Cuba

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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 05, 2022 1:46 pm

Did you know? There are no homeless people in Cuba. No landlords, foreclosures, or evictions
September 4, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha

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A view of homes on a street in Trinidad, Cuba.

You heard that right. No one in Cuba is living in the streets, in tents, or sleeping in cars at Walmart parking lots — scraping by without health care, regular showers, clean water, food, or even toilets.

That is not to say that there isn’t a housing problem in Cuba. There is a housing shortage. Cuba is tackling building more housing for its people. This is extremely difficult because the 60-year U.S. blockade makes it impossible for Cuba to import needed materials. So there are instances where people live with relatives, and there is a need to improve existing housing. But housing is a right.

But yes, even the capitalist press admits — not a single child, family, or person is living in the street in Cuba — an island as big as the state of Tennessee or Virginia with 11.3 million people, just 90 miles from Florida.

In the U.S. homelessness is growing. Tennessee just made it a felony for homeless people to camp in parks and public property. Miami considered a plan to move unhoused people to a city-sponsored encampment on Virginia Key — next to a sewer wastewater treatment plant and away from services. The Los Angeles City Council has begun bans.

There are now an estimated 1.5 million unhoused people in the wealthiest capitalist country in the world. Another 6.4 million face eviction as rents have skyrocketed.

Interestingly, it isn’t that there isn’t enough housing. Unlike Cuba, there are plenty of vacant houses and apartments, many of them brand new. The problem is the opposite of Cuba. People cannot afford sky-high rents and mortgages. If you don’t have the money and landlords can’t make a profit, then they’d rather have housing lie vacant.

And that should be a crime.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... evictions/

Another aspect of housing in Cuba is that the vast majority of homes are owned by the people who live there.

Every nation will adopt socialism to their needs and in light of history. Leftists who carp about 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' are chauvinists at best. If you think you can do better then please do so.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:49 pm

The most revolutionary thing today is to be anti-capitalist
October 10 materialized, in the same cry of rebellion, the most revolutionary spirit of the times. It had its first expression in the call for unity that has mobilized Cubans ever since: unity for a free nation against any form of foreign domination.

Author: Karima Oliva Bello | informacion@granmai.cu

october 20, 2022 10:10:44

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To sustain the freedom bequeathed to us by our forefathers the way is to continue being anti-imperialist. Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus

October 10 materialized, in the same cry of rebellion, the most revolutionary spirit of the times. It had its first expression in the call for unity that has mobilized Cubans ever since: unity for a free nation against any form of foreign domination.

At that time, in the very heart of the sense of our budding identity, took shape the hardest of all the contradictions we have had to work out as a people, which has marked the course of our history until today: between the will to be masters of our destiny and the temptation to be in the image and likeness of the empire; first Spain, then the United States, fulfilling the destiny of a colony that they have traced for us.

Today, under a new appearance, the dilemma is the same. The greatest threat to a country like Cuba is not only the interference policy of the United States and its desire to dominate our economy in the same terms as 60 years ago. Circumstances have changed and the world has been reconfigured since then. The fundamental risk that we face, together with the other peoples of our region, is the advance of capitalism with giant steps. It puts at risk our sovereignty and survival.

With the granting of unrestricted freedom to the market, characteristic of the neoliberal model, a new type of colonialism operates, through the mechanisms of coercion exercised by international financial organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund, on national economies, demanding the imposition of structural reforms that facilitate transnational corporations the unlimited exploitation of the natural resources of our territories (here in the South) and of the labor force, in almost slave-like conditions.

The uncontrolled privatization of strategic sectors that provide key services to the population, the reduction of public spending, the precarization of working conditions, the withdrawal of the State from its responsibilities for welfare and social security, the criminalization of anti-capitalist social movements and a long list of abuses, represent now the greatest danger to the sovereignty of the former colonies.

There are those who are dissatisfied with Cuba's present, because they would like the changes to lead, once and for all, to the development of a good capitalism, as if that were possible (especially for the most vulnerable), or they want us to make concessions so that our neighbor forgives us and welcomes us back into its tutelage, as if that were worthy.

Those of us who do not want to see a history of rebellion turned into submission and abysmal social differences are not satisfied with Cuba's present either. The only difference is that we understand that, in order to sustain the freedom bequeathed to us by our heroes and to achieve a progress that does not leave out any Cuban, the path must continue to be anti-imperialist. The only way to be consistent with the legacy of the founding fathers is to try to save it from capitalism, to the last consequences.

Translated y ESTI

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-10-20/th ... d68bd7a83f

While it is the single most important thing it ain't everything, consider the anarchists, anti-capitalist but otherwise confused and confusing.

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The sport of marking the enemy
October 29, 2022 Rosa Miriam Elizalde

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On Monday, Oct. 24, at noon Twitter users noticed a modification to the tagging policy. The social media platform began tagging a group of public media outlets as “affiliated with the Cuban government” and the tag would in turn appear on messages sent or shared from any individual account that linked to those publications’ websites. On Tuesday, Facebook shut down a score of profiles of supposed supporters of the Cuban Revolution but left hundreds that publish manuals for homemade bombs, call to burn police stations, announce armed expeditions, disclose private data for political assassination, threaten and insult generally from accounts abroad.

As if waging an online video game war, the U.S. platforms have decided this week to direct their laser sight into Cuba’s quadrant to mark and silence the “characters” of an enemy that has no way to defend itself.

Some might argue that it’s honorable to be labeled as a publicly funded government media outlet, and it certainly is. But Twitter does not intend to glorify Granma, Cubadebate, Radio Habana Cuba, Juventud Rebelde, and others, but to reduce the dissemination of their messages.

Without prior notice and in a beastly manner, the transnational has extended its control policies to the Caribbean, the rush to erase uncomfortable voices, the hypocritical correction of its community standards, and, once again, it exercises censorship on a global scale, simply by tweaking its algorithms and without the procedures that would allow justifying such decisions. To top it all, it considers private media to be impartial and more genuine than their publicly funded counterparts, so that on planet Twitter anything that smacks of private interest is off-label. In this biased view, users have no right to judge content on its merits.

But the biggest absurdity of all is that it is a U.S. government-linked corporation like Twitter that labels others as “media affiliated” with a state. It’s not hard to find evidence that the platform has worked in increasing intimacy with the White House ever since U.S. politicians began pressuring tech companies to regulate content. In a 2011 legal filing easy to find online, Twitter agreed with the Federal Trade Commission to “implement, monitor and adjust its security measures” under government observation and has since turned over thousands of users’ data to government agencies.

Forbes magazine reported in August that the U.S. tops the list of governments demanding data be handed over to tech platforms, with nearly two million user accounts handed over since 2013. In the election that brought Biden to the White House, Twitter was one of many Silicon Valley corporations that worked directly with U.S. government agencies to determine what content should be removed in order to “secure” the election contest.

Whenever Twitter reports that it has purged thousands of accounts suspected of inauthentic behavior and acting at the direction of foreign governments, it will never be accounts from NATO countries or other friends of the U.S. government, and it doesn’t take much imagination to explain the cause. The favorite sanctioned ones are Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, of course.

On May 12, 2020, the platform blocked 526 profiles managed from the island. It did not explain its decision to the users who saw their accounts abruptly canceled, but the next day, on May 13, Michael Kozak, then Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told the press that the State Department had identified “more than four dozen Cuban accounts” that violated Twitter’s policies – announced by the government agency, not the super and “independent” private company.

Almost simultaneously, The Miami Herald published statements from another official on the progress of relations with Twitter: “We have an ongoing dialogue with technology companies and are working with them to share our thoughts on attempts by state and non-state actors to leverage their platforms to spread disinformation and propaganda,” said Lea Gabrielle, director of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), also at the State Department.

Facebook’s track record as a U.S. government-affiliated media outlet is even darker and quite well-known. I cite as a sample the scandal starting in 2021 by the then White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, who told reporters that the executive compiled lists of people who publish on that platform “problematic” content so that Facebook “can remove them”.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, of The Intercept, reacted angrily: “Union of corporate and state power, one of the classic hallmarks of fascism”. Greenwald was talking about Facebook, but this could be a great label to hang on Twitter as well.

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US

https://struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/10/2 ... the-enemy/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 04, 2022 2:45 pm

The world condemns the US blockade against Cuba
185 countries voted to lift the cruel 60-year blockade that has deprived the Cuban people of more than $1 trillion according to some calculations

November 03, 2022 by Natalia Marques

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185 countries voted in favor of the resolution to lift the blockade, Brazil and Ukraine abstained, and the United States and Israel voted against the resolution. (Photo: Permanent Mission of Luxembourg to the UN on Twitter)

On November 3, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) once again voted almost unanimously for the United States to lift the cruel 60-year blockade against Cuba. 185 countries voted in favor of the resolution to lift the blockade, Brazil and Ukraine abstained, and the United States and Israel voted against the resolution.

“No other resolution at the UN has this level of consensus,” tweeted Cuba solidarity activist and co-executive director of the Peoples Forum, Manolo de los Santos.

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Voting records from the UN resolution to end the blockade on Cuba (Photo: Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations in New York)

The US has waged a war of attrition against Cuba since the nation’s socialist revolution overthrew a US-backed dictator. The blockade is the patchwork of economic, commercial, and financial policies that above all seeks to make foreign trade with Cuba impossible and hinders the delivery of humanitarian aid. Speaking to the UNGA, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez remarked, “More than 80% of the current Cuban population was born under the blockade. Three decades have passed since this Assembly began to demand, every year, the cessation of that policy, classified as an act of genocide and which has the effect of ‘a permanent pandemic, of a constant hurricane’ and is universally rejected.”

Rodriguez also explained the devastating economic effects of the blockade. By the calculations of the Foreign Ministry, the blockade deprives the Cuban people of $15 million per day. Since the inception of the blockade in 1962, the Cuban people have lost as much as $1.391 trillion to the blockade. An article ran by Al Jazeera also estimates the total to be around $1 trillion.

While rejection of the blockade has grown, US measures against Cuba have only increased. President Biden has continued to implement the worst of the 243 new sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed. Rodriguez explained how in the first seven months of 2022, these sanctions have cost the Cuban people $3.8 billion. Biden also stays faithful to Trump’s policy of voting against the blockade in the UN—in 2016, under President Barack Obama, the US abstained from the vote. Cuba also continues to be on the US state sponsors of terrorism list, a policy which many US activists staunchly oppose.

On October 29, Cuba solidarity activists in the US staged a rally and march in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, in protest of the blockade. Claudia de la Cruz, co-executive director of the People’s Forum, spoke to a crowd of hundreds. “The US dares to say that Cuba should remain in the terrorist list,” she said. “Who calls the US government terrorist? The United States has dared to overthrow governments all across the globe.”

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Activists gather in Times Square on October 29, 2022, to protest the blockade against Cuba

Washington claims that it is only trying to help the Cuban people. Sanctions are “one set of tools in Washington’s broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy, promote respect for human rights, and help the Cuban people exercise fundamental freedoms,” according to the then-political coordinator for the US Mission to the UN, Rodney Hunter, in 2021. “Every year we authorize billions of dollars’ worth of exports to Cuba, including food and other agricultural commodities, medicines, medical devices, telecommunications equipment, other goods, and other items to support the Cuban people. Advancing democracy and human rights remain at the core of our policy efforts,” he claimed.

In reality, the network of blockade and sanctions has prevented or complicated much needed humanitarian aid being sent to Cuba. As the Delta variant of COVID-19 ravaged the island in August 2021, the only Cuban oxygen plant was rendered inoperational as its technicians could not acquire spare parts due to the blockade. Cubans were deprived of oxygen as the US stubbornly refused to make an exception. The US blocked a COVID-19 aid shipment from Asia at the height of the pandemic in 2020. During the recent Matanzas fire, which devastated Cuba’s energy supply, activists petitioned the Biden administration to lift the sanctions which prevented much needed monetary donations to the fire recovery efforts. Washington ignored these petitions, as it did after Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on the island.

However, despite Cuba’s economic setbacks through Washington’s policies, Cuba has continued to confront and overcome diverse global and climatic challenges oftentimes better than the US. Its people-first COVID-19 response saw not only record low transmission and death rates, but also the development of vaccines available for the Cuban people and people across the global south. A stark contrast from the over one million deaths in the US and billions in profits made by pharmaceutical companies from the vaccine. The island’s hurricane preparedness and relief efforts were far also better than those of the US. Only three died during Hurricane Ian, compared to the over 100 who perished in Florida. Some point to the people-first central planning of Cuba’s socialist government as the key difference.

As De la Cruz declared at the October 29 solidarity rally, “The only threat that Cuba poses to the United States is the possibility of hope. The only threat that people are able to see is that it is possible for a government to put its people front and center.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/03/ ... inst-cuba/

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The world stands with Cuba once again!
November 4, 2022 Alejandra Garcia

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Projected sign in NYC expresses the sentiment of the majority of the people in the U.S.

Once again, the United States has been left alone in its efforts to stifle Cuba. The General Assembly of the United Nations once again pronounced itself overwhelmingly against the economic blockade that Washington insists on maintaining against the island.

The UN member countries voted this Thursday on the Cuban resolution “Necessity of putting an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. On this occasion, the document had 185 votes in favor, two against (the United States and its unconditional ally Israel), and two abstentions (Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Ukraine).

Today, the world is with Cuba, and it is no surprise. That US policy it’s an outdated and ineffective measure that hasn’t achieved and will not achieve its objective and has ended up discrediting and isolating the United States itself.

It has already been 30 years of continuous defeats. Since 1992, the Caribbean island, besieged and on the verge of economic asphyxiation, has been presenting this resolution before the UN in New York. Today, not even the US citizens themselves support this policy of hatred. Proof of this is that two nights ago, in the mythical Chrysler skyscraper in the Big Apple, a luminous sign caught the attention of the city dwellers and the world: “Down with the Blockade,” next to an image of the Cuban flag.

At the top of the building, the messages “Sanctions are a violation of human rights,” “Biden, vote for peace and justice” were also read; images that have been on the front page of major international media in the last hours, prior to the vote. New York, the American people, and the world want peace, but the White House doesn’t want to listen to these demands. It is stuck in the past and without an ounce of courage Biden has followed in the footsteps of previous administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, who adhere to the single notion of crushing Cuba and the example it projects to the world.

During its first opportunity to pronounce itself, in 2021, the administration of Joseph Biden voted against the resolution and today, it rejected once again the document, which shows, among other painful facts, that during the first 14 months of the Biden administration, the damage to the Cuban economy is estimated at $6.35 billion, equivalent to more than $15 million per day.

Cuban authorities have repeatedly denounced that the blockade has not only been in place for more than six decades but that it has intensified in recent years. Besides, the unilateral and fraudulent designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism reinforces the impact of that policy of economic asphyxiation.

Fidel’s words expressed 13 years ago came to life to me today: “The cynicism of U.S. policy hurts. It speaks of democracy while it includes Cuba on the list of terrorist countries, applies the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act exclusively to our nation, and blocks it economically.”

According to Cuban journalist Elson Concepción, being blockaded continues to be the price paid by those of us who declare ourselves free and sovereign, a condition conquered during years of struggle against Spanish colonialism, first, and U.S. neocolonialism, later.

“The blockade causes Cuban children to suffer the lack of some medicine, the implant of an organ, or the use of a reagent, for the ridiculous reason of having only 10% of U.S. components,” he added.

During his election campaign, Biden promised to change the U.S. policy path toward Cuba, but this has not happened. Meanwhile, Cuban families suffer when their children decide to emigrate in an unsafe way; they suffer from the lack of indispensable goods, such as food and medicine. They also suffer because they want their country to grow economically. After all, there’s no better place to live than where you were born and raised.

For the thirtieth time, the world said “No” to the blockade and is anxiously waiting for this to be the year of definitive changes. The U.S. would be a better place for it, a fairer one.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US

https://struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/11/0 ... nce-again/

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War and Peace in These Times
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 3, 2022
José R. Cabañas Rodríguez

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The VII Conference of Strategic Studies organized by the Center for International Policy Research in Havana, with the co-sponsorship of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), has concluded. The results of its debates are available to the public on the CIPICuba Youtube Channel. We are working on the digital edition of the texts that were sent to the Organizing Committee.

There is an obvious first conclusion and it is that, with the exchange, all participants have acquired new knowledge, which could allow us a better understanding of international events and, consequently, a superior ability to think about future scenarios.

The conference panels addressed a variety of topics, but in one way or another they were connected by the common concern of trying to understand the changes that the international community is going through today. A number of processes force us to wonder about the eventuality of a military conflagration affecting us all. Some have asked themselves the question in the present: are we at war?

The events that have taken place in Ukraine since last February have been presented as a singular event, they have tried to erase its antecedents, they have led to forget other recent similar events and it is described as the only one of the conflicts with the capacity to escalate.

The answer to the question that appears in the third paragraph has as many answers as there are recognized countries in the world today, or as many communities and ethnic groups within them. What answer do you think the Palestinians, the Saharawis, the Syrians, the Yemenis, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Libyans can give to this question? What considerations can certain aboriginal communities, populations of African descent residing in the so-called first world, or immigrants of Arab or sub-Saharan origin in Europe offer?

Many of them will undoubtedly be able to affirm that “we are at war”, even if they do not receive artillery or aviation impacts every day. These are thousands, perhaps millions, of people who certainly do not live in peace. It could be said that in this case we are referring to a level of “accepted” violence, with which we “live”, despite the declarations of solidarity and rhetoric-laden speeches at multilateral events.

However, the question asked by certain experts at the conference was directed in another dimension, thinking of the scope and magnitude of the two previous “world” wars. Such a consideration had not arisen with such force in the last 30 years, after the demise of the USSR and the socialist camp. No such danger was thought of when the former Yugoslavia was dismembered in the heart of Europe, nor when Washington announced the so-called fight against terrorism that rocked the Middle East for 20 years, or when NATO reneged on repeated commitments not to expand eastward. So what has changed now?

When recalling past “world” wars, we immediately think of the number of men at arms, the multitude of casualties and means of combat, the natural areas totally destroyed by gunpowder or chemical agents. But in pondering this danger that we consider “future”, we forget recent and daily data. Current military budgets, taken as a whole, are much higher than those of those conflagrations (including inflation); the amount of military means on the border and in bases abroad is significant and growing; the areas destroyed by oil spills, deforestation, or pollution are immense; curable diseases and uncontrolled pandemics claim millions of human lives annually; violence and the uncontrolled use of weapons by the civilian population is increasing; the number of animal species that reproduce healthily is decreasing sharply.

So, what is missing to declare ourselves “at war”? What is the “peace” we are enjoying?

In the case of Cuba, for example, we have lived a siege of more than 60 years for committing the crime of aspiring to be sovereign. The “war-war” has been imposed on us from Playa Giron to the bands of rebels in the 60’s, the repeated terrorist actions, the coercive measures. The list is endless. We Cubans have invented a “peace” to see our families grow, to educate ourselves, to enjoy art and nature. But the truth is that we have lived through repeated extreme situations generated by others, with cycles of rise and fall in our GDP, which always make us doubt about the sustainability or development of any project.

Something similar can be narrated by Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, for known reasons. Have Bolivians had a life in “peace” between a coup d’état and the threat of the next one? But the absence of peace is a reality in Latin American countries where the national “government” only decides the state of affairs in the capital city and a little beyond, because in the rural regions the cartels, irregular groups, narcos and other illegals rule. Is there total peace in those countries where drug trafficking dominates ports, supply routes and markets?

So, if all this is true, what is really new when we think about the eventuality of a “war”, we would say “another war”.

The first thing is that the great hegemon that decided, planned, sold and articulated most of the above conflicts is no more. Over and above the problems of all kinds that American society is experiencing at home, the once called “beacon of liberty” is no longer able to offer a model that others would be interested in copying, not even a “neoliberal globalization”-style economic recipe.

In fact, Made in China is much more frequent than Made in USA and in the manuals of high-tech products, Mandarin appears more often than English. In indicators of efficiency, productivity and innovation, Asian companies dominate.

Washington can no longer resort to traditional “competition” to consolidate its place in the world and, therefore, is increasingly making use of political actions, sanctions and foul play, in order not to lose its capacity as “decision-maker”.

The other novelty is that at least one multinational country, Russia, is no longer idly waiting for the military encirclement around its territory to be completed. Having repeatedly warned of the danger of a conflagration, Moscow decided to launch a military operation to pre-empt the danger of being attacked with lightning speed and to protect Russian national communities living outside its borders, according to its official statements.

Whether or not one shares the essence of what the Americans themselves called at the time “preventive war”, or “going to the source”, the reality is that a reordered Russia, strengthened and already renouncing the aspiration of ever being accepted as “Western”, has drawn a red line on the ground.

Despite the fact that the “enemy” is visibly located in the Ukrainian geography, in fact behind Kiev all material, intelligence and political resources of NATO are lined up. Until today, they have not decided on the participation (beyond mercenaries) of human forces, which could lead us to consider that, formally, there would be a confrontation of other proportions.

Several of the actors involved are in possession of nuclear weapons, so the possibility of an error, or its conscious use, also raises alarms.

The game in which the United States is involved is risky, with the aim of expanding the European armaments market and to stimulate multi-million dollar expenditures in the technological renewal of military equipment, in the face of the “Russian threat”.

Although most of the public information consumed tends to indicate that the Atlantic alliance is functioning coherently and monolithically in this “war”, we see daily news to the contrary. Since the announcement of “unrestricted” support for Ukraine in early 2022, several government leaders have exited the scene and there are others about to do so. Despite the will not to give it press coverage, every day there are massive demonstrations in European capitals against NATO’s involvement. The first “casualty” of the Russian-NATO conflict was paradoxically the Euro and not the Ruble. In an upcoming winter with high prices and no heating it is difficult to think of a “call to arms” from the European side. The advancement of technologies must be taken into account, where supersonic artillery, massive use of drones and cyber-attacks push away those traditional images of infantry crossing borders on foot.

Also new is the way in which so-called “third parties” have reacted in today’s more media-driven warfare. Voting in multilateral bodies clearly indicates that there is no unrestricted support for NATO positions and denunciations. In fact, the United States has not been able to impose its will even in the OAS, or the Summits of the Americas, on this and other issues.

The strengthening of Sino-Soviet relations, the new non-alignment, the enlargement of the BRICS and the attitude of countries such as India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey clearly indicate that the geopolitical map has changed and will continue to do so.

The actions of third parties include those who have made statements, or taken actions, on what are considered to be their most immediate conflicts. This can be related to what has been said and done in recent months by the People’s Republic of Korea, the State of Israel, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In the event that the possibility of a more international conflagration than the current one is greater, we could not be talking about a single “combat front”, nor about two “parties” or groups of countries in dispute.

What happens today in the world will have a direct impact on the mid-term elections in the United States and vice versa. The United States still maintains its capacity to “lead from behind” and to impose “wars” and instability within “enemy” countries without transferring troops. Washington is betting on the breakdown of leadership and social systems within countries that do not share its “rules of the game”. For an empire in decline, it will always be much more tempting to destroy and cause damage to the environment in the face of the impossibility of surviving, as the Romans, Ottomans and European colonial powers did before.

Living with “wars” today seems a more common phenomenon than we are willing to acknowledge. Building sustainable peace will require new alliances, new knowledge, new thinking, new leadership and definitely a new multilateralism, based on the principle of the cessation of “the philosophy of dispossession”.

José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is the former Cuban Ambassador to the United States

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ese-times/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:07 pm

BEFORE THE VOTE: CUBA’S REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF THE BLOCKADE
Posted by MLToday | Nov 6, 2022 | Other Featured Posts | 0

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BRUNO RODRÍGUEZ PARRILLA, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA
October 19, 2022


On 19 October the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez described the hostile blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for over 60 years as a constant pandemic or hurricane, due to damages it causes to the country.

Rodriguez presented Cuba’s latest report on the impact of the blockade to a press conference in Havana in advance of the UN General Assembly debate and vote which will take place on 2/3 November.

The updated report highlights the last six months of US sanctions on the Cuban economy. Rodríguez recalled that U.S. blockade is not merely the prohibition to buy in the US, but the impossibility of acquiring financial resources to get goods in that market or in other ones.

According to data from the report Cuba will present to UNGA on 2/3 November, that unilateral policy caused losses of over $3.8 billion from August 2021 to February 2022.

Likewise, in the President Joe Biden administration´s first 14 months, damages caused by these provisions reached over $6.3 billion, accounting for a loss of over $454 million monthly and more than $15 million daily.

Rodriguez pointed out that such hostility kept unchanged amid the global economic crisis, Covid-19, and ahead of recent events including the massive deadly fire popped at the Matanzas oil terminal or even the devastation caused by the passage of category 4 Hurricane Ian nationwide.

The Cuban foreign minister claimed that in view of this scenario, the United States should change its policy towards Cuba, stop persecution of its financial transactions, enable Cuba to rebuild itself, eliminate prohibition for U.S. companies to offer contracts to Cuba, or at least relax the blockade, and to apply humanitarian exceptions by using executive powers.

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Transcript of the words of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, in the presentation to the national and foreign press, of the update of the national report by virtue of resolution 75/289 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, entitled “Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” (Per period August 2021- February 2022):

I thank each and everyone for their presence.

I don’t know if you’ve already seen the images of the waterspout and the lightning over the Morro. Do we have the pictures? (shown on screen). Let’s hope there was no damage.

I appreciate your presence.

On November 2 and 3 , the United Nations General Assembly will consider for the thirtieth time the agenda item entitled “Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”

This will occur in a special context, marked by the devastating effects of Hurricane Ian, by the effects of a multidimensional global crisis that includes an international economic crisis and an imminent threat of a global recession, food crisis, energy crisis, health crisis, and other . In a context also of unprecedented intensification of the blockade against Cuba, which comes from the second half of 2019, based on a policy of the preceding Republican Government of the United States, of economic suffocation, of economic war, of deliberately seeking the collapse of the Cuban economy and of the country, without measuring the serious humanitarian consequences or the impacts of that objective, which will never be met, but which would undoubtedly cause unpredictable consequences.

The Report, which you already have online, on-line, and our people, our country, and the Diplomatic Corps accredited in Havana, reveals these impacts.

The blockade is not a new design, but it has been surgically better designed, targeting each of the country’s main incomes, viciously seeking to increase the impact on the daily life of our population, based on the best expression of that policy that is the Memorandum of Undersecretary Lester Mallory of April 1960, which recognizes that the objective of the blockade is to depress nominal and real wages, cause hunger, despair, suffering and the overthrow of the Government. The Helms Burton Act of 1996 codifies that same policy. And in the maximum pressure measures against Cuba, the more than 200 additional blocking sanctions applied by President Donald Trump, those same cruel objectives are sought.

I will give a new information. Between August 2021 and February 2022, the losses caused by the blockade are in the order of 3,806 million dollars. It is a historical record amount for a short period such as these seven months. The Gross Domestic Product of Cuba, according to very conservative data, could have grown, despite the adverse circumstances facing the Cuban economy, by 4.5% in that period, had these measures not been applied.

During the first 14 months of the Biden government, the damage caused by the blockade amounts to 6,364 million dollars, also a historical record. This means more than 454 million dollars per month and more than 15 million dollars per day, in damages.

In six decades, at current prices, the accumulated damages add up to 154 thousand 217 million dollars. An exorbitant figure for a small economy, without great natural resources, insular, underdeveloped, like Cuba’s. But at the value of gold, that is, per ounce of gold, taking into account depreciation, the accumulated damages reach the enormous figure of 1 trillion 391 thousand 111 million dollars. That is, one million million plus 391 billion dollars. Imagine, imagine our people, what Cuba could have done with those resources. What would Cuba be like today if the country would have had those resources?

The economic blockade is the central element that defines the nature of the United States policy towards Cuba. It was strengthened to unprecedented levels under President Trump.

Today the policy of President Joseph Biden against Cuba is unfortunately and inertially the same Republican policy. No changes have been made to that policy.

The surgical design pursued by each income, each source of financing and supply in the country is maintained, and is a daily theme. They are the regulations in force and it is the current practical conduct of the US authorities.

The impact therefore has a greater dimension and from the humanitarian point of view more perverse and damaging.

Blocking has gone to an aggressive quality that it hasn’t had in the past.

Despite the positive announcements, in the right dimension, but extremely limited, and practically inapplicable, in May 2016 by the US authorities, the blockade has not changed in any way in its scope or depth.

The performance of the Cuban economy in the last two years has been inevitably marked by the coincidence of these impacts with those of the Covid-19 pandemic itself, the exorbitant expenses to which it forced our country, and the consequences of the most recent international crises including the rise in food and fuel prices.

The existence of the blockade is an undeniable reality. No one could seriously or sanely say that the blockade does not exist or is a mere pretext.

It is totally tangible and reaches and harms every Cuban family, Cubans residing in the United States, US citizens, and individuals and businesses around the globe.

It is aimed at causing the inability of the country to meet the fundamental needs of the population.

The blockade causes extreme direct damage due to the integral gear of its measures, but at the same time it has the cruel and practical purpose of depriving the country of the financial income that is essential to acquire supplies, equipment, parts and pieces, technology, software, and then it also causes damage in that sense. This is the case, for example, of food, in the midst of a situation of shortages, shortages, long queues, anxiety, in the population facing difficulties even in ensuring the basic basket, which requires a highly effective effort by the Government and entities, or to ensure people’s daily lives.

It is true that Cuba can buy food in other markets, and it is true that it buys food even in the United States. But the blockade deprives Cuba of the essential financial resources to make those purchases in the United States or to make similar purchases in third markets. I will return to that topic.

The national electric power system is going through an extremely serious situation, which is the result of serious limitations, of lack of fuel in some cases and measures, but above all of obstacles to acquiring spare parts and other resources, by depriving the country of financing essential to do so, beyond the fact that the blockade prevents the use of US technologies, buying in the US market. In other words, the blockade is a dual effect, which must necessarily be taken into account.

It is not just bilateral, it is extraterritorial. It is direct and at the same time deprives the country of financial resources in areas where there are no specific prohibitions on purchases in third markets.

Cuba cannot acquire, anywhere, in any way, technologies, equipment, parts, pieces, digital technologies or software, which have 10% US components, which is a direct impact, as serious as that of the lack of foreign currency to guarantee supplies.

The measures of direct, financial, physical, extortion persecution, the effect of intimidation, the effect of the high country risk resulting from these actions, persecutes each one of our commercial, investment or financial transactions, since it places us in serious dilemmas. to supply companies.

This is the case of banking-financial relations. Dozens and dozens of banks deny services to Cuba for fear of US fines. Others are forced to settle from illegal, extraterritorial actions by the US government to avoid those fines. And it causes damage to a natural presence of the Cuban financial system in the international one.

The direct persecution of producers, transporters, carriers, shipping companies, insurers and reinsurance companies, seriously hinders and makes our fuel purchases more expensive by more than a third, and sometimes up to half.

Of course, this situation has had to be faced with emergency measures, and our people understand and accompany the daily difficulties that we all suffer, and at the same time assist, contribute to the investments and palliative measures that the Government, in conditions of emergency attention to electro-energy system and other needs, rigorously and efficiently meets. This is the case, for example, of blackouts.

Between January 2021, new data, and February 2022, a total of 642 direct actions were reported by foreign banks that, faced with the threat of the US financial system, refused to provide services to the country. In that short period, 642 actions against foreign banks. Unilateral, coercive, and illegal actions, from the point of view of international law of the national law that governs the conduct of these banks, from the point of view of the universally accepted norms of the international financial system.

Dozens of diplomatic missions, of Cuban embassies today lack banking services.

In various latitudes, a private Cuban citizen, a natural legal person, is deprived of opening personal accounts for the sole fact of being a Cuban national, which is deeply discriminatory.

The drug production capacity of the country has been seriously affected by these concepts, as I already mentioned. Cuba produces 60% of the medicines it basically needs. But to produce these medicines, it needs not only some raw materials, parts and pieces, some components, but also obviously needs financing, which the oppressive and comprehensive application of the blockade prevents from reaching our country.

In the face of these adversities, in the face of the hostility of the US government, our country does not stop or stop renewing itself.

Cuba changes every day, and will continue to change. Cuba renews itself all the time. What does not change, what is not renewed, what is anchored in the past, is the blockade policy.

We overcome Covid with our own vaccines. Despite the fact that the United States government, at the peak of the pandemic, applied exemptions, that is, it applied to dozens of countries under coercive or unilateral measures, that these be condoned, temporarily relaxed, for humanitarian reasons. And those countries under sanctions regimes were allowed to purchase vaccines, to purchase medical oxygen, to purchase lung ventilators.

Why was Cuba not included among the countries to which these temporary exemptions were applied? It was a deliberately cruel act. It is the recognition that the blockade also suffocates and kills.

The United States government hindered the acquisition of medical oxygen in third countries, when there was a failure of our main plant that caused a crisis in the country; which did not cause loss of life thanks to an extraordinary and effective effort by our people, the armed institutions, the health system and the Government.

The blockade prevented the acquisition of pulmonary ventilators. We didn’t stop. We produced our own lung ventilators with Cuban prototypes.

The Cuban economy is going through moments of great difficulty. The transformations, the growing autonomy and development of the socialist state enterprise have not stopped. The expansion and registration of thousands of new micro, small and medium-sized companies, both state and private, fundamentally private. The development of science, technology and innovation as a pillar of government management and of the transformations that ensure the progress of our socialist model.

The referendum on the Family Code, recently concluded in the midst of difficulties, shows a majority consensus. The transformations that the country applies in all its areas, based on the principle of changing everything that needs to be changed and moving towards a fairer, more humane, more democratic socialism for all our people.

We are all making a superhuman effort today to rescue the levels of economic activity that have been seriously affected by the circumstances that I explained.

It works very actively to diversify the productive matrix. There is a growing participation of entrepreneurship, as they are called, of state and non-state companies in these endeavors and the opportunities for foreign investment within our development policies have increased.

The blockade continues to limit these efforts, we will never give up our project of social justice.

The rejection of the blockade was one of the most discussed topics in the speeches of the Heads of State and Government at the recent High-Level Session of the General Assembly at the end of September. Forty of them loudly demanded the end of this policy. Some called for Cuba to be removed from the United States government’s arbitrary, unjust, capricious, immoral and illegal list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Others appreciated the cooperation, especially the international medical cooperation, that Cuba offers in a modest and quiet way.

This general debate reliably showed that the blockade policy only causes isolation and discredit to the United States government, which is opposed by the majority of Americans, the majority of Cubans residing in the United States and in other countries, who receives the practically unanimous rejection of the international community and that it has to be lifted since the world has changed and some government of the United States will have to do it.

The repudiation of a criminal policy that has neither defeated nor achieved the objectives it set for itself is universal, although it causes a lot of human damage, it causes suffering every day at every meal when the Cuban family meets at night when there is a blackout, when there are difficulties to guarantee medicine for a sick person, our people suffer.

Cuba has the right to live without a blockade, it has the right to live in peace. Cuba would be better off without Blockade, better off without Blockade. Everyone would be better off without Blockade. The United States would be a better country without a blockade against Cuba. The world would be better without the Blockade of Cuba.

Thank you very much.

Source: Cuba Solidarity UK

https://mltoday.com/before-the-vote-cub ... -blockade/

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Overwhelming victory for Cuba at the UN: 185 countries vote against the blockade

Cuba celebrates Thursday a new victory in its struggle against the U.S. blockade, by achieving overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for a resolution approved by 185 votes in favor, two against and two abstentions

Author: Maby Martinez Rodriguez | informacion@granmai.cu

november 3, 2022 13:11:13

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Cuba celebrates Thursday a new victory in its struggle against the U.S. blockade, by achieving overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for a resolution approved by 185 votes in favor, two against and two abstentions.

The report presented for the thirtieth time states that only between August 2021 and February 2022 that unilateral policy caused Cuba losses in the order of 3,806.5 million dollars. The figure is 49% higher than that reported between January and July 2021 and a record in just seven months.

At current prices, the accumulated damages during six decades of the blockade amount to 150,410.8 million dollars, with a great weight on sectors such as health and education, in addition to the damage to the national economy and the quality of life of Cuban families.

In the first 14 months of the Biden Administration alone, the losses caused by the blockade amounted to 6,364 million dollars, which is equivalent to an impact of more than 454 million dollars a month and more than 15 million dollars a day, according to the document.

The extraterritorial impact of the blockade harms the sovereignty of the countries of the United Nations, sanctions their businessmen and impedes access to their ports for third party ships that dock in Cuba. It also prevents the importation into Cuba of articles produced in any country when they have 10% or more of U.S. components, the foreign minister denounced.

https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2022-11-03/o ... e-blockade

Cuba will present resolution condemning the blockade at UN today

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez will present this Thursday, during the 77th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the draft resolution on the need to put an end to the U.S. blockade against the Caribbean nation

Author: Radio Habana Cuba | internet@granma.cu

november 3, 2022 11:11:06

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Photo: Twitter

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez will present this Thursday, during the 77th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the draft resolution on the need to put an end to the U.S. blockade against the Caribbean nation.

The day before, representatives of the delegations were given the opportunity to present their arguments on their votes, where the support for Havana's position was overwhelming and evidenced the international isolation of the U.S. policy of applying sanctions to countries that do not conform to its model of democracy.

Recently, when presenting to the press the bill to be voted on, the Cuban Foreign Minister pointed out that only in the first 14 months of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, the damages caused to Cuba by the application of this policy amounted to six thousand 364 million dollars, at current prices.

The head of Cuban diplomacy stressed that the unilateral and fraudulent designation of Cuba as a State sponsor of terrorism reinforces the dissuasive and intimidating impact of this policy of economic asphyxiation.

This is the thirtieth time that the Cuban government has submitted a draft resolution of this type to the UNGA for consideration, which received almost unanimous support from the international community since the first time.

https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2022-11-03/c ... t-un-today

Our lives depend on it

Although the conditions are not in place for values to flourish as we would like them to, neither is it an option for indifference to prevail.

Author: Karima Oliva Bello | informacion@granmai.cu

november 3, 2022 11:11:17

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The Cuban Revolution built its own ethics around the values of truth, justice, equity and freedom. Photo: Ricardo López Hevia
The intellectual authors and executors of the economic terrorism against Cuba have used three methods.

The first, obviously, is of a practical nature: to eliminate the obstacles that arose in January 1959 so they can fully exert domination over our territory. The second one is of a symbolic nature: to demonstrate that socialism is unfeasible.

That a socialist economy manages to sustain itself is something they will always try to prevent, because it would disprove on the spot the propaganda they have been the main promoters of for decades as the foundation of their ideological hegemony: there is no alternative to capitalism.

The third method is subjective: to demoralize. To defeat those who support the political system in Cuba through fatigue, frustration and despair. And, above all, to destroy any notion of ethics, one of the strongest pillars that the Revolution has produced and on which it has always relied. It is difficult, in conditions of sustained economic precariousness, to maintain values. Our enemies know this.

When a group of people take advantage of situations of shortages to profit, diverting State resources for the purpose of individual enrichment, we are not only facing a fact with economic conditions and political, social and legal implications, but also an unethical behavior. Even though we cannot reduce the analysis to this, I would like to elaborate it.

When someone, faced with the illness of another person, does not see the possibility of supporting, but the opportunity to negotiate with medicines and services, offering them at any price, because they are at fault, there is an important violation of ethical principles that puts socialism in check.

The Cuban Revolution built its own ethics around the values of truth, justice, equity and freedom. This ethic was built on the behavior of its leaders, on the objective with which its organizations and institutions were founded, on the story that gave meaning to the construction of a new society and on the concrete political decisions that have been taken.

This ethic constituted a reference for generations gathered around the dream that a better society was possible, with the effort of all, in the most difficult circumstances, because it has never been easy.

Although the conditions are not in place for values to flourish as we would like them to, it is not an option for indifference to prevail. That would be a defeat. What is wrong can never cease to cause us bewilderment, indignation and pain.

Fidel spent hours explaining, with honesty and courage, the hardest problems that shook the world and the nation. He did so, among other things, out of an ethical commitment.

We cannot fail to address our contradictions, with all their conditioning factors, which are also political and not only technical, ideological, communicative or cultural.

The challenges we are experiencing as a nation are also ethical dilemmas. And we should never stop being on the alert in its face.

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-11-03/ou ... pend-on-it

A criminal law for a frustrated dream

The objective of the ill-named Cuban Democracy Act was to destroy the Revolution through two fundamental means: economic strangulation and support for political subversion.

Author: Manuel Valdés Cruz | internet@granma.cu

november 3, 2022 11:11:23

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Ships touching Cuban ports are not allowed to touch U.S. territory for 180 days. Photo: Julio Martínez Molina

Imperialism really believed those who had bet on socialism had no more reserves left. Euphoric for having blown up the socialist camp in Eastern Europe, it fixed its eyes on the thorn in its side in the Caribbean since January 1959.

It was the ideal moment to call for the surrender, the surrender of the ideals for which more than a generation of Cubans had fought for; all it needed was the final blow. That was how imperialism thought.

The northern country wanted to materialize it very enthusiastically by proposing at the U.S. Congress on October 23, 1992, an act that would supposedly provide "independence" to Cuba, just as the Platt Amendment “did” in 1901.

The main purpose of such law, known as the Cuban Democracy Act or the Torricelli Act, was to destroy the Revolution by employing two fundamental means: economic strangulation, by preventing trade with other countries, and support for political subversion within the island.

To this end, they established the prohibition of the right of subsidiary companies in third countries to trade with Cuban companies. It also prohibited ships that had been in ports of the archipelago from docking in U.S. ports for a period of 180 days.

According to their vision, they would maintain democracy by supporting mercenary groups inside Cuba, which were to represent civil society organizations, in which they would invest numerous resources to subvert the internal order of the country.

Both ways complement each other because they besiege and demonize any type of economic or financial relationship of the nation, in order to create an image of inefficiency of the attacked State.

In this context, the groups created and financed by agencies of the aggressor State would take advantage of to promote protests, sabotage and acts of vandalism. By promoting chaos, they would use the pretext of violation of human rights or lack of democracy, and they would have the international media and opinion to back their claims so the desired military intervention, the real objective of this law, would be approved. Any resemblance with the current reality is not just a coincidence.

The White House's legal atrocity disregarded the right of the Cuban State, replacing it with the category of people, a deliberate manipulation throughout the document. It is interfering, it makes an act of war such as the blockade international, an act that is typified as genocide in itself.

Furthermore, it disregards the economic, commercial and international law recognized in the founding documents of the United Nations.

Thirty years after its enactment, its content is part of other attempts with the same objective, such as the Helms Burton Act, Obama's "smart power," or the 243 measures Trump announced to intensify the blockade, a policy maintained by the Biden administration.

All of them have something in common: they are bound to fail because they do not understand that the Cuban Revolution is one of a kind.

"Our plan has been to teach us in our height, to squeeze us, to join together, to outwit him (the enemy), to finally make our homeland free," as Martí taught us. Truth and ethics are the basis of the Revolution and of the people's confidence in it, no matter how hard the trials may be.

The world knows it and, I the last 30 years, the UN General Assembly recognizes it as well.

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-11-03/a- ... ated-dream
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 30, 2022 2:42 pm

Cuba: Assessing 2022 and the prospects for 2023
December 30, 2022 Gustavo Maranges and Bill Hackwell

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Rescuers at the Saratoga Hotel tragedy. Photo: Bill Hackwell

This year has been a defining year for Cuba. Let’s say it has been like the litmus test after two years of pandemic and important domestic changes. The economic measures implemented in 2021 designed to improve economic conditions did not reach its expectations in 2022, which remains the main concern of the island’s population.

In the political and social sphere, there were also several challenges, including the update of the Family and Penal Codes, as well as the beginning of the electoral process of electing a new government in March 2023. All this took place amid a changing and convulsive international scenario, marked by skyrocketing inflation that hammered underdeveloped countries like Cuba.

Given this reality, what has been the balance for a country where many decisions can be questioned but never its capacity to reinvent itself and try again and again to move forward despite facing obstacles that, at first sight, always seem daunting.

The year began with the war in Ukraine, which heavily impacted Cuba despite the geographical distance. Russia is one of the island’s main trading partners, so the Western sanctions hindered this commercial exchange while contributing to a dramatic slowdown of tourism. of the main tourist market at the time.

On the other hand, the price of food and fuel on the international market skyrocketed. The speculation hidden behind the mask of the war persistently harms the Cuban economy since we import most of the food and fuel we consume, especially those used in car transportation and small-scale electricity generation. It added stress for an economy shattered by the pandemic and struggling with the most comprehensive, far-reaching sanctions regime ever known: the U.S. blockade.

As a result, several sectors of the economy had to reduce their production, leaving the country unable to cap the domestic demand. As a matter of course, the situation worsened when the national thermoelectric system began to collapse due to lack of maintenance. Hence, people had to face long and persistent power cuts that fostered social discontent.

Having to cope with these chronic economic adversities unleashed a concerning migratory flow. According to statistics, 2022 has been the highest in the last 40 years. The figures are alarming and will hurt Cuba in the medium and long run, but the dangerous departures of many are not necessarily a defection of their country but represent a level of desperation based on fatigue. The corporate media has tried to portray it in a political framework as the failure of Cuba, conveniently ignoring that the dramatic increase in the migratory flow is regional and international and not exclusive to Cuba or its socialist project. Much of this can be blamed on the neo-liberal model centered in the U.S. that dominates and squeezes everything out of the majority while a few become obscenely rich.

On top of this, Cuba was shocked in 2022 by three devastating events; the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel in Havana on May 6, the Matanzas supertanker explosion and fire on August 5, and Hurricane Ian, which swept Pinar del Rio Province for over 7 hours on September 27. Beyond the billions in economic losses, the most regrettable fact was the death of over 70 Cubans. While each one of these events was devastating, the response of the Cuban government and people was extraordinary and, with the solidarity of international friends, showed resilience and will to stand back up after each of these blows.

Those in Florida and Washington betting on destroying the socialist project have not wasted an opportunity to try and foster social chaos and economic breakdown.

Every hospital without medicines, the long lines to get basic stuff and food, every broken power plant, the enormous efforts to keep up the fuel and food supply, every life or death matter of ours was seen cynically as a window of opportunity for them. This goes beyond the limits of ideological differences to one of extreme inhumanity that festers inside the empire. How else could you describe such a policy that thrives off depriving others of the most elementary access to resources and normal commerce?

We can’t ignore the setbacks of the progressive forces in Latin America in 2022, but we cannot forget our hard-fought victories either, and they will persist over the designs of the United States and its faithful minions: the regional oligarchies because history is on our side.

The IX Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June of this year was a clear example of this. Only the coordinated action of several leaders, among them Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Mexico), Xiomara Castro (Honduras), Ralph Gonsalves (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), and other Caribbean nations, could prevent the silence and isolation the United States tried to impose on Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from even attending the dialogue.

In this sense, the electoral victories this year in Honduras, Colombia, and Brazil are an encouragement in the building of a strong leftist alliance in the region, which would help Cuba to overcome the obstacles imposed by the current international economic crisis.

While it is true that little good economic news has come to Cuba this year, the country took a big step forward, politically speaking. The enactment of the Family Code in October was a victory not just for the government but for millions of Cubans who saw many of their demands settled by the law. It is a revolutionary step towards true equality in every sense of the word.

In the same way, the Criminal Code was passed. It brought benefits like the expansion of inmates’ rights and accessory penalties, the recognition of crimes on social media, and the strengthening of sanctions against corruption and for those who get funds from foreign agents to commit crimes.

The electoral calendar began with the election of representatives to the local governments. The process was held amid a difficult situation and with relatively low levels of participation. However, beyond the questions this could raise about governmental management, it served as a process to calibrate the social mood and correct the governmental agenda.

It has not been an easy year, not for Cuba or the region, but an objective analysis leads us to a positive balance. Today, thanks to the sacrifice of thousands of Cuban workers and international aid, the thermoelectric network has recovered, and power cuts have disappeared. On the other hand, the tourism sector, one of the country’s main hard currency income sources, is slowly taking off despite the incessant discrediting campaigns against it.

In line with this trend, the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) and other financial institutions forecast a minimum GDP growth of 3.5% and a slowdown in inflation, which will remain the main economic problem. On the political front, the most important event will be the March elections to renew the parliament and the government. It will be another massive exercise of democracy whose results will decide the strategy in how to advance in the economic recovery and strengthening of the socialist system.

A favorable regional context, such as the present one, can only help Cuba. The current correlation of forces inspires hope, especially after the results obtained in the summits of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Community of Caribbean States, and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP). No one can say what the future holds, but the only sure thing is the Cubans’ determined will to move forward.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – U.S.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... -for-2023/

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2023 will be a year of struggle and hopes

Speech delivered by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People's Power, on the occasion of the 18th anniversary of the founding of ALBA-TCP, at the Havana Convention Center, on December 14, 2022, "Year 64 of the Revolution".

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu

december 21, 2022 09:12:53

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Photo: José Manuel Correa
(Shorthand Versions - Presidency of the Republic)

Dear Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution;

Dear Comrade Esteban Lazo Hernández, President of the National Assembly of People's Power;

Dear brothers Nicolás Maduro Moros, Commander Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Luis Arce Catacora, leaders of the heroic resistance of Our America;

Dear Prime Ministers Ralph Gonsalves and Dickon Mitchell, I am very pleased that you are here just a few days after you gave us unforgettable stays in your countries;

Dear Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, our most sincere congratulations on your victory in the general elections held last December 6 (Applause);

Caribbean brothers;

Heads of Delegations to the 22nd ALBA-TCP Summit:

An embrace to all of you.

I believe I reflect the feelings of the deputies of our National Assembly of the People's Power, who feel honored by your presence (Applause).

We appreciate your words of recognition to the legacy of Commanders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and also the words dedicated to our Revolution and our people (Applause).

There is no doubt that Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz and Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías were visiting the future when agreed on creating ALBA.

Fidel and Chávez united us in ALBA. They united us in a true alliance of solidarity.

Eighteen years after its foundation, the Alliance not only proves its necessity, but also its value as an integration mechanism by uniting wills around solidarity, complementarity and cooperation.

Its projects of popular benefit, the historic Milagro and Yo sí puedo missions, works of profound human significance, unprecedented in the region, restored the eyesight and taught millions of inhabitants in Our America to read and write.

On several occasions and because I am convinced of it, I have always recognized that, of all the blocs that exist in the world, ALBA was the regional integration bloc that most quickly showed concrete results of benefits for its peoples.

This anniversary comes at a time when Latin America and the Caribbean are facing a new crossroads for their destinies, which cannot be faced without cooperation and unity.

The region most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be the most unequal; it suffers the effects of the unjust international economic order and even the onslaught of the grave situation created in another continent.

Transnational corporations have not ceased to plunder the region's resources and increase their profit margins, while energy and food prices have risen. Inflation has risen and in several countries reached the highest levels in recent years. Access to financial resources has become more difficult and costly. The strain on budgets has increased and the overwhelming pressure of external debt continues.

In this context, there has been an advance of political forces that intend to implement policies aimed at the social development and integration of our countries.

This advance is the result of social and popular struggles to satisfy citizens' demands for deep and urgent transformations of the previous policies that led large masses of people to uncertainty.

Alarmed by this advance, imperialism and its allies have accelerated the harassment of leftist candidates, they lead and encourage politically motivated judicial processes against them, such as the one carried out against the Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez, to whom we send a strong embrace and all our support (Applause).

Imperialism and the oligarchies permanently resort to disinformation and manipulation of the Latin American and Caribbean reality through the traditional media and the digital networks under their control.

Without hiding, these oligarchies group together to support politicians and candidates with fascist-oriented programs and express their will to prevent the electoral triumph of the left at all costs. To this end, they also resort to the crude intimidation of sympathizers and voters of leftist and progressive parties.

While the region is returning to the paths of social justice and integration, the United States is reactivating the Monroe Doctrine, which is about to celebrate 200 years since its proclamation. Its postulates, which have served to justify invasions, coups d'état and economic pressures on countries during various periods, now seek to limit sovereignty and, as usual, impose dominion over our destinies.

These realities make it all the more necessary to promote integration and cooperation, an endeavor in which the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) plays a key role by being a successful forum for concerted action. So, safeguarding and strengthening that legacy is our duty and must also be our vigilance.

Dear brothers and sisters:

This year, Cuba received the support of 185 countries in its struggle against the criminal blockade imposed on the Cuban people by the Government of the United States for more than 60 years. Likewise, the call for Cuba to be excluded from the arbitrary U.S. list of State sponsors of terrorism is growing. We deeply appreciate these positions.

We reiterate once again our most resolute support for President Nicolás Maduro Moros and the civil-military union he leads. We welcome with jubilation the progress made by the Bolivarian and Chavista government in favor of returning to Venezuela the financial and economic resources that have been usurped. The perseverance, dignity and courage of the Venezuelan people in the face of the continuous attacks against them will go down in history as another example that it is possible to overcome challenges and obstacles (Applause).

We strongly reject the attacks and unilateral coercive measures adopted against sister Nicaragua and we convey our support to Commander President Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Applause).

We reaffirm our solidarity and fraternal support to the Plurinational State of Bolivia and to brother President Luis Arce, who has had to face destabilizing attempts of the fascist opposition. Bolivia is not alone, brother Lucho! (Applause.)

Once again we reiterate our support to you, our Caribbean brothers, in your right to receive a fair, special and differentiated treatment, essential to face the growing challenges derived from natural disasters, the unjust prevailing international financial system and the new and difficult conditions generated as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not forget, because we also suffer from it, that the Caribbean suffers the effects of climate change like no other region.

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

We welcome the progress recorded by ALBA-TCP, for whose development we must do our utmost in 2023, to achieve the goals we set for ourselves in the economic, trade and in the promotion of collaboration in areas of strategic importance.

Our countries have much to share in the construction of a mutually beneficial economic and social path.

Let us continue to unite political wills to go beyond the declarative sphere and carry out projects with realism and determination, as the unforgettable leaders of our lands did before they were even named.

The year 2023 will be a year of struggle and hope. It is up to us to make it a year of progress and victories. We will be able to achieve it with the tenacity, perseverance and natural creativity of our unique and resilient peoples.

For these 18 years of alliance and integration in solidarity; for Fidel and Chávez; for the founding fathers of Latin America and the Caribbean, let us work for a more united ALBA! An ALBA of solidarity! An ALBA of dignity!

Onwards til victory! (Exclamations of: "Onwards!" and of: "Long live the Revolution!", "Long live Raúl!", "Long live Fidel", "Long live Chávez!" and "Long live ALBA-TCP!")

(Ovation.)

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-12-21/20 ... -and-hopes
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 27, 2023 4:14 pm

US Funds ‘Independent Journalists’ in Cuba To Spread Propaganda, Ex CIA Spy Admits
JANUARY 26, 2023

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Revolution Square Cuba. File photo.

Former CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong told The Guardian that, in Cuba, “a lot of the so-called independent journalists are indirectly funded by the US”. They spread anti-government disinformation with the support of the NED.

A former top CIA spy has admitted that the United States funds anti-government propagandists in Cuba who portray themselves as “independent journalists”.

Major British newspaper The Guardian spoke with CIA veteran Fulton Armstrong, whom it described as “the US intelligence community’s most senior analyst for Latin America from 2000 to 2004”.

Armstrong stated that, in Cuba, “a lot of the so-called independent journalists are indirectly funded by the US”.

The ex CIA analyst pointed out that, today, the Joe Biden administration bankrolls anti-government opposition forces in Cuba with at least $20 million in annual support for supposed “democracy promotion” activities.

The Guardian acknowledged that the CIA has a history of spreading disinformation inside Cuba, as part of a US information war aimed at destabilizing the revolutionary government. The newspaper wrote:

Financing media has long been part of Washington’s diplomatic toolkit.

In the 1960s in Cuba, Radio Swan, a CIA covert action programme, attempted not only a propaganda offensive to undermine support for Fidel Castro, but doubled up as a communication link, sending coded messages to paramilitaries during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

A decade ago it emerged that the US government had paid contractors to create ZunZuneo, a social network built on texts, to organize “smart mobs” on the island. And during historic, largely spontaneous anti-government protests on the island in 2021, externally funded, externally directed bots made anti-government hashtags trend on Twitter.


Still today, Washington funds another prominent Spanish-language, anti-Cuba disinformation outlet called Radio y Televisión Martí, which is part of the government’s propaganda arm the US Agency for Global Media (formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors).

Armstrong, the former CIA agent, explained to The Guardian the US destabilization strategy in financing opposition media outlets in foreign countries like Cuba:

US programs are designed with a win-win strategy. We win if the opposition media gain a foothold, and we win if they provoke government repression.

That thrusts the government into a dilemma – to let the organizing and funding go forward or to risk image and credibility by crushing it.


In addition to spying for the CIA, Armstrong worked for the State Department’s US Interests Section in Cuba (a diplomatic office located inside Switzerland’s embassy in Havana).

Armstrong served as the US “National Intelligence Officer for Latin America”, the intelligence community’s top analyst focused on the region. He also oversaw Latin America for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Guardian – which is itself closely linked to and collaborates with the UK’s intelligence services – portrayed the Cuban government as repressive for cracking down on foreign-funded disinformation agents.

The British newspaper gloated over the large revenue streams that anti-government media outlets in Cuba have, writing, “Tiny state salaries have also been unable to compete with the private sector”.

While The Guardian praised two right-wing Cuban opposition media outlets, called El Toque and El Estornudo, it admitted that both are bankrolled by the US government.

El Toque disclosed to The Guardian that “it has received US federal funds ‘indirectly’ as part of a mix of money from corporations and foundations”.

El Estornudo is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a notorious instrument of US regime-change operations that has meddled in the internal politics of countries all around the world.

A co-founder of the NED, Allen Weinstein, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA“.

The NED reported that it gave El Estornudo $180,000 in 2021 – a huge sum of money in any Latin American country, but especially in Cuba, which has trouble getting access to dollars due to Washington’s illegal, six-decade blockade against it.

NED el estornudo Cuba funding

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In a 1977 report titled “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.“, the New York Times admitted that the CIA had established a media outlet in the early 1960s called Free Cuba Radio, whose “propaganda broadcasts against the Government of Prime Minister Fidel Castro were carried over radio stations” in various cities inside the US and in the Caribbean.

The prominent newspaper explained:

One motive for establishing the Free Cuba radio network, a former C.I.A. official said he recalled, was to have periods of air time available in advance in case Radio Swan, meant to be the main communications link for the Bay of Pigs invasion, was destroyed by saboteurs.

Radio Swan’s cover was thin enough to warrant such concern. The powerful station, whose broadcasts could be heard over much of the Western Hemisphere, was operated by a steamship company in New York that had not owned a steamship for some time.


US funds opposition media propaganda in Venezuela and Nicaragua

The United States has used the same tactics to try to destabilize the leftist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The NED has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding right-wing opposition media outlets and so-called “civil society organizations” in Venezuela.

Many of these groups have been complicit in violence and participated in coup attempts against democratically elected Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

In Nicaragua in the 1980s, the CIA supported far-right death squads known as the Contras (short for “Counterrevolutionaries”), who burned down schools and hospitals and waged a campaign of terror to try to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government.

A key part of the US hybrid war on Nicaragua in the 1980s, and still today, included the dissemination of disinformation through NED-funded newspapers like La Prensa, which is owned by the Central American nation’s most powerful right-wing oligarch family, the Chamorro dynasty.

After the Sandinista Front returned to power in 2007, through democratic elections, the US again began pouring millions of dollars into opposition media outlets in Nicaragua.

During a bloody coup attempt in 2018, US-funded Nicaraguan opposition media outlets spread extreme propaganda and fake news, openly inciting violence and encouraging people to murder President Daniel Ortega and hang his body in public.

https://orinocotribune.com/us-funds-ind ... py-admits/

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Cuba's reasons in London, before a vulture fund

Since January 23, the High Court of England and Wales, based in London, United Kingdom, has been hearing the lawsuit filed by CRF I Limited (CRF), an entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands, against the Banco Nacional de Cuba (BNC) and the Republic of Cuba (Cuba). The plaintiff claims to be the holder of two financial instruments of Cuban public debt contracted in 1984.

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu

january 26, 2023 09:01:02

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Facade of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, where the High Court of England and Wales is located. Photo: AFP

Since January 23, the High Court of England and Wales, based in London, United Kingdom, has been hearing the lawsuit filed by CRF I Limited (CRF), an entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands, against the Banco Nacional de Cuba (BNC) and the Republic of Cuba (Cuba). The plaintiff claims to be the holder of two financial instruments of Cuban public debt contracted in 1984. The BNC and Cuba argue that, in fact, CRF has never been its creditor, nor is it at this time.

What are the public debts that are the subject of the lawsuit, and at what time were they acquired?

During the 1970s and 1980s Cuba borrowed from sovereign states and commercial lenders. At that time, the BNC was the Central Bank and, in the exercise of its Central Banking functions, it subscribed in 1984 the two public debt financial instruments that are the subject of the lawsuit. In both cases, the BNC acted as borrower, while the lenders were, in one case, Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland NV and, in the other, Instituto Bancario Italiano.

2.-Did the contracts signed by the BNC comply with Cuban law and international standards?

Yes, both financial instruments complied with Cuban law and international standards for this type of business. In them it was agreed, among other aspects, that if the lenders intended to assign their rights as creditors of these public debts, they had to inform the BNC and Cuba, and obtain their consent. Without the approval of the BNC and Cuba, such assignment has no legal validity.

3.-Is the claimant before the English court the original creditor?

No. The plaintiff CRF is not the original creditor of these instruments, and has never been a creditor of the BNC or Cuba.

4.-Who is suing BNC and Cuba?

CRF, a vulture fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. Vulture funds are dedicated to buying at low cost the debt of a certain country, through any mechanism, even through illegal acts. This behavior of vulture funds produces harmful effects both for the State in question and for international economic relations.

Why do the BNC and Cuba not recognize CRF as a legitimate creditor?

For three fundamental reasons. First: because being a vulture fund, it would not have been accepted in any case as a creditor. Second: because they resorted to illegal mechanisms to present themselves as creditors. Third: because the illegal mechanisms used involved serious irregularities committed by BNC officials, in violation of the law.

6.-What violations were committed during the alleged process of assignment of the public debt to CRF?

Representatives of the vulture fund proposed to a BNC official to violate the procedures regulated by Cuban law for the approval of the assignment of a public debt. As a result of this proposal, this official knowingly acted contrary to the law, for which he was criminally sanctioned. The document for the alleged assignment, issued by that official, did not comply with the legal requirements established in the agreements subject to English law, as well as in the internal rules of the BNC and Cuban law, for which reason it is null and void.

7.-Who will represent BNC and Cuba in the trial?

A team of English lawyers of recognized prestige, assisted by lawyers from an important Spanish law firm, together with Cuban lawyers of proven professional solidity, and representatives of organizations that have responsibilities in the management of the Cuban public debt.

8.-What has been submitted to the decision of the English court in this trial?

It is a declination of jurisdiction. The Court will determine whether or not CRF is a legitimate creditor of the BNC and Cuba, and therefore, whether or not the English jurisdiction is competent to hear the claim. The trial will concentrate only on this procedural aspect.

Does the possible decision of the English court at this time affect the Cuban economy?

No, this is a procedural question of jurisdiction, so in no case will the financial amounts of the debt be discussed in this hearing. Therefore, whatever the court's decision may be, the finances of the BNC and of Cuba are not compromised in this decision.

10.-What is the position of BNC and Cuba on the payment of their debts and relations with their legitimate creditors?

Both the BNC and Cuba have never disregarded the debts contracted, as long as they are valid, legal, current, enforceable and binding. It has always been in the interest of negotiating with those entities that are legitimate creditors.

Translated by ESTI

Cuba will defend the interests of the South in pro tempore presidency of G77 + China

Cuba takes over the pro tempore presidency of the G77 + China, the largest and most diverse concerted group in the multilateral arena with 134 member states representing:

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu

january 27, 2023 08:01:39

Two thirds of the Member States of the United Nations.



80% of the world's population



This is the first time that Cuba will chair this negotiating group.



PERMANENT HEADQUARTERS

New York

Paris

Rome

Geneva

Vienna



OBJECTIVES

A mechanism to coordinate the positions of underdeveloped countries with a view to their participation in economic events.



To unite the dispossessed and give them a voice to fight against an unjust, plundering, excluding and unsustainable international order.



ISSUES ADDRESSED

Climate change

Poverty

Unemployment

Food insecurity

Unilateral coercive economic measures

Reform of trade and international financial institutions

Escalation of geopolitical tensions and forms of domination and hegemony.



PURPOSES OF THE ARCHIPELAGO AT THE HEAD OF THE CONCLAVE

- To promote with concrete actions the aspirations set out in the 2030 Agenda.

- To promote international solidarity and cooperation in support of post-pandemic recovery for the developing world.

- Make South-South and Triangular cooperation a more effective instrument for the countries of the South.

- Enforce the responsibilities of industrialized countries to support development efforts through North-South cooperation.

- Promote universal access to quality education and health.

- Support the rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open and inclusive multilateral trading system based on the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries.

- Advance the common positions of developing countries, preserve and consolidate the unity of the Group and make its voice heard in the multiple and relevant multilateral processes to be held in 2023.



G-77 SUMMIT MOMENTS

1963. The movement is created in New York during the First UN Conference on Trade and Development.

1966. Seventy-five countries sign the first document: the Joint Declaration of the Developing Countries.

1967. The First Ministerial Meeting is held in Algiers. The Charter of Algiers, with demands for developing countries, was approved in preparation for the Second Conference.

1968. The II UN Conference on Trade and Development is held in New Delhi, India.

1971. The II Ministerial Meeting is held in Lima, Peru. The Lima Program of Action is approved. Cuba joins after the Santiago de Chile meeting, in which Salvador Allende participated.

1972. The III UN Conference on Trade and Development is held in Santiago, Chile. First participation of Cuba.

1975. The III Ministerial Meeting of the G77 was held in Manila, Philippines. Approval of the Manila Declaration.

1979. The IV UN Conference on Trade and Development is held in Arusha, Tanzania. The Agenda for Collective Self-Reliance and Framework for Negotiations was initialed.

1981. The Caracas Program of Action on Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries emerges in Venezuela.

1982. The Ministerial Declaration on the Global System of Trade Preferences among Developing Countries (GSTP) is issued.

1985. The Declaration on the Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) is published, New Delhi, India.

1987. The VI Ministerial Meeting of the G77 is held in Havana. Fidel Castro participates and delivers a speech at the inaugural session.

1989. The Declaration of Caracas, Venezuela, is approved on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the organization.

1990. Havana hosts the meeting of the G-77 Chambers of Commerce, which promotes the incorporation of businessmen to South-South cooperation.

1994. The Ministerial Declaration on An Agenda for Development is signed, New York, USA.

1998. The Bali Declaration and Plan of Action emerge, referring to the High-Level Meeting on Regional and Subregional Economic Integration.

2000. Cuba chairs the G-77 at FAO. In addition, the First and Second South Summits were held in Havana, where a Declaration and a Program of Action were approved. It was repeated again in 2005, in Doha, Qatar.

2001. The Declaration of the Group of 77 plus China on the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO is adopted in Doha, Qatar.

2002. Venezuela presides the G-77, with Hugo Chávez as representative.

2005. They disseminate the Declaration in preparation for the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference, in Hong Kong, China.

2014. The G-77 Summit was held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The blockade imposed by the US against Cuba was rejected and support was given to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The Declaration for a New World Order to Live Well was also signed, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Group of 77.

The 46th Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 plus China is held in New York. Cuba is elected, by acclamation, as Chairman for 2023. It receives the chairmanship today from Pakistan.

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2023-01-27/cu ... -g77-china

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Cuban leader Mariela Castro Espín on ‘progressive conquest of new rights’
January 26, 2023 Mariela Castro Espín

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Mariela Castro Espín at Cuba’s annual March Against Homophobia and Transphobia in 2017.

Video message from Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and deputy of the National Assembly of Popular Power, to the webinar “What We Can Learn from Cuba’s ‘Code of Freedom’ for Families,” hosted by Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha on Jan. 22.

Greetings to all. I am Mariela Castro.

There are two main milestones in the Cuban Revolution regarding family law. One was the Family Code approved in 1975, which also went through a process of popular consultation and was taken to a referendum.

This code allowed for instituting important values that are being promoted in Cuban society for equal rights between men and women, especially in family life, in the equitable distribution of educational tasks and household chores, to begin to erode that patriarchal heritage of the sexual division of labor.

That code played a very important role and was considered one of the most advanced in the world at that time. Still a heteropatriarchal code, in some aspects, and hetero-normative specifically, yet not much more could be asked of Cuban society at that stage.

Education and scientific development, especially in the field of legal and social sciences and humanities, led to strengthening of Cuban culture regarding the family and family law. Progress was made regarding the rights of women.

All of this is reflected at a statistical level, as Cuba ranks second in the world for women parliamentarians: 53% of the Cuban parliament consists of women. There is an increasing presence of women in the National Assembly of Popular Power at leadership levels. Cuban women predominate in the sciences and there are several sectors of Cuban society at a professional level where the presence of women is increasingly greater.

In Cuba there is respect for women, but the society is still patriarchal. Although the patriarchy has been eroded and weakened by the advances of our Revolution, there is significant resistance. That creates challenges after 47 years of the Family Code and all the new elements that were incorporated from the laws in which Cuba was subscribed and committed to as a state in international law.

Regarding human rights, in our Revolution it was necessary to update the code, but according to the country’s economic and social development strategy, with the participation of the people: their opinions, criticisms and proposals.

The next step was the constitutional reform, which was a substantial reform approved in April 2019, also submitted to a specialized consultation with the people and a referendum with a very high participation. Some 87% of the population approved that constitution, in which the rights of LGBTQ people were secured.

Thus, important routes were opened, for example, for what is called egalitarian marriage, but also for strengthening the protection of sexual and reproductive health, sexual and reproductive rights, and the rights of grandparents.



‘Heart, intelligence and wisdom of our people’

There are many other elements of the 2022 Families Code that others will explain to you and you will be able to read this valuable document that some consider to be the most advanced in the world, that is, international experts consider it to be so.

But this code, like the constitution, was written with the heart, intelligence and wisdom of our people. And so this is also called the heartfelt code, because the bonds of affection are given precedence over the straitjacket of biological bonds.

This is truly very significant, despite the opposition of some religious groups and particularly the Catholic Church, to prevent the advances of the Revolution in the progressive conquest of new rights. This has truly been achieved with the participation of our people in reaching a widely accepted code, although it was the first in which there were 33% negative votes.

But that’s fine. It shows the resistance that still exists regarding these issues and all the challenges that they generate for us to continue transforming awareness that will allow us to create an active citizenry regarding the need for social and subjective transformations, for achieving an increasingly just and equitable society. The transition to socialism is complex and individual awareness is always in the rearguard.

Our people have approved a constitution and a very advanced family code, within the context of a socialist society of rights and social justice, and I am very satisfied with the result.

I also feel the responsibility that we still have to continue advancing to educate and constantly communicate all the science-based analytical elements for monitoring and evaluating the application of this new legislation in family law.

I thank you very much for your interest in this issue and I invite you to read this valuable document that has been the result of building consensus for more than 40 years, the 47 years that the previous code lasted. This is the importance to our society: We are advancing by becoming more aware and moving towards a much more conscientious culture regarding the issues that this code deals with.

Thank you very much for your interest and a warm greeting until we meet again.

Full text of the 2022 Families Code (in Spanish)

Comprehensive summary (in English)https://walterlippmann.com/cuban-famili ... 2-summary/

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... ew-rights/

End the U.S. economic war against the Cuban people!
January 26, 2023 Cheryl LaBash

Image
Graphic: National Network On Cuba

Talk given by Cheryl LaBash, co-chair of the National Network On Cuba (NNOC), at the webinar “What We Can Learn from Cuba’s ‘Code of Freedom’ for Families,” hosted by Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha on Jan. 22.

Sixty years is a long time. But that is how long the United States government, led by both Democrats and Republicans, has waged an economic, financial and commercial war against the Cuban people.

Even before that, the Eisenhower administration recognized that Fidel and the July 26th Movement – Raul, Che, Almeda, Camilo, Vilma, Haydee, Celia, Melba and so many more – would stay true to their promise: liberation, equality and sovereignty for all the Cuban people.

An April 6, 1960, State Department memo admitted the fact that the Cuban people supported the revolution. So it prescribed the path taken by the U.S. from then until today:

“Every possible means should be undertaken to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” the memo states. “If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.”

Although the goal didn’t change, the tactic did. On Dec. 17, 2014, President Obama and President Raul Castro agreed to begin a different road. President Obama even visited Cuba – and as a result many people wrongly believe the blockade ended then. Some things were eased, but behind it all, the coercive economic measures continued.

Then, in June 2017, President Trump declared he would return to the failed direction outlined by the State Department in 1960.

And then came the pandemic. Cuba had to close its main source of hard currency – tourism – and used its reserves to save lives, develop five COVID vaccines (three now in emergency use) and send its famous Henry Reeve Brigades to countries needing help against the pandemic.

U.S. uses pandemic as weapon

The United States saw its opportunity to use the pandemic as a weapon. Some 243 new measures were implemented to block any financial possibilities for Cuba. Surely the Cuban people would be desperate enough to embrace capitalist landlords, bankers and bosses.

Then as a parting shot, after the 2020 Biden election, Cuba was again declared a “State Sponsor of Terrorism.” Certainly an insult as well as an injury to Cuba.

Although President Biden has been in office two years, he has done virtually nothing to lift the pressure on the Cuban people. The SSOT can be lifted with a letter from Biden!

Instead, we have been inundated with propaganda about “human rights” to justify turning back the changes made by the Obama administration in 2014-2015.

There is no alternative truth. Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism, but has been targeted by terrorist acts organized and financed in the U.S. The intensified blockade has hurt Cuban families on both sides of the Florida straits. For three years, Cubans in Miami have said “end the blockade” in the streets every month.

And it hurts farmers, workers and ordinary people in the U.S., too. Cuba has developed medical treatments that make 70% of diabetic amputations unnecessary, and a lung cancer vaccine that prolongs the quality of life of patients.

Guess what? The U.S. categories of “legal” travel to Cuba do not include medical treatment. It’s the only country in the world where U.S. travelers need to declare a U.S. government designated category.

Elected bodies representing more than 44 million residents from California to Connecticut, from Montana to Michigan to Alabama, have called for the blockade to end, including city councils and labor organizations, school boards and county commissions. Find out how to get local resolutions where you live.

The last weekend of every month, caravans are held to end the blockade in Miami and cities across the U.S. and around the world. Make a sign with hashtag #UnblockCuba and #OFFtheList.

Participate in the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference March 11-12 or the May Day Brigade.

Stay in touch with the National Network On Cuba on social media. Web: NNOC.org; Facebook.com/CubaNetwork; Instagram: NationalNetwork4Cuba; Twitter: @NNOCuba.

Sixty years is too long. This campaign needs you to act now.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... an-people/
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:36 pm

What’s Driving ‘Irregular’ Cuban Emigration to the United States?
FEBRUARY 24, 2023

Image
Cubans raising their flag in a rally. Photo: Ricardo IV Tamayo.

By Helen Yaffe – Feb 2, 2023

In 2022, an unprecedented number of Cubans arrived in the United States through irregular, or ‘illegal’ channels. Historically the United States has encouraged and weaponised Cuban emigration. Cuban migrants fuel US propaganda about the failure of socialism and about political persecution and the lack of freedom and human rights on the island. However, it is an issue which can spiral out of control, forcing US administrations into dialogue with the Cuban government in the past. The current surge is creating political problems for President Biden as his opponents exploit the issue for electoral gain. As a result, in January 2023 the administration introduced legislation that it hopes will halt the wave of ‘illegal’ Cuban entrants and that threatens to undermine the blanket privileges granted to Cubans in the United States. However, until the United States alleviates the punishing blockade that is suffocating the Cuban people, economic hardship will continue to drive Cuban emigration. The United States’ policy towards Cuban migrants is characterised by paradox and contradictions.

In 2022, over 313,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, most of them without visas and entering from Mexico. This is more than double the previous peak of Cuban migration during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. They were admitted after claiming asylum. However, these are economic migrants. Once settled, like many of the Cubans who preceded them, most will return to the island when possible to visit their families without the slightest fear of retribution from Cuban authorities.

Pull factors: Cubans are drawn to the United States by the unique privileges that Cuban migrants receive there; one year and one day after arrival, Cubans can petition for permanent residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, whether they arrived legally or not and without needing to claim asylum or refugee status. Although formally discretionary, permanent residence is systematically granted. Cubans are the only nationals to receive this privilege in the United States. They resort to irregular channels and long, complicated journeys because from 2017 to 2022 legal channels for Cubans to travel to the United States for any reason or duration (study, work, family reunification, or residence) were effectively closed. In November 2021, the Nicaraguan government removed the visa requirement for Cuban travellers. This gave Cubans an alternative route: instead of risking the perilous Florida Straits seaborne, they could fly to Nicaragua and risk the journey north through Central America and Mexico, treading the same path as millions of Latin Americans en route to the United States. In the last fiscal year, more than two million people were arrested trying to cross into the United States, a 24% increase on the previous year. For many, the journey subjects them to human traffickers and criminal gangs who make a lucrative trade from migrant desperation.

Push factors: Those Cubans leave behind an economy in crisis as a result of suffocating US sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic. The resulting scarcities and shortages of food, fuel, medicines, have made daily life exhausting. Economic problems have been compounded by inflation, following currency reunification and global prices rises. Even the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged these factors in a 9 January 2023 report on high and rising numbers of Cubans encountered at the Southwest border and interdicted at sea: ‘Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in decades due to the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, high food prices, and economic sanctions’.[1]

Between 2017 and 2021, the Trump administration pursued a ‘maximum pressure’ strategy against Cuba, introducing 243 new sanctions, actions and coercive measures. Among those contributing to the rise in irregular emigration are:

• Withdrawal of US consular services in Cuba in 2017. This ripped up previous Migration Accords under which the United States committed to issue 20,000 visas annually to Cubans for travel to the United States and suspended the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Programme, cruelly wrenching families apart. Cubans applying for visas were instructed to travel overseas to do so, with no guarantee of success.

• Eliminating legal channels for Cubans in the United States to send remittances to their families back home, to support them through the pandemic and to cope with rising prices. Cash remittances are estimated to have fallen by nearly $1.8 billion from 2019 to 2021. Individuals’ consumption fell and national revenue was hard hit. Complicated and costly alternative channels had to found for sending cash.

• Returning Cuba to the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, obligating international banks and financial institutions to categorise Cuba as ‘high risk’, placing it on their list of sanctioned countries, for which all transactions are avoided whether by individuals, businesses or the Cuban government, and regardless of their character; payment for goods and services, remittances or donations.

In 2020 and 2021, Cuba’s GDP plummeted 13%. Unlike most countries, because the United States blocks Cuba’s access to international financial institutions, Cuba has no lender of last resort to help it through economic crises.

President Biden left these suffocating measures in place, adding sanctions of his own in response to the 11 July 2021 protests in Cuba. In May 2022, Biden announced small steps would be taken to loosen Trump-era restrictions. Flights and travel from the United States were permitted to increase. The Cuban Family Reunification Parole Programme resumed from August 2022, after a five year suspension, and consular services in Havana were reopened from 3 January 2023. Restrictions on remittance amounts were lifted, but the Cuban financial institution which processed the cash transfers remained prohibited, so sending remittances remained complicated and costly in 2022.

The Cuban Adjustment Act and the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 applies to any Cuban inspected and admitted or ‘paroled’ into the United States after 1 January 1959. Initially the Act gave Cubans the right to request permanent residence after two years, but an amendment in 1976 reduced this to one year. Historically, those caught entering the United States without a visa were released by the DHS under ‘parole’ and instructed to turn up to a subsequent court hearing, which could take longer than their wait for permanent residency. Until the mid-1990s, Cubans only had to reach United States territorial waters to be eligible. This changed after the ‘rafters’ crisis’ of the early 1990s when, driven by the severe economic crisis following the collapse of the socialist bloc, known as the Special Period, tens of thousands of Cubans set out to cross the Florida Straits on rafts. In 1994, the US administration under President Clinton panicked about the influx of up to 45,000 Cuban rafters and entered talks with the Cuban government in which it was agreed that US authorities would stop admitting Cubans intercepted in US waters. From 1995, Cubans caught at sea by US coastguards (with ‘wet feet’) were sent back to Cuba or a third country, while those reaching the shore (with ‘dry feet’) could enter and be given parole.

In 2017, to disincentivise irregular Cuban immigration, President Obama eliminated the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy and instructed the DHS not to issue parole to Cubans entering illegally. Without parole, they should be disqualified from the Cuban Adjustment Act. Cuban-American immigration lawyer, José Pertierra, explains that the DHS simply changed the name of the mechanism used to release undocumented Cubans, from ‘parole’ to an ‘Order for Release on Recognizance’ (ORR). Then in 2021 an immigration judge in Miami effectively ruled that the ORR is parole by another name. This interpretation was followed by many immigration judges who continued to grant residency (under the Cuban Adjustment Act) to Cubans holding an ORR; the ‘wet foot/dry foot policy’ was back. This spurred irregular migration because, as Pertierra explains, Cubans entering the US border from Mexico knew, ‘that just by stepping on US soil they would receive permanent residence in the United States, even without having to seek asylum or claim persecution in their home country. Cubans continued to enjoy the privilege that US immigration laws have given them for decades.’[2]

Undermining Cuban ‘privilege’ through Title 42
On 9 January 2023, the Biden administration announced that a pandemic-related immigration policy introduced under Trump, Title 42, would be extended to send ‘illegal’ immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti caught crossing the US-Mexico border back to Mexico. Title 42 was initially introduced in March 2020 allowing border police to rapidly expel migrants, even those seeking asylum, on the pretext of slowing the spread of Covid-19 through detention centres. Biden had committed to eliminating Title 42 but has been blocked pending a ruling by the Supreme Court. In October 2022, his government began using Title 42 to expel Venezuelans from the United States. It simultaneously announced that 24,000 visas would be allocated annually to Venezuelans who apply online from outside the United States and have a US-based sponsor. There has apparently been a 90% reduction in Venezuelans arriving undocumented at the US border since then.

From 9 January 2023, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans were included in the scheme. If Cubans caught at the US-Mexico border, or in the United States without documents, are expelled to Mexico, they will not be eligible for residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. This ruling will likely face legal challenges on the basis of asylum laws. However, Biden announced that the government is preparing another regulation that disqualifies for asylum anyone who, en route to the United States, passes through a third country and does not apply for asylum there. ‘In other words, they want to close the border to Cubans trying to cross illegally’, concludes Pertierra. Trump’s efforts to pass similar legislation were blocked by federal courts. Although Title 42 cannot be applied retrospectively to recent Cuban immigrants, the courts could apply a strict interpretation of ‘parole’ and exclude them from the Cuban Adjustment Act. Their alternative would be to pursue an asylum claim but that requires evidence of fear of persecution, which will be hard for most Cubans to provide, even to biased US courts.

The Biden administration also announced that 30,000 visas will be granted every month to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who apply from outside the United States, have a US-based sponsor and undergo a rigorous background check. Citizens from those countries who cross irregularly will not be eligible for the US parole process and will be liable to expulsion to Mexico.

Small steps
On 3 January 2023, the US consulate in Havana finally resumed processing visas for Cubans. The online system for managed migration is operating and the first travel authorisations being processed. On 11 January, the US money transfer company, Western Union, announced that it had resumed sending remittances from the United States to Cuba on a limited basis. In the first three weeks of January, over 1,000 Cubans intercepted at sea en route to the United States were deported to Cuba. On 18 and 19 January, US and Cuban officials met in Havana for bilateral talks on law enforcement (terrorism, migrant smuggling, and immigration fraud); it was the first talks on these issue since 2018 and the third high-level meeting between the US and Cuban governments in less than a year. On 25 January, the DHS announced that unlawful crossings at the Southwest border by Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans had declined 97% compared to the previous month; the seven-day average had fallen from 3,367 per day on 11 December 2022 to 115 on 24 January 2023

Ending the US blockade of Cuba
‘The magnet that attracts immigrants historically has always been the economy’ points out Pertierra. ‘To get out of poverty, people are willing to scale steel walls and legal hurdles. Washington knows this and that is why it is investing $3.2 billon dollars to strengthen the economic infrastructure of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.’ While irregular immigration to the United States of nationals from those countries has declined, it has soared from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, countries being strangled by US sanctions. Pertierra is in no doubt, ‘when the Cuban economic situation improves, the illegal immigration of Cubans will decrease enormously. We’ve seen it before.’ He concludes, ‘If the Biden administration wants to reduce the illegal immigration of Cubans into the United States, it will have to do more than grant a limited amount of parole and try to seal the border. It must stop suffocating Cuba and allow it to breathe.’

* A version of this article was published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 292, February/March 2023.

Notes.
1. Federal Register, ‘Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans’, 9 January 2023. https://tinyurl.com/5v5yxchj. ↑

2. Temas, interview with José Pertierra, 9 January 2023. http://temas.cult.cu/la-ley-de-ajuste-n ... -pertierra

https://orinocotribune.com/whats-drivin ... ed-states/

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Photo: Bill Hackwell

Fidel Castro’s legacy lives on as Cuba keeps sending ‘Doctors, not Bombs’ all across the World
Originally published: Fidel Castro’s legacy lives on as Cuba keeps sending ‘Doctors, not Bombs’ all across the World on February 19, 2023 by Daniel Kovalik (more by Fidel Castro’s legacy lives on as Cuba keeps sending ‘Doctors, not Bombs’ all across the World) (Posted Feb 24, 2023)

In the immediate aftermath of the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, Cuba dispatched medical teams to the affected areas to provide care to victims. Their departure was marked by a farewell ceremony, which featured a large photo of Fidel Castro. It was quite appropriate, for the international medical solidarity which Cuba regularly extends to countries throughout the world is the brainchild of the late iconic leader himself, who, in 2003, proudly proclaimed that Cuba does not drop bombs on other countries but instead sends them doctors.

Though Castro retired from his official duties as President of Cuba 15 years ago to the day, he has continued to remain a leader in solidarity and in peace. Cuban doctors were sent to more than 70 countries over the years, including nearly 40 different countries in 2020 to help in the fight against Covid-19. In 2010, even the New York Times acknowledged Cuba’s successful campaign against the cholera epidemic which broke out in Haiti after another earthquake. In 2014, the Times similarly gave credit to Cuba’s leadership in successfully fighting Ebola in Africa:

“Cuba is an impoverished island that remains largely cut off from the world and lies about 4,500 miles from the West African nations where Ebola is spreading at an alarming rate. Yet, having pledged to deploy hundreds of medical professionals to the front lines of the pandemic, Cuba stands to play the most robust role among the nations seeking to contain the virus.

Cuba’s contribution is doubtlessly meant at least in part to bolster its beleaguered international standing. Nonetheless, it should be lauded and emulated.”

In addition, patients from 26 Latin American and Caribbean countries have traveled to Cuba to have their eyesight restored by Cuban doctors in what was dubbed “Operation Miracle.” Among them was Mario Teran, the Bolivian soldier who shot and killed Che Guevara.

In 2014, Fidel received the Confucius Peace Award for his efforts in ending tensions with the United States and for his work to eliminate nuclear weapons. In addition, he played a key role in helping initiate, host and mediate the peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC guerillas which resulted in a peace deal in 2016, ending 52 years of brutal civil conflict.

The historic role that Fidel Castro played was always outsized for a country as small as the island nation of Cuba, and as a result, his impact was felt beyond its borders. One of the first countries that Cuba aided, back in the early 1960s, was Algeria, which had recently won its independence from France. As described by Piero Gleijeses, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in his book Conflicting Missions:

It was an unusual gesture: an underdeveloped country tendering free aid to another in even more dire straits. It was offered at a time when the exodus of doctors from Cuba following the revolution had forced the government to stretch its resources while launching its domestic programs to increase mass access to health care. “It was like a beggar offering his help, but we knew the Algerian people needed it even more than we did and that they deserved it,” Cuban Minister of Public Health Machado Ventura remarked. It was an act of solidarity that brought no tangible benefit and came at real material cost.

This can be said of all of Cuba’s acts of international solidarity.

Meanwhile, what very few in the West know is that Cuba, under Fidel’s leadership and with the support of the USSR, played a key role in liberating southern Africa from U.S. and apartheid-era South African domination, and in ultimately ending apartheid in the country itself. It was for this reason that the first nation Nelson Mandela visited after his release from prison was Cuba. While there, Mandela lauded the nation as “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.” Even the Washington Post recognized Fidel Castro as a hero of Africa.

After the Chernobyl disaster of 1989, Cuba took in and treated 24,000 affected children. Many of these individuals and their families still live there to this day. This act of solidarity cannot be understated given the economic conditions in the island nation at the time. While Cuba benefited greatly from the support of the USSR and Eastern Bloc after its 1959 Revolution, which Fidel led, by 1989 the Communist governments had fallen and aid from the USSR itself, which would collapse in 1991, was drying up. As a result of all of this, Cuba would enter what it called its “Special Period,” a time of great economic deprivation which many believed would lead to the collapse of the Cuban Revolution as well. But Fidel and Cuba hung on, and they continued to extend help to people around the world even while they were having trouble feeding their own people.

Due to the intensification of U.S. sanctions and the blockade of Cuba under President Donald Trump, and continued under President Biden, Cuba has now entered a time rivaling the “Special Period.” Even before Trump’s tightening of the sanctions—unrelenting U.S. economic war against Cuba, described by Havana as “genocidal,” had cost the country an estimated $1.1 trillion in revenue and had denied the Cuban people “life-saving medicine, nutritious food, and vital agricultural equipment.”

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. even blocked delivery of critical medical aid, including masks and diagnostic equipment, to Cuba.

The U.S. is punishing Cuba and the Cuban people not for their shortcomings and failures, but because of their very successes. And amongst the successes of the Cuban Revolution which Fidel Castro led even after officially stepping down from power, is Cuba’s unequaled solidarity to the world. Fidel’s “doctors, not bombs” speech implicitly contrasted his country with the U.S., which is by far the world’s largest arms supplier while helping less and less with humanitarian aid. Indeed, US sanctions are directly standing in the way of humanitarian efforts in countries like Syria—a country the U.S. continues to economically strangle even in the face of the recent earthquake.

Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary and poet who inspired Fidel Castro himself, once said that “there are two kinds of people in the world—those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.” It is evident that Cuba, continuously inspired by the ideas and example of Fidel, is of the former type.

https://mronline.org/2023/02/24/fidel-c ... the-world/
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:18 pm

Conservatives in the US want the Cuban people to overthrow their own government—or else

Republican politicians want to keep Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism unless Cubans “transition away from the Castro regime”

March 29, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Children part of the youth organization José Martí Pioneers volunteer to watch the Cuban polls during the November 2022 municipal elections.

On March 28, just two days after Cuba held national elections, conservatives in the US Congress successfully pushed through legislation in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that would codify into law Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. The “Fighting Oppression until the Reign of Castro Ends Act” (FORCE Act) was introduced by Representative Maria Salazar, a conservative and daughter of Cuban exiles from Miami. A Senate version of this bill has been introduced by Senators Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Within the next few weeks, the entire House of Representatives will vote on the bill.

Cuba was included in the highly-politicized US State Sponsors of Terrorism List in January 2021, during the ultra-conservative Donald Trump presidency. This designation has wreaked havoc on the lives of the Cuban people, as many companies and financial institutions in other nations refuse to do business with Cuba for fear of retaliation by the US. As a result, Cuba continues to suffer shortages in raw materials and the daily necessities of life such as medicine and fuel. Right now, Biden can remove Cuba from this list with a stroke of his pen. If passed, Salazar’s bill will make removal nearly impossible.

Salazar’s bill would prohibit Cuba from being removed under the State Sponsors of Terrorism list unless the nation meets three impossible criteria: “release all political prisoners and allow for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations,” “transition away from the Castro regime to a system that guarantees the rights of the Cuban people to express themselves freely,” and “commit to holding free and fair elections.”

Essentially, Salazar is demanding that the Cuban people overthrow their own government and overturn the Cuban political system which has been built by the people and for the people over the last 60 years. The triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 brought significant gains in healthcare, social rights, and the material conditions of Cuban people in general. Pre-revolutionary conditions included high infant mortality, 60% literacy, diseases of poverty, and sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Representative Carlos Giménez of Florida, a supporter of the FORCE Act, denounced Cuba for “harboring fugitives of the American justice system and for unlawfully sentencing thousands of political prisoners in kangaroo courts in the aftermath of the July 11th, 2021 Movement.” Yet, the United States has been lambasted for decades for it’s detention and torture of various political prisoners, many of whom are part of the Black liberation struggle. Cuba provided asylum to one of those prisoners, Assata Shakur, a Black liberation fighter who was captured and nearly killed by US police. To this day, the US government, furious at her successful escape, demands her extradition.

Salazar’s implication that Cubans cannot “express themselves freely” goes against the experiences of many on the island, especially as the nation recently passed the world’s most progressive Family Code, paving the way for the rights of LGBTQ, elderly, and disabled people, as well as women and children. The Cuban people did not merely vote for the new code, they had a key role in creating it through the popular consultation process.

One central accusation of the FORCE Act is that Cuba does not already hold “free and fair elections.” Cuba held national elections on March 26, and over 75% of the eligible population turned out to vote. An impressive feat in any context, especially as the turnout for the last US presidential election was 66.2%, which was considered a record accomplishment. And yet, US mainstream media coverage of the Cuban elections highlighted only the voter abstention of 25%, despite the fact that there was higher turnout than the previous two years as the pandemic took a toll on voter turnout.

Criticisms of the Cuban electoral process that originate from Washington or Miami often point to the lack of campaigning or the fact that candidates run unopposed, as well as claims that the Communist Party dominates the political system. However, the cycle of endless campaigning in the United States often ensures that only those with the most disposable income succeed by projecting their message as loudly as money will permit. “Money in politics” has become a hot button issue in the US, with progressives such as Bernie Sanders launching initiatives against the blatant inequality inherent in the campaign cycles.

Candidates run unopposed during only the final part of the electoral process, but they are initially nominated from the communities they originate from, or from grassroots organizations of women, peasants, workers, and others. “That is the success of our vote,” Lázara Vivian Urrutia Nápoles, general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women’s Bloc of District 80 Playa, told Peoples Dispatch during the municipal elections of November 2022. “Precisely the unity that is chosen from the base, from the community.” In other words, Cuban people do not simply vote in candidates at the very last part of the electoral process, like in the US. Cubans are involved in the electoral system from the very beginning through community and organizational nominations of candidates.

Voters can be as young as 16 and candidates themselves can be as young as 18. Candidates do not have to belong to the Communist Party. Once elected, members of the National Assembly do not receive a salary for their work as political officials, they must continue their daily lives as workers, alongside the rest of the Cuban population.

This year saw record diversity in candidates, with the highest number of Black people, women, and young people running in Cuban history. Most of the candidates are women, and 98 out of 470 are under 35. “Since Moncada, [Cuban revolutionaries] empowered [women], and that is why we have so many women today nominated in all spheres of the Revolution. In all the economy of the country, women are present,” said Nápoles. “The Revolution has always taken into account children and youth, and it is the youth that really leads all the processes or the continuity of the processes we have.”

A campaign has been launched by US peace groups to call on elected officials to oppose the FORCE Act.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/29/ ... t-or-else/

This piece is grossly unfair to 'conservatives' as there is a boatload of liberal Democrats who 'red bait' at the drop of a hat. Anti-communism is a bi-partisan past-time in the dictatorship of the bourgeois.

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The most cynical spearhead of the United States against peoples
Human rights must be the most hypocritical and cynical arguments that the U.S. Government wields against countries that do not yield to the blackmail of imperial interests.

Author: International news staff | informacion@granma.cu

march 30, 2023 07:03:39

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Photo: Illustrative

Human rights must be the arguments that the U.S. Government wields with more hypocrisy and cynicism against countries that do not yield to the blackmail of imperial interests.
In order to attack those peoples, it would seem that the ideologues of the White House dig into the entrails of their own society, take out a piece of the cancer that eats it from inside, and from that violation that is most serious and repulsive, they take a copy and describe it in foreign scenarios, with the audacity to blame others.
They have done it again against Cuba, according to the so-called Report on Human Rights 2022, a saga of slander against the island, which the member of the Political Bureau of the Party and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, described as unacceptable.
"With the shameful record of violations and abuses to its own citizens, the U.S. should refrain from stigmatizing others," wrote on Twitter the Foreign Minister, who added that the leadership in Washington "tries in vain to disguise its interventionist and interferenceist behavior."
The U.S. report alludes to the fact that in Cuba, the courts have handed down draconian prison sentences to hundreds of people for protesting for their rights; however, paradoxically, the assessments made by the United Nations in 2022, explain that the United States continues to fail to fulfill its commitments on human rights, especially in the area of racial justice, and this is reflected in the country's inability to end the systemic racism linked to the legacies of slavery.
What lessons can the nation that continues to record the highest criminal incarceration rates in the world, with nearly two million people held in state and federal jails and prisons on any given day, according to data cited by Prensa Latina news agency?
What can the country in which half of all police departments refuse to report on the use of force, necessitating the collection and analysis of non-governmental data, demand; even knowing that in 2022 alone, U.S. police killed more than 400 people, of which the black people tripled the number of dead people compared to white people?
Translaed by ESTI

https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2023-03-30/t ... st-peoples

Cops killed a hell of a lot more than 400, more like near 1200.

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75.92% Turnout in Cuba’s Elections
March 27, 2023Cuba
The president of the National Electoral Council (CEN) of Cuba, Alina Balseiro, reported this morning the preliminary results of the 2023 legislative elections.

Out of 8,120,072 eligible voters, 6,164,876 Cubans exercised their right to vote, which represents 75.92% of the electoral roll. 90.28% of the votes were valid. 6.22% were blank and 3.50% were annulled.

Critics of the government were hoping for a low turnout, however, Balseiro explained that attendance at these elections was higher than previous votes: It was 1.8% higher than the Family Code Referendum, and 7.36% higher than in the last municipal elections.

In Cuban elections, all candidates stand as independents and have been nominated by social movement groups such as labor unions, the women’s federation, and other organized groups.

https://kawsachunnews.com/75-92-turnout ... -elections

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US Puts ‘Shameful Pressure’ on Italy for Hiring Cuban Doctors
MARCH 29, 2023

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Cuban medical personnel working in Italy pose with the president of the Italian province of Calabria (center). Photo: Facebook.

The Italy-Cuba Friendship Association (ANAIC) has condemned the US government’s “shameful pressure” on Italy for hiring Cuban doctors.

The association, through a statement released last Thursday, March 22, stated that “the United States is carrying out an absurd interference in the internal affairs of Italy” by “asking for explanations” for the Italian health authorities’ hiring of Cuban doctors.

According to a report by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the US embassy in Rome demanded that the Italian Ministry of Health explain “the procedures for hiring Cuban professionals for a fixed duration [in Calabria] and their remuneration,” to determine if they violate Washington’s blockade against Cuba.

On December 28, 2022, 51 Cuban doctors arrived in Calabria region of south Italy, including cardiologists, pediatricians and surgeons, to provide services in hospitals in the towns of Locri, Polistena, Gioia Tauro and Melito Porto Salvo.

The president of Calabria, Roberto Occhiuto, stated, “We are happy to have highly specialized doctors.”

Occhiuto stressed that his government is doing everything to guarantee the welfare of Calabria’s citizens, and trying to solve the state of emergency in the region’s public health sector.

The assistance of Cuban doctors is “a concrete way of providing immediate responses to the needs of citizens, providing adequate services, ensuring operational health facilities and functioning hospitals throughout the region,” he said.

On January 8, 2023, the ANAIC, together with other Spanish, French and Swedish organizations, demanded that the European Parliament protect the countries of the European Union against the extraterritorial application of the “blockade imposed by the world’s leading power on a small Third World country.”

https://orinocotribune.com/us-puts-sham ... n-doctors/
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 05, 2023 4:40 pm

What if the Protests in France Were in Cuba?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 4, 2023
José Manzaneda

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300 demonstrations with more than three million people, 500 people arrested in a single day. If it were Cuba, Belarus or China… the headlines would be filled with terms such as “social outburst”, “popular uprising”, “repression”, “regime”….

But since they are in France, they speak of “serious riots”, in which the only people injured – 440 in a single day – were “policemen”. Only policemen. Curious this “free and independent press” which repeats, in unison, the data offered by the French Minister of the Interior.

A report by three human rights organizations concludes that, since 2015, in the world, more than 120 thousand people have been injured by tear gas, rubber balls, water cannons or acoustic weapons of the police. It cites many countries: the US, France, Chile, Colombia… Curiously, not Cuba. But do a test: Google the words “Cuba” and “repression”. You will get dozens of headlines. Then, search for “USA” and “repression”, and you will also find dozens of news items of the US Government accusing of “repression”… that of Cuba.

Well, to Cuba, to that country where the police rarely hurt people, the Spanish Government has decided that it cannot export riot control equipment, in application of a “human rights” clause. It is a veto which is not imposed, for example, on its partner Morocco, whose repression of Saharawi activists is internationally condemned. And whose police, in June last year, killed nearly 70 immigrants at the fence of Melilla.

Justice in Spain: in an interview, the former minister José Barrionuevo justified, without remorse, his participation in the dirty war against the Basque Nationalist group ETA, for which he spent three months in jail, after being pardoned. Inevitable contrast with the case of the eight young Navarrese from Altsasu, several of whom spent almost four years in prison for a fight with civil guards in civilian clothes.

After two years and a month in prison in Lleida, the Catalan musician Pablo Hasel has finished the sentence imposed for the lyrics of his songs. But he is still in prison, as he has been sentenced to two new sentences for another six years. Have you read it in any Spanish corporate media? Not a thing. That’s freedom of speech and press freedom made in Spain.

We are still talking about artistic censorship in Europe. In Poland, the concerts of Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s leader, have been cancelled because of his stance on the war in Ukraine. And in Frankfurt, Germany, for his alleged “anti-Semitism”, which is really for his solidarity with Palestine. Nothing to be condemned as “censorship” by the European press, submissive to NATO’s discourse and Israel’s excesses. Whose government has just banned even the display of the Palestinian flag in public spaces. And which has killed, so far this year, almost 90 Palestinians. Where are the sanctions or the editorials of condemnation? The European sports press tells us that the top scorer of the Palestinian professional soccer league, Ahmad Atef Daragmah, “died during clashes with the Israeli army”. Clashes? No, he was killed by Israeli army bullets.

The government of the US has just published a new report on human rights in the world. And, as usual, it gives countries like Cuba the lessons it does not apply at home. Let’s take a look.

In the US, more than one hundred people die every day by firearms. In the first two months of this year, there were 102 mass shootings, which reached a record 648 in 2022 . It was also a year in which the police killed almost twelve hundred people.

Nearly 600,000 human beings survive on the streets of the United States on any given night. There are 42,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone, where a state of emergency has been declared for that reason.

Over 27 million people lack health insurance in the US. And, believe it or not, life expectancy in the richest country in the world is three years less than in Cuba.

Let’s read some other news. Michigan: a mother and two of her children freeze to death in a park; Memphis: 29-year-old black man dies after being brutally beaten by five police officers; Buffalo: 30 workers are fired by Tesla after trying to form a union; Alabama: an inmate dies after guards put him in a freezer as punishment . Imagine if just one of these events had happened in Cuba. How many times would we read in news and reports the word… “regime”?

Source: Cuba en Resumen

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/04/ ... e-in-cuba/

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UN Human Rights Council Condemns Use of Sanctions
APRIL 4, 2023

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UN Human Rights Council. File photo.

The United Nations Human Rights Council approved a resolution on Monday rejecting the imposition of unilateral coercive measures—euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”—against less developed nations.

This was reported on by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil: “UN Human Rights Council adopts by majority a resolution that condemns the application and unilateral and continued execution of coercive measures as an instrument of pressure against any country, in particular against least developed countries and developing countries.”

33 votes were cast in favor, 13 against, and 1 member abstained. Those countries that voted against the resolution included the US and many of its vassal states in Europe. Those countries voting in favor of the resolution were largely developing nations. The US currently applies illegal coercive measures—sanctions not approved by the UN—against more than 40 countries, comprising about one-third of humanity’s population. Although it is difficult to quantify the precise extent to which these measures limit access to food and medical care for their targets, these illegal coercive economic measures have led to the deaths of millions of individuals. Venezuela has faced severe economic sanctions since 2015.

“The resolution of the Human Rights Council highlights that unilateral coercive measures are contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the charter and the norms and principles that regulate relations between States,” wrote Gil in another communication.

“The resolution, adopted by a resounding majority, expresses concern about the negative impact on human rights of widespread compliance and excessive compliance with unilateral coercive measures,” he added.

Gil specified that the document placed special emphasis on the impact of such coercive measures on human rights, affecting “disproportionately poor people and those in situations of maximum vulnerability.”

Likewise, he noted that according to the resolution “no state may make use or threaten to make use of economic or political measures, in order to coerce another state to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights.”

For this reason, the Gil pointed out that the resolution reaffirms “that each state has full sovereignty over all its wealth, its natural resources and its economic activity and freely exercises said sovereignty, in accordance with resolution 1803 of the General Assembly, approved in 1962.”

Finally, noted Minister Gil, “the resolution urges states to stop adopting, maintaining, applying or complying with economic, political or any other measures contrary to international law and to opt for dialogue and peaceful means to resolve conflicts or differences.”

For his part, the permanent representative of Venezuela to the UN Geneva, Héctor Constant Rosales, wrote: “Strong vote by UNHRC clearly rejecting the negative impact of illegal unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of Human Rights. The position of the European Union, as it insists on ignoring reality, is once again shameful”.

Votes in favor included Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Cameroon, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The initiative was rejected by Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Romania, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States, while Mexico abstained.

https://orinocotribune.com/un-human-rig ... sanctions/
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Re: Cuba

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:35 pm

The war against Cuba
April 8, 2023 Ana Hurtado

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Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla

Cuba’s victories are piling up. There were many people who were full of praise for the victory of the U.S. baseball team in Miami, without expecting that this “defeat” for the Cuban team, and I am putting it in quotation marks on purpose, was the best thing that could happen for everyone in the face of public opinion and the international panorama.

What happened at the Miami ballpark is unprecedented; it is no longer talk of hatred, but of anger, as Pascual Serrano recently described at the Patria Colloquium held in Havana, the feeling emanating from all those who hate and suffer from the progress and advances of the Cuban people.

These are people who are not only against the government of the largest of the Antilles, but against their own people. What generates within a human being such affection as to insult and attack his own people? What moves them? Comparisons are odious, but it is enough to compare how the athletes of the Cuban team were received there, and how these people are received when they come to the island, or how representatives of U.S. governments have been received when they have come. Respect versus insolence.

It is not them, and this is not a justification. It is the machinery that pulls the strings behind it. Cuba has been at war for more than six decades, and this arms conglomerate keeps changing its shape, but its mission is always the same: to sink it. They did not succeed at the Bay of Pigs, they did not succeed when the socialist camp fell, and they are not succeeding now with the information and psychological warfare. This battle that is taking place now is taking place in the minds of men and women who are vulnerable to all kinds of information that reaches them by any means. It is no longer possible to distinguish what is true and what is not. And the enemies of frankness know it well. And they know that, in these times, is where they have to sink their teeth. This fight is the greatest challenge facing the defenders of the Cuban Revolution, the defenders of Fidel and those who hope for a better world.

We are confident that it is possible to fight against the predominance of capitalist values and hegemony, which have the upper hand in the Western world, and which little by little, through the Internet and cultural aspects, are trying to infiltrate Cuba. Manipulation is powerful, but it is not all-powerful. People have intuition. The good ones exist. And even if many are fooled, they cannot fool them all. Those who live in Miami, or in Spain, or in any other capitalist country, may have a distorted image of the Revolution, because of how they have been told, how they have been poisoned, how they have increased their discontent and hatred to transform it into anger. But that, consciously done, does not have to be forever.

The Dantesque episode in Miami was not decisive, but I have no doubt that it influenced the Cuban people to close the line at the time of the united vote in the elections of March 26. It served for this people, dignified and fighting, to see what is outside and the poison that is injected from the empire. Every time there are elections in Cuba, the enemies launch campaigns to turn them into a referendum against the revolution. Historically, this has been done on radio and television. As it could not be less, now also virtually through digital media and social networks.

But always, and forgive the expression, “it always backfires”. Because in this land, they are educated, and they are not so easily fooled. It is not easy to wash your conscience that they make you quickly do in any other country. The cultural war is hard, very hard, but here there is dignity, here there are values and there is confidence in the sovereignty that passes irremediably through socialism. In order to be eternally free and emancipated.

But that freedom has not been and is not given as a gift, it is forged and conquered every day. In fact, yesterday, April 4, was a historic date in this Homeland. On April 4, 1962, a congress of the Association of Young Rebels was held, which changed its name and began to be called as we know it today: Union of Young Communists. That same day, Fidel gave the closing speech and as always he emphasized the youth, because they are and will always be the relay of any process of continuity:

“The revolution that we are making is not the revolution that we want; the Revolution that we want is the Revolution that you are going to make”. And that is why, as Fidel continued, “Our society will be a society without exploiters or exploited, without privileged or discriminated”.

Before April 4, 1962, Cuban youth had already been protagonists in decisive moments in the country’s history, such as the Literacy Campaign and the Battle of Playa Girón.

What would this and other revolutions be without the role of the youth and their responsibility? Fidel always appealed to a responsible youth. A few days ago I myself was able to share with young and not so young Cubans, but all united in the end:

The image of how much Cuba works must be shown to the whole world. How much this socialist system leaves its skin on the basis of the principles and ideas of its heroes. As did Mella in the student struggles, Fidel in the Moncada, and so many more who gave their lives in this land, today free of any chain they want to impose on it, but with an imperial punishment, which it bears for having this freedom. Free or martyrs, the heroes would say.

The struggle, in this multipolar war, lies in the growth of Cuba, in the image of Cuba, not only in the media, not only fighting the matrixes of opinion against the defamers and enemies. But also in the daily work done with conscience and responsibility so that this revolutionary country advances. It is not only built from discourse but also from action.

And that is an indestructible mixture; that is the lethal mixture that as it takes steps and steps, this island, with the passing of the years, will rise in the ocean as an increasingly iron and indomitable bastion.

Source: Cuba en Resumen via Resumen Latinoamericano English

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... inst-cuba/

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Cuba and the New International Economic Order
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 12, 2023
Dr. C José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez

Image
Fidel Castro at the United Nations

Fidel Castro comes from the future to tell us once again: “Let the philosophy of dispossession disappear and the philosophy of war will have disappeared! Let the colonies disappear, let the exploitation of countries by monopolies disappear, and then humanity will have reached a true stage of progress!”

On May 1, 2024, it will be 50 years since the United Nations approved, at its Sixth Special Session, a resolution (3201) containing the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). This Declaration contains 20 headings listing the principles on which its implementation should be based. Separately, the Programme of Action on the Establishment of a NIEO was agreed to on the same day.

In the years following the documents’ approval, the various regional and political groups into which the international community is segmented have made different interpretations of that milestone, have pondered its implementation, or have taken initiatives that are diametrically opposed to its original purposes.

Several academic texts have reviewed the background to the NIEO and the stages of crisis that preceded it, and have defined historical cycles in its achievement. Most of these analyses coincide in recognizing the impact of the political decolonization process of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the integration of dozens of new sovereign countries into the multilateral system.

Since 1974, the international order (or rather, disorder) has continued to change constantly, although the new orders have not been built on the basis of agreements between parties. Rather, the main economic powers have used military force to subdue on many occasions those governments that have tried to change the rules of the game; the less developed countries have formed regional or thematic groups to achieve survival; the socialist model disappeared; neoliberalism spread throughout the world with its devastating effects both for the promoters and the believers in the formula; and the so-called “war on terrorism” spread over 20 years and changed the geography of the Middle East, and the world’s finances.

New powers have emerged –– which are increasingly approaching the level of development of the so-called first world –– some of them contrary to the Marxist logic of original accumulation, because they have been victims of colonialism and other forms of exploitation. These powers are already challenging the first economies in areas where they seemed impregnable until very recently: efficiency, productivity, artificial intelligence, financial services etc.

These powers aside, instead of narrowing, the economic gaps that have always existed between nations have widened and have extended to other sectors of international life, such as: education, health, the environment, information and knowledge.

These issues have not been comprehensively addressed at the multilateral level, and on many occasions, documents have been approved without in-depth political debate. Some more recent milestones include:

*The adoption of resolutions on an annual and biannual basis by the United Nations General Assembly, beginning in 2008.
*“The Future We Want“, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio +20 (2012).
*“Small Island Developing States accelerated modalities of action (Samoa pathway)”, adopted at the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (2014).
*The “Addis Ababa Action Agenda“, adopted at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (2015).
*The approval of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015).

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of a new right wing to the political scene in the USA and Europe, NATO’s attempts to offer a military solution to any conflict, plus the changes generated within nations such as Russia, China, South Africa, India and Turkey, among others, have provoked a new reflection on the existing “order” and the need, for some, to conceptually define a new stage

Among the features of this new era is the indisputable fact that nations such as the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and other former metropolises are facing so many difficulties in their economic engineering, that they are not even proposing new models or attempts at global solutions to the problems we all suffer from. Governments and political forces of countries that once looked to those capitals for support, cooperation, or solidarity, now know that they will not get such a response, and are looking in a different direction.

Development

Cuba, since its status as a founding member of the UN, but especially since the triumph of its Revolution in 1959, has made very concrete contributions not only to the debate, but also to the attempt to implement the precepts of the NIEO.

Since then, successive Cuban governments have based their foreign policy, first of all, on associating the possibility of establishing this proposed new order with the need for essential political premises, such as respect for sovereignty, equality among states, and self-determination.

Long before the events of 1974, the conceptual contributions of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, to the new order that was to emerge, were outstanding.

In his memorable speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1960, Fidel drew a parallel between the problems faced at the time by the Cuban people and those existing in the underdeveloped world of that era, when he read to the plenary the text of the First Havana Declaration.

This was his way of saying that, if the national imbalances in each country were resolved, this could have an impact at the global level, and would perhaps open new paths for humanity. Fidel referred to:

“The right of peasants to have lands; the right of workers to enjoy the results of their labor; the right of children to education; the right of sick persons to medical and hospital care; the right of youths to work; the right of students to free, experimental and scientific education; the right of Blacks and Indians to the ´full dignity of man;´ the right of women to civil, social and political equality; the right of elderly persons to secure old age; the right of intellectuals, artists and scientists to strive, through their works, for a better world; the right of States to nationalize imperialist monopolies, thus recovering national wealth and resources; the right of countries to free trade with all the peoples of the world; the right of nations to their full sovereignty; the right of people to turn their army fortresses into schools and to arm their workers.”1

But Cuba did not stop at theoretical definitions. At a very early date, before the revolutionary government had even begun to try to resolve national imbalances, projects of cooperation with de-colonizing nations were established, the first of these was carried out in Algeria2 in 1960.

Cuba tried to establish a new order in its own international relations, leading the country to change the rules of the game in its relationship with the United States; nationalize foreign properties; redistribute national wealth; and finance social programs that offered equal opportunities for its entire population. And perhaps this has been Cuba’s greatest contribution to the desired new order: to demonstrate that, in a very underdeveloped country, the political will of its government could succeed in changing the state of affairs, confronting even the world’s leading military and economic power.

Just after that 1974 resolution on the NIEO, three events took place in Cuba, which also explain this country’s commitment to a new economic and political world order.

In late 1975, the first Cuban internationalists left for the newly created People’s Republic of Angola to safeguard the early days of its independence. Cuba not only helped the Angolans to stand their ground against the onslaught from the former Zaire and apartheid South Africa regimes (both supported by the US), but also contributed to the liberation of Namibia and the end of the its hated regime of racial segregation.

These results stimulated changes throughout the region of Southwest Africa, where new nations now had the opportunity to try and build a future without external intervention. In these African countries, and in many others, Cuba sent doctors, teachers, scientists and many others to lend their support.

Secondly, in 1976, the first Cuban Constitution of the revolutionary era was approved by popular referendum. Article 12, as part of the principles of its foreign policy:

“a) ratifies its aspiration for a worthy, true, and valid peace for all States, large and small, weak and powerful, based on the respect for the independence and sovereignty of peoples and the right to self-determination; b) bases its international relations on the principles of equality of rights, free determination of peoples, territorial integrity, independence of States, international cooperation for mutual and equitable benefit and interest, peaceful settlement of controversies, marked by equality and respect, and the other principles proclaimed in the United Nations Charter and in other international treaties to which Cuba is a party; c) reaffirms its desire for integration and cooperation with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, whose common identity and historic need for advancing together toward political and economic integration to achieve true independence would enable us to reach the position that corresponds to us in the world; ch) advocates the unity of all the countries of the Third World against the imperialist and neocolonialist policy seeking the limitation or subordination of the sovereignty of our peoples, and the aggravation of the economic conditions of exploitation and oppression in the underdeveloped nations; d) condemns imperialism, the promoter and supporter of all fascist, colonialist, neocolonialist and racist manifestations, as the principal force of aggression and war and the enemy of the peoples; e) repudiates the direct or indirect intervention in the internal or external affairs of any State and, hence, armed aggression and economic blockade, as well as any other type of economic or political coercion, physical violence against persons residing in other countries, or other types of interference in, and threat to, the integrity of the States and the political, economic, and cultural components of the nations; f) rejects the violation of the irrevocable and sovereign right of any State to regulate the use and benefits of telecommunications in its territory, according to the universal practice and the international conventions that it has signed; g) categorizes the war of aggression and conquest as an international crime, recognizes the legitimacy of struggles for national liberation, as well as armed resistance to aggression, and considers its internationalist obligation to support the one attacked and [stand] with the peoples who fight for their liberation and self-determination; h) bases its relations with the countries building socialism on fraternal friendship, cooperation, and mutual aid, founded upon the common objectives of the construction of the new society; i) maintains relations of friendship with the countries which, possessing a different political, social and economic regime, respect its sovereignty, observe the rules of coexistence among the States, adhere to the principles of mutual advantage, and adopt a reciprocal attitude with our country.”3

In 1976 Havana was chosen to host the VI Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which would take place in September 1979. A few days after the summit, when reporting to the UN General Assembly on the results of the event, Fidel said:

“We are 95 countries, from every continent, and we represent the immense majority of humankind. We are united by the determination to defend collaboration among our countries, free national and social development, sovereignty, security, equality and free determination. We are associated in the endeavor to change the current system of international relations which are based on injustice, inequality and oppression. We act in international politics as an independent global factor.”4

Many observers may not have realized at the time the value of this last sentence, which was reinforced in the actions of other majority groups such as the G77, and in international campaigns, such as the one that sought to build consensus for the non-payment of the foreign debt.

A mere 11 years after that NAM Summit, when the disintegration of the so-called European socialist camp took place, Cuba saw 85% of its foreign trade disappear and registered a 35% drop in its Gross Domestic Product in 24 months. Once again, Cuban society made a singular and unique contribution to those who believed in the possibility of a new order, as it now resisted, on its own, the tightening of the US blockade, through the so-called Torricelli Act (1992) and the Helms Burton Act (1996).

Cuba emerged from that crisis with renewed capabilities in its economic model and, moreover, did not abandon its capacity to share its material and human assets with others.

This resistance put to rest the more than 30-year-old argument that the Cuban socialist project existed only because of the backing of a group of countries with which it traded on the basis of differentiated prices, and from which it received advantageous investments.

The decade of the 1990s had not yet concluded when one of the most ambitious Cuban programs of international collaboration was established, which included the training of physicians from more than 100 countries, including the United States, in Cuba and abroad.

With well-deserved prestige, Cuba played a leading role in the articulation of a new Latin American and Caribbean political technology, in its commitment to the Community of Caribbean States (CARICOM) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). It was also one of the most active countries in the efforts that would eventually lead to the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). All these regional groups, taken as a whole, contributed at the time to demonstrating the inability of the U.S. pan-American system embodied in the Organization of American States (OAS), i.e. the old order, to confront and resolve the most pressing problems of the Western Hemisphere.

Perhaps the singular collectively constructed fact that most clearly demonstrates the above statement was the defeat suffered by the Free Trade Area of the Americas project during the Summit of the Americas held in Argentina in 2005. Cuba was absent once again, but agreement between countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, among others, made such an outcome possible.

Cuba hosted the XIV Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in 2006, during which Army General Raúl Castro, addressing the plenary, said:

“On the sound foundations of our historic victories in the struggle for decolonization and the removal of apartheid, and with the rich experience of our efforts in favor of a New International Economic Order and of peace, disarmament, and the true exercise of the right to development, the Non-Aligned Movement shall now wage heroic battles against unilateralism, double standards and the impunity of the powerful; for a more just and equitable international order to tackle neoliberalism, plundering, and pillage; for the survival of the human species instead of the irrational consumerism of the wealthy nations.”

He went on to express: “In the present circumstances, non-alignment necessarily implies the defense of international law on the basis of the Bandung principles; the unrestricted exercise and respect for the sovereignty and sovereign equality of States; the defense of peace and the active opposition to war and threats; the indispensable democratization of international institutions, in particular, the United Nations and its Security Council; the defense of our values and of the plurality necessary in this diverse world, in which each peoples must have the right to choose the political, economic and social system they consider most appropriate to their national interests, and to preserve and develop their own culture”5.

In 2008, the world once again went through an international economic crisis, in the midst of a supposed war on terror led by the United States, which changed the geopolitics of North Africa and the Middle East, provoked unprecedented migratory flows, and signified the first major fracture in the scheme of neoliberal domination and the supposed end of ideologies promoted 20 years earlier.

In this context, Cuba took the lead in retaking the banner of the NIEO’s claims within the framework of the G77. The result of the subsequent negotiation process was endorsed in the approval, with 123 votes, of UN resolution 63/224, entitled “Towards a New International Economic Order.” The United States was the only country to oppose the two operative paragraphs of the document, which simply spoke of “reaffirming the need to continue working” for the establishment of such an order, and “to examine in depth the international economic situation and its repercussions”, requesting the Secretary General of the UN to present a report with its conclusions. The group of abstentions comprised 52 countries, primarily members and aspiring members of the European Union.

Since then, Cuba has maintained its leadership on the subject, first on an annual basis and then on a biannual basis. The last of the resolutions approved in New York with the purpose of establishing the longed-for NIEO was 75/225 of 2020, which constitutes a more elaborate text, recognizing the evolution of the subject, mentioning other international organizations responsible for development, and emphasizing the urgency of the issue.

Once again, 123 nations supported the proposal, and only 4 abstained, but 47, including the United States, went on to oppose it. This fact alone reflects, beyond what may have been raised by each delegation during the negotiating process, a distancing of an important group of countries (mostly the European Union) from a possible compromise.

This last exercise, however, took place in the midst of the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which once again shook the foundations of the international economy, caused major political changes in several regions, and had (and continues to have) an enormous human cost. The pandemic showed, as few recent global events have, that serious international problems can only be solved through cooperation, and that the large capitalist transnationals will profit from any issue that brings them profit, be it wars or diseases.

In that context, and even in the midst of an unprecedented tightening of the US blockade, Cuba rose with its proposal to guarantee universal health care as a human right.

This apparently simple approach, but reflected in working protocols, specialized institutions, and the commitment from the State as the main entity, was what allowed the island to effectively protect its population, have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world, and create five vaccines of its own that protected almost the entire population.

This effort, which was in itself epic, did not remain within national borders, as the country sent 58 medical brigades to 42 countries and colonial territories, including European nations, to help in the fight against the scourge.

Once again, without waiting for universal debates which often fail to have a concrete impact, Cuba went ahead and changed the order of things towards solidarity and cooperation.

In terms of contributions to the new order, there is a political effort in which Cuba has participated for several years, which perhaps does not have the international magnitude as the fight against COVID, but which is once again taking effect as a result of the changes taking place in South America and has great regional significance, with direct repercussions for the peaceful coexistence and development of neighboring nations.

The peace negotiations in Colombia (government of President Juan Manuel Santos, FARC-EP), which lasted from September 4, 2012 to August 24, 2016, were an arduous diplomatic and political process in which Cuba was not only the host (with the associated expenses), but also guarantor, together with the Kingdom of Norway.

The disregard of the agreements by the government of Iván Duque (2018-2022), together with the Monroist interests that rose to power in Washington under Donald Trump (2017-2021), had the direct purpose of destabilizing Venezuela and justifying the US’ decision to again include Cuba in the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, with the sole purpose of making any future bilateral rapproachement with Havana more difficult.

A new political change in Bogotá, along with the survival of the Bolivarian Revolution and the continuity of the Cuban resistance allow, as of 2022, for the cycle of peace negotiations to be completed (or not) with the ELN guerrilla organization. Suffice it to say that, in Colombia, under the argument of the fight against drug trafficking and guerrillas, there is the largest US military presence in the western hemisphere outside its territory. The country is the only strategic extra-continental partner of NATO, that is, of the old order.

Again, since Cuba’s action in terms of changing the state of affairs in a conflict with national, bilateral and regional implications, there are more reasons to try to aspire to a new international order.

Conclusions

Cuba’s efforts to achieve a New International Order, and. specifically, a New International Economic Order, has been multidimensional and multifaceted. Its international projection, in this sense, has been possible thanks only to the internal changes that took place in the country since 1959, since the yearnings of freedom, equal opportunities, human solidarity, wealth redistribution, and universal access to social services became a reality for Cuban citizens.

Cuba’s attempts to change that Order coincide in time with the triumph of the Revolution itself, and did not wait for the maturity or solidification of the project. Cuba’s dutyvocation to work for the “balance of the world” is rooted in Marti’s thought of preventing the imperialist projection of The United States over Latin America with the pro-independence action.

Today, there are new dangers of domination, which complement those already known, and have to do with the domination of information, of states of opinion, and the penetration of the culture of entire peoples. In these fields, finance and technology are once again in the hands of a few countries and companies, which obtain the greatest benefits in terms of gathered information and political influence.

In other words, new imbalances have been added to the old ones, while the latter have not yet been corrected, and we are still far from an international articulation that would allow us to face them.

New energy, environmental and health crises which are more global than the economic crises, present us with the challenge of trying to address them through cooperation, or face the possibility of the extinction of humanity as we know it today.

The road begins in each of our localities, regions, provinces, territories, nations and countries. If a new order is not created from there, it will be very difficult for it to be projected on an international scale.

Fidel Castro comes from the future to tell us once again: “Let the philosophy of dispossession disappear and the philosophy of war will have disappeared! Let the colonies disappear, let the exploitation of countries by monopolies disappear, and then humanity will have reached a true stage of progress!”

He said this in 1960. Until it happens, we will continue to live in “la prehistoria”.

Dr. C José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.

References

01
Castro, Fidel (1960) Discurso pronunciado en la sede de las Naciones Unidas, Estados Unidos, el 26 de septiembre de 1960.
Source↗

02
Nombre oficial República Argelina Democrática y Popular.
03
Constitución de la República de Cuba (1976).
Source↗

04
Castro, Fidel; (1979) Discurso pronunciado ante el XXXIV Período de Sesiones de la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, efectuado en Nueva York.
Source↗

05
Castro, Raúl; (2006) Discurso del jefe de la delegación cubana ante el plenario de la XIV Conferencia Cumbre del NOAL, La Habana.
Source↗

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/04/ ... mic-order/

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Health, Agriculture, and Education in Cuba
APRIL 12, 2023

Image
Teacher and students working in garden at Centro Mixto República Oriental del Uruguay, in Las Terrazas, Artemisa, Cuba. Photo: Author.

By Mark Ginsburg – April 7, 2023

I just returned from a nine-day educator-exchange trip to Cuba. I traveled with a group of five faculty members and 36 graduate students from the University of Maryland and George Washington University. The program, Busquedas Investigativas, has organized opportunities to share educational research and practice between Cuban and US colleagues since 1994.

As a retired professor of education affiliated with the University of Maryland (though now living in Santa Cruz), I have participated in this program (originally called Seminario) several times over its 29-year history. This year we had lectures by Cuban and US participants, took part in seminar discussions, and visited a range of educational institutions (preschools, primary schools, lower secondary schools, upper secondary schools, and universities as well as research institutes).

Overall, I was struck by the enthusiasm of Cuban colleagues involved in the program as well as the educators, students, and researchers we met during visits. This is despite the hardships and challenges that they told us they faced—due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic but in large part due to the 60+ year US blockade, including the ratcheting up of sanctions by the Trump administration which have only minimally been reversed by the Biden administration.

Several colleagues also called specific attention to the problems Cuba faced because Trump had (re)placed Cuba on the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism–an inclusion that is both erroneous and cynical, given that Cuba has been the target of terrorist actions sponsored or condoned by the US government for decades (for more information, go here.

I wish there was space to share all the experiences I had, but I hope that readers will join one of the many opportunities to travel to Cuba themselves.

Let me start with some notes about Cuba’s experience with COVID compared to that of the US. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 22 February 2022), the US recorded three times the number of cases of COVID per 100,000 people than did Cuba (30,496 vs 10,200) and witnessed 4.4 times the number of COVID-related deaths per 100,000 than did Cuba (332 vs 75).

These dramatic differences can be attributed to the overall health of the Cuban population pre-COVID, the coordinated and extensive efforts by the Cuban public health system to monitor and treat—and eventually vaccinate—the population, and the Cuba people’s general respect for science and receptiveness to scientists’ recommendations (wearing masks, getting vaccinated).

We learned that Cuba—like most of the world—closed schools (but not preschools) in March of 2020. Like many countries, but more uniformly and energetically, Cuba transitioned to distance education modalities (notably television, radio, WhatsApp, and distributing printed materials). While Internet-based strategies were employed, primarily in larger cities and tertiary-level institutions, these were limited by the blockade’s restriction on access to certain platforms like Zoom.

Moreover, research conducted in a large national sample of pre-university educational institutions by the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences, based in Havana, found only a limited degree of lost learning compared to what was projected in to occur normal years.

I should mention that the success of Cuba’s education system was previously demonstrated in findings from the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study conducted by UNESCO’s Latin American Laboratory for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education in 2019, a year before the pandemic.

For example, 48.3% of Cuban third graders scored in the higher levels (III and IV) of the mathematics test, outperforming all other 17 countries that participated in ERCE (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay).

Also memorable for me was a visit to a mixed (primary and secondary) school in Las Terrazas, located in the province of Artemisa (Centro Mixto República Oriental del Uruguay). This small rural community is devoted to sustainable development and offers a unique environment in connecting with nature, incorporated even more than other schools I’ve visited. This institution gave attention to preserving and protecting the environment—both in classes and out-of-class projects.

I also noticed a poster prominently displayed on a wall of the building calling attention to the reality that “all families are different.” In line with Cuba’s Families Code, which was overwhelmingly approved through popular referendum in 2022, the message is that families can be headed by a heterosexual couple, a gay/lesbian couple, a single male or female, and parents or grandparents.

Poster in a Cuban school communicating the “all families are different,” expressing the progressive message incorporated in the Families Code, approved by referendum in 2022. Photo: Author.
Poster in a Cuban school communicating the “all families are different,” expressing the progressive message incorporated in the Families Code, approved by referendum in 2022. Photo: Author.
I was thrilled to visit a primary school in Havana (Nicolás Estévanez Murphy). I have a long-standing admiration for José Martí Pérez (1853 – 1895), a Cuban poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, and professor, who founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party (fighting for independence from Spain’s colonial rule and to end slavery) and lived for many years in New York City. Not only did the school have the usual statue of this national hero (see photo), but each of the classrooms was labeled with one of Martí’s stories from his classic children’s volume, La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age).

I have lived mainly in urban areas in the US and Egypt and spent most of my time in cities in Cuba. But I had a chance to visit the national Agrarian University as well as the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, both located in the province of Mayabeque. I was very impressed with the academics and scientists that I met.

Like other Cubans who spoke to our group, these colleagues exuded pride in their institution’s accomplishments, despite the challenges they had faced when the blockade was strengthened during the ravages of the pandemic. I was particularly struck with some of the Institute’s research and development achievements. Their work focused on creating strains of various plants that could thrive in diverse topographical and climate conditions (including hurricanes and drought).

At one point I asked whether the speakers thought that any of the seed variants that they had created would be beneficial to farmers in the US. They said that African, Asian, European, and Latin American countries that had made effective use of their inventions. I followed up to clarify that my question was about the US benefitting, and they responded by stating the obvious that—because of the blockade—they couldn’t export their products to the US.

This led me to reflect how the US financial, commercial, and economic blockade (what some in the US call an embargo) negatively affects not only Cubans but US citizens as well. The blockade not only restricting our access to important biopharma products (for the treatment of certain cancers and prevention of amputations for people with diabetes) but also prevents us from benefitting from the achievements in the area of agricultural sciences.

https://orinocotribune.com/health-agric ... n-in-cuba/

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Deputy prime minister of Cuba checks Food Sovereignty Law

Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca checked this Monday in the western province of Pinar del Río the implementation of the Law on Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security (SSAN), as part of the national strategy.

Author: Radio Habana Cuba | internet@granma.cu

april 11, 2023 10:04:13

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Photo: Ronald Suárez Rivas

Havana, April 10 (RHC) - Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca checked this Monday in the western province of Pinar del Río the implementation of the Law on Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security (SSAN), as part of the national strategy.

During a critical analysis, Tapia Fonseca insisted on family and territorial self-sufficiency, an important aspect of the SSAN legislation and which demands increasing crop plantings and an efficient contracting process.

These meetings are also focused on the evaluation of the operation of the price agreement committees, the situation of non-payments to producers, delivery of land and creation of livestock modules, organization of municipal companies, among others. (Source: ACN)

https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2023-04-11/de ... eignty-law
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