Trudeau Trump Venezuela Cuba

While the Trudeau blackface/brownface racial incident are still getting considerable Canadian and international mainstream media attention, those same media continue to ignore the profound, centuries-long racism ingrained in both the Liberal and Conservative parties as well as the Canadian state that they administer.

For example, Trudeau’s recent condescending rebuttal and forcible removal of an Indigenous person, for bringing the life-threatening mercury poisoning of the Grassy Narrows territory in Ontario to the Prime Minster’s attention, is but a reflection of the still lingering bipartisan colonialist approach toward the First Nations. However, these vestiges of colonialism are also visible today in the international arena, as Canada’s imperial foreign policy remains aligned with the notoriously racist, white-supremacist Trump administration and is responsible for the deaths of brown and black people.

Setting aside, for the moment, Canada’s bipartisan support for the arming of the Saudi Arabian army with light-armoured vehicles (LAVs) that according to credible reports kill and maim brown people of Yemen, let us focus our attention on Latin America.

The Trudeau government is entirely complicit with the U.S. attempt to overthrow the Maduro government. Trudeau has aligned himself with Donald Trump against the Venezuelan people. Venezuelans, as Don Kovalik writes in his book which will be launched next Friday, are “70% Mestizo, that is, a nation composed of people with mixed blood from Indian and African descent. On the other hand, Kovalik writes, we read [in establishment media] that at the 2019 Guaidó opposition rallies, the crowds are almost entirely white.” Kovalik is right.

As Kovalik says, the issue in Venezuela is as much about race as it is about class. I did not notice it that much on my initial visits to Venezuela, but during my recent stay in July, after reading the Kovalik book, I did begin to further observe the social and racial composition of the Bolivarian Revolution. Maduro himself is Mestizo. Kovalik is right.

Thus, on one side you have white-supremacist Washington and its wealthy coup allies; on the other the Venezuelans, the majority of them people of color with modest incomes.

The U.S.-imposed economic sanctions against Venezuelans, fully supported and cheered on by the Trudeau government, have resulted in the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelan citizens. This mass punishment has disproportionately hit the poorer/ Mestizo segments of the population. Yet, out of political expediency, the corporate media and the Conservative Party reserve their criticism of Trudeau’s racism for his ridiculing of black and brown people, while his death-provoking policies in Latin America get a free pass.

As part of my presentation on Friday, I will offer up this aspect of Canadian foreign policy on Venezuela for debate. In particular, I want to take a close look at Canadian policy on Cuba as it relates to Venezuela.

Have you had a chance to read the public statements made by Trudeau and his Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on the US-Venezuela-Cuba triangle? I have been following them since the beginning. At the meeting, I want to deconstruct these statements with an eye to how they fundamentally reflect Canada’s imperialist stance toward both these countries of the global South. I will argue that the North’s contemptuous words and deeds continually smack of Eurocentric racial bias. While you may or may not agree with me, we should at least give this matter a public airing.

As to Canada’s foreign policy with respect to the U.S. blockade of Cuba, it may look at first sight to be above reproach. However, on Friday, allow me to walk you through the Trudeau government’s spineless attitude toward Trump on the issue of the Helms-Burton Act, the enabling of its Title III, and the continual tightening of the blockade.

How many opportunities have Trudeau and Freeland passed up, in Canada and on the international stage, to publicly call out Trump on Title III and the genocidal blockade against Cuba, which is being ratcheted up virtually every day? We will review Canada’s statements, with particular emphasis on the stark contrast between Trudeau’s and Freeland’s polite, inoffensive and spineless comments to the Trump administration on the blockade against Cuba, on the one hand, and the Canadian government’s brutal and aggressive pro-Trump stance toward the Maduro government, on the other.

Can Canadians afford to sweep this under the rug, or should we raise it loud and clear in order to put maximum pressure on the current Canadian government and the one that will take power after October 21

The annual United General Assembly Canadian vote against the Blockade (next one in November) with the entire world community except the US will of course very positive. However, shouldn’t we urge the government to adopt a far more critical, ongoing face-to-face Ottawa versus Washington attitude toward Trump’s attempts to starve the Cuban people into submission, as we Canadian do across the country on a regular basis?  Just in the past year, the blockade has cost the Cuban people 4.3 billion dollars! Why should we go along with Trump’s punishment of Cubans for its unconditional support of the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s legitimate, constitutionally elected President Nicolas Maduro?

Further info on the Friday September 27meeting in Toronto:

https://www.facebook.com/events/827211654346807/

Twitter Blocks Key Cuban Journalists

ENGLISH
Statement of the CUBAN UNION OF JOURNALISTS (UPEC):

Twitter massively censors journalists and media in Cuba

Twitter blocks Cuban journalists en masse

On Wednesday afternoon, dozens of Twitter accounts of Cuban journalists and media were blocked by the platform, a few minutes before the television appearance of President Miguel Diaz Canel and other top Cuban government officials began. For an hour and a half, they exhaustively presented exceptional economic measures in response to the intensification of U.S. economic warfare against our country.

As soon as the live broadcast of the program Roundtable began at 6:30 p.m. (local time) and was expected by millions of Cubans, dozens of professionals denounced through Facebook, Whatsapp and other social channels that their Twitter accounts had been suspended. They could access their timeline, but had the options ” like”, “retweet” and comment were blocked.

Among the media blocked “for violating Twitter rules” are @Cubadebate with almost 300,000 followers and @Granma_Digital with about 167,000 followers, in addition to @MesaRedondaCuba, @RadioRebelde, @DominioCuba, @Cubaperiodistas, @CanalCaribe, among other users, which include active journalists.

Several professionals also warned on Facebook the closure of their channels on Twitter. They suspended, for example, all the accounts of Cubadebate’s journalists and directors, without exception, as well as those of Leticia Martínez (@leticiadecuba ) and Angélica Paredes (@aparedesrebelde), of the President’s press team; that of the First Vice President of the Union of Cuban Journalists, Rosa Miriam Elizalde (@elizalderosa), and of Granma’s journalist, Enrique Moreno Gimeranez (@GimeranezEm), among others.

“It seems to be a concerted operation of false denunciations for abusive use and violation of platform policies. It surprises the political bias, the selectivity of the affected users and the opportunism: when President Díaz Canel speaks,” Elizalde wrote.

In addition, the institutional account of the Ministry of Communications (@MINCOMCuba) and that of government officials, such as Yaira Jiménez Roig (@yairajr), director of Communication and Image of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, were also blocked. Also, the director of the National Center for Sexual Education, Mariela Castro Espín (@CastroEspinM).

This is not the first time that Cuban Twitter users report problems logging into their accounts and receive messages that their accounts have been blocked and they should follow the procedure to recover them. What is new is the massiveness of this obviously planned act of cyber warfare, which seeks to limit the freedom of expression of Cuban institutions and citizens, and to silence the leaders of the Revolution.

The State Department’s Internet Task Force for Cuba last June issued its recommendations to use the network as a subversion highway in Cuba. It has proposed giving more funds to open digital sites, generate “attractive content” on the net, provide scholarships and finance a cybermilitance trained in harassment, lies and political assassination, which is not usually affected by this type of Twitter actions.

The Cuban Union of Journalists strongly denounces the disappearance of these spaces for the expression of ideas, in an act of massive censorship of journalists, editors and media. We demand the immediate re-establishment of the blocked accounts that, in no case, have violated Twitter policies, while the platform flagrantly tramples on the rights of communicators, prevents them from carrying out their work and tries to muzzle a first-rate news event in our country.

National Presidency of the Union of Journalists of Cuba.

Chávez y su eterno llamado a la unidad del pueblo ADAN CHÁVEZ

Chávez y su eterno llamado a la unidad del Pueblo

Por Adán Chávez

Una de las líneas temáticas más elaboradas en el discurso de la oposición antidemocrática venezolana, es la recurrente afirmación de que la Revolución Bolivariana y el Comandante Chávez, específicamente, dividieron al país entre “pobres y ricos”, lo fracturaron en dos polos y estimularon el odio entre venezolanas y venezolanos. Es así como, según esta tesis que encontramos casi a diario en los medios de comunicación y redes sociales (instrumentos masivos al servicio de los centros de poder del mundo capitalista), esa fragmentación social, es “la peor herencia del chavismo”.

Es, a todas luces, una de las mentiras más repetidas por los enemigos de la Patria, y que escuchamos o leemos continuamente en términos de una añoranza por “aquellos tiempos en que éramos felices y no había diferencias entre nosotros”, por sólo mencionar una de las tantas formas utilizadas para sus trampas ideológicas. Más allá de ser una simple muestra de la falsa moral de la burguesía, se trata de todo un montaje propagandístico muy bien estudiado, focalizado principalmente hacia la clase trabajadora y sobre todo a las capas medias de la población.

Lo primero que debemos subrayar es que, en el año 1999, cuando el Comandante Chávez inicia el proceso de grandes transformaciones en el marco de la liberación nacional, las desigualdades sociales eran abismales, consecuencia de una distribución arbitraria de la renta petrolera, que enriquecía a unos pocos (la burguesía) e iba empobreciendo al resto de la población. Cuando se inició la Revolución Bolivariana, la pobreza extrema era de 10,8% y la general de 29%. Hoy día, pese a la guerra económica inducida y a todas las dificultades creadas por el imperio norteamericano, la extrema se ubica en 4,3% y la general en 17%. Pero el aparato ideológico del capitalismo se encargó siempre de crear un falso mundo de bienestar, en el que la felicidad está asociada al ascenso de “estatus social”, con una supuesta “igualdad de oportunidades” para quienes sueñan con progresar exitosamente en tal escalamiento, sin importarles a quienes arrollan en el camino.

Al capitalismo no le interesa, por lo tanto, que se indague sobre las causas que originan las brechas sociales, justificándolas con su fraudulento juicio: “es pobre quien así lo decide”, y enarbolando la libre competencia como su mayor contribución al progreso. De forma tal que, bajo esa premisa de “supervivencia del más apto”, ha promovido el individualismo, el egoísmo, el racismo y demás formas de discriminación en las sociedades bajo su dominio.

Fue el líder histórico de la Revolución Bolivariana quien, justamente, puso al descubierto la esencia de aquellas democracias al servicio de las transnacionales. Chávez volteó la tortilla y redistribuyó la renta del petróleo, dando prioridad a los programas sociales, a satisfacer las necesidades de las y los que históricamente fueron invisibilizados, y al mismo tiempo, desenmascaró las causas objetivas de la pobreza, lo cual enfureció a la oligarquía apátrida, que durante largos años de hegemonía las había mantenido camufladas bajo la farsa de un país feliz de telenovelas y concursos de belleza. Y fue entonces esa oligarquía la que pretendió inocular el odio entre venezolanas y venezolanos, más allá de la simple división entre chavistas y opositores, que fue una división lógica en una Nación en la que la inmensa mayoría del Pueblo despertó y asumió un proyecto, el proyecto bolivariano de la independencia y la soberanía, a despecho de quienes asumieron la continuidad de las viejas políticas puntofijistas.

La burguesía estimuló una confrontación de carácter étnico, cultural y social, que llegó a niveles críticos con la imposición de la violencia como vía para liquidar la revolución y sus conquistas. Basta recordar el terror desatado en las guarimbas (verdadero testimonio de odio y fragmentación), financiadas y espoleadas por las y los pseudodirigentes de la oposición, en las que incluso quemaron gente viva por parecer chavista. Entonces, quienes estimulan el odio y la violencia?

Mientras la oligarquía promovía la confrontación, el Comandante Eterno llamó a la unidad de nuestro Pueblo, a la integración de Nuestra América. Y hoy, cuando las clases empresariales, las élites de la Iglesia Católica y las voceras y los voceros opositores incitan a enfrentar todo aquello que se asocie al chavismo, la Revolución Bolivariana ha mantenido su llamado al diálogo, a la solución pacífica de los problemas, a la paz y a la convivencia. Es una verdad inobjetable, que los eruditos al servicio del imperialismo no mencionan ni mencionarán.

No lo harán, porque la verdad no está de su lado. La verdad está de lado del Pueblo, que esperó siglos de sufrimiento para conquistar su soberanía y convertirse en forjador de su destino.

¡Unámonos y seremos invencibles!!