Translations 241
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.
Of John McCain and Other Truths
Of John McCain and Other Truths
The media has reflected that McCain’s wife will be the one to take office in the Senate, a practice that demonstrates the unique logics of American “democracy”.
—————————————————————–
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
John McCain, who ran for president in 2008, with his wife Cindy. Photo: Lasexta.com
He went to war in Vietnam and did so at ease, convinced that by bombing the people of that country he was helping the greatness of the United States, while striking blows against communism, then identified as the Soviet Union.
This is Senator John McCain, who died recently at the age of 81, who at only 31 was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Navy and on October 26, 1967, during an action against the Vietnamese population, the fighter jet he flew was shot down by a Soviet-made missile during his 23rd mission to the north of the Asian nation.
After their physical disappearance, due to cancer, not a few stories and fables have been spread to the world by the big media. An attempt has even been made to establish a supposed critical stance against the current president, Donald Trump.
Little or nothing, however, is brought to the international community’s attention regarding the war against Vietnam and the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese deaths, many of them from Agent Orange, a toxic chemical used savagely by Washington.
The war in Vietnam – I am sure – scarred this man of war and the system he represented, not only for the five years he was a prisoner of the Vietnamese army. In this regard, the period of time between his death and the broadcast by the media of the most varied lies, exhibits as an example those that stand out in the supposed “torture” that the U.S. military suffered.
Today the mainstream media highlights one aspect of McCain’s posthumous letter, in which he emphasizes the the deceased’s recommendation that Americans not hide behind walls. “It’s a veiled critique of Donald Trump,” reports the northern nation.
It is also recalled that whoever was a candidate in the 2008 elections, had numerous public confrontations with Trump despite being colleagues in the Republican Party. In his posthumous letter he calls for understanding between different positions.
As an example of the media’s treatment of the death, John McCain lived at a time when the political, military and cultural power of the United States was unrivalled in the world.
The Republican senator was born a few years before World War II and came to adulthood at the dawn of the United States becoming a global superpower. “Now he is leaving during what is, perhaps, the twilight of U.S. domination as the nation focuses inward, concerned about the potential risks and challenges of immigration, multilateralism and the global economy,” says Anthony Zurcher, BBC correspondent in Washington, D.C.
Another issue that has not escaped the media hype has to do with the occupation of McCain’s Senate seat and the references that his widow, Cindy, will be the nominee, since an Arizona state law – very “democratic” in the style of the United States, by the way – determines that it is the governor who appoints his replacement until 2020.
Although there has been little time between the death of the former U.S. military man who bombed Vietnam and the media coverage with its excesses and adulterations, would it not be too much to ask that, in moments of recollection like this, at least remember what happened in Vietnam.
Or is it that the truth may be different when it comes to the United States?
Facebook and Radio and TV Marti
Will Facebook close the fake accounts of Radio and TV Marti?
Cuban journalist. First Vice-President of UPEC and Vice-President of FELAP. She is a Doctor in Communication Sciences and author or co-author of the books “Antes de que se me olvide“, “Jineteros en La Habana”, “Clic Internet” and “Chávez Nuestro”, among others. He has been awarded the “Juan Gualberto Gómez” National Journalism Prize on several occasions. Founder of Cubadebate and its Editor-in-Chief until January 2017. On twitter: @elizalderosa
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
To be, or not to be: that is the question. (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I).
The new digital platforms favor the emergence of groups of individuals organized like a claque, ready to unconditionally applaud the one who pays. Anyone who isn’t in a blockaded country like Cuba can create content, invest in it for specific groups to see and even rent or buy virtual applause to generate “likes” on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter.
This is the business model of these technology platforms, thanks to which, for example, in the first quarter of 2018 Facebook had a turnover of $11.79 billion, almost four billion more (49 percent) than a year ago. Of that total, about 98.5 percent comes from advertising.
Such a thing happens every day and it is difficult to generate a perception of popularity on networks without hundreds of thousands of followers. These are usually achieved by registering artificial identities that promote messages of support, and the favor is not free. There are hundreds of companies that offer this service without any complexes. Simply enter “buy followers” in any search engine to find them. And it is not expensive: the price of a thousand followers is between 15 and 20 dollars. Getting ten thousand more people to follow us costs less than $120.
“Troll farms” – editors responsible for spreading false information on the Internet – have been used by politicians, entertainment stars, American spies, Donald Trump’s campaign team, Macri’s campaign team, the British military, Israeli propaganda organizations and many others who have made these huge profits from the platform founded by Mark Zuckerberg possible and placed it among the ten largest companies in the world, according to its value on the stock exchange.
The numbers are impressive and not just for the profits: a study published in March 2017 by the universities of South Carolina and Indiana estimated that, within Twitter, the proportion of “troll farms” that use automated applications to replicate messages (known as bots) was between 9 percent and 15 percent of their total users. The number of automatically-controlled fake profiles is between 30 million and 48 million.
Not out of moral compulsion, but to tune in to Washington’s anti-Russian and anti-Iranian discourse, Facebook has been willing to shut down some “troll farms” and escape, even momentarily, from the wave of criticism that has fallen on it for buying and selling data without the consent of its more than 2.4 billion users. This is how hits decided to eliminate hundreds of accounts with “inauthentic behavior” on Tuesday, according to a press release
We eliminated 652 pages, groups and accounts for coordinated “non-authentic behavior” that originated in Iran and were targeted to people across multiple Internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, the United Kingdom and the United States.
But while Facebook eliminates foreign-generated fake accounts, allegedly of Russian or Iranian origin, it tolerates the U.S. government’s “troll farms” without any crisis of conscience. Before any of us had heard of this machinery of fake accounts, fake news and Cambridge Analytica – the London-based company that intervened in more than 200 elections by manipulating the users of Facebook – the Pentagon was already publicly boasting that it was using the blue thumb network as propaganda bait for its operations.
Defense One magazine reported in November 2016 that Michael Lumpkin, former director of the Global Engagement Center (GEC, Pentagon propaganda department), described how the Center used Facebook data to maximize the effectiveness of its operations:
“Using Facebook ads I can get an audience, choose Country X, a specific age group between 13 and 34, filter people who like Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi or any other group… and I can shoot and hit them directly with messages,” Lumpkin said. He stressed that with the right data, effective message targeting can be done with only pennies per click.
Yesterday, the Miami New Times, a weekly newspaper in Florida, released a document proving that a US government-funded broadcasting organization is creating fake Facebook accounts in disinformation operations. These are directed against a country, Cuba, that has not done the slightest damage to the United States and that cannot access the Facebook ad manager because of the US blockade laws.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will spend more than $23 million in fiscal year 2019 on its Office of Broadcasting to Cuba (OCB), which controls Radio and TV Martí, and its projects include no less than a troll farm.
Budget requested for OCB.
According to the budget requested of Congress for 2019, OCB will use the money in fake Facebook accounts of the kind that it perfectly classifies as “non-authentic behavior” to promote regime change on the island.
Considering the disaster of inefficiency, waste and corruption that has accompanied Radio Martí and TV Martí in 33 years of existence at a cost of more than $800 million at the expense of the US taxpayer, the former head of the US Interests Office in Havana, Vicki Huddleston, echoed on Twitter the news of the digital propaganda project against the island, to which she added a phrase of contempt: “Same-old-same-old!!”.).
Will Facebook close the US government’s “non-authentic behavior” accounts, starting with those of Radio and TV Martí? To be or not to be, that’s the question, right, Zuckerberg?
(Taken from Cubaperiodistas)
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.
Minor Accuses Weinstein Denouncer of Abuse
Minor Accuses Pioneer in Complaints Against Harvey Weinstein of Sexually Abusing Him
August 20, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
On the left, actor Jimmy Bennett, who reported being sexually assaulted by Argento. Photo: AFP.
Italian actress and director Asia Argento, a figure in the #MeToo movement after accusing producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, agreed to pay $380,000 in a settlement to a young man who said he was sexually assaulted by her, according to The New York Times.
The victim was rock actor and musician Jimmy Bennett, who reported being sexually assaulted by Argento in 2013 in a California hotel, according to the newspaper. In that state, the age of consent for sexual intercourse is 18. Bennett had worked with Argento playing his son in a movie.
The agreement would have been reached in the months following the revelations on the Weinstein case in October last year. In a letter dated April to Argento confirming the final details of the agreement and the payment schedule, the actress’s lawyer referred to the money as ‘help for Mr. Bennett’.
“We hope it never happens to you again,” attorney Carrie Goldberg wrote to her client, “you’re a powerful and inspiring artist and it’s miserable that you live surrounded by shitty individuals who have taken advantage of your strengths and weaknesses.
For the young actor, who as a child captivated Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis, that 2013 meeting was “a spiral of emotional problems,” reports the New York Times, citing the contents of the documents. According to the information, it was so traumatic that it hampered Bennett’s work, so his lawyers were initially seeking $3.5 million in damages because his mental state had affected his income.
The New York newspaper assures that it has had access to the accusations of the young actor and to the subsequent financial agreement reached by Argento and Bennett’s lawyers, who are now 22 years old, through documents that have been sent to them anonymously. These documents, which were sent via encrypted mail, include a selfie photograph, dated May 9, 2013, of the two actors lying in bed, reports Efe.
The newspaper adds that it has tried “repeatedly” to contact those involved in this issue without success. However, Bennett’s lawyer, Gordon K. Sattro, told the newspaper that his client would not agree to be interviewed about it and that he would “continue to do what he has been doing in recent months and years: focus on his music.
“A traumatic sexual assault”
Bennett was 17 when the alleged incident with the then 37-year-old actress occurred. Bennett’s lawyers described the meeting at the hotel as a “sexual assault” that traumatized their client, threatened his mental health, and called for compensation of 3.3 million euros.
For Bennett, seeing Argento present herself as a victim of sexual harassment was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It made him relive that episode in 2013, of which there is even a photo left on the actress’s Instagram profile. “What he felt that day came back when Argento became the voice of Harvey Weinstein’s victims,” Bennett’s lawyer said in the complaint document.
For Bennett, the Italian actress was both a mentor and a mother, and they had a certain amount of contact since they met in 2004 during the filming of The Heart is Liar, which she directed and starred in with him. The argument revolved around the relationship between a drug-addicted prostitute (Asia Argento) and her son (Jimmy Benett), and the relationship between them revolved around this mother-child relationship. Until May 9, 2013, she wrote on Instagram: “Waiting for my long-lost child Jimmy Bennett”, with a selfie at the door of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, California. He replied, “I am coming”.
The New York Times’ account of the events recalls that the actor arrived in the room with a family member because of a vision problem that prevents him from driving. Argento asked the companion to leave them alone, gave him alcohol to drink and showed him some notes he had written for them. Then she kissed him, pushed him to bed, took off his pants and gave him oral sex. Finally, she climbed on top of him and they had a sexual relationship. She also asked for some photos to be taken and shared on social networks.
In the image that came to the newspaper along with the anonymous documentation, you can see them both with their torso uncovered. After the episode in the hotel room, they ate lunch together and, on the way home, Bennett began to feel “extremely confused, mortified and upset. A month later, however, she sent Argento a Twitter message with a picture of a bracelet she gave her that said, “I miss you, Mommy.”
Financial and family problems
Bennett’s life wasn’t easy back then. Around the time of his meeting with Argento, he had confronted his mother and stepfather in court, whom he accused of having thrown him out of the family home, of having stolen his possessions and of having appropriated, over the years, at least one and a half million dollars of his savings. Bennett was broke at the time and owed two months’ rent.
The financial agreement recently reached by the actors does not prevent the young person from making what happened public, but it does prevent him from demanding it. Nor would I be allowed, after accepting the money, to publish the photo of both of them. According to the New York Times, and although it is not known if both have spoken since the signing of the agreement, Argento would have given him a “like” on Instagram to a selfie of the actor in which he appeared caressed.
Asia Argento became a powerful voice in the #MeToo movement after accusing Weinstein of raping her in a hotel during the 1997 Cannes Film Festival when she was 21.
At the close of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the actress told the audience: “Things have changed. We’re not going to let them get away with this.
(Taken from El Mundo)
Madiba at 100
Madiba at 100
Images of Nelson Mandela by Cuban photographers
Wednesday, July 18, 2018.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
From the blog of Cuban photographer Juvenal Balán.
Namibia- Juan Almeida Bosque, Nelson Mandela y Jorge Risquet Foto Arnaldo Santos 24/03/1990Mand0035
The prisoner with the number 46664 and the first black president of South Africa, who spent most of those 27 years confined in a damp cell barely 2.4 metres high by 2.1 metres wide, who showed gallantry and who was not, nor could anyone break his fighting spirit that led him to become the world’s oldest political captive and an icon of the universal struggle against the hated apartheid segregationist regime that existed in his country, would now be 100 years old.
A man of universal stature who is remembered today by all because, as Fidel said in a reflection following his death: “No present or past event that I remember or have heard of, such as Mandela’s death, had such an impact on world public opinion, not because of his wealth, but because of the human quality and nobility of his feelings and ideas”.
Granma’s photojournalists had the good fortune and joy of immortalizing him with their photos. Arnaldo Santos while attending the inauguration of the new government in Namibia on March 24, 1990, where Nelson Mandela exchanged with the Cuban delegation led by Revolution Commander Juan Almeida Bosque and Jorge Risquet Valdés.
Then Liborio Noval when Mandela first visited Cuba — a year after his release from prison, met Fidel Castro personally and began a close friendship — and was present at the July 26, 1991 ceremony in Matanzas, where Fidel was decorated with the José Martí Order. It was an intimate friendship sealed in the common struggle, and it remained undisturbed, for the admiration between the two was mutual.
Fidel visited South Africa again in September 1998 – the first time was in 1994 – and I had the opportunity to immortalize these two greats of history who treated each other like brothers.
Fidel said about Mandela: “Old and prestigious friend, how pleased I am to see you converted and recognized by all the political institutions of the world as a symbol of freedom, justice and human dignity.
Mandela, on Fidel’s first visit to his homeland, said: “I am a loyal man and I will never forget that in the darkest moments of our homeland, in the struggle against apartheid, Fidel Castro was at our side.
And this relationship between the two great men, both symbols of the moral strength of principles and dignity, lasted until Mandela’s death on 5 December 2013 at the age of 95.
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.
Fake News About Cuba via Facebook
US Uses Facebook to Spread Fake News About Cuba
August 22, 2018.
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde
Cuban journalist. First Vice-President of UPEC and Vice-President of FELAP. She is a Doctor in Communication Sciences and author or co-author of the books “Antes de que se me olvide”, “Jineteros en La Habana”, “Clic Internet” and “Chávez Nuestro”, among others. He has been awarded the “Juan Gualberto Gómez” National Journalism Prize on several occasions. Founder of Cubadebate and its Editor-in-Chief until January 2017. On twitter: @elizalderosa
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
This plan fits into a long history of attempting to use technology for propaganda against Cuba.
While the United States is making a scandal about the supposed Russian intervention in social networks to influence the 2016 elections won by Donald Trump, today evidence has been uncovered that the U.S. government is using Facebook to spread fake news about Cuba and clandestinely foment dissidence on the island.
The Florida weekly Miami New Times revealed Wednesday that it has had access to documents from the government’s Office of Broadcasting to Cuba (OCB), run by Radio and TV Martí. It reveals that the Trump administration has been using Facebook accounts for two years that appear “native” (from real people on the island) to spread propaganda without informing Cuban Facebook users that it is government advertising.
According to the report obtained by the weekly, due to the failure of Radio and TV Martí,
the OCB’s strategy has focused on an offensive through social networks, based on metrics that place YouTube, Google and Facebook among the most visited sites in Cuba. With the use of AVRA (Audio and Video for Radio) technology, Radio Martí’s programs began to be broadcast through Facebook Live along with TV Marti’s programming. This provides OCB with additional efficient and cost-effective distribution output for both its radio (now visual radio) and TV content.
In fiscal year 2018, OCB has been establishing itself with digital island equipment (read “dissidents” paid for by the US) that creates native and “unbranded” Facebook accounts to disseminate information. Native” pages increase the chances of appearing in the news for Cuban Facebook users. The same strategy will be replicated in other preferred social networks.
Miami New Times says that the documents do not explain what federal agents mean by “unbranded” or “native” Facebook pages, but it is clear that they must resemble the pages of regular social network users to persuade Cubans to read propaganda from Radio and TV Martí.
According to the weekly, both government broadcasters have spent more than $800 million from the U.S. taxpayer over the years in their unsuccessful effort to influence Cuban public opinion.
This plan fits into a long history of attempting to use technology to fit propaganda against Cuba, says University of Pennsylvania professor John S. Nichols.
“There are certainly warning signs here,” says Nichols, co-author of Clandestine Radio Broadcasting: A Study of Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Electronic Communication (1987), about OCB’s efforts. “It is the latest plan in a long list of efforts by Radio and TV Martí and their predecessors to try to overcome the laws of physics…. Every time they fail to get their message to Cuba, they say there has to be some technological solution.
Instead, he adds, Congress “seems to fail to recognize that both stations are a colossal failure. It’s sad because they’re spending taxpayers’ money. But what’s really being wasted is our credibility as a great nation doing this kind of thing, dumb and stupid.
Prominent figures from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum, including Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, have described these OCB programs as counter-productive and a waste of money. Democratic representative Betty McCollum liquidated the AeroMartí platform in 2015 (to transmit to from an airplane to Cuba the broadcasts of Radio and TV Martí) and said that the OCB was an “unnecessary” office.
“Radio and television Martí are old-fashioned Cold War artifacts,” McCollum said in a statement in 2015. “Our taxpayers shouldn’t be funding propaganda broadcasts.”
But the programs continue to exist thanks to a handful of anti-Cuban lawmakers, including Miami representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a longtime promoter of Radio and TV Martí, says the Miami New Times.
Earlier this year, Senator Marco Rubio helped install Tomás Regalado, an old friend, as head of the Radio and TV Martí programs. Since then, Regalado has made great promises about how both stations have new plans to reach “5 million” Cuban citizens in the coming years. Regalado appeared last week on the Spanish-speaking MegaTV network to brag about the use of mysterious new technologies that the Cuban government supposedly cannot block. He said that 200 Cubans had received receivers that would help in this new attempt.
“It’s a technology that didn’t exist, and since the government doesn’t know about it, it will be almost impossible to block it,” Regalado told the cameras.
Nichols argued to the Florida weekly that this type of social media propaganda is damaging the U.S. position in the world.
“Third countries see what we are doing and say,’Here comes America again doing this nonsense,” and he adds,’It’s low, petty and not worthy of great power. Other countries will say,’If the U.S. is willing to violate international law, why should we obey our contractual obligations? And given what Radio Martí and TV Martí might be doing right now, we have a hard time complaining about what other countries might be doing against us.
The report that Miami New Times had access to is OCB’s budget request for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It does not reveal the identities of fake “native” and “unbranded” accounts created on the social network, but Facebook administrators do know what they are. By these extravagant quirks in life, this information coincides with the decision of the social network founded by Marc Zuckerberg to eliminate hundreds of alleged false accounts of Russians and Iranians allegedly involved in several disinformation campaigns.
Will Facebook also eliminate the false accounts created by the U.S. government for regime change in Cuba and will the U.S. Attorney’s Office appoint Robert Mueller or another of his ilk to investigate these abuses, as it has done to determine alleged Russian interference through Facebook in the 2016 elections?
Failed saga of Radio and TV Martí
1985: Radio Martí began broadcasting, and five years later, the television aggression began when a television transmitter was put into service on board a captive aerostat at an altitude of 3,000 meters in one of the keys in the south of the state of Florida.
2005: Hurricane Dennis disappeared the captive balloon located at 10,000 feet above sea level in Cudjoe Key, from where Television Martí was broadcast. The OCB replaced it with the AeroMartí platform.
2014: OCB created the unwanted text messaging service Pyramid, which failed. Then it tried to smuggle small satellite devices into the island, but the project was aborted because in addition to being expensive, the “dissidents” used the terminals to view pornography.
2015: Deactivation of “AeroMartí”.
2018: President Trump created the Internet Task Force for Cuba, which according to the State Department “will examine the technological challenges and opportunities for expanding access to the Internet and independent media in Cuba. Clearly, this Task Force has encouraged OCB’s digital fantasy.
Several investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have acknowledged that there is strong evidence that Radio and Television Martí is not heard or seen in Cuba. According to the Miami New Times, this saga has cost the American taxpayer more than $800 million.
TAKEN FROM: Desbloqueando Cuba
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.