Manuel E. Yepe 151
The Cards Are On the Table in Brazil
The Cards Are On the Table in Brazil
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Just over a month before Brazil’s October 7 presidential elections, the judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal rejected, four votes to one, the candidacy of the population’s undisputed favorite in the largest and most populous nation in Latin America.
This occurred despite the fact that a resolution to this effect by the International Human Rights Committee of the United Nations (UN) stipulated that the Brazilian State must allow former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to exercise his political rights as the presidential candidate of the Workers’ Party and a coalition of movements and parties that are already legally entitled to compete in the upcoming elections.
No one doubts that Lula da Silva would be a broad winner in these elections but it happens that, since April, Lula has been held in a Federal Police cell in the state of Curitiba. He has been sentenced to 12 years in prison in an arbitrary trial, with no sign of legality, on charges of passive corruption and money laundering. No evidence of such charges against the top left-wing political leader, simply because the crimes have never existed.
The latest polls published make it clear that Lula da Silva, who has almost 40% of the voting intentions, would be elected in the first round. But if he fails to do so, he will wipe out all the other contenders in a possible second round of voting.
Former army captain and deputy Jair Bolsonaro, candidate of the Social Liberal Party, which represents the extreme right, is second in the polls, with 19% of the intention to vote.
The candidate considered to be the representative of the (not extreme) right is the one presented by the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) with the support of the Brazilian Democratic, Labor, Social Democratic and Solidarity parties. He is the former governor of Sao Paolo Geraldo Alckmin. He is ranked third in the polls with about 5% of the declarations of intent to vote.
Other parties that have announced their own candidates are the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), with Manuela d’Avila as its presidential candidate and the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) of former Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles, both with very low voter intention rates.
Alckmin’s campaign strives to gain followers among the owners of capital with an irrational, homophobic, racist and misogynistic discourse. They have very abundant financial resources, but the public fears that a large part of the right wing will choose to join the right-wing extremist campaign.
There has been massive manipulation by the unelected government of Michael Temer and the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia to prevent the election of Lula as president of the largest nation in South America. This has transformed the Brazilian popular leader, from a central protagonist and determinant of a national electoral process into an emblematic figure of Latin American independence in the face of the imperialist hegemonic power of the United States.
Thus, Brazil will have a presidential election this year that should have been aimed at restoring to the South American giant the precarious normality it had achieved in 1985. After 21 years of a military dictatorship widely supported by the owners of capital and representatives of imperialist interests in Brazil, Brazil’s tenuous normality was broken by the institutional coup that removed Dilma Rousseff in April 2016 and culminated in the arbitrary imprisonment of Lula two years later.
The solution could be in the hands of the magistrates of the Superior Electoral Court or, ultimately, those of the Supreme Court of Justice. However, this would require that the country’s vital decisions be returned to the hands of the Brazilian people.
Unfortunately, in Latin America, the approach of the legal system to politics has given rise to repeated behavior in which judges and prosecutors prevaricate and lend themselves to the persecution of popular leaders. This has been shown in the cases of Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador, where former presidents Lula, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Rafael Correa are being harassed and prosecuted for crimes that they did not commit and which obviously cannot be proven.
In the event that the manipulation of the process through violence or corruption is imposed and Lula’s inclusion on the ballot is prevented, it is expected that a sufficient number of voters will choose to do so in favor of Fernando Haddad, former mayor of Sao Paolo and former minister of education during the government of the popular labor leader, who is already registered as an aspirant for the vice presidency with Lula.
In Brazil, the cards are on the table. What their people want is known. What is also known is just how much violence and cruelty imperialism and the local exploiters is capable of to impose their rule.
Paranoia For Intervention in Venezuela
Paranoia For Military Intervention in Venezuela
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Bomb, invade, occupy a country to see it flourish.” Such is the logic of the absurd philosophy of imperialist interventionism that has been applied by the United States throughout the world in the name of the defense of freedom and western culture.
But war is the worst human calamity and, despite the feverish hopes and utopian promises of its promoters, humanitarian interventions almost always result in unimaginable killings, devastation, horror and suffering added to the situations that “justified” them.
The most recent United States wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria) should serve as sufficient proof of this fact: Future humanitarian warriors make serious professions of humanitarianism and end up killing many of those they promised to help.
I consider it very interesting to assess this dilemma from the point of view of the defenders of humanitarian warfare as an ideal mechanism to ensure its geopolitical and/or class advantages in circumstances such as the current ones we are analyzing here.
Let us examine what the imperialist camp is proposing about a possible U.S. military intervention in Venezuela by Doug Bandow. He is a senior researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded in Washington D.C. in 1974 as the Charles-Koch Foundation, dedicated to lobbying and promoting capitalist public policies that challenge socialism based on the free principles of individual freedom, limited government and the pro laissez faire markets.
Bandow was President Ronald Reagan’s assistant and author of the book “America’s New Global Empire.
Previously, the warmongering “humanitarian” interveners went straight to looting but, over time, they refined their rhetoric and began to talk about trade and investment opportunities, increases in GDP and other more subtle forms of robbery.
According to Bandow, last year, President Donald Trump asked his aides if the United States should intervene militarily in Venezuela. Everyone argued against the idea. He then asked for the opinion of several Latin American leaders who also strongly opposed it.
However, the US intervention had to be assessed from the point of view of the economic benefits that this could bring, both for the oligarchic sectors of Venezuela and for the hegemonic interests of the United States.
Cynically, it was argued that the number of people killed by an American assault on Venezuela would be reduced. Extrapolating data from the U.S. assault on Panama cites an estimate of 3,500 civilian casualties.
He didn’t consider that war is not just another political tool. It is based on death and destruction. No matter how well-intentioned, military action is often indiscriminate. The course of the conflict is unpredictable and often unexpected.
Bandow admits that the pinkish predictions about the results of a U.S. expeditionary force landing in Venezuela are highly questionable. Such intervention could result in a mixture of civil war and insurgency in which the “good guys” would undoubtedly win, but the costs would be severe.
The Cato Institute researcher acknowledges that it is grotesque to try to justify military action on the grounds that fewer people could die if it didn’t happen. Should lives be treated as abstract numbers in an account balance? Whatever the number of victims, a war would mean that thousands of people would otherwise be alive and would die.
Who authorized US politicians to make that decision? who anointed Washington to play God with the future of other peoples?
If the security and humanitarian arguments are insufficient, the economic justification is laughable: How much economic benefit for life, American or Venezuelan, justifies war? Imagine a president writing to the families of the dead soldiers explaining that his sacrifice was justified because it helped to increase Venezuela’s annual GDP rate.
And then the height of cynicism: “The most important thing would be the impact on the United States. The main responsibility of the U.S. government is to protect its own people, and its uniformed officers, who should not be treated as pawns on tactics in some global chess game. Their lives should only be in danger when their own nation has something substantial at stake.”
Finally, it is striking that these assessments emanate from the ranks opposed to Chavism, and it is certainly the case that attempting a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be the worst, and perhaps the last, madness of U.S. imperialism!
August 29, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
The Atlas Network Against Latin America
The Atlas Network Against Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Latin American Freedom Forum, took place in 2017 in Buenos Aires with the participation of President Mauricio Macri and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. It discussed a strategy to defeat socialism at all levels, with tactics ranging from camp battles on university campuses to nationwide mobilization to force the removal of a constitutional government as occurred in Brazil shortly thereafter.
The pseudo-academic capitalist offensive was initiated by the capitalist international, an extreme right-wing libertarian movement operating as a conglomerate of centers and societies united by almost undetectable threads, in which the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, or Atlas Network, stands out.
Several of the leaders linked to the Atlas Network are ministers of the conservative Argentine government, ultra-right-wing senators from Bolivia and leaders of the Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) who helped overthrow constitutional president Dilma Rousseff, and who have recently gained notoriety for their predatory actions.
The network functions as a tacit extension of Washington’s foreign policy. The think tanks associated with Atlas are funded by the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They are a crucial arm of the U.S. soft-power strategy sponsored by the powerful ultraconservative multi-millionaires Koch brothers: Charles and David.
The NED and the State Department have public entities that function as centers of operation and deployment of lines and funds such as the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), Freedom House and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). They are the main actors that distribute directives and resources in exchange for concrete results in the asymmetric war against the peoples of Latin America.
The Atlas Network comprises 450 foundations, NGOs and think tanks with an operating budget of some US $5 million, contributed by their associated “non-profit charitable foundations”. It has served to support, among others, the MBL in Brazil and organizations that participated in the offensive against Argentina. Among these are the Crecer y Pensar foundation, an Atlas think tank that joined the Republican Proposal Party (PRO) created by Mauricio Macri, as well as opposition forces in Venezuela and Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing candidate in the Chilean presidential elections.
Atlas has 13 affiliates in Brazil, 12 in Argentina, 8 in Chile and Peru, 5 in Mexico and Costa Rica, 4 in Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Guatemala, 2 in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and El Salvador, and 1 in Colombia, Panama, Bahamas, Jamaica and Honduras.
The MBL and the Eléutera Foundation (a formation of neoliberal experts that was very influential in Honduras after the coup) received payments from Atlas and are part of the new generation of political actors trained in the United States.
The “new” extreme right is the libertarian movement that has now been assimilated into the US Republican Party. It bases its actions on a deliberate strategy of misinforming the masses and imposing its plutocratic policies. It has in the Atlas Network its main propellant in Latin America.
A key promoter of this movement is the multimillionaire Charles G. Koch (one of the two famous brothers who adopted the thesis of James McGill Buchanan, an economist from the University of Chicago and Nobel Prize winner. It was designed to disarm the state with an operational strategy in defense of “sacrosanct private property rights” with the slogan: “for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be put in chains”.
Koch funds some 15 major organizations, plus 60 from the U.S. Policy Network (SPN).
The International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a foundation affiliated with the NED, was created by the U.S. government to advance Washington’s foreign policy objectives. It funds political organizations in the Third World and was established by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the largest lobbying organization in the country. 96% of its funding comes from the State Department and USAID.
CIPE plays a key role in funding the Atlas network and is the main force in its ongoing strengthening. Since 1991, the Atlas Network has been run by Alejandro Chaufen, an Argentinean apologist for the then bloody Argentine dictatorship.
With data from Aram Aharonian and Álvaro Verzi Rangel, Co-Directors of the Observatory on Communication and Democracy (OCD) and the Latin American Centre for Strategic Analysis (CLAE).
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
August 27, 2018.
Capitalism’s Craziness
Capitalism’s Craziness Won’t Last Much Longer
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Ultimately, people like to dream of a better world. They like to commit themselves, even to sacrifice for another being, or for an ideal, or for a revolution. The madness that the West has spread across the planet to keep capitalism and imperialism in control of the planet will not last much longer. Soon, people will understand that there is nothing more glorious than building their own country, improving conditions around the world, cleaning up our environment, loving and fully committing to that work.
But before that, however, the lies will have to be exposed. War is war, peace is peace. Aggressors are aggressors and victims are victims.
The West has immobilized people all over the world with its filthy, depressing lies. Soon, I’m sure, the world will rise up and demand the truth! With the truth, the psychological balance will return.
People will learn to dream again. The alienation that the West has been spreading will be confronted with dreams and imperialism will scream, howl, try to chew on everything that moves, but sooner rather than later it will lose all its power.
Millions of people are now, again, ready to fight for it and hopefully, it will kick the bucket. I believe in it.
The preceding paragraphs summarize the ideas of the philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist Andre Vltchek, a native of Leningrad, of Czech parents and resident in the United States. He has written several books, including The Great October Socialist Revolution, in a substantial essay entitled The West has taken a philosophical blow to the left, published in the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.
People all over the world, including certain groups within the imperialist countries, feel that they have already endured too much. The main media, academia, the most visible propagandists of capitalism have been trying to convince the world that ideology has died, or at least become irrelevant and that the left is actually… the right!
It is an extremely complex but important event. The main problem is that, after decades of philosophy being locked up, imprisoned, inside the decadent classrooms of decadent universities, most people have lost all idea of what they really dislike; of what they reject and what they want.
People all over the world have had enough. Even certain groups within the imperialist countries have endured enough. Philosophy and issues as deep and essential as “the direction in which the world should evolve” were no longer discussed at UNESCO meetings, but were no longer discussed by the presenters of surface talk shows. Light pop music, horror films, the promotion of selfish, often childish, values and desires did not satisfy the masses, but damaged them, reducing their ability to think, analyze and draw sober and well-informed conclusions.
Increasingly, the left has been defamed and conflated with the extreme right, even with fascism. In fact, comparing communism and fascism was tremendously rewarded. In the West, thousands of thinkers and ideologues have made their living doing nothing more than that.
In Europe or North America, when you tune into any television or radio station you hear the great political leaders of the left being systematically called demagogues, populists, or worse, and they make crazy comparisons between Stalin and Hitler. Never a logical comparison like Hitler’s with Churchill or German Nazism with European colonialism. The political reality becomes extremely confusing, Vltchek says.
The biggest problem is that the vast majority of Western citizens have succumbed to this propaganda. They are no longer able to question anything related to these issues, and if they want to question them, they don’t even know where to look for sources that could effectively challenge the official dogma.
They are indoctrinated, but they believe they are free. Not only that, they do not realize that they are deeply conditioned and brainwashed: they really think they are in a position to preach, obliged to enlighten others, instructing the world with what they have been taught.
And so, they talk and write, they get paid for it. They join the UN, international cultural institutions and NGOs, universities, and continue to spread all those dogmas developed by Western ideologues for one and the same purpose: to exploit and control the world.
August 23, 2018.
Progressive Preaching by Sanders
Progressive Preaching by Sanders Left Its Mark
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders granted an extensive interview to a journalist from The Washington Post. He discussed the perspectives of the Democratic Party in the upcoming US mid-term elections, the possibility that he will run for the presidency again in 2020 and, if he is elected to the presidency, remains steadfast in his decision to be non-military in the Democratic ranks.
According to the interviewer, James Hohmann, Sanders has polished his image a lot since he launched his presidential campaign three years ago. His answers are now clearer and stronger. “According to the surveys I’ve seen, today there are more people who consider themselves independent than those who call themselves Democrats or Republicans,” said Sanders answering a question.
“Frankly, there’s not a lot of love for the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party, and a lot people are disappointed in both of us. That’s why I don’t think it’s a bad idea to declare that I am independent, but that I want my followers, as independents, to enter the Democratic primaries to transform that party.”
When asked if he will run in 2020, the 76-year-old politician responds that he or she is most likely to run as a candidate to the presidency but he will take that decision at the appropriate time.
His name will then appear on the Democratic primary ballot in that state’s primary. But when he wins, he’ll formally turn down the nomination and will run as an independent in the general elections. That’s how he ensures he’ll not have any Democratic competition.
He says he mistrusts billionaires like industrialist Charles Koch and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson who incites leaders Republicans to embrace Sanders’ agenda. He is also concerned about the number of Democratic billionaires who are entering the United States. and who push the party towards more plutocratic policies that tend to entrench what he already considers to be “an oligarchy that exercises control of the country.”
Several super-rich people have come forward, either on their own or through political representatives who have inserted them in their pay slips as potential presidential candidates for 2020, such as Howard Schultz, Mike Bloomberg, Mark Cuban, Tom Steyer, Bob Iger, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey.
“Look, there are billionaires out there who are very decent people, who are smart people, who are well-meaning people,” Sanders said. “But they should have no better right to run for office than an equally decent and brilliant worker, but who cannot afford to raise the millions needed for a campaign.
“If you look at what’s going on in the Senate or the House of Representatives. Representatives, one finds that virtually every piece important piece of legislation that arrives there is funded by interests of the rich and powerful,” he said.
Sanders believes that many politicians from both parties do not criticize Israel for mistreating the Palestinians because they fear missing out on campaign money from big donors’ pockets. “Look, here’s the reality: I’m Jewish. I lived in Israel for a while when I was young. I believe in the need for Israel to be independent, free, safe and secure from attack by terrorists. But I also think it’s unacceptable that almost two of them millions of people live in Gaza, where the water is dirty, the youth unemployment is 60% and people can’t even get out of it. that area.”
“The reality is that, for many decades, Republicans and Democrats allowed this country to sign trade agreements that would benefit the major U.S. corporations, the industry, and the pharmaceutical company and Wall Street, but which were disastrous for the workers.”
In the interview, Senator Sanders urges the candidates in the mid-term elections to “have the courage to face the challenge of oligarchy.”
Sanders said that even candidates he doesn’t support or who aren’t aligned with him, are embracing the ideas he has presented, they are embracing him. which he values as a positive development. “The most important thing, and what we do our best to attract millions more people to the political process.”
“That’s why I think it’s important to talk to Trump’s supporters and say: Let’s face it, some of Trump’s supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, but I don’t think most of them are. I think in many cases it’s about people who feel that the establishment has ignored them. And you know what? It’s true that the establishment has ignored them! Both political parties have ignored them!”
August 20, 2018.
Capitalism Erodes Mental Health
Capitalism Erodes Mental Health
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
By examining our evolutionary past and history as egalitarian, cooperative, and supportive hunter-gatherers in the primitive era, we dispel the false idea that human beings, by their very nature, are competitive, aggressive, and individualistic. Human beings have all the psychological and social skills to live differently and inequality is not inevitable.
This is the view of epidemiology professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, authors of several books and other studies on the effects of social inequalities in the United States. In their new book entitled The Inner Level, they rely on a solid set of arguments to demonstrate that “inequality devours the heart of the intimate world and the social anxieties of the vast majority of the population.
In The Inner Level, the evidence shows the impact of inequality on mental well-being, but is only part of the new situation. Professors Pickett and Wilkinson question two key myths that some use to justify the perpetuation and tolerance of social inequality.
Let’s address the misconception that current levels of inequality reflect the existence of a justifiable meritocracy in which those of greater natural capacity rise and those who are incapable languish at heart. We understand that, on the contrary, it is inequalities in outcomes that limit equal opportunities; differences in achievements and achievements themselves are driven by inequality, not its consequences.
Pickett and Wilkinson argue that inequality is a major obstacle to the creation of sustainable economies that serve to optimize the health and well-being of both people and the planet. They say this is because consumerism is about self-improvement and competition for status is intensifying with inequality.
A recent survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that at one point last year, 74% of adults in the UK were so stressed that they felt overwhelmed and unable to cope. One-third were suicidal and 16% had self-injured at some point in their lives. These figures were much higher among young people.
In the United States, death rates are rising steadily, especially for middle-aged white men and women, due to “desperation,” which includes deaths from drug and alcohol addiction as well as suicides and many car accidents. An epidemic of distress seems to be affecting some of the richest nations in the world.
Studies in 28 European countries show that inequality increases status anxiety in all income groups, from the poorest 10% to the richest segment.
Another study on how people experience low social status, in both rich and poor countries, found that, despite huge differences in their material standards of living, people living in relative poverty around the world had a strong sense of shame and self-hatred. Being at the bottom of the social scale feels the same if you live in a rich country as if you live in a very poor country.
While the vast majority of the population appears to be affected by inequality, we respond in different ways to the concerns raised by the way others view and judge us. One such way is to feel overwhelmed and oppressed by distrust, feelings of inferiority and depressed self-esteem, and that leads to high levels of depression and anxiety in more unequal societies, say the authors of The Inner Level.
Psychotic symptoms, such as delusions of grandeur, are more common in more unequal countries, as is schizophrenia. Narcissism increases as income inequality increases, as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) from successive samples of the American population.
Another widespread response to the need to overcome what psychologists call the “social evaluative threat” is through drugs, alcohol or gambling, through comfort food, or through the use of status and conspicuous consumption. Those who live in more unequal places are more likely to spend money on expensive cars and to buy status goods; and are more likely to have high levels of personal debt because they try to prove that they are not “second-class people” by owning “first-class things.
August 17, 2018.
Why Three Popes in Twenty Years?
Why Three Popes in Twenty Years?
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In less than twenty years, three Popes have visited Cuba. This is something really surprising when you consider that this archipelago is a country geographically and demographically small, and has a relatively small number of Catholics compared to other nations of Latin America.
After four centuries of colonialism –during which the official religion, with total exclusivity, was Catholicism– an “independent” republic emerged in Cuba under the protection and control of the United States. During that republican period, Cuban society, in fact, maintained Catholicism as its main religion for the first half of the 20th Century.
Although the 1902 and 1940 constitutions stipulated the separation between church and state, their texts identified Christian morality as the ethical rule for society. This was to the detriment of any other non-Christian morality and thus ignored the cultural, moral and religious diversity required in such a plural community in terms of ethnicities, religions and traditions.
The process of formation of the Cuban nationality, the struggle for independence from Spain, and the successive stages in building an independent national project as is the current socialist society, have been characterized by a secular orientation… anticlerical to some extent. This does not mean that religion was absent from the motivations of the patriots, but the objectives have always been formulated on secular foundations.
The first time the separation of church and state was proclaimed as a constitutional principle in Cuba was during the Republic in Arms [during the 19th Century war for independence] when Cubans were fighting the colonial regimes of Spain … and Catholicism.
Relations between the Catholic Church and the Revolutionary Government –which took power in 1959 after a bloody struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista– have gone through big challenges and tense moments.
The social transformations generated by the revolution and the development of its independent and socialist project had great impact on the process of demystification of nature. Because of its character, which renewed traditions, customs and culture in general, the revolution had a secularizing effect on society.
The legislative actions and practices of the revolution, such as the law for nationalization of education, limited the social space of the Catholic religion in Cuba, and extended it to others, such as the Spiritualists, those associated with African religions, and the Pentecostals. All these managed access to public spaces to which they had very little access previously, because of the Christian and Catholic religious monopoly.
Just remember that before 1959, the Cuban Criminal Legislation included as an aggravating factor the practice of brujeria
(witchcraft), the term with which the predominant Christian culture identified those religions originated in Africa, that were widespread in Cuba, especially among the poorest sectors.
In 1991, the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba corrected sectarian errors committed in the heat of the initial clashes. It modified its statutes and declared itself as a secular non-atheist organization. It also eliminated admission barriers in the political organization for people with religious beliefs.
As a result of this, in the midst of a situation of apparent contraction of the social space of religion, the Cuban revolution created the basic legal and social conditions for a genuine religious pluralism, without confessional or institutional distinction; as well as for something that had never existed before in the country and which few nations can boast of having: a genuine religious freedom.
Admittedly, after some initial negative episodes promoted by the strong influence of Pope Pius XII and the Fascist ideas of some Spanish priests inserted in the Cuban Catholic hierarchy, the Vatican has promoted a very constructive policy in its relations with Cuba
But the current positive practice did not start as a result of the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998 –as some have written several times– but after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). On this, it is fair to acknowledge as essential, the role of the then newly appointed Apostolic Nuncio in Havana, Archbishop Cesare Zacchi, today considered the “Architect of peace between church and state in Cuba.”
The impressive popular and official welcome offered to Pope Francis in Havana seems to confirm forecasts that Latin America and the humble peoples of the world can count on the moral and ethical support of this charismatic guide of Catholicism who is willing to clean and thoroughly renew the image of his Church, bringing it closer to the Poor.
Now that US elites want to turn back history in the Latin American countries which are in the process of liberation from the domination by the North, this support could be really transcendental.
September 19, 2015.
Venezuela Has Been Strengthened
The Bolivarian Revolution Has Been Strengthened
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The frustrated assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro Moros on August 4 in Caracas will decisively strengthen the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and make it invincible.
It would seem that such a crime was all that was left for the Venezuelan counterrevolution to completely lose the credibility it has enjoyed among the few sectors of the population that have been supporting it. They are interested in recovering the privileges they enjoyed before the Chávez revolution. They also want to win over those who had been won over by the siren songs of Washington, whose endless capitalist propaganda about the possibility of maintaining the social benefits recently achieved by the revolution in a more just, but still unequal, society in which they could already be part of a less poor class.
It is evident that the once-opulent Venezuelan oligarchy – pulling strings from the current violent opposition – in alliance with the mafia, both subordinated to the U.S. strategy and limperialist command, carried out this action. Their objective was of turning history around, regaining control of Venezuela’s oil wealth, and once again returning the homeland of Bolivar and Chavez to the status of a U.S. puppet.
Only problem was that Venezuelan revolutionaries and patriots think very differently. The previously-dispossessed classes, along with advances in their material well-being, have seen their political culture and social consciousness grow. They are and are less polluting and less seduceable by imaginings of material progress. The humble are also the most conscious as members and allies of the working classes in the revolution.
The measures recently announced by Nicolás Maduro, in relation to fuel control, and his new approaches to the country’s economy, have taken a heavy toll on the enemies of the Bolivarian process. It was this which, according to all indications, led them to take action on August 4th. Their foolish calculation was that the elimination of Maduro would put an end to a process whose roots are, in fact, much deeper.
At the time of the failed criminal attack, the President was at a meeting in Caracas, commemorating the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard. In the middle of his speech, two strong explosions were heard. “Madurop called for an honest and hard-working Venezuela: let’s bet on the good of our country. The time has come for economic recovery.” Maduro said this at the moment when, according to later unofficial information, a drone with a C4 plastic explosive charge exploded near the presidential box.
The President, his wife Cilia Flores, and members of the Cabinet were not injured. They were quickly moved to safety, according to official information. This act of terrorism sought to overthrow a government that is the result of the democratic will of the Venezuelan people. This people’s support for the Chavista revolution has been reaffirmed on many occasions at the ballot box. It constituted a desperate attempt to achieve, by means of assassination, what they have not been able to obtain in several elections.
Nor have they achieved it through coups d’etat like the one of 2002 against the then President Hugo Chávez. Same with the oil coup of 2003 and the extensive and intense imperialist policy of harassment to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. This includes the arbitrary and aggressive US Executive Order describing Venezuela as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy” of the superpower. They have unilaterally imposed economic sanctions violating international law. The US Secretary of State declared the full validity of the Monroe Doctrine, He called for a military coup against the constitutional government of Venezuela. Trump warned against “a possible military option” against Venezuela.
The aggression and the coup against Venezuela hurt all of Latin America. It benefitted only the interests of those who are determined to divide the countries and peoples of the region so they can exercise their domination over our nations.
These people support the empire of the North in their maneuvers are using unconstitutional means to overthrow the Bolivarian and Chavista revolution. They don’t care if this generates conflicts of incalculable consequences for this region. Sooner or later they will have to assume a serious responsibility before history and answer for this before their peoples.
Nobody doubts that the failed attempt of assassination in Caracas is a powerful further reason for Latin American and Caribbean unity against imperialist domination!
August 6 of 2018.
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
President Trump has ordered the NATO countries to increase their arms spending. The reasons for his insistence on doing so are becoming increasingly clear. It has nothing to do with any defense logic. After all, the Secretary-General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we do not see any imminent threat against a NATO ally”. Also, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that “at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20% lower than in 2016”.
Radio Free Europe, the US government’s anti-Russian station, reports repeatedly that Russia has reduced its defense spending.
It has been proven that Russia poses no threat to any NATO country. But even this is considered irrelevant in the context that US arms sales are flourishing and those who carry it out are being encouraged to increase and multiply their business.
On July 12, the second and final day of the recent meeting between the United States and NATO, the British news agency Reuters issued a categorical statement with a clear promotional orientation from Trump: “The United States produces by far the best military equipment in the world: the best planes, the best missiles, the best weapons, the best of all.”
The president then listed by name the major U.S. arms manufacturers: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman.
Trump proudly stated at the NATO conference that the United States has many rich countries as customers, “but we also have some not-so-rich countries and they ask me if they can buy US military equipment and if we can help them, and we tell them that we will help them a little. He added that “poorer countries that want to buy U.S. arms may not have to put cash into their purchases.
That single statement raised the prices of the shares of the three arms manufacturers named by Donald Trump and referred to in the previous paragraph by more than ten dollars.
The State Department, to boost the bonanza, made every effort to facilitate further U.S. arms sales by allowing arms manufacturers to bypass their checks and balances. These had been established to hamper the purchase of weapons from the United States by regimes considered to be of ill-repute in the world who want to buy weapons from the United States to put a fig leaf over some if some of its legal, moral and economic restrictions.
In fact, these regulations no longer apply. On July 13, the State Department announced new measures to “accelerate government approval of proposals from aerospace and defense companies,
Within European NATO, the biggest buyers of US arms are Poland, Romania, Great Britain and Greece, and the quantities involved are colossal.
The message to European NATO is that the US is making every effort to sell weapons and wants to make them see that there is scope to buy more of the “best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” that Trump has to offer.
As journalist Brian Cloughley defined it on July 30th on the Counterpunch and Strategic-Culture websites, “NATO’s gold mine is there to be exploited and, following Trump’s enthusiastic encouragement of the manufacturers of its weapons, it looks like the extraction will be effective. The U.S. Military Industrial Complex will benefit greatly from its President’s campaign to increase the number of weapons in the world.
Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, Director of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the Farnborough International Air Show on July 18 that “defense exports are good for our national security, good for our foreign policy… and good for our economic security. He then proposed that his agency reduce the transportation fees charged to foreign military customers, which would be an important stimulus to the sales of “the best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” so highly valued by Mr. Trump.
This officer, obviously a devoted follower of his President, followed his line of action with dedication, reminding the media that as they have said “administration and our leadership, economic security is national security.”
August 2, 2018.
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Many observers and U.S. allies calculated that in Helsinki President Trump had intended to achieve the re-establishment of a triangulation between the United States, Russia and China. And there were good reasons for that hypothesis.
At a 2015 press conference, Trump advocated the Hanry Kissinger line: keep Russia and China divided so that they can never unite against Washington.
On that occasion, Trump said: “…One of the worst things that can happen to the US is for Russia to get closer to China. We’ve let them join in with the big oil deals that are being made. That’s a horrible thing for our country. We’ve made them friends because of a incompetent leadership.”
In an essay published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on July 23rd signed by Alastair Crooke, a former M16 agent, and British diplomat, there is speculation that perhaps, in Helsinki, Trump was doing something a little less strategic and more realistic – something more along the lines of The Art of The Deal [Trump’s book].
According to Crooke, “Over the decades, we have developed a model of how “people are supposed to behave when they’re not in a good mood. presidents and in the process of policy formulation. Bush and Obama were fully driven through that process. But obviously, Trump doesn’t fit that model. Trump’s process follows the following order:
1) Identify a major target (tax cuts, trade, etc.) balanced trade, a wall, etc..
2) Identify the points of influence in front of anyone who stands in your way (elections, tariffs, jobs, etc.).
3) Announce any extreme threat aggression to your opponent.
4) If the opponent backs down, mitigate the threat, declare victory and come home with a win.
(5) If the opponent responds, Trump applies the principle of double or nothing.
6) Eventually, the escalation must lead to negotiations with the perception of a victory for Trump – even though this is more apparent than real.
If we frame the Helsinki meeting in the context of this perception of Art of the Deal, we get that the divergences of vision between Russia and the United States are so substantial that the common ground is small and there are very few prospects for an ‘overall strategic agreement’.
In fact, President Trump has little to offer Russia: sanctions relief is not in his power (but in Congress’s), and you could not renounce Ukraine, “even if Trump understood that the US and Europe made a bad buy with their coup d’état.”
According to the Russian journalist specializing in the conflict in Ukraine, Rostislav Ishchenko, “We have a situation where both sides, even before they negotiated, they knew they could not reach an agreement and neither could bes even prepared for such a thing (there was no provision for the signature of a document after the negotiations).
At the same time, both sides needed the event to be successful. Trump, obviously, is blackmailing the European Union with a possible agreement with Russia. But I’ll tell you what, Putin also needs to show Europe that there are other fish in the the sea besides them.”
Europe’s position is clear. Not by chance, Trump, in listing Washington’s enemies (the EU, China and Russia), made it clear that he considers Russia to be a smaller problem than the EU because there are practically no economic contradictions with Moscow.
The main “enemy” of the United States is not China, with whom the US has the largest negative trade balance, but the European Union, which Trump defined as the main commercial competitor and which obtains from the relationship with the United States many unjustified economic benefits through political agreements.
With this, Trump solves his political-military contradictions with Russia and, consequently, reduces the value of the EU as an ally of Washington to zero. Recently, after the NATO summit, Merkel began to speak out clearly about Trump’s hostility to Europe. She considers it unjustified because of how much Europe has fought against Russia for the benefit of the interests of the United States.
Europe, which, unlike China, has not dedicated itself to the diversification of its economic ties in the world and which seemed to depend on access to the U.S. market, is not prepared for a strong confrontation with the United States.
Without running the risk of getting ahead of Trump on the issue of the normalisation of relations with Russia, EU leaders were fatally afraid that Trump and Putin, despite the difficulties, might do the impossible and come to an agreement, because both of them proved to be prepared for decisions that could change the world’s destiny in an instant.
July 30, 2018.
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