Translations 492
Donald Trump’s Dark Path
Donald Trump’s Dark Path
An unacknowledged or reluctantly-admitted defeat, and a forced commitment to a peaceful transition of power, are still far from the final closure on the chaos
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Trump incited them and his followers left for the Capitol. Photo: AFP Published: 07/01/2021 | 08:29 pm
The United States has experienced a very bitter drink of the acíbar [aloe juice] or purgative that has made other nations of the world drink more than once with names of seasons or colors. As an unusual fact for the idyllic image with which the American democracy has sold itself and deceived the planet throughout three centuries, we have witnessed an insurrection of the most extreme and violent ultra-right, determined to maintain the political power of he who is its image and likeness.
The most dangerous professions
The most dangerous professions in the world in 2020
None of the murdered, disappeared, assaulted, or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
January 4, 2021 23:01:57
Julian Assange resists the oppression of journalism professionals committed to the truth Photo: reuters
According to the barometer of press freedom violations, website of the NGO, Reporters without Borders (RSF), 51 journalists were killed in 2020 and 400 were imprisoned. The source itself stops to list arbitrary detentions, disappearances, torture, mistreatment and other methods, country by country.
The subject of the moment draws attention, that of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who suffers a marked deterioration of his health in the prison where he is held, in Great Britain, for which the judge in the case, Vanessa Baraitser, accepted the diagnosis of the psychiatrists and ruled to prohibit the transfer to the U.S., due to the high risk of suicide.
The same judge described the judicial process as defective and punitive, but did not grant him bail, since the Australian journalist faces charges in the U.S. country for the leaking of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
The other side of the story is the proposal by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who asked for Assange’s freedom and offered his country to grant him political asylum.
However, RWB does not refer to the case, but marks Cuba in black along with other countries, symbolized as the worst violators of that freedom, although none of its figures include the Cuban archipelago.
The explicit contradiction in the information on the RSF website demonstrates the double standards and political intent with which this data is measured and the information is manipulated with the aim of demonizing the Cuban Revolution.
On the other hand, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported, on December 23, that 59 journalists were killed in 2020, four of them women. There is a difference of eight between the two reports.
According to UNESCO data, during the last ten years, 888 journalists and media workers, that is, one every four days, were killed.
These crimes continue to be committed with total impunity, according to the report on the safety of journalists, published in November by the UN agency, which shows that in 2020 there were no consequences in 87% of the cases.
The agency reflected the increase in harassment and attacks on information professionals, for example, in the attacks they suffered during the coverage of protest demonstrations in Chile, where 90 attacks were reported, and the case of the Black Lives Matter mobilizations, where up to 500 different attacks against the press occurred.
The document of the multilateral organization detailed that, in the first half of the year, press workers were attacked in 125 protests held in 65 countries.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations recently asked all the governments of the world to release, immediately, the journalists who have been arrested for carrying out their professional work. “Many have been subjected to harassment, acts of intimidation, sanctions, killings and also arbitrary arrests. We know that prisoners, detainees and prisoners, in general, are very vulnerable to the rapid spread of the virus,” said António Guterres.
It should be noted that none of these murdered, disappeared, assaulted or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban. The last journalist murdered in the Greater Antilles fell victim to Fulgencio Batista’s police in 1958.
Health workers, the most dangerous job in 2020
Although practicing journalism remains an extremely dangerous profession, in the year that ended, health workers contributed, through their dedication and courageous stand in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the greatest number of victims.
At least 7,000 of them have died from COVID-19 in the world, with Mexico being the hardest-hit country, according to a recently released study by Amnesty International.
Behind Mexico, the study places the United States (1,077 deaths), United Kingdom (649), Brazil (634), Russia (631), India (573), South Africa (240), Italy (188), Peru (183), Iran (164) and Egypt (159). Cubans did not add to this last statistic either.
It is not a matter of informative curiosity, a simple coincidence or mere chauvinism on our part, it is a reality marked by results, it has to do with the culture of socialism that places human being in first place, in the center of all priorities.
Sources: RT, RSF Barometer and reports from the UN.
New Prices for Agricultural Products
Government of Havana Approves
New Prices for Agricultural Products
January 3, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Agricultural market in Havana Photo: Alex Castro
Decree-Law 17 “On the Implementation of the Monetary Ordering Process”, dated November 24, 2020, establishes the monetary and exchange rate unification.
In accordance with the above and in compliance with the recently approved policy of commercialization of agricultural products, the Governor of Havana, by means of Resolution 19 of 2020, approved the purchase prices to the producer, the wholesale prices and the maximum retail prices in Cuban pesos (CUP) of the first quality agricultural products in all the commercialization network of Havana that are commercialized by all the forms of state and non-state management, as of January 1, 2021.
Approved in the resolution itself, in the case of benefited and packaged products, up to 20% above the approved retail price will be applied, and when benefited products are cut and packaged, up to 50% above the approved retail price will be applied, empowering the mayors to approve the network that will market these products.
In approving the prices, the intention was to stimulate the income of producers as the main link in the production and marketing chain, with an increase of between 2 and 3.5 times the current prices.
Maximum retail prices of first quality agricultural products in the entire marketing network of Havana that are marketed by all forms of state and non-state management.
Products Retail Price UM: pesos per pound |
|
ROOT VEGETABLES |
|
1. Sweet potato (Boniato) |
3.00 |
2. Malanga xanthosoma |
8.00 |
3. Malanga colocasia |
4.00 |
4. Yuca |
4.00 |
5. Banana fruit |
3.00 |
6. Banana lunch |
4.00 |
7. Donkey banana |
2.00 |
VEGETABLES |
|
8. Tomato |
8.00 |
9. Dried Caribbean Onion |
28.00 |
10. Green Caribbean onion |
13.00 |
11. Dried white onion |
15.00 |
12. Green onion branch |
10.00 |
13. Garlic |
47.00 |
14. Bell pepper |
10.00 |
15. Cucumber |
3.00 |
16. Pumpkin |
4.00 |
17. Melon |
3.00 |
18. Cabbage |
3.00 |
Other vegetables |
|
19. Carrot without the top |
6.00 |
20. Beet without the top |
6.00 |
21. Chives |
6.00 |
22. Eggplant |
5.00 |
23. Hot bell pepper |
11.00 |
24. Chay bell pepper |
7.00 |
25. Radish |
5.00 |
26. Bean |
8.00 |
27. Okra |
6.00 |
28. Lettuce |
5.00 |
29. Chard |
4.00 |
30. Spinach |
3.00 |
31. Chinese Cabbage |
3.00 |
32. Watercress |
4.00 |
CITRUS AND FRUITS |
|
33. Sweet orange |
10.00 |
34. Lemon |
13.00 |
35. Mango |
6.00 |
36. Guava |
7.00 |
37. Grated fruit |
5.00 |
38. Green fruit bomb |
3.00 |
39. Pineapple |
4.00 |
40. Avocado |
5.00 |
GRAINS |
|
41. Baby Corn |
(UM: weight per ear) 3.00 |
42. Black common bean |
14.00 |
43. Common red bean |
16.00 |
44. Chickpeas |
35.00 |
(With information from Tribuna de La Habana)
This article also appears in GRANMA:
http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-01-03/aprueban-nuevos-precios-de-productos-agropecuarios-en-la-habana-03-01-2021-18-01-25
MYTH: “If the Cuban revolution is so good….
MYTH: “If the Cuban revolution is so good, Cubans living in the U.S. and defending it should return to Cuba
Author: Dr Salvador Capote
January 3, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
REALITY:
The decision to live in the United States is an individual one and is made for one or more of many reasons that are part of a freedom of conscience that no one, especially those who lack the necessary authority, can question. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans live in the United States who wish to establish civilized relations between this country and Cuba, to be able to travel freely to the island and to send help to their families.
Within this sector, there are many who defend the humanist character of the revolution, its achievements and triumphs, its immense effort to achieve a system of equality and social justice, its solidarity, without this necessarily meaning that they assume, in their totality, the revolutionary principles, methods and objectives.
A considerable part of the Cuban population in the United States has already put down deep roots. They have established or rebuilt their families. They have children, grandchildren, nephews, etc., born here, and only someone who is very blinded by rancor, very ignorant, very insensitive, or very irresponsible, can demand that, for ideological reasons, they abandon them and return to live in Cuba.
To a great friend and comrade, Michael Martínez, born in the United States of Cuban parents, a union leader, in a demonstration demanding the cessation of hostility against Cuba and Venezuela, a television journalist publicly asked the well-known question: If the Cuban revolution is so good, why don’t you go and live there? Mike’s answer was, in my opinion, the best of all: “I am not going to live in Cuba because it is here, in the United States, where the Revolution must be made.”
Maintaining links with the Homeland is completely normal. What is not normal is that someone, who calls himself a Cuban, supports the criminal blockade against Cuba, advocates intensifying the economic strangulation of his own people, tries to prevent the reunion of families, promotes the execution of terrorist acts on the homeland and shows himself – in his visceral hatred – a supporter of an invasion of Cuba by the Marines, even though he knows that they will only collect “the dust from his blood-soaked soil,” as Antonio Maceo warned.
But since it is a question of questioning, why not question the hundreds of thousands of Americans who, also for multiple reasons, have established their place of residence abroad? Why, if the United States is paradise, do so many go to live in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico? and it is possible to find them in practically any corner of the planet? This, without going into the subject of occupation troops, CIA stations, secret prisons and military bases all over the planet.
Finally, and without trying to exhaust the subject, although the Cuban government has the decency not to use the fact as propaganda, every year there are thousands of Cubans who, in spite of all the difficulties, return to Cuba for the permanent and definitive reunion with their identity and their roots.
Secret Memories of Prostitution
Secret Memories of Prostitution
By Fernando Rodríguez Sosa
May 11, 2016
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
“Before I could understand a woman sleeping with a man for money, whether she liked him or not, but now? Not now. We all left the business when we were given the opportunity to do so. For some, it was not easy to change, especially for the older ones”.
Thus confesses one of the voices that appears in Secret Memories of Two Public Women (Ediciones Cubanas Artex, 2015, 144 pp), in which its author, Tomás Fernández Robaina, through various testimonies, proposes a look, at the past and the present, of prostitution in Cuba.
In two chapters, thought out and created with skill and dexterity, stories are told that shake and move. They are stories of life, intelligently enriched with various documents – such as texts from newspapers, excerpts from books, lyrics of songs… – that contribute to understanding, in all its dimensions, the complex phenomenon of prostitution.
This installment opens with the testimony of Violeta and Consuelo, La Charmé, two women who practiced one of the oldest trades in the world, who tell of their lives before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and in the first months after the popular victory of January 1, 1959.
Also of great interest is the reading of the second part of Secret Memories of Two Public Women, in which Tomás Fernández Robaina brings together “other voices (that) will speak of their times and existences, not as secret memories, but as current experiences”.
In this second chapter, we can read heartbreaking testimonies that move us to indignation and compassion at the same time. Here is one of those confessions:
For me, it made no sense to continue studying. Some of my little friends had dropped out of high school and launched into the struggle. It was not always easy for them with their families, but later when it was seen that through this path of struggle they were resolving many things that were essential for the daily life of their relatives, what they were doing was seen and valued as something “normal”.
(…)
When you see that others have everything, because they are in the struggle, just as I am now, or for other reasons, you break something inside; you want it and you don’t want it, because our parents taught us other rules of life, but they don’t fit, because even by sacrificing they can’t provide what their children really need.
Author of wide research, mainly related to racial issues, Tomás Fernández Robaina (Havana, 1941) has published, among other titles, Bibliography of Afro-Cuban Studies, The Black in Cuba 1902-1958, Speak Paleros and Santeros, Cuba: Personalities in the Racial Debate and Afro-Cuban Identity: Culture and Nationality.
In Secret Memories of Two Public Women, which had a first partial edition in 1984, you will find -in the words of its author- voices of yesterday and today that, in a clear and honest way, reveal their sadness, longings, frustrations, rages, contradictions, disappointments…
A revealing book, that testifies, in two time periods s, a similar phenomenon, although sustained in diametrically opposed realities. A book that, through its pages, makes it possible to rescue, for today and tomorrow, a sad chapter of the collective memory of the Cuban nation.
Pilgrimage to El Rincón
Pilgrimage to El Rincón
By Claudio Pelaez Sordo
December 17, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Celebration for St. Lazarus Day. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Today part of the Cuban people celebrate the day of Babalú Ayé, popularly known as Saint Lazarus, one of the most miraculous saints according to popular culture and venerated for being the guardian of the most dispossessed and sick.
Through the lens of Claudio Pelaez we know the journey to the sanctuary “El Rincon”, in Santiago de las Vegas, where thousands of faithful of Saint Lazarus arrived. The usual pilgrimage, which is already part of the Cuban identity, was marked on this occasion by faces covered with masks due to the context of the COVID-19.
Anyway, I get to the Corner. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Between the two of us we arrived at the Rincón. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Very happy to celebrate this day. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Lazarus is our favorite deity. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
This pilgrimage is an expression of Cuban identity. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
We carry Lazarus deep inside. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Special moment to gather together the deserved homage to the saint who watches over them and protects them. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Cult of Saint Lazarus, solid expression of Cuban identity. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
Any sacrifice is little to venerate Lazarus. Photo: Claudio Peláez Sordo.
History of a medical feat
History of a medical feat
Maylín and Mayelín Téllez Bruzón were born on December 18, 1973, united by the abdomen and were the first Siamese twins to be successfully separated in Latin America
Author: Juan Morales Agüero | juan@juventudrebelde.cu
December 19, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
When they turned 15, Dr. Vazquez Fernandez accompanied them in the celebration. Author: Norge Santiesteban Published: 19/12/2020 | 12:07 pm
Las Tunas – At 3:00 pm on December 18, 1973, the phone of Dr. Rafael Vazquez Fernandez, a surgeon at the Hospital Vladimir I. Lenin Hospital in Holguin, began to ring with insistence. “Good afternoon, tell me,” answered the doctor when he picked up the phone. “Dr. Vázquez? -Yes, this is Dr. Hernández Ojito from the Victoria Maternity Hospital in Las Tunas. A woman has just given birth here, Siamese twins. Would you help us evaluate them?”
The news took his breath away. “Siamese twins! -exclaimed the also professor of surgery at the Universidad de Oriente. You don’t see that much in Cuba. And he recalled having read that the highest proportion of twin births is among the Yoruba in Nigeria, where almost one in every 22 births is a twin.
Dr. Vazquez Fernandez didn’t think twice: “I’m going there,” he said before hanging up. Minutes later, he boarded a car, took the road, devoured the 70-something kilometers [43 miles] that separated him from Victoria de Las Tunas and in a matter of an hour and a half he was on the ground in front of the health institution of the neighboring province. Not by a long shot did he suspect that days later he would star, along with other specialists, in an event of unusual transcendence in the history of Cuban and Latin American medicine.
The preliminary assessment
In front of the Mártires de Las Tunas hospital, his colleague Hernández Ojito was waiting for him. He had attended the multiple birth together with pediatrician Clara Bisquet and doctor Orlando Zaldívar. Without wasting a minute, they went to the room where the little Siamese girls Maylín and Mayelín Téllez Bruzón – each weighing six pounds – were taking their first nap on earth, joined at their abdomens.
The preliminary examination concluded that their separation could be attempted. They requested an ambulance and left for the Lenin Hospital in Holguin, opened eight years earlier. “How much times have changed,” said Dr. Vazquez Hernandez. And his thoughts went back to the time of the Hindus of the 16th century, who incinerated Siamese creatures as soon as they came to life.
Already in the City of Parks, a multi-disciplinary team was formed to study the feasibility of separating girls through surgery. Anesthesiologist Pura Avilés, pediatrician Félix Álvarez, hematologist Norberto Rodríguez and doctor Vázquez Fernández performed cardiovascular, hematological, genetic, blood gas and radiological tests on them.
The results were encouraging. All that remained was to consult the parents. “Success is possible, but it can also fail. Do you agree to the operation?” they were asked. And they agreed.
For the first time in Latin America, an intervention of this kind would be carried out. Other cases in the world appeared in the literature, but not identical. The foundational separation of Siamese twins took place in France in 1689. They were united by the navel. And if we are talking about Siamese twins, the oldest were the English Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, born in 1110. They lived 34 years with a single pair of upper and lower limbs, a rectum and a single vagina.
Meanwhile, the most famous conjoined twins were Chang and Eng Bunker, born in 1811 in Siam, today’s Thailand. They lived to be 63 years old. Doctors refused to operate on them because they had… a common liver! They both married and had 10 and 12 children, respectively. Chang was the first to die. A few hours later Eng died. Since then the term Siamese designates this type of twins.
A medical feat is accomplished
But let’s continue with Maylin and Mayelin. At midnight on December 27, 1973, the surgical procedure began and lasted almost two hours. An atmosphere of great expectation was felt in the rooms surrounding the operating room. Bohemia magazine reported this in a memorable article: “For the first time in the history of medicine in Cuba, the complex task of operating on two people at the same time in the same room, and, in this case, on two small creatures only nine days old, and closely connected by the abdominal region, was undertaken.
Two groups were formed to provide differentiated care to the Siamese twins during the surgery. In the first, Doctors Vázquez Fernández, Hernández Ojito and Viamonte would assume the separation. In the second, on a parallel table, Doctors Cabrera, Velázquez and Abadía would be in charge of reconstructing their abdominal walls, once they had been separated.
“We operated with an electric scalpel, which cuts and prevents bleeding,” said Dr. Vazquez Fernandez later. We faced three tense moments: the opening of the abdominal cavity, the cutting of the xiphoid appendix, and the section into two equal parts of the common liver. This organ, by the way, had independent systems for each girl. Otherwise, the operation would have been fatal for one of them. All obstacles were overcome.
The prestigious anesthesiologist Pura Avilés also referred to her experiences at that time. “We faced another extremely challenging technical difficulty when proceeding with the endotracheal intubation of the creatures. It happened because of the proximity of their faces and because of the unwieldy heads. But we were able to solve these problems as well.
It was a resounding and resounding victory. The Holguin newspaper ¡Ahora! in the edition of January 5th, 1974, highlighted in a great headline of its front page the unusual event: “GREAT SUCCESS OF CUBAN MEDICINE”. According to the specialized literature, it was the 132nd surgical intervention on Siamese women in the history of humanity. Ours, as it has been said, were born by natural childbirth, but united from the xiphoid appendix to the umbilical region.
Motherhood was another of the prizes that life offered Maylín and Mayelín. Photo: Norge Santiesteban
Today Maylín and Mayelín are two completely normal women, who this December 18th, turned 47 years old. Both continue to reside without setbacks or consequences in their native Las Tunas. In addition to granting them strong health and notoriety, life also offered them the joy of being mothers. “At present, we don’t live together, because each one has her own family,” says Mayelín. But we visit each other frequently and are aware of each other to help each other if necessary. Maylín, for her part, remembers that “we lost our mother a few years ago. She always wanted us to be together and that is what we do”. The separation of the Siamese from Las Tunas is recalled in a sculpture erected at the School of Medical Sciences in Holguin. It’s a tribute to a feat of Cuban medicine that began to be shown on December 18, 1973, when the sound of Dr. Vázquez Fernández’s phone ringing augured something that still fills us with wonder.
The Theory of Induced Demoralization
DESDE LA IZQUIERDA
The Theory of Induced Demoralization
Combating induced demoralization in no way means suspending criticism. Quite the contrary. It implies the exercise of responsible and well-founded criticism, which safeguards unity and does not make it easy for the enemy to destroy us. Demoralized we are nothing
Author: Fernando Buen Abad | internet@granma.cu
December 20, 2020 20:12:21
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Argentina in the year of the pandemic
Argentina in the year of the pandemic
As everywhere else, the arrival of SarsCoV-2 has hindered Peronist management in its return; but this has not hindered a social task that has struggled to impose itself on the economic ballast during its first year in office
Author: Marina Menéndez Quintero | marina@juventudrebelde.cu
December 12, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Alberto Fernandez believes he will be able to raise Argentina again, as he did in 2003 when he was Nestor Kirchner’s right-hand man. Author: Getty Images Published: 12/12/2020 | 08:21 pm
The debates to legalize the voluntary termination of pregnancy close the legislative year and, also, the list of relevant events noted in Argentina during the first 12 months of the Peronistas return. But the events that will most mark the life of the nation are in the economy and in society itself, at the mercy of both, like everything in this world, of the scourge and the confrontation of the pandemic.
The interruption of the pregnancy will be the last vote that the Senate will take on the 29th of this month after its approval in the House of Representatives, which could lead, if it is approved, to the fulfillment of one of the most important campaign promises of the executive that Alberto Fernandez presides over.
And although the issue is attracting the attention of defenders and detractors, it is discussing spaces in the media with the arrival, in the first two months of 2021, of ten million doses of the vaccine against Covid-19. This was negotiated with Russia through the direct intermediary of President Vladimir Putin to help a country that is accumulating more than 40,000 deaths from Sars-Cov-2, despite the efforts of the government in the care of the disease and the sick.
It could be said that the outbreak of the pandemic in March, barely three months after the arrival of the Front of All to power, has passed through his presidential administration at the beginning, to the point that the Head of State has declared that when history is written he will be remembered as “the president of the pandemic”.
The Argentine Senate also approved the Law of Solidarity and Extraordinary Contribution to Covid-19. Getty Images
Confronting the coronavirus has been much more difficult for a nation that was left, as Argentines often say, “in intensive care” by Mauricio Macri’s terms and was therefore in a worse position to face a crisis that has continued to rage.
In October 2019, still in the middle of Macri’s administration, the official National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) reported that poverty had risen to 35.4 percent and destitution to 7.7 percent.
That was the scenario where the restrictions imposed against the risk of contagion were primed, so that at the end of the first half of 2020, Indec reported another slight rise in poverty by five percentage points to 40 percent. Meanwhile, the price of the basic basket rose by 20 percent: nine percent more than the increase in total family income which grew by 11 points, so that families living standards continued to decline .
The substratum was visible in the macro numbers left by Macri. At the end of his two terms, inflation had escalated from 25 to 50 percent annually, the accumulated peso devaluation was 540 percent, reserves had become thinner and, worst of all, the foreign debt was equivalent to 95 percent of the GDP in a country that was not growing.
Argentina was in virtual default.
Faced with this reality, the impact of what was the biggest challenge and now also the biggest success of the new government is not yet visible: the renegotiation of 99 percent of the debt bonds held by private holders, an agreement that saved the country from default and set sail so that, despite everything, the ship would sail again.
The rescheduling of payments – as the young and talented Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, is accustomed to say, because only the terms have been distanced but Argentina will pay – was completed in September and, although it may have passed by in the midst of the contingencies unleashed by the Covid-19, it can be considered transcendental. Paying interest on the debt, it was impossible to think of any plan for national revitalization.
The arrival of the coronavirus added to other problems already facing Argentines. Photo: Getty Images
The payment of $66,137 million dollars of debt under foreign legislation in ten years was restructured with a deduction of around 60 percent, so that only the debts agreed to with the International Monetary Fund itself, relatively “comprehensive” now but responsible for an unpublished disbursement approved by Macri of 57 billion dollars, of which $44 billion were received. Despite its cooperation in the process with the bondholders, the Fund will try to negotiate with the government by imposing prescription books that the Argentine executive does not want to accept.
The successful negotiation with the private sector made it possible for the legislature to approve last month an ambitious and optimistic budget for 2021 that contemplates the forecast of 5.5 percent economic growth after the 12.1 percent collapse of the year that ends,. Inflation is projected to decelerate from 32 percent reported this year, to 29%; and a primary deficit of 4.5 percent, among other aspects.
Martin Guzman, who is responsible for the plan already approved by Congress, has said that this will be one of the elements he would use to negotiate a new program of extended facilities with the IMF.
The interventions of the IMF in Argentina have been popular rejected. Photo: AFP
Offering the shoulder to the people
But the benefit that some of this brings is not yet visible today, when the adversity of the economic figures has been lessened by the government with social measures, aimed at making the burden on the people less heavy.
This shouldering of the burden must be responsible for the fact that, in spite of the sorrows, the executive headed by Alberto and former President Cristina Fernández closed the year with popularity ratings that give more than 50 percent support to the president.
A neoliberal ideologue bent on discrediting him would call it “populism”; but such thinking about people is precisely what offers the nuances that differentiate the models from the socio-political point of view.
Among these measures is the Law of Solidarity and Productive Reactivation, which suspended the formula for adjusting pensions and retirement pensions, and promoted their stability. Also, there is the increase of withholding taxes on exports, the freezing of public service rates throughout the year, the creation of the so-called PAIS Tax on purchases with dollars in order to increase savings, and the increase of taxes only on those who receive more income.
In addition, steps were taken to strengthen local production chains in order to make products cheaper, and it was decided to create a food card that will monitor the nutritional quality of families.
Interviewed by the alternative media El Destape, Alberto Fernandez has confessed the rigors of governing a country that received in crisis and then has vilified the coronavirus. But he has also shown that he feels at ease.
During the last three months, income has exceeded inflation by almost three points, he said. Industries such as the automotive industry produced 20 percent more in November than in the same month last year, and reports state that “in the most popular neighborhoods, where people need it most, demand in the dining halls has fallen,” he said.
“So I say, I was not wrong.
A second inauguration on January 20th?
A second inauguration on January 20th?
Outgoing President Donald Trump is organizing a “second inauguration” online at the same time that Bidel will take his oath of office and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden
Author Juana Carrasco Martín | juana@juventudrebelde.cu
December 22, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
People have spoken, says cartoonist Author: Juventud Rebelde Published: 22/12/2020 | 12:34 am
The height of irrationality among supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump: they are organizing a “second inauguration” for him, on January 20, at noon, at the same time that he will be sworn in and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s inauguration will be online and can be considered a provocation and probably a violation of constitutional norms, but there they go proclaiming that it is their right “to freedom of expression.”
As social networks endure everything, more than 60,000 Facebook users are promoting the event they have called “Donald J. Trump’s second presidential inauguration ceremony,” and they claim in a “disclaimer” that they are a sum of 325,000 private individuals, not affiliated with any formal organization, who want to show their support for “President Donald Trump”.
In the face of such ignorance of the popular will expressed in the ballot box and the certification of the Electoral College, Facebook has simply issued another “disclaimer”: “Joe Biden is the president-elect. He will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021.”
As reported in The Hill, the event will be hosted by Ilir Chami and Evi Kokalari, who was allegedly part of Trump’s 2020 campaign and is featured in regular on right-wing news networks such as One American News Network.
In a recent post on the Facebook page, Kokalari re-posted Facebook’s disclaimer, writing: “Our voting rights are under attack! So is our freedom of speech! And FB’s disclaimer in this post proves it.”
One could not expect less from these fans when Trump has not recognized himself as a loser and continues to encourage such false news and disruptive actions.
Rumor has it that in his obsession with staying in the White House he seems to have in mind appointing attorney Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate allegations of voting fraud.
For identification purposes, Powell was separated from the Trump campaign in November when he was mocked for claiming that there was a broad “national conspiracy” to deny the current president victory and an “immense influence of communist money from Venezuela, Cuba and probably China” that interfered with the elections, in addition to claiming that the voting machines used were “created in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez” to ensure that he would never lose an election.
At the time, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, had said in a statement: “Sidney Powell is practicing on her own. She is not a member of Trump’s legal team. Nor is she an attorney for the President in her personal capacity.”
Now, that statement comes crashing down. Desperate Trump put her in the ring and provided evidence that anywhere in the world psychiatry would have already rendered a verdict of committal or at least strong treatment of insanity.