Uncategorized 124
“Assault” on La Puntilla
“Assault” on La Puntilla: 15,000 Apples for a Single Client
By Iroel Sanchez
Cuban engineer and journalist. He works in the Office for the Informatization of Cuban Society. He was President of the Cuban Institute of the Book. On twitter @iroelsanchez
September 9, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Cuba imports apples that are sold in the domestic market. Photo: Archive
Some time ago, in an article titled “Against the third blockade,” [published 2014]I spoke of the fledgling oligarchs who already control food distribution networks in Cuba, this Friday, I had the opportunity to see them act. It was as a result of the sale of apples in the La Puntilla de Primera y “O” store, in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar.
Organized almost militarily and faced with the complicit indifference of the employees, a platoon of strong young men appeared – a good part of them “in uniform” with clothes bearing the U.S. flag – who, in a few minutes, bought 15,000 apples (150 boxes of 100). Using the pallets and wheelbarrows of the store, they arranged to take them out, using transportation from the CIMEX corporation itself, which the head of the group, [acting] with total authority, insistently demanded from a cell phone and a luxurious and modern black car with a private-car’s license plate.
When asked how this was possible, a store employee replied: “We can’t do anything”. An empty “information desk”, but [only] with a sign with the telephone numbers of “Customer Service” of the Panamerican chain of stores. When calling, at first they do not answer and after insisting several times they say that they already knew about the situation were taking care of it.
But in one hour, despite the promise of the only employee who tried to give an explanation: that the manager of the complex was on his way, he never arrived. Remember, the central office of the Corporation is a few meters from the store in a building named Sierra Maestra (!!!!). The calm with which the “platoon” acted suggested their conviction of their impunity.
I know that before this publication the company will try some answer, maybe there will be explanations and some disciplinary measure but let’s transcend the anecdote that surely told daily and get to the bottom. Let’s not collect more water with baskets:
A store that not long ago caught fire, was completely rebuilt, with cameras, guards, brand new cash registers and expensive security devices, for whose benefit? Imports with scarce foreign currency, for whose benefit? It is impossible not to remember what our colleague Javier Gómez Sánchez told us about how the same “uniform” prevails in the wardrobe of nationals who vacation in hotels in Varadero.
It is all very well for the press and prosecutors to go to the construction material stores, but they must follow the trail to the mansions that have been built with them, such as those on the road to Marbella, sorry, I meant Belllamar, in Matanzas. Marbella, in Spain, is where the oligarchs who ransacked post-Soviet Russia erected their residences.
State vehicle of the CIMEX corporation, plate B037883, in which they moved part of the hoarded merchandise.
Trump Represents a Split in the Ruling Class
Trump Represents a Split in the Ruling Class
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
It is good that many on the U.S. left are beginning to see that the clashes between Trump and his supporters against the so-called “resistance,” reflect a “split in the ruling class.”
This is the view of Greg Godels, the prominent American communist journalist who used to use the pen name Zoltan Zigedy. “It is a very healthy advance because it rules out confusion fomented by the Democratic Party leadership, childish sensationalism, and the meaningless simplicity of the capitalist media.
According to Godels, this is a real and fierce battle between different groups among the richest and most powerful. It’s a conflict that gives deeper meaning to the strange mischief of the Trump era. Behind the harsh and illusory images of a corrupt vulgar person like Trump, to whom only by the “heroic” protectors of freedom and security (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) object, hides a real struggle for ideas, interests and the future. It is good that more people are seeing it as a struggle between the rich and the powerful fighting over their different visions of the future of capitalism: “a split in the ruling class.”
Many times in the last two years, Greg Godels has written about the emergence of alternatives to market fundamentalism such as neoliberalism and globalization in the conventional wisdom of the ruling class. He has argued that the rise of economic nationalism in advanced economies is an expression of that alternative. Intensified competition in energy policy is offered as a material symptom of economic nationalism, as is disinterest in maintaining a relatively peaceful backdrop for securing and promoting trade.
The United States is more interested in selling arms than in resolving its many wars (it is known that Secretary of State Pompeo convinced members of the Trump administration, publicly embarrassed by the massacre in Yemen, not to cut off support for Saudi Arabia because of such misdeed due to the possible loss of $2 billion in arms sales).
A recent reflection by Joshua Green, Bloomberg Businessweek national correspondent, entitled The Dividends of Anger, accounts for how the recognition of the changing political terrain provoked by the crisis. Trump’s slogan of economic nationalism “Make America Great Again” explains how it was the anger over the financial bailout that gave Trump the presidency. Green recalls Obama’s infamous meeting at the White House with the CEOs of the major banks, where he frankly told them, “My administration is the only thing between you and the gallows.
Reflecting on Obama’s words, Green warns: “Millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, their retirement accounts and fell out of the middle class. Many more live with an anxiety that gnaws at them. Wages were static when the crisis broke out and have remained static throughout the recovery. Recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the share of U.S. workers in non-agricultural income has fallen almost to its lowest level since World War II.
This harsh indictment of post-apocalyptic capitalism captures well the conditions that have fuelled the fear of such pitchforks. Make no mistake, those who rule the major capitalist centers pay attention to anger, not to respond to it, but to divert it.
The history of American politics in the last decade is the story of how the forces that Obama and the Democratic Party failed to contain, restructured the world by unleashing energies on the left (Occupy Wall Street) and on the right (the Tea Party). The critical mass of conditions that led to Donald Trump had its genesis in these reactions?
Trump was able to prepare a campaign based on responding to anger with measures of economic nationalism, patriotism and, paradoxically, partisanship for the working class.
Of course, the idea that Trump was planning to build a workers party or intended to transform the Republican Party into a “workers party” is ridiculous, but it is remembered that his campaign was driven by anti-immigrant animosity with the argument that jobs were being taken away from them. When Trump declared his candidacy, Americans of all stripes were bitter with the ruling elites of both parties, and on that rests Trump’s opportunistic position of attacking them, including the Republicans.
Greg Godels concludes that only a concerted effort to create or nurture a truly independent, anti-capitalist movement that addresses the real needs of workers makes sense today, when bourgeois parties voluntarily sacrifice workers’ interests for the sake of capitalism.
October 1, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
I Don’t Discriminate… What About You?
- English
- Español
I Don’t Discriminate… What About You?
By Claudia González Corrales
ACN Special Service.
Sep 27, 2018 6:32 AM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Have you ever felt rejected? Have you ever thought that, because of your curls and thick lips outlined in red, you are not welcome? Has the idea crossed your mind that you must behave this way or another if you want to be socially accepted?
Have you considered that you deserve more than someone just because you are heterosexual? Have you thought yourself more capable than a girl tied to a wheelchair? Have you labeled love, friendship, solidarity, with a lot of absurd superstitions?
As human beings at last, almost unconsciously, we spend it deciding what is right, what is wrong, what we like, what we don’t. We believe ourselves to be omnipotent magistrates with the capacity to judge the lives of others, and to act accordingly, as if it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t injure their dignity.
Fortunately, when such a behavior results in an offense, it can be condemned by law. This this is one of the guarantees put forward by the draft Constitution that is currently being discussed in every space of our Cuba.
The irrevocable principle of equality of all before the law is not something exclusive of the new bill. Since the 1976 constitution, the categories of equality and non-discrimination on the grounds of race, skin color, sex, national origin, religious beliefs and any other harmful to human dignity were included, and which were punishable by law.
The Magna Carta under debate transcends the previous one, since it widens the margin of aspects that can mark one different. It will now include such conditioning factors as gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and any other distinction injurious to human dignity (Article 40).
Such a decision is far from being made at random, and is one of the many aspects that adapt the Cuban project to the realities of the new times. Law graduate Liset Mailén Imbert Milán, legal advisor of the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex), explained to the Cuban News Agency that we are at a qualitatively superior moment, since the constitutional text has been perfected and enriched.
According to the specialist, it is important to stop at the meanings of equality and discrimination. For her, equality is a principle that recognizes that all people must be treated equally and that they are subject to the same laws of justice. It equates all citizens in civil and political rights; therefore, the law must guarantee that no individual or group of individuals is privileged or discriminated against.
On the other hand, to discriminate is to divide, to select, to mark someone different. It is the act of separating or forming groups of people on the basis of certain criteria. H hence it explicitly refers to the violation of the equality of human rights.
Imbert Milan insists that any feature of the human personality that is used to discriminate should not be well-regarded and deserves legal treatment in order to repair damage to the victim and take the required measures with the person who commits the act.
At first glance, it might seem that the article is redundant, because one can intuitively imagine that sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity … mean the same thing because they are closely-related.
The specialist stops to explain that sex is that set of qualities that characterize the individuals of a species dividing them into females and males; it is the anatomophysiological expression, that is to say, the external aspect of the genitals.
Meanwhile, gender is that socio-cultural construction that responds to a specific historical moment and space. Hence the notions of masculinities, femininities, what is required of us, what roles are assigned and assumed for women and men.
Sexual orientation, in turn, is the capacity of each person to feel emotional, affective and sexual attraction to people of a different gender, of the same gender, or of more than one gender. Can be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.
The concept of gender identity refers to the internal and individual experience of gender, as each person feels it deeply. It may or may not correspond to the established sex at the time of birth, or appears very attached to the notions referred to. It is belonging to one gender or another: I was born female and I feel like a woman, I agree psychologically with my biological sex.
More explicit are the categories of ethnic origin, skin color, freedom of religious belief, national origin… which are also endorsed in the constitution by the vestiges that exist of discrimination and it is a political will to work to eliminate such episodes, said Imbert Milán.
Cenesex’s legal adviser also insists that when people discriminate, they can be the object of analysis, from a legal perspective or any other required one, based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination defended in the Magna Carta, as well as the rest of the complementary laws that obey and execute the stipulations of the same.
In cases of discrimination, individuals may contact the Office of the Attorney-General of the Republic, at all levels, at Department for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights. There are also the offices of attention to the population in the National Assembly of People’s Power, and Cenesex has legal orientation services that are provided Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., where advice is given to people on each fact.
The Oscar Arnulfo Romero Center provides assistance to victims of violence. The Oscar Arnulfo Romero center also provides assistance to victims of violence.
In general, the specialist considers the broader issue of equality and the principle of non-discrimination to be very positive. “I believe that we are in function of an improvement, and that the constitution has included the different forms of discrimination is a contribution, a great advance, and is a sign of political will. We jurists are also committed to studying it and to apprehending these theoretical questions of diversity, so as not to judge or label. It is necessary to be more given to read, study, listen, learn from experiences, to then take a legal solution thinking of the welfare of all,” he said. (By Claudia González Corrales, ACN)
Yo no discrimino… ¿y tú?
Por Claudia González Corrales
ACN 20
Servicio Especial de la ACN
Sep 27, 2018 6:32 AM
¿Alguna vez te has sentido rechazada? ¿Has pensado que, por tus rizos y gruesos labios delineados en rojo, no eres bienvenida? ¿Ha pasado por tu mente la idea de que debes comportarte de esta u otra manera si quieres ser socialmente aceptada?
¿Has considerado que mereces más que alguien solo por ser heterosexual? ¿Te has creído más capaz que una chica atada a un sillón de ruedas? ¿Has etiquetado al amor, a la amistad, solidaridad, con un montón de supersticiones absurdas?
Como seres humanos al fin, de manera casi inconsciente, nos la pasamos jerarquizando lo que está bien, lo que está mal, lo que nos agrada, lo que no. Nos creemos jueces omnipotentes con capacidad para juzgar la vida de los otros, y actuar en consecuencia, como si no les importara, como si no lacerara su dignidad.
Por suerte, cuando tal práctica redunda en la ofensa, puede llegar a ser condenada por la Ley, y ello es una de las garantías defendidas por el proyecto de Constitución que en hoy se discute en cada espacio de la Cuba nuestra.
El irrevocable principio de igualdad de todos ante la ley no es algo exclusivo del nuevo proyecto, sino que desde la norma de 1976 se defendían las categorías de igualdad y no discriminación por motivo de raza, color de la piel, sexo, origen nacional, creencias religiosas y cualquier otra lesiva a la dignidad humana, lo cual era sancionado por la ley.
La Carta Magna en debate trasciende a la anterior, pues amplía el margen de aspectos que pueden marcar lo diferente al incluir las condicionantes de género, orientación sexual, identidad de género y cualquier otra distinción lesiva a la dignidad humana (Artículo 40).
Tal decisión dista de ser tomada al azar, y es uno de los muchos aspectos que atemperan el proyecto cubano a las realidades de los nuevos tiempos. La licenciada en Derecho Liset Mailén Imbert Milán, asesora jurídica del Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (Cenesex), explicó a la Agencia Cubana de Noticias que estamos en un momento cualitativamente superior, pues el texto constitucional se ha perfeccionado y enriquecido.
De acuerdo con la especialista, es importarse detenerse en los significados de igualdad y discriminación. Para ella, la igualdad es un principio que reconoce que todas las personas deben ser tratadas de igual manera y que están sujetas a las mismas leyes de justicia; equipara a todos los ciudadanos en derechos civiles y políticos; por lo tanto, la ley debe garantizar que ningún individuo o grupo de individuos sea privilegiado o discriminado.
Por otro lado, discriminar es dividir, seleccionar, marcar lo diferente; es el acto de separar o formar grupos de personas a partir de criterios determinados; de ahí que se refiere de manera explícita a la violación de la igualdad de los derechos humanos.
Imbert Milán insiste en que cualquier rasgo de la personalidad humana que se utilice para discriminar no debe ser bien visto y merece un tratamiento legal en función de reparar el daño a la víctima y tomar las medidas requeridas con la persona que comete el hecho.
A simple vista podría parecer que el artículo es redundante, pues uno puede, de manera intuitiva, imaginar que sexo, género, orientación sexual, identidad de género…significan lo mismo por estar estrechamente relacionados.
La especialista se detiene a explicar que el sexo es ese conjunto de cualidades que caracterizan a los individuos de una especie dividiéndolos en hembras y machos; es la expresión anatomofisiológica, o sea, el aspecto externo de los genitales.
Mientras, el género es esa construcción sociocultural que responde a un momento histórico concreto y a un espacio. De ahí vienen las nociones de masculinidades, feminidades, qué se nos exige, cuáles son los roles asignados y asumidos para mujeres y hombres.
La orientación sexual a su vez es la capacidad de cada persona de sentir atracción emocional, afectiva y sexual por personas de un género diferente al suyo, de su mismo género, o de más de un género. Puede ser heterosexual, homosexual o bisexual.
Muy apegado a las nociones referidas aparece el concepto de identidad de género, el cual se refiere a la vivencia interna e individual del género, tal como cada persona lo siente profundamente, que puede corresponderse o no con el sexo establecido al momento del nacimiento. Es la pertenencia a un género u otro: yo nací hembra y me siento mujer, estoy de acuerdo psicológicamente con mi sexo biológico.
Más explícitas son las categorías de origen étnico, el color de la piel, libertad de creencia religiosa, origen nacional… que también aparecen refrendadas en la constitución por los vestigios que existen de discriminación y constituye una voluntad política trabajar para eliminar tales episodios, señaló Imbert Milán.
La asesora jurídica del Cenesex insiste además en que las personas cuando discriminan pueden ser objeto de análisis, desde una perspectiva legal o de las que se requieran, basado en los Principios de igualdad y no discriminación defendidos en la Carta Magna, así como el resto de las leyes complementarias que obedecen y ejecutan lo estipulado en la misma.
En caso de discriminación, las personas pueden dirigirse a la Fiscalía General de la República, en todos sus niveles, al departamento de protección de los derechos ciudadanos. También están las oficinas de atención a la población en la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, y en el Cenesex se cuenta con servicios de orientación jurídica que se prestan miércoles y viernes de 9 de la mañana a 3 de la tarde, donde se dan asesorías a las personas en cada hecho concreto, indicándoles adónde debe dirigirse, si precisan de un abogado, cómo actuar. Asimismo, el centro Oscar Arnulfo Romero brinda servicios de asistencia a las víctimas de violencia.
De manera general, la especialista valora de muy positivo el que haya sido más amplia la cuestión de la igualdad y el principio de no discriminación. “Creo que estamos en función de un perfeccionamiento, y que la constitución haya incluido las distintas formas de discriminación es un aporte, un avance grandísimo, y es una muestra de la voluntad política. Los juristas también estamos abocados a estudiarla y a aprehender de estas cuestiones teóricas de la diversidad, para no juzgar ni etiquetar. Hay que ser más dados a leer, estudiar, escuchar, a aprender de las vivencias, para entonces tomar una solución jurídica pensando en el bienestar de todos y todas”, sentenció. (Por Claudia González Corrales, ACN)
cgc meb jgm 18
Peculiar Aspects of Democracy in the USA
Peculiar Aspects of Democracy in the USA
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The United States is a “democracy” only in the sense that citizens have a theoretical right to vote for a number of nominated officials. It is a freedom that almost half of Americans consider meaningless. This is why only 56% of Americans voted for president in 2016, and for Congress two years ago less than 40% voted.
Like most “democratic” socialists in the United States, Bernie Sanders, the surprising favorite of large numbers of Americans in the 2016 election campaign, conflates bourgeois electoral freedom with real democracy, one which empowers people to put the political economy at the service of the common good.
In doing so, Sanders seeks to create a chaste foundation for siding with U.S. imperialism, says Glen Ford, executive director of the Black Agenda Report. His in-depth article was reproduced September 20 by the Marxist-Leninist website MLToday.
The U.S. is an oligarchy in which big businessmen almost always get away with it while average citizens and mass organizations have little or no influence in politics.
There is a dictatorship of the wealthy classes, says Glen Ford, recalling that the superpower is governed by oligarchs. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, they are also the biggest promotors of violence in today’s world.
Washington’s closest allies in this global mission are the former colonial powers of Western Europe and the former colonies of white settlers of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The foreign policy of the superpower ruled by white multi-millionaires aims to preserve the global order of white supremacy that served for more than 500 years to keep most of the world under its exterminating and enslaving rule.
According to Ford, “it’s no wonder that Bernie Sanders, and so many other politicians who consider themselves progressive in the United States, avoid articulating clear foreign policy positions. That’s how two-thirds of progressive Democratic candidates for Congress act.”
An example of this is that Sanders’ supporters in the campaign team of Bronx Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left out of their program platform mention of a “Peace Economy,” or which denounced U.S. military interventions in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
A true U.S. foreign policy needs a list of enemies. Sanders found them in an authoritarian axis whose members “share attributes of hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and the belief that the government should benefit its own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to an oligarchic network of billionaires who see the world as their economic toy.”
The U.S. government, as the toy of 12 of the world’s 15 richest people, should be at the top of Bernie Sanders’ list. But no, according to his worldview, only Trump classifies as a world-class villain, even though he is, by himself, a minor oligarch compared with others of his ilk.
But it is significant that the geopolitical center of this new oligarchic authoritarian axis of evil is not located on Wall Street or in London, but in Russia and China. They are seen as the enemies whom the warmongers of the Pentagon and the CIA pretend to fear and hate, mainly the Americans.
Sanders does not clearly oppose U.S. imperialism. On the contrary, he offers a supposedly “progressive” justification for preserving it. The new oligarchic authoritarian axis of evil seeks to give “progressives” a reason to accept, and even love, U.S. militarism and imperialism.
Sanders wants the United States to improve relations with “our old democratic allies” in Western Europe because he believes that China and Russia are more dangerous malefactors and function as a single satanic unit.
Glen Ford’s essay concludes by expressing his hope that Sanders will achieve good results in the 2020 primaries, and that he will defeat all other corporate Democratic hopefuls for the nomination. But Ford thinks it will force the top authorities of the Democratic Party to sabotage Sanders’ own campaign once again.
“Sanders will never leave the Democratic Party, but perhaps a critical mass of his followers will come out of that capitalist pigsty in search of real, and truly democratic socialist solutions,” predicts Glen Ford.
September 24, 2018.
This article can be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Trump’s Stuff and Nonsense at the UN
Trump’s Stuff and Nonsense at the UN
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Americans suffered one of the worst embarrassments they have had to go through in this century when their President, Donald Trump, arrived late and was unable to address the UN General Assembly in the first round, which, as the host country of the world’s highest body, was his due.
But that was only the first of a large number of gaffes that Trump has committed before the UN. The second was when he began his speech by stating that he was there to “share in the extraordinary progress we have made.” This caused an explosion of laughter in the audience of high representatives of the world community. The laughter rose in tone when he added “in less than two years my administration has achieved more than any other in the history of our country,…the US economy is flourishing like never before and we have the lowest unemployment in the last 50 years.
To that I would later add an inconceivable barrage of lies: “unemployment among Latinos and blacks and other groups has declined;” “we have passed the biggest reforms in history,” “America is now stronger, safer and richer than before I took office,” he concluded to the astonishment of the audience. He justified trade war against China and assured the world that the United States was not going to “apologize” for defending its interests.
Forgetting that he spoke at the United Nations, he said the US would not cede its sovereignty to the “bureaucratic” spaces administered by the United Nations. He attacked many of the world’s institutions such as the UN Human Rights Council.
Regarding the International Criminal Court (ICC), he said that it has no jurisdiction, legitimacy or authority and that it “violates all the principles of justice” and therefore the United States neither recognizes it nor will support it.
On international relations, he maintained the tone that defines him as a hero: “I have forged close ties and friendships with leaders from all over the world.” However, he didn’t allude to the rise in tensions with historic allies such as the European Union, Germany, and Mexico; nor to the worsening of their ties with Russia and China.
The main U.S. media highlighted the isolation of the country provoked or exacerbated by President Trump’s speech at the UN.
During his election campaign, Trump claimed that the world was laughing at the United States. Now it’s really laughing at Trump, says an editorial in The New York Times.
Yesterday the president apparently confused the UN General Assembly with a campaign rally, boasting that his administration achieved more successes than any of the previous ones. This was answered by laughter among those present, says the NYT. An editorial in USA Today questioned Trump’s isolationist policy, expressed in the slogan “America First. “The world’s biggest problems, such as climate change, terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, trade disputes or refugee flows, require international solutions,” the newspaper says.
CBS puts it this way: “After 20 months in office, the president is much more adept at burying the international agreements signed by his predecessors than at replacing them with something better. (…) The spontaneous response of the dignitaries to Trump’s speech demonstrated the isolation of the U.S. president between allies and enemies alike. Trump’s nationalist policies created divisions with former partners and cast doubt in some circles on the reliability of Washington’s commitments.
The news site Político also highlighted the growing isolation of the ruler that was shown during several speeches in the plenary. As an example, it cites the speeches by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, both of whom defended multilateralism. “U.S. presidents used to set the global agenda at the United Nations General Assembly. Now they’re laughing at Trump,” Ben Rhodes, who was former President Barack Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser, wrote on Twitter.
It could be said that Donald Trump’s speech, full of nationalist rhetoric in this UN Assembly, served to formalize the abandonment by the United States of “globalism” and his embrace of “patriotism..” In addition, it reiterates the empire’s threat to not fulfill his country’s economic obligations to the organization, because these are “unjust” to the superpower.
September 26, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Singularities of Democracy in the USA
Singularities of Democracy in the USA
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The United States is a “democracy” only in the sense that citizens have a theoretical right to vote for a number of proposed officials. It is a freedom that almost half of Americans consider meaningless. This is why only 56% of Americans voted for president in 2016, and for Congress two years ago voted less than 40%.
Like most “democratic” socialists in the United States, Bernie Sanders, the surprising favorite of large numbers of Americans in the 2016 election campaign, conflates bourgeois electoral freedom with real democracy that empowers people to put the political economy at the service of the common good.
In doing so, he seeks to create a chaste foundation for siding with U.S. imperialism, says Glen Ford, executive director of the Black Agenda Report. His in-depth article was reproduced September 20 by the Marxist-Leninist website MLToday.
The U.S. is an oligarchy in which big businessmen almost always get away with it while average citizens and mass organizations have little or no influence in politics.
There is a dictatorship of the wealthy classes, says Glen Ford, recalling that the superpower is governed by oligarchs who, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, are also the biggest promotors of violence in today’s world.
Washington’s closest allies in this global mission are the former colonial powers of Western Europe and the former colonies of white settlers of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The foreign policy of the superpower ruled by white multi-millionaires aims to preserve the global order of white supremacy that served for more than 500 years to keep most of the world under its exterminating and enslaving rule.
According to Ford, “it’s no wonder that Bernie Sanders, and so many other politicians who consider themselves progressive in the United States, avoid articulating clear foreign policy positions. That’s how two-thirds of progressive Democratic candidates for Congress act.”
An example of this is that Sanders’ supporters in the campaign team of Bronx Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left out of their program platform the paragraphs on “Peace Economy,” which denounced U.S. military interventions in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
A true U.S. foreign policy needs a list of enemies. Sanders found them in an authoritarian axis whose members “share attributes of hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and the belief that the government should benefit its own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to an oligarchic network of billionaires who see the world as their economic toy.”
The U.S. government, as the toy of 12 of the world’s 15 richest people, should be at the top of Bernie Sanders’ list. But no, according to his worldview, only Trump classifies as a world-class villain, even though he is, by himself, a minor oligarch than the rest in the whole.
But it is significant that the geopolitical center of this new oligarchic authoritarian axis of evil is not located on Wall Street or in London, but in Russia and China. They are seen as the enemies whom the warmongers of the Pentagon and the CIA pretend to fear and hate mainly the Americans.
Sanders does not clearly oppose U.S. imperialism. On the contrary, he offers a supposedly “progressive” justification for preserving it. The new oligarchic authoritarian axis of evil seeks to give “progressives” a reason to accept, and even love, U.S. militarism and imperialism.
Sanders wants the United States to improve relations with “our old democratic allies” in Western Europe because he believes that China and Russia are more dangerous malefactors and function as a single satanic unit.
Glen Ford’s essay concludes by expressing his hope that Sanders will achieve good results in the 2020 primaries, and that he will defeat all other corporate Democratic hopefuls for the nomination. But Ford thinks it will force the top authorities of the Democratic Party to sabotage Sanders’ own campaign once again.
“Sanders will never leave the Democratic Party, but perhaps a critical mass of his followers will come out of that capitalist pigsty in search of real, and truly democratic socialist solutions,” predicts Glen Ford.
September 24, 2018.
This article can be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Dialogue with Tom Dengler
|
Hi; I took another look at your site. It’s very good. It does give a positive view of Cuban Socialism. That is certainly to the good. I wonder about the electricity. If Cuba can afford free health care why can’t they afford free electricity? I fear that a heavy-handed approach to this matter is going to stoke a backlash. I think a Cuban NEP is a good thing. But it’s not socialism. Criminalising electricity theft reflects a mentality which is bureaucratic at best and capitalistic at worst. Gay marriage is interest politics. What happened to class politics? The Party nomenclatura don’t have limosines in Cuba…yet.? In general I think the SWP’s treatment of the Cuban revolution was inadequate. The party regime which Barnes replaced was pretty lame. By the way what do you think of Barnes v.v. Cuba?
— tom
|
================================================
Hi, Tom –
It’s been awhile. Hope you are well.
What’s wrong with them giving themselves a new Constitution
if that’s what they want? There’s plenty of small and some not
so small private business in Cuba, and more is developing in
recent years. Cuban society has been changing a lot since
their last constitution, which was adopted in 1976. Let’s hope
this one improves on that one. We’ll see when we get to look
at the details.
Want to see more of the same thinking, try this:
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/25312/is-cuba-s-vision-of-market-socialism-sustainable
Perhaps you read my translation of the article about stealing electricity?
Should people get their electricity for nothing in what remains a poor,
underdeveloped country? Should someone pay for their electricity?
Should anyone?
Take care,
Walter
========================
—–Original Message—–
From: Tom Dengler
Sent: Aug 1, 2018 4:24 PM
To: Walter Lippmann
Subject: CubaWhat do you make of the new constitution business? I read how the authorities are going after electricity “thieves”. There seems to be an awful bureaucracy at work in this. It’s just like Chicago. Maybe capitalism is alive and well in Cuba.
—
tom
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
https://walterlippmann.com/
https://www.facebook.com/walter.lippmann.33
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CubaNews/info
“Cuba – Un Paraiso bajo el bloqueo”
===============================
Women in the Revolution
Women in the Revolution
By: Graziella Pogolotti
Cuban art critic, essayist and intellectual. National Literature Prize (2005). President of the Advisory Council of the Minister of Culture, Vice President of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, member of the Cuban Academy of Language and President of the Alejo Carpentier Foundation.
September 3, 2018
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Women have ceased to be a simple object of desire, used as an instrument of the businesses that move around the beauty competitions. Photo: Miguel Rubiera.
Panchita’s face kept the indelible mark of the misery accumulated throughout a lifetime. She worked in the bookstore of L and 27 that I frequented weekly in search of the latest. Efficient, helpful without servility. In spite of the current of sympathy between us, we exchanged few words. One afternoon, however, I told her that I had spoken about her with a friend. Was it Charito? he asked with a broad, complicit smile.
That’s how it was. In fact, Charito Guillaume devoted her entire life to the needle-trades workers union struggle. This included, among others, branches of big Havana businesses, against prevailing racial discrimination in the sector, for salary improvements and in defense of the “right to the chair,” that is, the possibility of sitting when there were no clients in the area. According to her, a grassroots militant, Panchita had faced her son’s upbringing in solitude. Hers was not, however, an isolated case.
Cuban women can proudly tell a story that makes us precursors in more than one field.
In these times of open discussion about our Draft Constitution, it is right to evoke the profile of Ana Betancourt, an early defender of our rights in the Guáimaro Assembly. Many shared the harsh conditions of the Mambi camps. Mariana Grajales was prepared to offer her children to the struggle for the conquest of an independent nation, liberated from the infamous slavery and its racist aftermath. On the verge of waging the necessary war, José Martí noted the gesture of Manana, Máximo Gómez’s wife, with emotion. In offering him some help in the face of imminent helplessness, the wife of the great strategist stated that she would ask nothing from the revolution.
Throughout the neocolonial Republic, Cuban women continued to fight for their rights, inseparable from the fundamental battle in favor of the Revolution. Recently, Granma took up again the famous chronicle in which Pablo de la Torriente Brau evoked the death agony of Rafael Trejo, still smiling. “This boy cannot be saved,” commented the doctors as they struggled to defend that young, promising life that had become the most valuable symbol of the revolutionary student body.
When the inevitable outcome occurred, the women disputed the honor of shouldering the heavy coffin. In the fight against Machado, they challenged the police in the street demonstrations. When I try to rescue in my imagination that scenario full of violence, I like to remember that, among so many others, there was our “charming damsel”, the refined Esther Borja, then an education student and future interpreter of Ernesto Lecuona. When the dictatorship fell, we obtained the right to vote.
Faced with Batista’s coup, in addition to prominent fighters such as Haydée, Melba, Celia and Vilma, thousands of women mobilized in resistance to the dictatorship. Many of them fulfilled their mission and divoted themselves to diverse tasks in favor of the transformation of society. There is much to investigate and write about this beautiful story. Because, in spite of what has been conquered, much remains to be done.
Vilma’s leadership of the FMC took into account Cuban reality, and the legacy it had received. She looked at the problems of the future, objective and subjective – and therefore cultural. These had to be overcome immediately, as well as in the long term, in the light of the evolution of society as a whole.
It was urgent to overcome accumulated backwardness, especially for farmworker women. It was necessary to encourage access to work, to promote professional development in all branches of knowledge, to protect motherhood and the upbringing of women workers’ children. With patience and wisdom, it was indispensable to file the deleterious legacy of machismo, often unconsciously assumed as a natural fact by the women themselves.
The Family Code, sex education and the legalization of abortion placed us at the forefront of international debate in this field. Owners of their own destiny, women ceased to be simple objects of desire, used as an instrument of the businesses that promote beauty contests.
Recently, a Cuban television colleague suggested that, on the occasion of the carnivals, the idea of choosing the star should be taken up again. He argued that this is an internationally-established custom. We must be open to the world for all the useful learning it can offer. However, we cannot adopt customs that imply a regression from the conquests reached. This is all the more so in complex circumstances that introduce shadows of bad memories into our society.
In more than one sense, there are expressions that reflect the resurgence of machismo. On the other hand, in something strictly cultural, the changes introduced years ago in the carnival celebrations truncated a deeply-rooted popular tradition. Few people know that the one in Havana was the oldest in our country. The comparsas, as in Rio de Janeiro, emerged from the soul of the neighborhood. They took a long time to prepare, choosing the design of the steps, the wardrobe, and to develop the exceptional skill of the bearer of the lantern. I still remember when, at the side of La Punta, the drummers were warming up.
The comparsa was the result of a collective creation. In it the sense of belonging was settled. It was the manifestation of a living folklore. Because of its popular essence, it emerged from the bottom up to be delivered to thousands of spectators.
The massive use of women as sexual objects, a commercial phenomenon widely promoted by the media, has had disastrous consequences in all countries. To the hypertrophy of the quinceañera celebration, in some places have been added the so-called mini-quinces. These deform the developmental process of the child’s personality which have given rise to tragic phenomena of pedophilia. In some countries, this has gone to the point of demanding application of penal measures against the media which contribute to the diffusion of the phenomenon.
Let us not fall into easy temptations. Let us observe the world around us and carry out the indispensable critical exercise stripped of complacency, about what is proper and lucid as to what is essential among the inalienable values that we must defend.
(Taken from Juventud Rebelde)
Last Tango in Paris: Truth or Lie?
SPECTATOR’S CHRONICLE
Last Tango in Paris: Truth or Lie?
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972) has been shown again these days at the Yara cinema as part of a series entitled Placeres y Angustias de la Carne (Pleasures and Anguishes of the Flesh), and with it comes “the latest” -which is really not so new-, related to one of the most controversial films in the history of cinema.
Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
September 2, 2018 18:09:42
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
An image from the film.