2020 y el legado de Chávez ADÁN CHÁVEZ

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Adán Chávez Frías

@Adan_Coromoto

 

Los desafíos del 2020 y el legado de Chávez

 

Retomando nuevamente nuestro Sentir Bolivariano, después de una breve pausa para el compartir en unión familiar, quiero saludar a mis lectoras y lectores, deseándoles un año de bienaventuranzas, paz y armonía, para continuar enfrentando los grandes retos que seguimos teniendo en este camino de transición hacia el socialismo.

 

Estamos iniciando un nuevo año, de enorme trascendencia para el futuro del proceso continental de liberación nacional, la vía que nuestros Pueblos eligieron para ir socavando la estructura y la lógica del neoliberalismo salvaje, y seguir construyendo las bases para edificar Estados democráticos y populares. No debemos perder, bajo ninguna circunstancia, por más complejos que se presenten los escenarios en la coyuntura económica, la perspectiva revolucionaria: sólo avanzando hacia el socialismo los Pueblos del mundo tendrán esperanza. Como lo dijo el Comandante Chávez, en la clausura de la IV Cumbre de Petrocaribe en el 2007: “el socialismo es el único camino hacia la justicia, hacia la igualdad, hacia la libertad. No hay otro camino que el socialismo. No hay terceros caminos posibles.”

 

El capitalismo sigue demostrando que, lejos de resolver los enormes problemas de la humanidad: la pobreza, la desigualdad social, el desempleo y la destrucción del ecosistema; cada vez los agrava más, en favor de las grandes corporaciones. Y lo dejó muy claro apenas iniciado el año, asestando un duro golpe a la paz y la estabilidad mundial, tras el bombardeo al aeropuerto de Bagdad ordenado por la administración de Trump para asesinar al comandante iraní Qasem Soleimani, obedeciendo a sectores extremistas del Partido Republicano relacionados con la industria militar.  Es un indicio más del endurecimiento de la política de agresión de los EEUU contra los Pueblos del mundo no alineados con sus intereses. En ese sentido, el llamado es, como siempre, a estar atentos ante posibles nuevas arremetidas injerencistas y violentas en nuestro Continente.

 

Los desafíos de la Revolución Bolivariana para este año se centran en derrotar la conspiración tutelada desde el Departamento de Estado Norteamericano, que el año pasado, a pesar de los intentos desestabilizadores, sabotajes, salidas golpistas y magnicidas, guerra mediática y económica; no tuvo éxito ante la heroica resistencia del Pueblo de Bolívar y Chávez.

 

El compañero Presidente Nicolás Maduro subrayó de manera contundente: “el 2020 es el año de la estabilidad y de la prosperidad en todas las dimensiones de la vida nacional. En Venezuela tenemos lo necesario para lograrlo”. Es fundamental asumirlo como un gran reto colectivo y no dejarse engañar por quienes, desde los medios de la oligarquía nacional e internacional, intentan generar desconcierto y angustia en la población. La inflación inducida se ha venido enfrentando con mucha determinación, y este año será vital para lograr la recuperación definitiva de nuestro aparato agroproductivo y, por ende, de nuestra economía nacional. Así como no hay revolución verdadera sin revolución cultural, no la hay sin una economía sana, estable, anticapitalista, que le asegure al Pueblo “la mayor suma de felicidad posible”.

 

También en lo político hay grandes retos. La estabilidad económica requiere estabilidad política, y se hace necesario que todos los sectores democráticos del país, tanto del Gobierno Revolucionario como de la oposición crítica y no violenta (que no comparte nuestra concepción ideológica pero apuesta por la vía constitucional y el diálogo), se sumen al debate con un solo objetivo: fortalecer la confianza en nuestra democracia popular. Por eso es importante que la venidera batalla electoral de cara a la Asamblea Nacional, sea asumida con dignidad, con patriotismo, para dar una estocada final a las pretensiones de salidas golpistas que estimulan sectores ultraderechistas.     

 

Como se dijo antes, estos retos no son sólo del Gobierno Revolucionario. La dirigencia del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) y del Gran Polo Patriótico, la militancia y todo el Pueblo trabajador, deben  asumir su papel histórico de organización y movilización  para la defensa de la Patria. La especulación criminal será derrotada, definitivamente, sólo con la participación activa del Poder Popular, movimientos sociales, trabajadoras y trabajadores del país. Debe ser el año de la unidad nacional para vencer la conspiración multifactorial e impulsar el progreso y el bienestar social.

 

Grandes desafíos requieren tempranas  acciones.  En ese sentido, ya para este mes de enero, los movimientos sociales y políticos del mundo se reunirán en Caracas en el marco del Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP), para discutir las tareas inmediatas en la lucha permanente contra el imperialismo, revisar los planes y acordar estrategias concretas. Es una responsabilidad de gran trascendencia, que debemos asumir con disciplina y espíritu internacionalista.

 

Y están las tareas permanentes, que no deben descuidarse un solo instante. La formación y organización de nuestro Pueblo, de nuestra juventud, orientando los esfuerzos a la consolidación de la conciencia revolucionaria y humanista y la defensa del legado del Comandante Hugo Chávez, para que las futuras generaciones “escriban la historia en un mundo mejor”, como cantó Alí Primera.    

 

Quiero terminar estas líneas con nuestro Comandante Eterno, refiriéndose en el preámbulo del Plan de la Patria, a los retos que nos ha tocado enfrentar en estos tiempos:

 

“…a la tesis reaccionaria de Imperio y de la burguesía apátrida contra la Patria, nosotros y nosotras le oponemos la tesis combativa, creativa y liberadora de la Independencia y el socialismo como proyecto … [dialéctico para la transformación]: la Independencia no ha terminado y la forjamos en nuestra lucha diaria y permanente. Nos toca realizar plenamente el sueño libertario que nunca ha dejado de palpitar en la Patria y que hoy está latiendo de manera incesante. Así lo creo desde la fe combativa y la razón amorosa que me alienta: la herencia heroica nos obliga y tal exigencia es bandera y compromiso para nosotros y nosotras. Desde el tiempo que nos ha tocado vivir es preciso honrar los retos; tantos sacrificios no pueden ser en vano, hacerlos carne y sangre de la vida nueva tiene que seguir siendo el horizonte que nos llama y desafía”.

 

Trump CUBA Trudeau

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More of the Weekly “Turning of the Screws to Suffocate the Cuban Economy.”

 

That is how Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel put it last December.

 

Today, yet another. Join Yves Engler, Don Foreman and Arnold August in Ottawa on February 27. Among other points, I will call on the Trudeau government to speak out against Trump for his weekly attacks last year against Cuba, and now again in January. Join us! If a group or organization wants to cosponsor, contact Larry in Ottawa: Everyone knows him.

 

Here is the information and summary from the US Financial Post, including the exact quote from Díaz-Canel:

 

WASHINGTON/HAVANA Financial Post — The United States curbing public charter flights to Cuba in a further effort to squeeze the Cuban government’s income, the U.S. State Department said on Friday, prompting an outcry from officials in Havana.

The Trump administration, in its latest effort to roll back warmer U.S-Cuba ties established by the Obama administration, said it would only let some charters into Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport but did not say how many.

U.S. officials, in October, banned regularly scheduled flights to all Cuban cities except Havana.

 

“Today’s action will further restrict the Cuban regime’s ability to obtain revenue, which it uses to finance its ongoing repression of the Cuban people and its unconscionable support for dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

 

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and other Cuban officials blasted the move, calling it a violation of human rights that would hinder family reunification.

The flight caps would punish Cubans “on both sides of the Florida Strait,” the foreign ministry’s General Director for U.S. Affairs Carlos Fernandez de Cossio tweeted.

Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has clamped down on Havana following the historic move by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama to reopen U.S.-Cuba ties. His administration has imposed sanctions over Cuba’s support for Maduro.

 

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, in an address to parliament last month, said new U.S. sanctions were being imposed on average every week on top of the decades-old embargo and the country should expect more of the same in 2020.

 

“That is a turn of the screw every seven days to suffocate our economy,” he said.

The State Department said public charter flight operators would have 60 days to wind down their Cuba operations.

 

The U.S. Department of Transportation will set an “appropriate cap” of flights allowed to Jose Marti airport and will release more details “in the near future,” Pompeo said.

Havana’s ambassador in Washington, on Twitter, wrote that the restrictions would push more visitors to “use Cubana Airlines domestic flights or other Cuban companies for local transportation.” He also the United States was seeking to “limit the amount of people that see CUBA reality by themselves.”

 

Nearly 624,000 Cubans living abroad visited their homeland in 2019, of which a record 552,800 were from the United States, Cuba has said.

 

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Marc Frank in Havana Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)

 

Source:

https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/u-s-seeks-to-squeeze-cuba-by-further-curbing-flights-to-island

Maduro Personalidad Internacional 2019

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Me uno a Al Mayadeen de Líbano, Iroel Sánchez de Cuba, y a todos las repercusiones muy positivas en el mundo, a su elección del presidente Nicolás Maduro como personalidad internacional del año.


En 2019, tanto en el oeste capitalista, como en Canadá, como en América Latina / Caribe, la presión para abstenerse de criticar a Israel por temor a ser etiquetado como “antisemita” ha sido más viscosa que nunca.  Sin embargo, resistiendo todas las presiones oportunistas para abandonar Palestina, Maduro y la Revolución Bolivariana se mantuvieron firmes en apoyo de Palestina y contra el régimen asesino del apartheid israelí.

A lo largo de 2019, el presidente Maduro ha liderado con éxito la resistencia histórica del heroico pueblo bolivariano contra una de las guerras personales / políticas / económicas / paramilitares / mediáticas más viscosas de la historia reciente, dirigida por las fuerzas combinadas de los EE. UU., El Cartel de Lima  y gran parte de Europa.


No solo esto, sino que en el transcurso de esta resistencia, Venezuela ha logrado muchos objetivos sociales, como el 26 de diciembre cuando el milagro de entregar al pueblo vivienda número 3 millones, uno de los objetivos de Hugo Chávez.

Esta lucha épica también es conocida y admirada en el Medio Oriente, una de las razones para la decisión de Al Mayadeen.

Alba Bolivia CANADA Evo Arnold August

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Saludos ALBA en La Habana de *literalmente * millones de personas en Canadá con motivo de la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América-Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos (ALBA-TCP), número 17. LA HABANA.

 

Mis cinco artículos sobre Bolivia / EVO y el impacto en Canadá, publicados en Trabajadores:

¿La revuelta pro-Evo en Bolivia despierta la escena política canadiense?
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¿La revuelta pro-Evo en Bolivia despierta la escena política canadiense?

Sindicatos canadienses condenan golpe de Estado en Bolivia
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Sindicatos canadienses condenan golpe de Estado en Bolivia

Evo y Eduardo Galeano en….¡Québec!
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Evo y Eduardo Galeano en….¡Québec!

¡Sindicato desafía al gobierno canadiense a visitar a Evo en México!
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¡Sindicato desafía al gobierno canadiense a visitar a Evo en México!

Más sindicatos canadienses denuncian el golpe de estado contra Evo:
¿Cómo se expresa esto en los medios corporativos canadienses?
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Más sindicatos canadienses denuncian el golpe de estado contra Evo

Bolivia as in Palestine Arnold August

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Bolivia is resembling Palestine these days. For many reasons it is important to make this comparison now as the horror of the installation of a brutal dictatorship is unfolding in that South American country.

First and foremost these are two native peoples who not only face an implacable enemy but also a religious factor that is among the most lethal weapons that could be used against them.  In the name of a defamatory and unhealthy version of true Christianity, the Bolivian oligarchy in true Nazi style is promoting “racial purity”, by using the Bible as its mandate, including brainwashing being applied by the Pentecostal churches to co-opt the poorest layers of society and the different and numerous original ethnicities that it considers inferior.

If these tricks don’t work, plan B is rolled out to show them hatred by mocking and humiliating them in every circumstance and destroying the most precious symbols of their identity. Burning of their wiphalas for example, despising and degrading Bolivian indigenous women or cursing the indigenous people as a whole as Camacho, Mesa and the de facto president have done, are concrete elements of punishment to those who look different.

This is the same script Zionism wields against the Palestinian people. It is the idea of ethnic cleansing, by the way of distorting the reading of a history where fundamental data is omitted to disguise that when the invaders arrived, they found the indigenous people who had lived there for centuries clinging to their territory with the same strength and determination that they do in the present. The Zionist entity is, like the stateless Bolivian oligarchy, racist and violent to the core, one in the name of Jehovah and the other using an invented God to justify its crimes.

This Bolivian dictatorship of today, which orders its military and police to repress the indigenous-peasant people, workers and students as they did in the most sinister days of the Latin American decade of the 60s and 70s, are shooting from helicopters or tanks, torturing and murdering. This also has class hatred in it against those who, thanks to a popular and revolutionary government, could feel included for the first time, treated as equals, empowered and entwined with the rest of the population.

In Palestine, the occupier not only seizes territories, expelling the native inhabitants, demolishing their homes and destroying their crops, but also manifests a deep hatred towards those who, in spite of continuous persecution and massacres, maintain a profile of political and above all cultural resistance. The occupants act as an oppressive class, being in reality an elite of new riches nourished by the wealth that others like them send from the diaspora. The objective of these voluntary contributions, sometimes under pressure, is to achieve, among other projects of economic opulence, to grease the machinery that carries out the continuous looting of Palestine and through a gigantic war apparatus, to militarize that territory in order to harass the rest of the Arab world from there.

On the other hand, what can we say about the resistance to the oppressor in Bolivia when every day we are seeing the next Tupaj Katari, Bartolina Sisa and Evo Morales, heroic scenes in which the masses guided by their natural organizations using all the methods of struggle, but making the main weight fall on the peaceful resistance to which the indigenous peoples have been accustomed to using for centuries. An important aspect of this strategy is the blockade of the big cities to make the maximum weight felt by those who sow, produce, manufacture and distribute food. Or at the same time they generate massive mobilizations, occupying the streets, the highways and the diverse territories, demanding that those who were not elected fall and that the man who socialized the leadership with his comrades in so many struggles re-govern again. The response of the parasites of the bourgeoisie and the affluent classes to the slightest hint of shortage consists of ordering their uniformed dogs to go hunting.

As in Bolivia, the Palestinian people have not stopped fighting and mobilizing, not a single day since the occupation and the Nakba it brought with it more than seven decades ago, and in that sense the peaceful “return marches” for more than a year now led by the people of Gaza or the continuous actions of protest and resistance in the West Bank, become landmarks of territorial vindication where the heroism of its protagonists are shown, confronting with stones heavily armed snipers in Palestine, or police and military blinded by hatred, gasifying men, women and children to the point of asphyxiation, or machine-gunning them, in the Bolivian El Alto or Cochabamba. In both confrontations, identity symbols such as the multicolored wiphala of the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala or the four-colored Palestinian insignia are proudly raised by those who know that the two synthesize much more than a banner, which must be defended with life if necessary.

Finally, a note on how the world reacts to these ethnic cleansings. The governments, almost all of them, with the exception of revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela (to which we can add, especially in the case of Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, the future Argentine government and Third World countries) keep quiet or close ranks supporting the murderers.

In the field of international intellectuals and academics, in the face of conflicts of such magnitude as those occurring today in Latin America and the Middle East, there are also two distinct perspectives. An important minority that is aligned with the Bolivarian and Cuban revolutions that is clear on who the main enemy is and do not hesitate to show their support for both peoples who are being subjugated. Unfortunately, however, there are some dissonant expressions.

They are the ones who are on the lookout to mark and emphasize what is wrong with the leadership or the peoples, and throw themselves into corrosive criticism. They are the ones who do not use the same power, in the midst of a massacre here or there, to denounce and confront with the same force the criminals linked to the Empire.

We see it over and over again when it comes to Palestine, when tired of turning the other cheek, there were and there are sectors of the resistance that decided to combine peaceful methods of struggle with revolutionary violence. Immediately the voices of the eternal “good thinkers” (many confessed “progressive” or “left”) come out to pontificate: “this is not how it is done”, “this plays into the hands of the enemy”.

And without further ado, they continued or continue to give lectures on this at various universities, while those who fortunately do not listen to them, give themselves completely to defend their territories.

Now, in Bolivia, the same thing is happening, this intellectuality that calls itself “in solidarity” or even “anti-imperialist”, is very concerned about discovering the “magnitude” of the “errors” of Evo Morales and they do it, once again from the comfort of the people who overthrew Evo not because of their errors but because of their thousands of successes and who are now trying to take the Bolivian people back to the Middle Ages.

It is a pity that not even in such limited moments, where the Empire, capital and patriarchy are on one side and those who challenge it on the other, can they close ranks to give a common-sense response to such enemies. But since these are not times of speeches, advice or omnipotent attitudes, but rather times of action and concrete solidarity, we will continue in the struggle and those who do not understand that will be left on the road.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation North American bureau

Evo Bolivia York Arnold August

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Everyone  welcome, Free! Toronto, York University, Arnold August International Speaking tour stop, Friday, November 29, 7 PM. Evo and Bolivia impacts Canadian Politics & Trade Union Movement.

The NDP leader is in favour of new Bolivian elections. However, Evo was already elected and furthermore the US- backed coup leader in Bolivia declared that Evo will be arrested if he attempts to return to Bolivia!

Yet, some NDP MPs support Evo as president. Moreover, the CUPE  and CUPW unions  have issued clear statements. Some local union labour  Councils are sponsoring a special resolution for the upcoming OFL Congress.  Bolivian unions are putting their life on the line to demand the return of Evo as president, some of them assassinated by the Pro-Trump puppet regime.

NDP can make history, and Canadians proud, by taking a stand in support of Evo.

The pro-Trump Trudeau government is backing dictatorships in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Haïti.

Whither Canadian foreign policy?
Let us discuss.

U.S.-Venezuela-Cuba-Canada: The Geopolitics. Talk by Arnold August.
‪Friday, November 29, 2019
York Lanes 280N – YORK University
‪5:00pm – 7:00 pm
Free and open to all.

“The health of the people is not only the health sector responsibility, it also embraces wider political issues such as trade and foreign policy. Tackling this requires political will to engage the whole of government in health.”

Thus asserted the Helsinki Statement on Health in All Policies (HIAP) crafted by participants of the WHO sponsored 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion, in Helsinki, in June 2013, building upon and inspired by a tradition of thinking about the social and political determination of health launched in 1978 by the Alma Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care in the USSR and continued in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in Canada in 1986.

And yet, to this day Canadians give short shrift to the massive and indisputable health implications of foreign policy – ranging from issues as diverse as immigration, refugees, trade, and war.


Canadian journalist, lecturer and author Arnold August will discuss the geopolitical context of Canada’s current foreign policy and its implications for the health and well-being of the people of Cuba, Venezuela and now Bolivia, and indeed, the United States and Canada. Please join us!


Introduction by: Dr. Keith Ellis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Spanish and Portuguese. University of Toronto.
Organized by the Graduate Program in Health, York University.

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Research on Latin American and the Caribbean (CERLAC) and the Department of Languages, Literature & Linguistics
Further Information:

https://cerlac.info.yorku.ca/event/4178/?instance_id=177

 

Trudeau Trump Venezuela Cuba

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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

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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

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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!!

Venezuela y el mundo contra el bloqueo EEUU

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Manifestaciones masivas en Caracas y otras ciudades de Venezuela por parte del pueblo venezolano, protagonista contra el bloqueo y el embargo completo  estadounidense.

¡SÍ! El pueblo venezolano está escribiendo un nuevo capítulo de la historia universal, camino hacia la segunda independencia definitiva de América Latina, con repercusiones mundiales. El carácter internacional de la lucha de Venezuela es también el resultado de las manifestaciones mundiales del mismo día y del apoyo de más de 120 gobiernos de todo el mundo, incluidos China, Rusia e Irán, a pesar de las presiones de Estados Unidos.

En el siglo 20, un capítulo de la historia mundial ya ha sido escrito por Cuba y Fidel Castro; en Asia, por ejemplo, el pueblo vietnamita escribió un capítulo indeleble; en África, el pueblo de Sudáfrica, con el apoyo de Cuba, eliminó el régimen del Apartheid; en Eurasia, por supuesto, la revolución de Lenin en Rusia ha sido el más importante capítulo de la historia del siglo.

Ahora corresponde a VENEZUELA. Cuando, el 27 de julio, les dije a los venezolanos que estaban escribiendo este nuevo capítulo, entonces estaba convencido de ello.

 

Lo vi en los ojos de los venezolanos, de Bolívar y de Chávez. Hoy estoy aún más persuadido de ello, después de la reacciones en Venezuela y en todo el planeta.

Estamos viviendo un importante período de la historia mundial.