectives of its combatants, as well as the circumstances in which the struggle is waged.
Washington unabashedly approves of “friendly dictatorships” while applauding, promoting and financing terrorist actions by its allies and its own intelligence and counter-intelligence organizations. At the same time Washington presents itself as the leader of a war against terrorism that is increasingly rejected or distrusted by the people.
Terrorism could never be a method of revolutionary struggle because it is contrary to the interests and aspirations of the people and so could never be identified with a popular cause. That is why it is increasingly easy and possible to identify the difference between terrorism and the irregular methods of revolutionary struggle that oppressive regimes cynically try to equate. True revolutions must be characterized by the admiration of their own people for their humanism. That is why they are respected even by those they fight.
It should be a source of pride for Cubans and admiration for other peoples that, despite the fact that Cuba had suffered thousands of deaths as a result of acts of terrorism organized and financed from United States territory, the island’s authorities had never resorted to such despicable methods of defense or counterattack, even in the most extreme situations.
The fact is that terrorism, as a method of struggle, is typical of fanatics or criminals who seek their own good to the detriment of the common good, or of those ambitious for power and wealth who despise others. The torture of prisoners could never be the method of revolutionaries, who only deserve such a label if they are fighters for human welfare and dignity.
January 5, 2020
Originally published in two parts.
FIRST
https://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/terrorismo-es-lo-contrario-de-revolucion-i-por-manuel-e-yepe/
The Isolated Superpower
The Isolated Superpower
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
On March 12, 1996, the Congress of the United States of America approved one of the most regressive and draconian imperialist foreign policy initiatives, ironically named the Solidarity Act of Freedom and Democracy for Cuba (LIBERTAD), known as the Helms-Burton Act.
Before the triumph of Cuban guerrilla weapons over the armed forces of Fulgencio Batista’s tyranny, which had been imposed by Washington on Cuba, the United States exercised absolute control. The economy of the island was ultimately subordinated to the interests of U.S. companies involved in relations with the Cuban authorities and entities.
After the victory of the revolution in January 1959, the situation changed completely. Cubans became masters of their country and their economy. Nevertheless, Cuba could not conduct its normal foreign trade relations with the US because US hostility became present in economic relations.
However, before the 1990s, the blockade on trade with Cuba had not been legally established although it started working through so-called “executive orders”.
It was President Kennedy who officially initiated the blockade, euphemistically called the “embargo”, in 1962. He did this on the basis of [U.S. national] self-interest in response to the nationalization of US assets ordered by Cuba following the revolution’s coming to power.
Happily for Cuba, that moment arrived just at the moment when Moscow was in a position to become Cuba’s main trading partner in the New World. There were special incentives from its ideological affinity and a certain economic complementarity that the political alliance would bring about.
It is rightly said that the community’s approach and world public opinion have very little influence on the policy of the United States of America. This perception was fully confirmed by history during the second half of the 20th century.
Every year, Cubans, many Latin Americans and not a few Americans, humiliated by the shame of the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade that their country, the richest and most militarily powerful in the world, has been exercising against this small island. Cuba is a giant in terms of dignity,
The sole justification of Washington’s fear is that the example of Cuba’s successful resistance to unjust abuse will encourage other peoples and governments of the continent to defend their sovereignty, which cannot be renounced.
Once again this year, the most representative body of the international community debated and approved almost unanimously, in a plenary session of its General Assembly, the resolution “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba”.
A few minutes after the conclusion of this most recent session of the UN General Assembly, the whole of Cuba celebrated, as it does every year, “the new victory against imperialism” with as much joy as if it were the first time that it did so as an expression of its condemnation of the unjust blockade imposed on the Caribbean country.
This was the umpteenth time in as many consecutive years that the United Nations General Assembly approved the same resolution. It calls for the suspension of the longest blockade in human history. It has already caused the island more than $100 billion in losses. It could have served to bring Cuba out of underdevelopment through its own efforts, according to the original projects of the triumphant revolution in January 1959.
The Helms-Burton Act was not the only piece of explicitly anti-Cuban legislation circulating in Congress at the time. On February 9, 1995, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) introduced a bill with a diametrically opposed text, the Cuba Free Trade Act. It was aimed at eliminating the blockade and establishing a dialogue with Cuba. In doing so, Rangel sought to draft an agreement on the disposition of expropriated U.S. assets in Cuba.
Congress did not approve that law, opting for a hard-line stance against Cuba and avoiding constructive policies that would transform it.
December 27, 2019
Russia Increases Parliament’s Role
Russia Increases Parliament’s Role
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
During his annual message to the Federal Assembly (Russian Parliament), the President of that nation, Vladimir Putin, proposed a series of constitutional amendments that he considered important for the development of Russia as a legitimate social state, one whose highest value lies, he said, in the freedoms and rights of citizens, the dignity of people and their welfare.
Putin proposed that a package of legislative actions to be put to a citizens’ vote, the outcome of which would serve to make the final decisions. Putin’s most publicized proposal was to transfer from the President to Parliament the power to approve nominations of the Prime Minister and members of the government.
It also gives Parliament the power to approve, on the proposal of the head of government, the appointment of all deputy prime ministers and federal ministers. However, the Prime Minister shall retain the power to dismiss the Prime Minister, his vice ministers and other ministers, when they lose their confidence or perform their duties incorrectly.
It consolidates the regular indexation of pensions and sets the minimum wage that cannot be below the level of the current subsistence minimum. It prohibits the adoption of foreign citizenship or any residence permit abroad for certain categories of public officials who hold positions critical to ensuring the country’s security and sovereignty, such as regional leaders, parliamentarians, ministers, heads of other federal agencies and judges.
It adjusts the requirements in order to ensure that candidates for the Russian presidency have permanent residence in the country for no less than 25 years and that they do not have citizenship or a residence permit in a foreign country.
It consolidates the status and role of the Council of State, so that the highest leaders of all regions of the country are included in this high legislative body.
Limits the priority of international law so that the requirements of international law and treaties, as well as the decisions of international bodies, may act on the territory of Russia only to the extent that they do not restrict the individual rights and freedoms of citizens, and do not contradict the [Russian Federation’s] Constitution.
It grants the Council of the Federation (the upper house of the Russian Parliament) the power to dismiss federal judges and, in some cases, to remove – on the proposal of its president – judges of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.
It strengthens the role of the Constitutional Court, giving it the right to verify the constitutionality of federal laws that are initiated by the President, before they are signed by the Head of State.
It assigns to the Russian President the power to appoint the heads of law enforcement agencies, after agreement with the Council of the Federation.
Currently, under the Russian Constitution, the President only requires authorization from the State Duma to appoint the head of government and, after that, to appoint the head of the Cabinet, his
deputy ministers and all ministers.
Now Putin has proposed changing this order and entrusting the State Duma not only with the authorization, but also with the approval of the candidacy of the President of the Government of the Russian Federation, and then, on the proposal of the President of the Government, of all the deputy prime ministers and federal ministers”.
The Head of State will also be obliged to appoint them to the post, i.e. he will not have the power to reject the nominations of officials approved by Parliament.
Putin said that this is “a very serious change in the political system that will increase the role of Parliament, as well as the importance of the State Duma, the parliamentary parties and the accountability of the head of government and all members of the Cabinet.
He assured that they will assign greater responsibility in the formation of the Executive with “more responsibility for the policies that the Government implements”.
Currently, under the Russian Constitution, the President only requires authorization from the State Duma to appoint the head of government, and after that the President appoints the head of the Cabinet, his deputy ministers and all ministers.
Putin argues that greater responsibility in the formation of the executive augurs well for greater accountability in the policies that are implemented.
After the opinions of 75 experts with diverse profiles created to discuss the constitutional amendments proposed by Putin are known, they will be voted today, Thursday 30th, in the Duma.
January 31st, 2020.
Trump’s Impact on U.S. Youth
Trump’s Impact on US Youth
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
It’s easy to imagine the formidable negative impact that the presidency of the energetic Donald Trump may be having on America’s youth.
In every action, every gesture, and every word of his behavior as head of the nation that rules the destiny of the capitalist world, Trump sends signals that being racist, sexist, homophobic, or misogynist is a merit equivalent to an honorary badge.
Historically, inept presidents are challenged, among other defects, for being liars, spoiled and rude, which are precisely the adjectives that most “adorn” Donald Trump’s daily behavior.
This is highlighted in a new book entitled The Fixers, which examines the relationship between Trump and Roy Cohn (1927-1986), an American lawyer who was best known for being Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief advisor during the anti-Communist Senate hearings held by the Army and Senator McCarthy himself in the 1950s.
It was Cohn who orchestrated the McCarthyite persecutions of suspected communists that later extended to homosexuals. Thousands and thousands of Americans were subjected to police and legal investigations. Their lives, families, and careers were destroyed as a result.
Later, Cohn would become the personal lawyer of Donald Trump, the current president of the American nation. Roy Cohn was publicly homophobic and encouraged public persecution of homosexuals. It is now known that he himself was a homosexual man and died in 1986 at the age of 49 due to AIDS-related complications.
Trump had “distanced himself” from Cohn after he became ill. However, the President organized a “farewell dinner” in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago club shortly before his death from AIDS, according to the book mentioned above.
The book states that Trump would later recall Cohn’s visit when, in 2016, he jokingly told guests at his club that he had to have Mar-a-Lago sprayed after the man’s visit because he was dying of an AIDS-related illness. “I had to spend a fortune to fumigate all the dishes and silverware in this place,” he said amid jokes.
In an excerpt from the book published in the Wall Street Journal, authors Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld wrote that Cohn, as Trump’s first fixer, “manipulated the media and the legal system to secure business advantages for Mr. Trump. “He passed his client off as a fabulously successful developer who transformed his father’s collection of low-cost apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens into a Manhattan-based luxury condominium tower empire.
Trump’s views on the media and celebrities were shaped by Cohn and his successors, people he trusted to project a particular version of himself that often bore little resemblance to reality.
“Their careers with Mr. Trump shed light on his rise in public life and his victory in the 2016 presidential election. In 2017, recordings emerged of President Trump joking that he forced Princess Diana to take an HIV test before having sex with her. Trump made such horrific comments shortly after Princess Diana’s death in 1997, in a radio interview with athlete Howard Stern. When Cohn died of AIDS in 1986, his biography was as fascinating as it was despicable. His life journey made him more like a movie villain than a royal lawyer. Which might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that the consequences of his worst acts still reverberate throughout the world.
After graduating from law school at the age of 20, Cohn made a name for himself by prosecuting the couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on espionage charges. Even then, he set aside ethics to ensure that the Jewish couple would not only be found guilty but also sentenced to death and executed, even though the evidence was clearly insufficient to do so.
Throughout the 1950s, he became McCarthy’s right-hand man during the witch-hunt and the lawyer for mob boss Anthony Salerno. Two moves that propelled him into the circles of power – and corruption – in New York. His figure was something like a bridge between the bosses of organized crime and the politicians and businessmen who had to deal with them.
His lack of scruples and his bellicose ways made him a notorious character, who surrounded himself with the most prominent people in the country: celebrities, communication magnates, the Reagans… and Donald Trump.
The two men first joined forces when Trump, then a young construction entrepreneur, was sued, along with his father, for refusing to rent his apartments to Black tenants. Contrary to Cohn’s initial opinion, Trump settled with the plaintiffs, not without first suing the government for $100 million. Trump had learned one of Cohn’s golden rules: “never admit you’re wrong and never apologize.”
The Role of Fear in U.S. Elections
The Role of Fear in U.S. Elections
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Although there are still several months to go before the U.S. vote is held for the 2020 presidential election, scheduled for November 2020, the U.S. media has been noting concerns about the vulnerability of the event to foreign interference.
The initial factor in the escalation of fear appears to have been the release of a joint statement issued by key members of the Trump administration last November, authored by Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, FBI Director Christopher Wray, National Security Agency Director General Paul Nakasone, and Director of the Infrastructure Security and Cybersecurity Agency Christopher Krebs.
This document states that foreign interference in the voting for the 2020-2024 presidential election is imminent although it admits that there is no evidence for such a claim.
“Our opponents want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment, and affect our government policies with Russia, China, Iran, and other malicious foreign actors who will try to interfere with the voting process or influence voters’ perceptions.
“Opponents may seek to achieve their objectives through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations, or carrying out disruptive or destructive cyber attacks against state and local infrastructure.
“While we have no evidence at this time that the electoral infrastructure has been compromised or altered to allow opponents to prevent voting, alter the vote count, or alter the ability to count votes, we continue to closely monitor any threats to the U.S. election,” the statement said.
Despite the key caveat that there was no evidence at the time the document was issued, many media reports such as BuzzFeed, ABC News and Newsweek used the statement to claim that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent.
In addition to reports that have confirmed the involvement of state actors – Russia, Iran and China – and despite the lack of evidence, other media have claimed that this supposedly imminent interference will inevitably be successful. This is, in large part, due to claims that the tactics used will be based largely on technologies that the US does not have the capacity to successfully counteract.
CSO Online, an online media outlet that provides news, analysis and research on security and risk management, recently warned that “fixing the United States’ voting and election infrastructure problems is a long-term proposition that will not be solved in time for the November election.
Meanwhile, the New York Times warned of the impending chaos. It said that “stealthy” and malevolent foreign actors had already laid the foundation for “an ugly campaign season marred by hacking and misinformation. The US monthly magazine Wired and its news website of the same name claimed last year that the security of the US elections “continues to hurt on all levels”.
The target is the mind of the American people,” says Joshua Geltzer, former director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “In some ways, we are less vulnerable than we were in 2016. In other ways, more. Almost all experts agree on this: The worst-case scenario – for which we must prepare – is a situation that causes Americans to question the very foundations of our democracy – “with free and fair elections.
Long before this kind of rhetoric reached the U.S. media, the Israeli intelligence-linked technology company Cybereason said in a statement on its Web site that “messing with the voter’s mind” would have a greater impact than changing the total vote, even before the 2016 election.
That statement, released by Cybereason before the last presidential election, was written by the company’s CEO, Lior Div, who was then leading offensive hacking operations against nation-states for Israeli military intelligence.
Everything indicates that a great electoral fraud is being prepared for next November’s elections and that the scene is being set for the identification of the “culprits” of an alleged “foreign interference” to cover up the simulation.
February 3rd, 2020.
Dictator of the World
Dictator of the World
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In his July 4 speech to Congress in 1821, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said that if the United States were to abandon its then non-interventionist foreign policy, it would inevitably become the “dictatorship” of the world and begin to behave accordingly.
Political scientist Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president of the “Future of Freedom” foundation, wrote on May 10 of last year that he finished a major journalistic work entitled “The Dictatorship of the World” in which he wrote that it cannot be denied that that prediction of J.Q. Adams has become a reality.
The United States has truly become the dictatorship of the world, an arrogant, ruthless and brutal dictatorship that tolerates no dissent from anyone on earth.
“I use the term America now because that’s what Adams originally used, but in reality, it’s the United States government that has become the dictatorship of the world,” says Hornberger. A good example of this phenomenon occurred when, at the beginning of the last century, the world’s dictatorship applied its cruel system of sanctions against Cuba with vengeful ends and has maintained it to this day.
It is unfair enough to punish innocent foreign citizens with death or impoverishment for the sake of a political objective. But it is also important to note that the sanctions are an attack on the economic freedom of the American people because they involve sanctions against the American citizens involved.
If an American trades with an Iranian, a Cuban or a Venezuelan, the world’s dictator threatens, pursues and convicts him or her with vindictive intent, through criminal prosecution, civil fines, or both.
A similar system of sanctions has been applied during the 1990s against Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from the Arab world. The sanctions were.
That did not bother the dictator, at least not enough to end those sanctions. The idea was that if a large enough number of children could be killed, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would either abdicate in favor of a U.S.-approved dictator, or there would be a coup d’état or violent revolution that would accomplish the same thing.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright expressed the dictatorship’s official view when she announced that the death of half a million Iraqi children from sanctions “was worth it”.
Another example of this was the case of Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese citizen working as the financial director of the giant Chinese technology company Huawei. After being arrested by Canadian authorities and placed under house arrest, she suffered the wrath of the world’s dictatorship.
What was her alleged crime? Having violated US sanctions against Iran? What do US sanctions against Iran have to do with China? Exactly nothing! She’s a Chinese citizen, not an American. Then why was she being prosecuted by the United States government?
Sanctions have become a regular tool of US foreign policy. Hardly anyone cares about their imposition and enforcement. Their aim is to threaten foreign entities and citizens with death, suffering and economic deprivation. Its goal is to bend their governments to the will of the American dictator and her violent and brutal agents.
What could be more violent and ruthless than threatening innocent people with death and impoverishment as a way of reaching their governments? It is well known that most citizens of the world have little control over the actions of their governments,. U.S. citizens have little control over the actions of their government. What is the morality in punishing innocent citizens as a way of achieving a political objective? That is precisely why terrorism is condemned.
Washington is not content to demand that its citizens comply with its evil system. In its role as global dictator, the federal government requires everyone to comply with its evil system. The dictatorship claims world jurisdiction for itself.
Why are innocent foreign citizens the target of death and economic suffering simply because the
Why do U.S. officials not like their government? Why are the freedoms of U.S. citizens being destroyed for the same reason? And why are foreign citizens around the world criminally prosecuted for violating the federal government’s evil penalty system?
December 25, 2019.
Cobalt Could be Blue Gold
Cobalt Could Become Cuba’s Blue Gold
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Cuban economist Joaquin Benavides Rodriguez, who has served as government minister and leader of his country’s communist party in the area of his specialty, believes that Cuba has in cobalt a great mineral wealth that, like lithium, is becoming a strategic mineral for the production of batteries in the electronic age.
According to international sources, Cuba has reserves of this mineral of around half a million metric tons that place it in third place in the world among the thirteen countries with the largest estimated reserves of cobalt on the planet. It is estimated that the largest is the Democratic Republic of Congo with an estimated reserve of 3.4 million metric tons, followed by Australia with 1.2 million and Cuba appears in third place. Next are the Philippines with 280,000, Canada and Russia with 250,000 each, China with 80,000 and the United States with 38,000, according to data from the German statistical portal Statista 2019 cited by the Cuban expert.
World consumption of cobalt in 2019 is estimated to be 122,000 tons. In 2011 it was 78,000 tons, an increase of 56% in 8 years. The price in 2019 is quoted at more than 46 thousand dollars per ton. The largest extraction is recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has had years to extract 90,000 tons. Russia extracts 5.9 thousand tons.
China is the largest producer of refined cobalt. It contributes 43% of the world total according to the British consultancy Euromonitor International, cited by Benavides.
A few years ago the world produced more of this metal than it was consumed. However, from 2017 onwards, with the increase in demand, prices soared by almost 100%.
Cobalt has a great demand in large producers of electronic effects such as TESLA that requires it to improve the performance of their electric cars. Or Apple, which uses it for the batteries of the IPhones, which produces massively in China.
The reason is that cobalt enhances the qualities of other metals such as lithium which has become the most used component in batteries. Until the last decade this metal had gone unnoticed but about three years ago aroused the interest of the financial world. Before the use of lithium and cobalt batteries became widespread, the companies that made large alloys were the ones that made the greatest use of this metal.
Today these companies have been displaced by battery manufacturers, which each year account for 45% of global production of cobalt, whose demand recorded annual growths of at least 5% for a decade, according to the president of the Cobalt Development Institute (CDI) in the United States, David Weight, quotes Benavides.
The interest increased even more when TESLA announced a model of electric vehicle and inaugurated a mega factory that will allow it to supply 35GWh of battery power. That is to say, a greater volume of production than the total realized in 2014.
There are currently another 13 mega battery factories of different brands in the construction or planning phase.
China needs cobalt to manufacture portable and cellular products within its borders, according to BBC World Euromonitor Economics and Consumer Analyst Oru Mohiuddin.
Nearly half of the planet’s households have a smartphone and a laptop and this is expected to increase by at least 70% by 2030.
A large concentration of the factories that manufacture these products is in China.
Cobalt is Cuba’s most strategic mineral. In the refinery that the island has in Canada together with the company Sherrit, 15% of the world cobalt is produced with a 99.98 purity.
It is a metal that stores a lot of energy in a small space. Its applications in medicine are important and in the blades of turbines or jet engines of all aircraft are used cobalt alloys, for its ability to resist sudden changes in temperature on which the action of the engine fluid is exerted.
The Government of China has been launching a great global investment program, called the Silk Road and the Silk Road, mainly for Asia, Europe and Africa, but there are also Latin American countries that have raised their interest in participating.
Benavides considers that perhaps the moment is coming when “the Government of our country raises with the Chinese authorities Cuba’s interest in participating in this great investment project of the Silk Road, particularly with regard to the extraction and refining of cobalt in the mining area of Moa”.
Cuba’s interest in investing jointly with countries such as Japan and Germany, with highly developed industrial economies in advanced technologies that lack cobalt, could also be raised.
(http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com)
(*) This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO! as the source.
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