Translations 677
Better Late Than Never
Better Late Than Never
Sexual abuse, a global wound in which justice is most often delayed in the international sports world
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Author: Alfonso Nacianceno | internet@granma.cu
April 25, 2018 21:04:57
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
135/5000 Years have passed after the rape, and even the former French tennis player Isabelle Demongeot cries when she talks about the fact. Photo: crhoy.c
Excessive ambition for success, fear, deceit, and contempt for human dignity spice up a contemptible practice that is now, belatedly, being punished by justice in the international arena of sport.
Sexual abuse carries enough dynamite to exploit a young man’s sporting career and traumatize him for life. The world, despite being aware of the damage, has been slow to react to these excesses and, in many countries, the desire to win is predominant in the mentality of the clubs, which silence the voices of protest inorder to avoid condemnation.
The seriousness of sexual abuse against children and adolescents from the very moment they embrace a sport exhibits painful edges, since the athlete becomes totally dependent on the designs of the coach, by exerting an influence in many cases greater than that of his parents.
The shameless take advantage of the privilege that this close relationship gives them, even when they simulate a caress accompanied by the phrase “I am the one who will lead you to victory”, creating a smokescreen that makes their pupils – who are also afraid to see their future cut short – hesitate to report having been victims of harassment.
Will they believe me or not if I go public? In this dilemma, time passes for the athlete who was subjected to such a punishment, as happened to the French athlete Isabelle Demongeot, raped by her mentor Regis de Camarat, whom she denounced when the facts had already come out, although the man was sentenced to ten years in prison for acting in the same way with two other students.
Sexual abuse does not discriminate against sports. The same thing happened to some 20 footballers in Great Britain who decided to bring to light the aggressions of coaches and headhunters, testimonies with which they accused their clubs of closing their eyes to the felonies for not seeing their successes annulled.
NASSAR, THE TRIGGER?
The 175-year prison sentence and trial of Dr. Larry Nassar, who is responsible for the health of the U.S. gymnastics team, was the biggest sex scandal in the history of world sports and was the spark that sparked a reaction in many countries.
As in most of these cases, in August 2016 the former gymnast Rachel Denhollander, and later the Olympic medalist in the same discipline, Jamie Dantzscher, took the initiative and exposed the predator Nassar.
Influenced or not by what is known about the case in the United States, on Wednesday Gerardo Werthein, president of the Argentine Olympic Committee (COA), asked to denounce sexual abuse before the courts.
“It’s a really severe issue and one that attacks sport in the world. I tell my fellow leaders not to keep things under the rug, to take responsibility,” said a concerned Werthein, who is also the head of the Organizing Committee for the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games.
On April 3, the COA brought to justice a coach from the national teams of the Argentine Gymnastics Confederation, a sexual abuser of some athletes in the 1990s.
Earlier this week, Granma published the decision by Australian sporting authorities to stop the infamous practice of abusing athletes, a report that revealed that in 2012, an investigation revealed that more than 4,000 government institutions (including 344 sports institutions) had been charged with child sexual abuse.
It does not matter whether or not the Nassar case was the trigger for justice in the world. Hopefully, the number of countries on the same path will grow, because the planet and the international sports movement will be hurt by doping, the theft of talent from poor nations and commercialisation. Fighting back, better late than never.
OAS Exposed
OAS Esposed in the Face of Cuba’s Electoral Continuity
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Under the pseudonym “General Secretariat of the Organization of American States”, the United States Ministry of Colonies issued a press release with which it once again stripped itself naked.
The current Secretary General of the OAS is a sordid traitor to his Uruguayan homeland. Having carried out important political tasks in his country of origin under the presidency of José Mujica – a highly respected personality who is the pride of Latin America – the Secretary General threw his buttocks into the arms of the empire and today exercises the saddest role that a Latin American could play.
Luis Almagro, who was a member of the Frente Amplio, a prestigious unitary political group in Uruguay that provided the Uruguayan people with an efficient political weapon for achieving notable victories at the polls. Almagro has dealt a harsh blow to the popular aspirations of Latin America with his embarrassing performance at the OAS. He has undermined the democratic prestige of his own nation of origin like no one else since the period of the military dictatorships.
In judicial proceedings for petty thieves and other minor crimes that in themselves denounce the misery that led him to betrayal, Luis Almagro intends to continue providing services to the empire with attacks on Cuba, Venezuela and everything that hinders U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere.
Cuba has just carried out an electoral process for presidential continuity that is a paradigm of real democracy and the full exercise of its people’s sovereignty. This well-paid servant of imperialism claims that “the election by the Cuban National Assembly of Miguel Díaz-Canel as President of the country has taken place without the free expression of the Cuban people”.
Almagro cannot ignore that it is precisely the electoral systems of the hemisphere – especially the United States, which claims to be the model from which the rules and patterns for others flow – that the peoples of the “representative democracies” that Washington has spread across the continent most strongly object to as its sardonic “Manifest Destiny”.
The legal system of the latter constitutes the ideal scenario for an unjust order of unequal exchange, exploitation and misery. Washington considers itself called upon to impose this on the world, in accordance with the US philosophy that seeks to justify the way in which the elites of some countries concentrate wealth while submitting to the dictates of the imperialist metropolis.
“Manifest Destiny”, which expresses the belief that America is destined by providence to expand to the four winds, is a racist doctrine. It considers white Americans superior to the mestizos of neighboring countries south of its border who must be regenerated. It assumes that God chose the American people to be, as a political and economic power, a nation superior to the rest of the world, and connects this with the Monroe Doctrine of “America for the Americans.”
When in so many countries on the continent, including the United States, opponents and dissidents are imprisoned and tortured, people are discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, age and nationality; freedom of expression is limited to those who have enough moneyy to exercise it. Selective deaths are ordered and carried out for political reasons by gangs manipulated by capital. Those who demand the right to organize, to better wages, to study and to work are cruelly repressed. The security of the population is undermined by the sale and proliferation of firearms in society by merchants who bribe unscrupulous politicians with impunity.
The U.S. colonial minister has tried, with as much indignity as he can imagine, in order to carry out the will of Washington and Wall Street against the progressive governments that several peoples of the hemisphere have managed to install on the basis of a united patriotic struggle.
Almagro attributes to the OAS the function of denouncing and working for a hemisphere free of dictatorships, with very peculiar selectivity. As a result of the intervention of criminal groups in a citizens’ protest against an increase in social security contributions, an unusual wave of violence broke out in Nicaragua. A dozen were left dead and many injured in that country, which is considered the most peaceful and safe in Central America. The OAS immediately “demanded” Daniel Ortega’s progressive government not act against “peaceful demonstrations” and the country was subjected to a terrorist methodology similar to the guarimbas promoted and financed by Washington’s anti-Chavism in Venezuela, both in 2014 and 2017.
The diligence with which the OAS acted there contrasts with the laziness it showed when, recently, it was asked to act in Honduras in the face of dozens of crimes committed by the repressive forces of the local regime… and to which the OAS never responded.
April 26, 2018.
Seven Coincidences between Nicaragua and Venezuela
Seven coincidences between the violent protests in Nicaragua and Venezuela
Sub-Title
By Mission Verdad [Truth] April 24, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
[Photo above from Venezuela in 1017, wl]
- Non-conventional weaponry. The use of handcrafted weapons to confront the security forces seeks to create a blurred line between peaceful protest and tactics of subversion and urban warfare, so that the deaths will occur and then be endorsed to the government as part of a “human rights violation” case.
Metras, mortars, rockets, among other implements, are used by mercenary collision groups in Venezuela and caused damage to Adrián Duque, Armando Cañizalez, César Pereira, Diego Arellano, Miguel Castillo, Roberto Durán and Yeison Mora, who were killed by metal spheres or by civilians from the same side of the demonstrations. Andrés Uzcátegui, Nelson Arévalo Avendaño, Neomar Lander and Engelberth Duque Chacón were also killed handling handcrafted explosives.
During the violent protests in Nicaragua, armed groups taking the vanguard use similar devices.
In order to avoid confusion because of the similarity of the images, the first photo corresponds to Venezuela and the second to Nicaragua.
- Rumor campaigns. Unconfirmed information is generated by psychological warfare operators who use social networks as amplifiers to create anxiety and panic in the population. Amidst the protests in Venezuela last year, some opposition leaders led a rumour campaign to link the Venezuelan government to the alleged use of chemical weapons, with the aim of attracting international media attention and generating terror in public opinion. At that time, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Syrian government was accused of carrying out a chemical attack, and it was later confirmed that the alleged attack was a setup to justify a US bombing campaign on the Arab country.Walter Lippmann This is a translatlion from Cubadebate of the Chavista-Venezuelan MISSION VERDAD commentary on the similarities betwee the recent Nicaraguan protests and the violent protests in Venezuela last year.
The photos are from Venezuela last year, 2017.
[link to many Twitter images of Venezuela in 2017, wl] https://twitter.com/dsmolansky/status/850804443557888000Walter Lippmann This is a translatlion from Cubadebate of the Chavista-Venezuelan MISSION VERDAD commentary on the similarities betwee the recent Nicaraguan protests and the violent protests in Venezuela last year.
The photos are from Venezuela last year, 2017.
Trying to emulate that same sense of opportunity, in Nicaragua the use of rumor was used to link the government to the use of chemical weapons, a lie that, although it fell, was useful to the oxygenation of violence via social networks.
- Manipulation of death figures. Those killed during the violent events are reported without any explanation or specification, so, as in Venezuela, the media blames the government or “armed groups”. With this tactic in the use of means, a dossier is drawn up that could allow for intervention or coup d’état, depending on the circumstances. Media such as ABC have launched a death toll that even the local media cannot confirm. As we have seen in the previous ‘coincidence’, these estimates have been put into practice by operators with long experience in the information war against Venezuela.
In Nicaragua, the international media is chorus of ghostly “reports” that place the death toll at over 20, unable to say whether they are confirmed or not.
Applying the same disinformative maneuver, it attempted to hide the fact that in 2017, for example, 25 people died in Venezuela who were passing through the vicinity of a demonstration but were not directly involved. Cases such as those of Almelina Carrilo (Caracas) or Paola Ramírez (Táchira), murders committed by opposition demonstrators, were used as media triggers to escalate the violence by holding the government accountable without any judicial resolution of the cases.
- Looting and damage to public and private property. Armed groups in Nicaragua have looted several premises of electrical appliances and even motorcycles in some parts of Nicaragua, and have caused damage to state facilities, such as hospitals and educational institutions. The profile of violence has been professional and focused not only on key service infrastructures for the daily life of the population, but also on symbols and institutions of state power.
Similar events occurred in the municipality of Chacao, Miranda State, Venezuela, when anti-c
Chavista-funded clash groups set fire to and attacked public buildings such as the Executive Directorate of the Judiciary of the Supreme Court of Justice. This is just one small example of the burning of public transport units, libraries and hospitals during 2017.
- Use of snipers. In Venezuela, targeted killings were carried out using snipers, and Sergeant Niumar Sanclemente (Miranda) and Carabobo Police officer Jorge Escandón were killed with accurate shots. Jesús Leonardo Sulbarán and Luis Alberto Márquez, workers in the governorate of Mérida, were also shot from several buildings in the state.
The journalist Angel Gahona, from a state television channel, was murdered on Saturday night while he was broadcasting the events on Facebook Live in Bluefields, Nicaragua. He was walking behind the police forces and a gunshot shot him in the head in front of dozens of people. From April 11, 2001, through the Euromaidan to Nicaragua, snipers have been a recurrent resource in coup operations conducted from the US.
- Use of show business influencers. To implement the sensitivity of people linked to the entertainment industry is a successful advertising resource to reach support for the days of violence in increasingly broad strata of public opinion. This catalyst is still useful for this type of operation; in the case of Venezuela, there were too many show business figures demonstrating their bias against Chavism.
In Nicaragua this resource has also been applied through international musical references, Miss Nicaragua 2018 Adriana Paniagua and other characters from the local entertainment industry.
- Symbols and glorification of death. The lists of dead people painted with chalk on the pavement used in Nicaragua are similar to those written in Venezuela during the 2017 guarimbas, with the purpose of hiding the causes of each case and transferring the human scars of the violence to the government. Even though among the deceased, in both Venezuela and Nicaragua, there are members of the security forces, students, workers and political activists, it is important for the media deployment to swell false lists and give it a “non-violent struggle” aesthetic, which, being internationally recognized, empties these deaths of any local meaning by transforming them into consumer products.
(Taken from Mission Verdad)
The Young Karl Marx
The Young Karl Marx
The young Karl Marx can be seen next month on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of Das Kapital
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Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
April 22, 2018 20:04:56
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The young Karl Marx can be seen next month on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of Das Kapital
Next May 5, 200 years after the birth of Karl Marx, this proven director, who is undoubtedly the Haitian Raoul Peck, made the German film The Young Karl Marx in 2017, a film to which even those who do not sympathize with Marxism have had to grant him artistic merit and the rigor of the concepts on which it is based.
The film tells of two young people who did not know firsthand the ruthless exploitation of capitalism in their day – and of course the other is Frederick Engels – and yet set in motion a movement that overflowed the antagonistic politics of their time and has inspired the emancipatory yearnings of millions of people around the world over the course of a century and a half.
Biographical notes on some lives and events that began in 1843 and ended in 1848 with the edition of the Communist Manifesto, years in which Marx and Engels met and solidified an eternal friendship. The director Raoul Peck, adapting himself to the didactic demands of the biopic, shows that even in a genre, the biography, coming from a consolidated literary tradition at the service of bourgeois glorification, back in the 19th century, can innovate and make more attractive a narrative whose vital substance is the weight of ideas. A well-told film with a convincing August Diehl as the young Marx, it is a story not to be missed by those who want to know how a key text of contemporary political thought was forged, which is like saying how the Communist Manifesto was forged.
Haitian Raoul Peck was forced to emigrate with his family to the Congo after the Duvalier dictatorship threatened them with death. He was closely linked to African reality and studied filmmaking in Berlin. His films, such as Lumumba and I’m Not Your Negro, the latter a documentary about racism in the United States that was nominated for last year’s Oscar, highlights the political and social concerns of this filmmaker. Director Peck – and the film makes this very clear – is not interested in wax figures. Hence we will see a passionate young Marx, a troublemaker, a drunkard at times, a Marx with defects, as his wife reproaches him, at times self-sufficient, a person of flesh and blood. Peck’s Marx is also overflowing with a youthful energy channeled under the imperative that happiness, the meaning of life, becomes concrete for him in an act of resistance and constant struggle against social injustice.
A film for any kind of audience, but one that scholars of history and Marxism will enjoy very much as they witness the dialectical battles established between the two young revolutionaries and other figures who understood only part of what the struggle for a new world should be. Thus we will see a gallery of these characters in this story that, faithful to reality, dedicates a special treatment to the women who influenced the life of Marx and Engels, and not only in the love aspect, but also contributing ideas.
Excellent moments are recreated, such as when the young people are introduced and the director conceives the scene as a train wreck, with an ironic Marx reproaching his great friend for the golden buttons he wore on his jacket the day they first met. From the beginning, both face their egos, then show mutual admiration, and finally end up in a night party. From then on they will fight together against censorship and police raids, riots and riots that will augur the strengthening of the workers’ movement, which until then had been disorganized in no small measure.
Although the film takes fictional licenses as is usual in any biography, historically it is impeccable. At the same tim, nourishing new points of view concerning this present of ours, contaminated by many of the contradictions then predominant and perfectly explained in Das Kapital, the film is a masterpiece for then and now. It’s not for pleasure that director Raoul Peck concludes his film with a dynamic editing that alludes to the perennial validity of Marxism. First, we’ll see the historic photo of Mary and Frederick, Jenny and Karl Marx and No Direction Home, played by Bob Dylan, a collage of photos and images that remind us of what the world has been like over the last 60 or 70 years. It’s a way of telling us that the two young friends are still as relevant as when they wrote 170 years ago that a specter was haunting the world.
Canada Involves Itself in Lies Against Cuba
Canada Involves Itself in Lies Against Cuba
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Ottawa government, which maintains cordial relations with Cuba despite the enormous pressure against the United States, seems to have given in to the manipulations led by Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He is presented as an exile from Cuba – a country where he was not born and has never visited – to carry out an agenda of dissimulations and lies to Havana´s detriment.
Senator Marco Rubio aspires to be Donald Trump’s replacement in the U.S. presidency. His promoters have prepared an anti-Cuban program for him that is based on the calculation that the next president of the United States will be Latino and Republican. Rubio’s family fled Cuba, it is true, but this happened in 1956, during the bloody tyranny of Fulgencio Batista imposed by the United States in 1952 through a coup d’état and was deposed in 1959 by the popular revolution. He was born in Miami and has never set foot in Cuba. Calling Marco Rubio as Cuban is like defining Donald Trump as European.
Canada established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1945 and maintained them uninterruptedly after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Cuba was the first country in the Caribbean region with which Canada exchanged diplomatic missions.
Cuban-Canadian ties were particularly warm in the 1970s and 1980s, during the government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, since November 2015.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Fidel Castro had a very close relationship of friendship, solidarity and respect. This was symbolized by the fact that, at the death of the Canadian leader in 2000, Fidel Castro was one of his pallbearers at the state funeral.
In 1994, a joint venture was formed between the Cuban Nickel Union and the Canadian company Sherritt International, which operates a mining and processing plant in Moa, on the eastern tip of the island. A second joint venture, Cobalt Refinery Co. Inc. was established in Alberta, Canada, to refine nickel. All together, there are 85 Canadian companies and subsidiaries of various profiles in Cuba.
Canada has consistently criticized the blockade against Cuba and has strongly opposed the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act.
In 1996, the Godfrey-Milliken Bill was introduced in Canada’s Parliament in rejection of the extraterritoriality of the Helms-Burton Act. It was a law that would have trained some three million Canadians of British Empire loyalist descent who fled the U.S. revolution to demand retribution for property and land confiscated by the U.S. government in the late 16th century as a result of that revolution.
Such a law would have placed a financial burden of many trillions of dollars on a number of large and medium-sized economic entities in the United States, given the current valuation of expropriated property.
The Godfrey-Milliken bill did not become law but resulted in an amendment to the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act that effectively neutralized any attempt to impose the Helms Burton Act on Canadians and Canadian entities.
The Canadian government also imposed a $1.5 million fine on any Canadian entity that contributed in any way to the implementation of the Helms Burton Act in Canada.
Canada has also protested against the presence of U.S. agents at Canadian airports trying to catch U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba as tourists in defiance of U.S. blockade laws.
Canada has operated an embassy in Havana since 1945. Cuba has its own in Ottawa and consulates in Toronto and Montreal.
Marco Rubio has declared himself the architect of the current stage of U.S. aggression against Cuba. He´s also the inventor of the hoax of sonic attacks on U.S. diplomats on the island. In this capacity, he advises on the drawing up of lists of Cuban persons and entities that Washington sanctions as violators of the provisions of the U.S. blockade.
It is not easy to understand why the government of Canada, the nation that is the biggest source of tourists to Cuba, could have aligned itself in a campaign against Cuba that has as its axis someone with such a fuller trajectory.
To disavow for security reasons the travel to Cuba of the relatives of Canadian diplomats accredited to the island is extremely strange considering that there has never been any report of a fact indicative of insecurity against any Canadian among the millions who, many years ago, enjoyed the goodness of the Cuban climate and the sincere affection of its people.
April 23, 2018.
Diaz-Canel Could be the First
Diaz-Canel could be first Cuban president to speak of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The new president of the Council of State and Ministers, Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez would be able to be the first Cuban president to publicly recognize the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.
Taken from Cubadebate
In his career, which we commented on extensively when he became the country’s first vice president in 2013, we can highlight facts such as the unconditional support he gave to the El Mejunje Cultural Center since he was a leader of the Communist Youth and later as the first secretary of the Party in Villa Clara.
Ramón Silverio, founder of this inclusive project, always highlights Diaz-Canel’s defense of the place, at a time when it was more difficult to do so, in the 1990s. “He always knew how to cope with the pressures of those who disagreed with the activities for the LGBT community, which were undoubtedly the ones that bothered me,” he told me that time.
In the foreground of the photo, Díaz-Canel appears first from left to right, next to Mariela Castro Espín, at the 2013 Gala.
For two consecutive years – in 2012 and 2013 – Díaz-Canel participated in the Cuban Gala against Homophobia and Transphobia at the Karl Marx Theatre, which makes him the highest ranking state and political leader who has supported the Cuban Days against Homophobia and Transphobia.
But perhaps the most significant event that demonstrated this new Cuban President’s understanding of the issues of diversity and sexual rights occurred during the debate on the Labor Code in December 2013.
As first vice-president, on that occasion, he recognized the political significance of the proposals made by Deputy Mariela Castro to add to the bill important issues such as non-discrimination based on gender identity, in addition to the explicit mention of sexual orientation that it already contained.
Photo: Byron Motley.
In mediating the controversy, Díaz-Canel also suggested that a parliamentary committee be charged with drafting a final version of the law that would take into account all the positions, in order to reach a consensus on the technical arguments, which were allegedly prejudiced, of some parliamentarians.
At that juncture, Diaz-Canel’s comments received the support of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and the approval of Parliament, which finally allowed the new law to be endorsed by majority vote, which, unfortunately, would later enter into force without incorporating the term gender identity.
The close link the current president had with the entire intellectual and cultural sector in its broadest sense, with young people, creators, the work of the media and information and communication technologies, undoubtedly brought him even more information on the problem of discrimination based on homophobia and transphobia.
It will even be easier for Díaz-Canel to address any of these issues in official contexts, when appropriate and necessary, because we must not forget that Raúl would probably find it embarrassing to intervene or advocate in public for a cause that is not only further away from his training, sensitivity and knowledge, but that has also been led his own daughter Mariela for more than a decade.
It is quite possible that this crucial moment will come with regard to the debates that will have to take place in order to bring about the announced constitutional reform. To these very important purposes we will also have to add the necessary modernization in relation to such sensitive issues as the family and marriage, in order to implement the policies already approved by the Communist Party of Cuba through legislation.
The already imminent XI Cuban Day against Homophobia and Transphobia will be, then, a good opportunity to see the progress and obstacles that we still have to face in terms of accompaniment and political will, in this fight for non-discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
April 19, 2018.
Who is Paquito el de Cuba?
I am Paquito, from CUBA; I am a Marti follower and a an author; I am a communist and gay journalist; I am a convinced and superstitious atheist; I am the father of a son whom I have adored and have been a partner for fifteen years with a seronegative man who loves me; I have been an AIDS patient since 2003 andam a survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for more than twelve years; I am a university professor and a student of life; a follower of Cuban economic issues and a passionate devourer of universal literature; an incontinent and belligerent moderate; a friend of my friends and a compassionate friend of my enemies; often wrong and never repentant; a hardened and eternal enthusiastic optimist; alive and kicking; in short, another ordinary man who wants to share his story, opinions and desires with you…
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Washington’s Attack on Syria
Washington’s Attack on Syria Was a Mockery of the World
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
An American friend of mine believes that when Donald Trump’s presidency ends – no matter how it ends – the best account will have to be in a comic strip book that would be the most hilarious in American history.
However, the disastrous effects in terms of deaths and misfortunes that the madness of this clown is leaving on people, peoples and nations throughout the world are not compatible with a festive approach to the suffering caused by this grotesque character and his gang of hawks.
In recent days, the US armed forces have made a huge fool of themselves in the name of satisfying the will of their mad president. In the process, they have made their counterparts in France and the United Kingdom look like foolish satellites.
On the night of 13 April, this disparate coalition of powers launched an attack on Syria. “I ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to launch precision attacks on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump. He wasn’t able to justify the aggression with the testimony of the U.N. experts charged with overseeing the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons. A few hours after the attack, they were to rule on the nature of the alleged attack by the Syrian government against its opponents.
The arrival of these specialists was scheduled for April 14, but the U.S. government decided to act earlier, showing its fear of the verdict of these specialists. Nearly a hundred Republican and Democratic congressmen had sent a message to Trump insisting that he seek congressional approval before attacking. “Engaging our military in Syria when there is no direct threat to the United States and without prior official authorization would violate the separation of powers clearly outlined in the Constitution,” they said.
However, Donald Trump, with his ears deaf to so many calls for sanity, self-rule and international law, launched his air strikes on military positions in Damascus, including a scientific research center in Barzeh and Al-Domair Airport on the outskirts of Damascus. There were also rocket attacks on Damascus International Airport and Mezzeh Military Airport, among other targets.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, regretted that the attack on Syria by the USA, the UK and France had taken place just when the Arab country had a magnificent opportunity to have a peaceful future.
“First they tried going against the Syrian people using the Arab Spring, then with the Islamic State, and now by launching their smart missiles at the capital of a sovereign country, which for many years has been trying to survive in the midst of terrorist aggression,” Zajárova said.
Both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May made statements in support of Trump’s barbarism.
What is unique about these statements is that they all start from a hypothetical attribution to the United States and the two ancient former European colonial metropolises to intervene in the internal affairs of Syria, a nation that is a sovereign member of the United Nations.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, declared that the alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Duma, which served as a pretext for the start of the military operation against Damascus, was a setup. He declared that he had irrefutable data that confirms it. As the first details about the effects of the unlawful aggression became known, thousands of people in the Syrian capital took to the streets to jubilantly to show their support for President Bashar al-Assad, who had quietly arrived shortly before in his offices in central Damascus.
Syrian television broadcast live the demonstrations of the population. With Syrian flags and clapping their hands, they spontaneously showed their national pride in the actions of the Syrian military. On their own, they had the latest generation of modern military equipment provided by the solidarity of Russian forces, and had been able to successfully carry out the defense of their country against the direct imperialist aggression of the United States. Washington, which possesses the largest arsenal of atomic, chemical and other prohibited weapons in the world, and therefore has no moral right to blame other countries.
It was a unilateral action, on the fringes of the United Nations Security Council, and a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and of the Charter of the world organisation. It was a rude outrage against a sovereign state that, although it left only three people injured, cannot be summed up in a simple cartoon of a comic book about the picturesque performance of an eccentric president.
April 17, 2018.
Happy Confirmation of Democracy in Cuba
Happy Confirmation of Democracy in Cuba
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Cuban electoral system confirmed its democratic character through the exercise of the popular consultative procedure that elected Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez as head of state and government. Cubans will now place their hopes in him to continue the island’s revolutionary process, a paradigm of ideas and struggles for socialism and the independence of the nations of Latin America.
“I’m not here to promise anything, like the Revolution never did. I have come to fulfill the program that we have imposed on ourselves with the guidelines of Socialism and the Revolution”, the new President emphasized about his main work objectives.
Díaz-Canel had been First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers. Together with him, engineer Salvador Garcia Mesa was proclaimed 1st Vice-President. Before that, Esteban Lazo had been re-elected President of the Mational Assembly.
On April 18, the National Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba (ANPP) was constituted in its nineth term session. It elected, from among its 605 newly-elected deputies, the members of its highest body, the Council of State. The latter, in turn, chose the new president of the Republic of Cuba at its first session, succeeding Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, who had been in charge of the nation’s government since 2008.
Initially, Raúl took up the position through normal succession when President Fidel Castro Ruz fell ill. It was his responsibility to replace Fidel in accordance with his duty as First Vice-President, a position that had been legally assigned to him by the National Assembly of People’s Power in the past.
During those two consecutive presidential terms, Raúl was elected and re-elected President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers by the will of the citizens expressed at the polls. However, on the second occasion, the Cuban revolutionary leader announced his decision not to run for re-election.
Raúl Castro had been, since the beginning of the insurrection against the Batista tyranny, the second figure in the leadership of the revolution. His performance at the head of the government earned him an increase in prestige as a leader, which was already great due to his brilliant performance at the head of the country’s defense.
No one questions that Raúl’s enormous authority and popularity would have enabled him to continue in the presidency for a third term, but Raúl Castro himself had advocated the need to renew the leadership of the revolution and the government, which, in the eyes of the people, turned compliance with his decision not to continue in office into something like paying a debt of gratitude to its President.
On the morning of April 19, marking the anniversary of the first defeat of U.S. imperialism in America at Playa Girón, Miguel Díaz-Canel delivered his first speech as President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers,
“With this legislature,” he stressed, “the culmination of the election process of the last few months, which the people have carried out conscious of its historical importance, and without any campaigning, corruption or demagoguery. Citizens have distinguished humble, hard-working and modest people as their genuine representatives. They will participate in the approval and implementation of approved policies.
He added that anyone who wants to see Cuba in all its diversity can observe it in its National Assembly.
He stressed that he assumes responsibility with the conviction that all revolutionaries, from any trench, “will be faithful to Fidel and to Raúl, the current leader of the revolutionary process.
He then stressed, as another inherited achievement, that “unity has become invulnerable within our party, which was not born of the divisions of others, but out of the unification of those who sought to achieve a better country”.
“Raul remains at the forefront of the political vanguard. He continues to be First Secretary of the Party as a reference point for the revolutionary cause, teaching and always ready to confront imperialism, like the first, with the rifle at the time of combat.
He highlighted Raúl’s revolutionary and political work, his legacy of resistance and in the quest for the nation’s improvement, his statesmanship, building consensus and leading the process of implementing the Party’s guidelines. He also mentioned how Raúl had supported the efforts to bring about the return of the Five Heroes that Fidel had predicted.
This session of the Ninth Session of the National Assembly was closed by Raúl with a vibrant and historic speech outlining many of the most urgent tasks facing the new Cuban President.
April 19, 2018.
A Crazy President, But Not So Much
A Crazy President…But Not So Much
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The madman was advised and suspended his visit to Lima where he would have attended the VIII Summit of the Americas as head of the U.S. delegation. Nor will Donald Trump travel to Colombia, as officially announced. The reason given for this was that the president had to deal with the situation in Syria, a country over which a threat of war hangs as a result of the president’s own outbursts. These are based on the worn-out, paradoxical and proven-false accusations against the government of Bashar Al Assad of having used chemical weapons in its internal war against terrorism.
Sarah Sanders, White House spokeswoman, announced that Vice President Mike Pence will be in charge of Washington’s delegation, both in Lima to conduct bilateral talks with Latin American leaders who will be present at the hemispheric meeting and in Bogotá for the meetings Trump had scheduled with Colombian authorities.
There is no doubt that the pretext of the situation in Syria will serve to prevent the United States from having a resounding catastrophe in its relations with the governments of the nations of Latin America.
History shows that when the countries south of Rio Grande act together they are able to shock the empire at its deepest roots. But hardly anyone expected that, as a result of the right-wing movement that has emerged as a result of various US coups d’état on the continent, such unity would be able to achieve such encouraging results.
The planned Summit of the Americas was announced as a likely trigger for the fury of the peoples of the continent against Washington’s most recent impositions and manipulations. But the arrogance and irresponsible actions of President Donald Trump have reached such an extreme that even the rulers of Latin America, who have shown themselves to be more servile in their ties with Washington, have jumped with unprecedented firmness.
An extreme case was produced by the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, who suggested that the New York magnate review the origin of his anger. “If your recent statements stem from frustration over domestic policy issues, your laws or your Congress, you should address them, not the Mexicans. We are not going to let negative rhetoric define our actions,” Peña Nieto said, when it was announced that President Trump had ordered the deployment of between 2,000 and 4,000 military personnel to support the Border Patrol agents on the southern border of the United States.
The Mexican president’s message also responded to a series of tweets and comments by the magnate-president, motivated by a caravan of Honduran migrants who sought to reach Mexico’s northern border with the United States.
Trump warned that he would cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations if the Mexican government did not detain Central American migrants.
“It is better that the great caravan of people from Honduras, coming through Mexico to our border of weak laws, stop. NAFTA is at stake, as are foreign aid for Honduras and the countries that will allow this to happen. Congress must act now!“the president tweets threateningly.
To general surprise on the continent, Peña Nieto declared that Mexico will not be afraid to negotiate with the United States, but he demands respect. “We will never negotiate in fear.”
The Mexican Senate also demanded respect from the president of the United States and demanded that the Peña Nieto government suspend binational collaboration on immigration matters.
The four candidates for the presidency of the nation: Margarita Zavala, Ricardo Anaya, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and José Antonio Meade immediately joined in the rejection of the deployment of U.S. troops on the Mexican border. “When it comes to defending national dignity, we all speak with one voice and demand respect,” independent Congresswoman Margarita Zabala wrote to Donald Trump in her tweeter.
Peña Nieto mentioned these statements in his message to the nation while underscoring the negotiating tone with which his government has addressed the U.S. president. “The Mexican government’s efforts have been aimed at building an institutional relationship of mutual respect and benefit for both nations.
The relationship between the two countries “is intense and dynamic but that does not justify threatening attitudes or lack of respect between our countries,” insisted Peña Nieto. “If you want to reach agreements with Mexico, we’re ready. As we have shown so far, we have always been ready to engage in serious, good faith and constructive dialogue.
April 12, 2018.
World Bids Farewell to Winnie Mandela
World bids farewell to Winnie Mandela, Mother of the South African Nation
Leaders from around the world expressed their condolences after the death of the anti-apartheid fighter on Monday.
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Author: International Editor | internacionales@granma.cu
April 3, 2018 20:04:36
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The anti-apartheid fighter, Winnie Mandela, died at the age of 81. Photo: Prensa Latina
PRETORIA: Leaders from around the world expressed their condolences after the death on Monday of Winnie Mandela, a woman whom the current South African president described as “the voice of challenge and resistance in the face of exploitation and repression by the apartheid regime”.
In a message released yesterday in Pretoria, the head of state and government, Cyril Ramaphosas, further noted that “Winnie was a champion of justice and equality and that throughout her life she contributed to the struggle through sacrifice and persistent determination”.
The news of the death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, 81, on Monday, April 2, at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, was reported by family spokesman Victor Dlamini. He said that “we want to communicate with deep sadness that she has passed away,” he said.
The African Union (AU), in the words of its Commission Chairman, Moussa Faki Mahamat, also expressed shock and sadness at the death of Nelson Mandela’s second wife, reported Prensa Latina.
Also joining in the condolences was Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Yavad Zarif, who addressed his condolences to the South African people in general and to the supporters and all those who follow the thought and beliefs of the anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
Alluding to the four long decades of struggle against apartheid alongside Mandela, he noted that Winnie’s death had caused South Africa and the world pain.
From a closer latitude, Evo Morales, president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, expressed his solidarity with the South Africans for the loss of the one considered by many “mother of the nation” of South Africa.
Morales’ message on Twitter states that the second wife of South African leader Nelson Mandela “was and will be a symbol of the struggle for freedom and equality.
In 1994, after the first democratic elections, Madikizela-Mandela was appointed deputy and vice-minister of Art and Culture. Since then, she had been a member of parliament and remained a leading figure in the African National Congress (ANC), the governing body in South Africa since the first democratic elections after the end of apartheid, in which she won together with Mandela’s victory in 1994.
The South African government announced yesterday that on April 14 Winnie Mandela will be sent off by her people with state funerals, after President Cyril Ramaphosa visited her family in Soweto to express his condolences and support directly to them.
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