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The Many Shades of Fidel Castro |
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Tuesday, 29 November 2016 15:00 |
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Fernandes writes: "Yesterday morning, Cubans woke up to the news that the 90-year old leader Fidel Castro had died. It was an event much expected and anticipated, given Fidel's ailing health and advanced years, but it still took Cubans and the world by surprise. It was a particularly hard blow coming so soon on the heels of the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency."
Fidel Castro in Havana in 1978. (photo: Marcelo Montecino/Flickr)
The Many Shades of Fidel Castro
By Sujatha Fernandes, NACLA
29 November 16
The committment of Fidel Castro and his generation to the building of an alternative model of a socialist society is a memory well worth keeping alive.
 esterday morning, Cubans woke up to the news that the 90-year old leader Fidel Castro had died. It was an event much expected and anticipated, given Fidel’s ailing health and advanced years, but it still took Cubans and the world by surprise. It was a particularly hard blow coming so soon on the heels of the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. In some ways these events represent the waning of one era marked by wealth redistribution downwards, international solidarity with oppressed peoples, and pro-poor governance to another that signals an intensification of free market capitalism, wealth redistribution upwards, and a rhetoric of borders and walls that unleashes rampant xenophobia and racism.
The American mainstream media and hardliner Cubans in Miami have long presented the Cuban socialist system as entirely dependent on the iron fist leadership of Fidel Castro, with his much awaited death leading to celebrations in the streets and the downfall of the system. Yet this view is wrong on several counts. Fidel managed a transition in leadership to his brother Raúl ten years ago, when his health started to decline. In practical terms, Fidel’s death presents little to no challenge to the everyday functioning of the Cuban government. And when Raúl retires in two years, there will be a transition in leadership to Vice-President Miguel Díaz-Canel, ensuring a continuity with the Castro brothers’ policies and programs.
While there have been mixed reactions in Cuba to Fidel’s death, there are no large celebrations on the streets. This is only partly due to fear of reprisal: for many Cubans, particularly of an older generation, Fidel still represents the idealism and hopes of an earlier generation that they could create an independent and equitable socialist system on an island under the yoke of the United States. For all of Fidel’s errors and flaws in leadership, and they were many, he pursued this dream single-mindedly for many decades. He survived numerous assassination attempts, outlived many U.S. presidents, and always sought to extend the outreach of the Cuban revolution abroad through solidarity with liberation struggles and medical and educational assistance, which will be some of his greatest legacies as leader of Cuba.
There will be no quick transition to a market society as a result of Fidel’s death. While the media has often presented Cubans as clamouring for market freedoms denied to them, the past few decades of experimentation with market reforms have resulted in widely increasing racial and economic divisions in Cuban society. Although the Cuban socialist system became dysfunctional after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban leadership has had to tread carefully in their market reforms to preserve the most important and cherished aspects of Cuban socialism, including the health care and education systems. Cubans could see the vast inequalities that opened up in Russia and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, and that was not a model they wanted to emulate.
Fidel was beloved by many for his charismatic style of leadership that kept him close to the people and to their concerns. A Cuban friend of mine, now in her mid-40s, recalled the day that Fidel came to her elementary school. There was no formal visit announced and the children didn’t even realize he was coming until they saw him enter the schoolyard with a few of his guards. He sat with the children and asked them about their day, and what they were learning about in school. For my friend, that day forever marked her view of the president as someone who cared about the people and wanted to get their input.
At other times, he could be seen as a micro-manager who demanded people’s attention and allegiance. On the evening of September 11, 2001, Fidel reflected on the events of that day in a nationally broadcast address from a new elementary school that he was inaugurating. In front of a group of ten and eleven-year-olds, Fidel expressed sympathy for the American people, offered the resources of the country for treatment of the victims, and urged caution on the part of the American government. In the middle of a statement about why the United States should not be carried away in a fit of rage and start dropping bombs on innocent people, he paused to reprimand a young schoolgirl sitting at her desk: “Put down that pencil. Don’t doodle. Try to pay attention while I’m talking.”
Cuban musicians and artists tended to refrain from references to Fidel in their artistic productions partly in a bid to avoid censorship. They sometimes used veiled references to Fidel, such as Daniel Díaz Torres’ 1991 film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown). Alicia is a satirical comedy about a drama coach who goes to a small town called Maravillas for her obligatory year of community service. The director for the corrupt and mismanaged Sanatorium for Active Therapy and Neurology (SATAN) in Maravillas was rumored to be a caricature of Fidel, and the film was withdrawn from theatres after four days. In 1989, an exhibition at the Castillo de la Real Fuerza was closed when it was found to include a portrait of Fidel Castro in drag with large breasts and leading a political rally. This period was one of provocative political art and confrontations with the art establishment, but in the wake of censorship, artists again moved to safer topics.
Despite the lack of tolerance for anti-establishment art in Cuba, Fidel showed himself willing to engage with new cultural genres like rap music during the 1990s. At a National Championship baseball game in 1999, when the Cuban national team played the Baltimore Orioles, instead of the obligatory salsa song, before the game started they chose to play a song by the Cuban rap group Doble Filo. The whole stadium rapped along with the group, including Fidel Castro himself. American actor Danny Hoch, who was present at the game, called Fidel “the first world leader to embrace hip-hop.”
A much maligned figure seen by some as the Castro dictator, and loved by many others who referred to him endearingly as Fidel, he is remarkable for his very survival in a world that sought to eliminate young black, indigenous, and third world revolutionaries. Lumumba, Che, Sukarno, Malcolm, Allende, Anna Mae Aquash, Fred Hampton—all were gunned down before they could bring to fruition the visions of equality and justice to which they dedicated their lives. By sheer luck or ingenuity, Fidel and the Cuban revolution survived to provide an alternative model of a socialist society. In the current dystopian Trump era, it will be important to keep alive the memory of what Fidel Castro and others of his generation stood for.
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FOCUS: Standing Rock Is the Civil Rights Issue of Our time - Let's Act Accordingly |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=19600"><span class="small">Bill McKibben, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 November 2016 12:19 |
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McKibben writes: "When John Doar died in 2014, Barack Obama, who'd already awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called him 'one of America's bravest lawyers.' Without his courage and perseverance, the president said, 'Michelle and I might not be where we are today.'"
Bill McKibben. (photo: rightlivelihood.org)
Standing Rock Is the Civil Rights Issue of Our time - Let's Act Accordingly
By Bill McKibben, Guardian UK
29 November 16
The US government sent helpers to protect integration efforts in the 1960s. Why not do more to protect the Dakota Pipeline protesters today?
 hen John Doar died in 2014, Barack Obama, who’d already awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called him “one of America’s bravest lawyers”. Without his courage and perseverance, the president said, “Michelle and I might not be where we are today”.
Doar was the federal lawyer sent south by the Kennedy and Johnson justice departments to keep an eye on the explosive centers of the civil rights movement. Those White Houses didn’t do enough – but at least they kept watch on things. Doar escorted James Meredith to classes at the University of Mississippi, and helped calm crowds at the murder of Medgar Evers; he rescued activists from mobs during the Freedom Rides. A figure of history, in other words.
But history is just news from a while ago. Right now, we’re seeing a scene as explosive as the Freedom Rides or the bus boycotts play out in real time on the high plains of the Dakotas. And it’s a scene that desperately needs some modern-day John Doars to keep it from getting any worse.
Representatives of more 200 Indian nations have gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in an effort to prevent construction of an oil pipeline that threatens the tribe’s water supply, not to mention the planet’s climate. It’s a remarkable encampment, perhaps the greatest show of indigenous unity in the continent’s history. If Trump Tower represents all that’s dark and greedy in America right now, Standing Rock is by contrast the moral center of the nation.
But the peaceful protests have been met with repression that closely resembles the work of Bull Connor, as the pipeline company’s hired guards began by using dogs, and the local sheriff escalated from pepper spray to using water guns in freezing weather, “sonic cannons” and rubber bullets.
Clearly the authorities are attempting, a la Birmingham or Selma, to goad nonviolent protesters into some kind of reaction that will justify more repression. They’ve used every trick in the book, including arresting reporters and shutting down camera drones to make sure they’re operating in the dark.
So far the Native Americans and their allies have held back despite the most intense provocation – for instance, the pipeline company bulldozed sacred sites and ancient graves the day after the tribe handed a list of their locations to a federal court. Now the Army Corps of Engineers has announced that they’re revoking the permit under which everyone is camped at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers as of 5 December.
So far the Obama administration has announced at least a short delay before granting the final pipeline permits. But that delay could expire at any moment, adding to the tension in the camp. Clearly the administration needs to do much more: the entire pipeline, which underwent an “antiquated” approval process, needs a full environmental review – by a body other than the project’s own developer.
Yes, Donald Trump will likely overturn the delay. But Trump’s not president yet; this tragedy is playing out in the Obama years.
Along with other actions, the federal government needs to grant the Sioux tribal government request to send justice department observers — contemporary John Doars – to the Standing Rock reservation to ensure that the local authorities don’t keep escalating the situation. They should do it because it’s right, and also because it’s a historic moment.
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FOCUS: Free Trade, Protective Tariffs, or 21st Century Socialism - How Far Will Bernie Go? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 November 2016 11:43 |
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Weissman writes: "When Donald Trump announced that he would kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day as president, and would take steps to negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), many progressives breathed a huge sigh of relief."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP)
Free Trade, Protective Tariffs, or 21st Century Socialism - How Far Will Bernie Go?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
29 November 16
hen Donald Trump announced that he would kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day as president, and would take steps to negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), many progressives breathed a huge sigh of relief. Bernie Sanders had campaigned fiercely against the TPP, which the Obama administration had negotiated out of public view with the direct participation of Wall Street, multinational corporations, and their high-priced lawyers. Bernie even forced Hillary Clinton to speak out against the treaty. So, will Trump now represent our interests on international trade and related issues?
Not until pigs learn to fly. Trump is an economic nationalist, a characteristically short-sighted species. Threatening to impose high tariffs, or taxes, on goods from Mexico, China, and other countries to force them to do what he wants, he fails to see the obvious. Unless he backs down, these countries will retaliate by slapping similar tariffs on goods made in the United States. The ensuing trade wars would hurt everyone, not least the American workers whose jobs Trump claims he wants to safeguard.
Trump’s trade wars could also encourage shooting wars, especially with Beijing. The Middle Kingdom’s overblown nationalist claims to much of the South China Sea already clash dangerously with those of smaller Asian nations, strongly abetted by Washington’s age-old mantra to freedom of the seas. Warring over trade will only fuel the flames throughout the area.
TPP and the other multilateral trade agreements lower certain tariffs and other barriers to trade, which may – or may not – be a good thing. It depends on who wins from the increased trade and who loses. In the case of NAFTA, which Bill Clinton used Republican votes to push through Congress, many corporations benefited enormously by moving their operations to Mexico in what 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot called a “giant sucking sound.” The American workers at those corporations lost their jobs, and the Midwestern communities in which many of them lived too often became ghost towns.
For all their claims to promote “free trade,” the treaties also have provisions that remain frankly protectionist. Some of these provisions give over-extended protection to patents and other intellectual property rights, erecting a huge restraint of trade worth billions to Big Pharma, US media conglomerates, and Silicon Valley. Trump, the economic nationalist, has said little or nothing about all this. Would his renegotiations or his own “free trade agreements” keep them in place or even expand them?
Trump also has a long history of using Chinese labor to produce his branded products. Would he now ban such outsourcing?
As on almost every other issue, Trump favors lowering corporate tax rates, which ? he says – is the way to compete with China and keep jobs in the United States. Compare that to Bernie Sanders, who wants to make the wealthy, Wall Street, and large corporations pay more taxes to create American jobs through government-funded infrastructure projects.
Like most progressives, Bernie Sanders has for years stood against “unfettered free trade,” whether in TPP, NAFTA, or the World Trade Organization (WTO). “It is not a good deal for American workers,” he explained in Congress in 2000. “American workers should not be asked to compete against desperate people in China who are forced to work at starvation wages, who cannot form free trade unions, who do not even have the legal right to stand up and criticize their government.”
“I believe in fair trade which works for the middle class and working families, not just large multinational corporations,” he added in his campaign against Hillary Clinton.
“I was on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA. We heard people tell us how many jobs would be created. I didn't believe that for a second because I understood what the function of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, and the TPP is, it's to say to American workers, hey, you are now competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour minimum wage.”
Protecting American workers must be the bottom line for progressives. But if we need to remove unwanted barriers to trade, we should ask ourselves the obvious question: Can we carefully construct social and economic measures to ensure that the benefits of increased trade go overwhelmingly to those who lose their jobs and benefits because of increased competition from lower waged workers?
Trump would call such measures Socialistic. They are, as in the kind of Democratic Socialism Bernie favors and needs to talk more about. Our Revolution has a world of educating to do.
Equally important, much of America’s current unemployment and under-employment come less from outsourcing jobs overseas than from robots, other automation, and the computerized manipulation of information. Why not expand Socialist protection of workers to include these as well?
Under Trump, none of this will be possible. But when he falls flat, as he will, we have a whole world to win.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he divides his time between writing and Boycott Trump’s America, at www.facebook.com/btanow.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting |
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Tuesday, 29 November 2016 09:13 |
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Taibbi writes: "Last week, a technology reporter for the Washington Post named Craig Timberg ran an incredible story. It has no analog that I can think of in modern times."
The 'Washington Post' ran a piece last week headlined 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say." (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)
The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
29 November 16
The capital's paper of record crashes legacy media on an iceberg
 ast week, a technology reporter for the Washington Post named Craig Timberg ran an incredible story. It has no analog that I can think of in modern times. Headlined "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say," the piece promotes the work of a shadowy group that smears some 200 alternative news outlets as either knowing or unwitting agents of a foreign power, including popular sites like Truthdig and Naked Capitalism.
The thrust of Timberg's astonishingly lazy report is that a Russian intelligence operation of some kind was behind the publication of a "hurricane" of false news reports during the election season, in particular stories harmful to Hillary Clinton. The piece referenced those 200 websites as "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda."
The piece relied on what it claimed were "two teams of independent researchers," but the citing of a report by the longtime anticommunist Foreign Policy Research Institute was really window dressing.
The meat of the story relied on a report by unnamed analysts from a single mysterious "organization" called PropOrNot – we don't know if it's one person or, as it claims, over 30 – a "group" that seems to have been in existence for just a few months.
It was PropOrNot's report that identified what it calls "the list" of 200 offending sites. Outlets as diverse as AntiWar.com, LewRockwell.com and the Ron Paul Institute were described as either knowingly directed by Russian intelligence, or "useful idiots" who unwittingly did the bidding of foreign masters.
Forget that the Post offered no information about the "PropOrNot" group beyond that they were "a collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
Forget also that the group offered zero concrete evidence of coordination with Russian intelligence agencies, even offering this remarkable disclaimer about its analytic methods:
"Please note that our criteria are behavioral. ... For purposes of this definition it does not matter ... whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide 'useful idiots' of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny."
What this apparently means is that if you published material that meets their definition of being "useful" to the Russian state, you could be put on the "list," and "warrant further scrutiny."
Forget even that in its Twitter responses to criticism of its report, PropOrNot sounded not like a group of sophisticated military analysts, but like one teenager:
"Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the subject - they're so vewwy angwy!!" it wrote on Saturday.
"Fascists. Straight up muthafuckin' fascists. That's what we're up against," it wrote last Tuesday, two days before Timberg's report.
Any halfway decent editor would have been scared to death by any of these factors. Moreover the vast majority of reporters would have needed to see something a lot more concrete than a half-assed theoretical paper from such a dicey source before denouncing 200 news organizations as traitors.
But if that same source also demanded anonymity on the preposterous grounds that it feared being "targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers"? Any sane reporter would have booted them out the door. You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.
Yet the Post thought otherwise, and its report was uncritically picked up by other outlets like USA Today and the Daily Beast. The "Russians did it" story was greedily devoured by a growing segment of blue-state America that is beginning to fall victim to the same conspiracist tendencies that became epidemic on the political right in the last few years.
The right-wing fascination with conspiracy has culminated in a situation where someone like Alex Jones of Infowars (who believes juice boxes make frogs gay) is considered a news source. Jones is believed even by our new president-elect, who just repeated one of his outrageous reports, to the effect that three million undocumented immigrants voted in the November 8th election.
That Jones report was based on a tweet by someone named Greg Phillips of an organization called VoteStand.
When asked to comment on his methodology, Phillips replied in the first person plural, sounding like a lone spree killer claiming to be a national terror network. "No. We will release it in open form to the American people," he said. "We won't allow the media to spin this first. Sorry."
This was remarkably similar to the response of PropOrNot when asked by The Intercept to comment about its "list" report. The only difference was, Phillips didn't use emoticons:
"We're getting a lot of requests for comment and can get back to you today =)" PropOrNot told The Intercept. "We're over 30 people, organized into teams, and we cannot confirm or deny anyone's involvement."
"They" never called The Intercept back.
Most high school papers wouldn't touch sources like these. But in November 2016, both the president-elect of the United States and the Washington Post are equally at ease with this sort of sourcing.
Even worse, the Post apparently never contacted any of the outlets on the "list" before they ran their story. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism says she was never contacted. Chris Hedges of Truthdig, who was part of a group that won the Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times once upon a time, said the same. "We were named," he tells me. "I was not contacted."
Hedges says the Post piece was an "updated form of Red-Baiting."
"This attack signals an open war on the independent press," he says. "Those who do not spew the official line will be increasingly demonized in corporate echo chambers such as the Post or CNN as useful idiots or fifth columnists."
All of this is an outgrowth of this horrible election season we just lived through.
A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked – in some cases publicly – about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic "distance" from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign. "Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism," is how The Times put it.
These journalists seemed totally indifferent to the Pandora's box they were opening. They didn't understand that most politicians have no use for critical media. Many of them don't see alternative points of view as healthy or even legitimate. If you polled a hundred politicians about the profession, 99 would say that all reporters are obstructionist scum whose removal from the planet would be a boon to society.
The only time politicians like the media is when we're helping them get elected or push through certain policies, like for instance helping spread dubious stories about Iraq's WMD capability. Otherwise, they despise us. So news outlets that get into bed with politicians are usually making a devil's bargain they don't fully understand.
They may think they're being patriotic (as many did during the Iraq/WMD episode), but in the end what will happen is that they will adopt the point of view of their political sponsors. They will soon enough denounce other reporters and begin to see themselves as part of the power structure, as opposed to a check on it.
This is the ultimate in stupidity and self-annihilating behavior. The power of the press comes from its independence from politicians. Jump into bed with them and you not only won't ever be able to get out, but you'll win nothing but a loss of real influence and the undying loathing of audiences.
Helping Beltway politicos mass-label a huge portion of dissenting media as "useful idiots" for foreign enemies in this sense is an extraordinarily self-destructive act. Maybe the Post doesn't care and thinks it's doing the right thing. In that case, at least do the damn work.
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onald Trump says there were 3 million fraudulent voters in a “rigged” election he lost by more than 2 million popular votes.
