Some allies are calling on Trump to delay his planned announcement for next week, saying the party’s focus should be on Georgia, where Trump-backed football great Herschel Walker’s effort to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is headed. to a second round that could determine control of the Senate.

“I will advise you to hold off on him until after the Georgia runoff,” said former Trump adviser Jason Miller, who spent the night with the former president at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

“Georgia should be the focus of every Republican in the country right now,” he said.

Trump tried to use the midterm elections as an opportunity to demonstrate his political influence after losing the White House in 2020. He endorsed more than 330 candidates in electoral contests, some inexperienced. He reveled in his major victories. But many of his positions, including echoing fraud in 2020 and his hardline views on abortion, were out of step with the political mainstream.

Although he scored some big victories on Tuesday, particularly in Ohio, where his election to the Senate, Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance sailed to an easy victory after Trump’s endorsement catapulted him. In North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd, one of Trump’s first picks, held a vacant Senate seat held by the GOP.

But Trump lost some bigger spots overnight, particularly in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Mehmet Oz, who narrowly won the Senate primary with Trump’s endorsement, lost to Democrat John Fetterman. Trump-backed candidates also lost gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland, and a Senate race in New Hampshire, though Trump seemed to celebrate the latter and criticized Republican Dan Bolduc for trying to moderate his positions by backing down. in his acceptance of the alleged electoral fraud invented by Trump in 2020.

The biggest Republican win of the night came in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis won re-election, cementing his status as a national Republican rising star while contemplating his own potential 2024 run. Ex leader.

Trump’s setbacks
While Republicans still appear well-positioned to flip the House and ultimately could take the Senate as well, those who had believed that frustrations with record inflation, combined with President Joe Biden, would produce quick victories for the Republicans, they were wrong. The “red tide” was not.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a longtime Trump friend and adviser turned critic who is considering his own run for president in 2024, said Republicans “have a fundamental choice to make.”

“We lost in the 18th. We lost in the 20th. We lost in the 21st in Georgia. And now, on the 22nd, we are going to lose net governorships, we are not going to get the number of seats in the House that we thought and it is possible that we will not win the Senate despite a president who has a 40% labor approval”, he affirmed. .

According to Christie, “there is only one person to blame for that and that is Donald Trump.”

Meanwhile, Trump publicly insisted that he was happy with the results.

“While in a way yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal point of view it was a great victory: 219 wins and 16 losses overall. Who has done better than that?” he wrote on his Truth Social network on Wednesday afternoon.

But Republican strategist David Urban, a former Trump adviser, said the Trump brand is hurt no matter what the former president says.

Some now worry that if Trump goes ahead with his planned announcement next week, it could pave the way for a repeat of the Republican defeats in Georgia in 2021.

Trump’s former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who now works for Fox News, advised on air that Trump should postpone announcing him until after the Georgia Senate runoff.

DeSantis, the future candidate
DeSantis emerged as the obvious winner of the night. In addition to his wide margin of victory, he won the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade, and he did so without Trump’s endorsement. (Although Trump told reporters that he had voted for the governor days after calling him “Ron DeSantis.”)

“DeSantis is coming out of the election with a lot of momentum,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant. “Trump has been weak for a long time, but it was not clear who the alternative was… For the first time, Trump really has a formidable rival within the party.”

Even some Democrats admitted DeSantis’ strength.

Miami-based Democratic strategist Jose Parra said Trump’s rival enters the 2024 conversation with “a lot of wind in his sails” after a stronger-than-expected performance across the state, especially in the Miami-Dade County, in South Florida.

Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, Biden said his “intent” is to run again. But pointing to the emerging competition between Trump and DeSantis, he said it would be “fun to see them square off.”

Trump futures
Trumpism as an expression of a right-wing “populism” is here to stay, although it was not expansive beyond its hard core. But this hard core of the extreme right is an intense political-social force, not an occasional phenomenon, arising from the deep political and social polarization that has been installed as a sign of the times, and that is expressed in a distorted way in the so-called “wars”. cultural”. Among Republican voters, a portion close to 70% considers that Trump was the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and therefore that the Biden administration is illegitimate. The most extreme sector of this electoral base was the one that starred in the attempted takeover of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 under the political leadership of the president himself, who was trying to prevent Congress from validating the electoral result.

DeSantis is something of a mild-mannered Trumpist. He won with a tough “law and order” speech. He promises to defeat the “woke”, that is, the “progresses”. He defines himself as “pro-life” but unlike other Republican states, Florida has not completely liquidated the right to abortion, but has limited it to 15 weeks. Several analysts highlight the high percentage of the Latino vote for DeSantis as a symptom. However, it does not seem at first a generalized phenomenon. In Florida, the most right-wing Latino electorate is largely concentrated, made up mainly of Cuban and Venezuelan exiles. Although it is a warning sign.

The result leaves DeSantis well placed as an alternative to Trump in the Republican presidential primary. This was received with some relief in the US imperialist establishment, which was already concerned about the possible return of Trump to the White House in 2024. Especially at a time when the White House, with its role in the war in Ukraine, had regained leadership over the European allies for its dispute with China.

(Taken from The Daily Left)

When the first cases of covid-19 were detected in Cuba in March 2020 and the pandemic began to spread throughout the national territory, 243 measures were already weighing on the Cuban economy and people, which to date hit sources of income, operations as well as exports and tourism.

At the same time, unilateral decisions by Washington fractured relations between families in Cuba and abroad.

Although they were activated during the Trump administration, Biden has kept them unchanged. A demonstration that, in the United States, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party embody the same hegemonic strategy of imperial domination.

In the case of Cuba, in line with the speech enunciated from the White House, which sought to present the country as a failed state, on digital networks the media financed by the United States government tried to conceal the criminal nature of the system of coercive measures against the island.
Through the analysis of experts, testimonies and documents, this chapter of the audiovisual series Archivo.cu reveals why this unilateral policy denies rights to Cubans.

(By: Daily Perez Guillen)

“But first we have to achieve a historic victory for the Republican Party this November,” he added in relation to the midterm elections that will take place on November 8.
Likewise, he criticized Pelosi and stated that he will end his political career. “And we’re going to end up with crazy Nancy Pelosi, and she’s crazy, she’s crazy. We are going to end his political career,” Trump said.
On the other hand, he assured that, if he had been re-elected in the 2020 presidential elections, the conflict in Ukraine would not have happened “not in a million years.”

Hours earlier, Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to testify in the committee’s investigation into the insurrection.

In a letter to Trump’s lawyers, the nine-member special panel demanded that the former president testify under oath, either on Capitol Hill or by videoconference, “beginning on or about November 14.” which is after the crucial midterm elections on November 8 – and continue for several days if necessary.

A series of documents was also requested, including personal communications between him and legislators, as well as with extremist groups, made on the day of the assault. The subpoena comes after this special panel voted unanimously on Oct. 13 to order Trump to appear before investigators.

“We recognize that subpoenaing a former president is an important and historic move,” commission chair Bennie Thompson and vice chair Liz Cheney wrote in the letter. “We do not take this measure lightly.”

It was unclear how the tycoon and his legal team would respond to the order, as he could abide by it, negotiate with the panel or simply ignore it. He could also challenge it in court. His spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.

The commission alleged in its letter that it has gathered “overwhelming evidence” that Trump “personally orchestrated” a campaign to reverse his own defeat in the 2020 election, including spreading false allegations of widespread fraud, “attempting to corrupt” the Department. of Justice and pressuring state officials, legislators and his own vice president to alter the results.

Lawmakers, however, say key details about the case are missing, and the only person who can fill those gaps is Trump.

Meanwhile, federal judge Carl Nichols sentenced Steve Bannon to four months in prison for refusing to testify, although he allowed him to remain free while he appeals. In addition, he fined her $6,500 as part of the sentence. In July, a federal court found him guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress: refusing to testify and failing to produce documents.

Steve Bannon, Trump ally and convicted of contempt of Congress, accompanied by his lawyer Evan Corcoran, leaving the court that sentenced him yesterday. Photo: AP.

Nichols recalled that the law clearly establishes that contempt of the legislature is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of one month in jail. The prosecution had asked for a six-month sentence, while the defense had argued in favor of a period of probation.

“Today was my trial day,” Bannon said defiantly as he left federal court in Washington. He promised that “on November 8 the illegitimate regime” of President Joe Biden will be judged, alluding to the mid-term elections. Protesters yelled at him “Traitor! Fascist!”

Asked about the sentence, Biden responded with disdain: “I never have a reaction with Steve Bannon.”

Alan Byerly, a Pennsylvania man, was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for assaulting an Associated Press photographer and attacking police officers with a stun gun during unrest on Capitol Hill.

The Department of Justice assured that it urgently needs “more than 34 million dollars in additional financing” to maintain the investigation against those suspected of participating in the insurrection of January 6.

In this context, anonymous sources consulted by The Washington Post newspaper reported that the documents seized from the Trump mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, last August included highly confidential intelligence data that addressed Iran’s missile program and “described a job of highly sensitive intelligence directed at China.

(Taken from The Day)

Although this conflict of interest has been documented before, and it was already known that the Secret Service paid a bill of 1.4 million dollars to the former president’s hotels from 2017 to 2021, Congress has seen accounting reports that generate more outrage.

On Monday, the House Oversight Committee reported that the fees charged to the Secret Service to stay at Trump hotels, and thus provide a security scheme for the president and his family when they participated in events, was totally “ excessive”. According to bills seen by the Committee, federal employees paid up to five times the budgeted rate for one night’s stay.

“The exorbitant fees being charged to the Secret Service and the agents’ frequent stays at Trump properties raise significant concerns about the personal treatment of the former president and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for the former president’s ailing businesses. Trump,” said Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York.

In one of the ledgers seen by the Oversight Committee it is found that the Secret Service was charged $1,160 for a room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., a rate that was five times higher than the 2012 budget. dollars per room for that season. This is money paid by taxpayers. Hotels offer a special government rate for federal officials, at a good discount, but this does not seem to be the case with the Trump Organization.

These records contradict information from the Trump Organization and relatives of the former president, who claimed that Trump hotels gave agents rooms at normal cost, at deep discounts or even for free.

“Any services provided to the United States Secret Service or other government agencies at Trump-owned properties were at their request and provided at cost, heavily discounted or free of charge,” the Trump Organization said in a statement. .

Eric Trump, son of the former Republican president, had stated on his own that “if my father travels, (the agents) stay at our properties for free… if they went to a hotel across the street, they would be charged $500 for night, while you know we charge them, like 50 (in ours)”.

Trump visited his estate 547 times, including 145 visits to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida and also his ongoing visits to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to an investigation by the US-based Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility. Washington. Secret Service agents were to stay with him. If the budget for a room was much less than spent, how did the Secret Service pay the bills?

“The Secret Service has been authorized additional flexibility for spending during protection missions, including per diem spending above the government rate,” Maloney said in a letter sent to the Secret Service asking for more complete information about expenses, since the panel he presides considers that the expenses could be higher than the 1.4 million that are known.

“Given longstanding concerns about the former president’s conflicts of interest and efforts to cash in on the presidency, the committee has a strong interest in obtaining a full accounting of federal government spending on Trump properties,” he wrote. Maloney.

Neither the Trump Organization nor the Secret Service have commented on this scandal.

(Taken from The Spectator)

The congresswoman launched those words when an aide informed her that the Secret Service – the police force that protects the US president – had refused to allow Trump to go to Capitol Hill to support his supporters, who were in full coup attempt.

Pelosi’s sentence was recorded on video by her daughter, Alexandra, who is a documentary filmmaker and was recording the ratification of the election result that Joe Biden won that day.

The video was broadcast Thursday at the session of the House Committee investigating the assault on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters.

The footage was overshadowed in the media by the vote to call the former president to testify before the Committee.

Today, Friday, Trump has tried to respond to the summons to testify with a 14-page letter in which he does not say whether he will go or not, although he insists again on his theory -never proven- that in 2020 there was fraud electoral.

But the video reveals how Pelosi and then-Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to prevent the assault on Congress.

Likewise, it shows Pelosi, once she had already been evacuated from the building, trying to mobilize the National Guard to come to the Capitol to restore order.

The images and sound reveal that, contrary to what Trump and several of his supporters in Congress have stated, Pelosi tried to restore order so that the election ratification process could continue.

(Taken from The World)

As detailed by the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, the authorities want the accused to not be able to acquire commercial real estate in the state for five years, and prevent them from receiving loans from any financial institution registered in the entity during the same period.

The 214-page lawsuit is the culmination of a three-year investigation showing that Donald Trump and his children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., as well as Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney, allegedly used the image of wealth and opulence of the former president to make him look like a great businessman who earned millions of dollars when he was a television presenter, as well as during his presidency.

James announced the details of the lawsuit at a news conference, where she said the case was civil, not criminal, and that her office rejected settlement offers made by Trump’s attorneys.

The prosecutor stated that the “investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth, to deceive the banks and the people of the great state of New York.”

“Stating that you have money that you don’t have is not the art of the deal. It is the art of theft,” she maintained.

The prosecutor seeks compensation of 250 million dollars, since, according to her, this would be the approximate value of the benefits that the defendants would have obtained after using these fraudulent practices.

The objective of the alleged scheme would be to boost Trump’s image as a billionaire and the value of his properties, since by doing so he obtained several advantages: he could access favorable loan conditions with cheaper interest, pressure insurers to provide him with more comprehensive coverage at lower premiums while strengthening his image as a business strongman.

Meanwhile, the investigation also indicated that the former president and his company devalued assets on other occasions to obtain tax benefits.

The prosecuting body claims to have found evidence of falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, insurance fraud, conspiracy acts and bank fraud. James’ office said the findings will be forwarded to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service.

The former president would have lied when he said that his apartment in Trump Tower had 2,787 square meters and not the real 1,096. Meanwhile, his valuation of Mar-a-Lago in Florida was $739 million and not the roughly $75 million he actually costs.

What is the prosecution looking for?
Letitia James, through her office, is seeking the appointment of an independent auditor for at least five years to oversee the Trump Organization’s compliance with financial reporting, appraisals, and disclosures to lenders, insurers, and tax authorities. .

Another matter that James seeks, which is allowed by federal law, is to ban the former president and the Trump Organization from making commercial real estate acquisitions and obtaining loans from New York banks for five years, as well as permanently bar the Trumps from being officials or directors of any company or similar business entity registered and/or licensed in the State of New York.

Officials of the Trump Organization, if found guilty, would be barred from exercising the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity registered and/or licensed in the State of New York.

In addition, the Organization will go to trial in October for a criminal proceeding. He is accused of giving tax-free perks to top executives, including CFO Weisselberg, who received $1.7 million in bonus payments.

The executive pleaded guilty on August 18 and will have to testify at trial. If the Trump Organization is found guilty, it could pay a penalty of twice the amount of the taxes it has not paid.

As Letitia James files this lawsuit, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is conducting a parallel criminal investigation into the same business practices, saying in a statement that “our criminal investigation regarding former President Donald J. Trump, the The Trump Organization and its leadership is active and ongoing.”

The former president testified in August about this case after strong pressure, although in his statement he accepted the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which allows the accused to remain silent.

From his social media platform, Truth Social, Donald Trump called the lawsuit “another witch hunt by a racist attorney general,” referring to James, a declared Democrat and African-American.

The former president called James “a fraud who campaigned on a ‘get Trump’ platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the world’s crime and murder disasters under his watch!” .

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, also lashed out at the prosecutor, accusing her of abusing her authority “by meddling in transactions in which absolutely no wrongdoing has occurred,” adding that the lawsuit “doesn’t even focus on the facts.” nor in the law, rather, is it focused solely on advancing the attorney general’s political agenda.”

The lawsuit about Trump joins various open legal proceedings against the president, who could aspire to re-election in 2024 and squeezes a pillar of the Republican Party a few weeks before the mid-term elections in November, in which this force is play the domain of Congress.

(With information from France24 and RT in Spanish)

Without presenting any evidence, the pretext for this action is the alleged responsibility of the minister of that portfolio, General Lázaro Álvarez Casas, in alleged violations of human rights, a pretext that the US Government uses repeatedly to justify its actions against countries that do not they surrender to its dictates.

According to an official statement by the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the measure is adopted in accordance with Executive Order 13818, which implements the Global Accountability on Human Rights, one of the laws that Washington uses to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. .

The text reiterates accusations similar to those outlined in recent years, and indicates that the Minint is designated for being responsible, an accomplice or participating directly or indirectly in alleged abuses against human rights.

Among other justifications for sanctioning Minint, Pompeo’s statement indicates that the Cuban government keeps at least 100 prisoners in prison who, according to that federal agency, are in jail for political reasons.

On repeated occasions the authorities of the Caribbean nation rejected this category, since in reality they are individuals who violated Cuban laws with criminal actions of various kinds.

Finally, the Secretary of State calls on other governments and international organizations to comply with Washington’s demands and support these unilateral sanctions, in addition to those that the White House has maintained against Cuba for more than six decades.

The unjustified and unilateral measure against the Minint adds to the announcement that Pompeo made this week about the reinclusion of Cuba in the list of nations that according to Washington sponsor terrorism, a provision that experts describe as unilateral, spurious and politically motivated.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the decision one of “the last blows of a failed and corrupt Administration committed to the Cuban-Miami mafia.”
The New York Times: Trump’s Tireless Effort to Impose Restrictions on Cuba

Trump in 2017, passing restrictions on the ability of Americans to travel and do business with Cuba. Photo: NYT.

When the Donald Trump administration announced this week that it had designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the reaction in Havana was immediate and energetic.

The Cuban government accused Washington of hypocrisy and described the designation as an act of “political opportunism” by President Trump to obstruct relations between Cuba and the incoming government of President-elect Joe Biden, reports The New York Times in a published article. under the title “Cuba has its sights set on a future without Trump.”

The US newspaper notes that, “however, beyond the outrage, Cubans are ready to move forward , a sentiment stressed by their president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who tweeted on Tuesday, January 12, that the United States decision it was part of ‘the last blows of a failed and corrupt administration.’

According to The New York Times , Trump’s “uncompromising strategy” has resulted in “a series of restrictions on tourism, visas, remittances, investment and trade, which has worsened an already poor economy. The pandemic has aggravated the problems, in large part by having almost completely paralyzed tourism, one of the main sources of foreign currency.

Amid these difficulties, the newspaper continues, many in Cuba hope that Biden will change US policy in a way that eases economic pressure.

“The president-elect has not commented much in public on his political objectives for Cuba, although during the campaign he attacked Trump’s strategy towards Havana, ” he says.

Similarly, it draws attention to the fact that some of the foreign policy leadership of Biden’s transition team (including Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for secretary of Homeland Security) participated in negotiations with Cuba during the second term of President Barack Obama.

“Biden’s team is not parachuting into this without prior experience,” said Rafael Hernández, political scientist and editor-in-chief of Temas , Cuba’s most important social science magazine. “They can resume the consensus they created during 2015 and 2016.”

“Biden represents the hope that the worst is over,” said Hal Klepak, emeritus professor of history and strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada, who lives in Havana for part of the year. “It represents the possibility of a renewed Obama-style opening. It represents listening to the CIA, the Pentagon and the Department of National Security about the value of Cuba as a friend and collaborator and not as an enemy ”.

After citing these statements, the NYT notes that “the decision to put Cuba back on the list of states accused of sponsoring terrorism – a designation that was last applied for more than three decades, until Obama withdrew it in 2015 – crowned a tireless effort by the Trump administration to impose economic and diplomatic restrictions on the island. ”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others “worked with the goal of repealing anything that could be seen as a benefit to the Government of Cuba,” said Ted A. Henken, associate professor of sociology at Baruch College in New York. York.

Although Trump’s company had been looking to invest in Cuba shortly before he took office, as president he has punished the island with the toughest sanctions in more than half a century. US cruise ships were prohibited from docking in Cuban ports, remittances from the United States were prohibited, and ships carrying oil from Venezuela were prevented from arriving with their cargo.

“The only thing left is diplomatic relations,” Henken said. “We still officially have diplomatic relations with Cuba, despite the fact that in practice they are frozen.”

These efforts by the Trump administration to reverse Obama’s initiatives have slowed the development of the private sector in Cuba and crippled efforts by US companies that had tried to build relationships after the Obama-era détente, Henken said.

The NYT considers that one of Cuba’s demands, if a context of normalization of bilateral relations returns, would be the elimination of the designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In this regard, he quotes William LeoGrande, professor of Government at the American University in Washington, who states that “the reason this is so sensitive for Cubans is that they have been the object of literally hundreds of terrorist attacks,” most of them which were launched by Cuban exiles based in the United States and trained and organized by the CIA.

So the Cubans, he said, “are very offended at being labeled supporters of terrorists.”

(With information from Prensa Latina and The New York Times )

The assault on the Capitol is the most serious attack in the history of the building that symbolizes U.S. power, since the British set it on fire, along with the White House and other government institutions, on August 24, 1814, after winning the battle of Bladensburg.

The sobering events may remind us of others in the confines of this city, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who was shot in the head while attending a performance at the Ford Theatre, the result of a major conspiracy in the context of the Civil War, or what took place March 1, 1954, when Puerto Rican patriots Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores, and Andrés Figueroa forced their way into the House of Representatives chamber at the Capitol to draw the world’s attention to Puerto Rico’s colonial status and the U.S. government’s repression of the island’s independence movement.

What few in that country will mention is the danger still lingering after the night of April 30, 2020 when, very close to the White House, a terrorist fired an AK-47 rifle into the Cuban embassy, another violent act some may have forgotten, given the complicit silence of the current U.S. administration.

(Taken from Granma)

Has there ever been a leader in history where the discrepancy between the global reach of his power and the ridiculousness of his person has been more pathetic?

Maybe some Roman emperor. Nero, for example, who, in addition to being a despot, macho and arsonist, had his mother, Agripina, murdered, seems to have poisoned his stepbrother, Británico, executed his first wife, Claudia, and kicked his second, Poppea. , in full pregnancy. But he played the lyre, and in his taste for music he surpassed Trump, apart from the fact that it would not have occurred to him to decree the fire of Rome and, at the same time, prohibit the circulation of vinegar, a drink that mixed with honey was so popular in the first century like coffee now.

We Cubans are so fed up with Trump that the echo of what he does in these last weeks of his presidency reaches us muffled, already hovering on the slope of indifference. After having cut off remittances, the trips of the Americans and the oil tankers, after the persecution of companies from third countries and the billion-dollar fines to the banks that operated with Cuba, almost nobody has given importance to this occurrence against the coffee distributor. And those who found out, put the anecdote at the end of the long line of failures of the gringo Nero.

Here everyday life coexists with other sounds. On January 1, the convertible peso (CUC) goes out of circulation and Cuba will begin its process of monetary unification, which has taken seven years to materialize. There will be only one official currency, the Cuban peso (CUP), with a conversion rate of 24 pesos to the dollar, which has left the forecasts of a severe devaluation of the national currency badly off. The so-called “Ordinance Task” is in turn accompanied by a reform of salaries, pensions and subsidies for the most vulnerable people.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that the end of the double currency will not be “the magic solution to all the problems” of the economy, but “will allow for a more solid advance”, in a context marked by the international economic crisis, the Covid-19 and the effects of the United States blockade.

At this point, those who strive to ignore the unilateral sanctions of the powerful neighbor against the island and its open and covert operations, give the exclusive of the Cuban economic drama to the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, while a capitalist of back and forth as Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Columbia University, recalled Tuesday that “medical and humanitarian aid is not denied to a population due to political disagreements, even in war.” (By the way, former Bush administration Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez reacted instantly to Chovanec’s tweet: “This is what we’ve done to Cuba for 60 years! It’s time for a policy change.”)

Stock-outs and uncertainty have triggered queues and prices on the black market, as the government tackles speculation and hoarders, and acknowledges the unpopularity of currency-only stores, a move that attempts to reorient the economy. internal the money that trickled out of the country. Juggling is made so that families receive their unalterable basic food basket, while the authorities repeatedly assure that “no one will be left homeless.”

But the hardest year that Cubans have lived in a long time ends with formidable news: “Sovereign 02”, the national candidate for the Covid 19 vaccine, has already begun phase two of clinical trials and is the first drug of its type in Latin America to advance to that stage. Of the more than 200 vaccine projects that are managed in the world, “Sovereign” is the 30th of 14 countries that have received authorization from the corresponding regulatory entity to advance to trials with human beings.

In the midst of all this, imagine the drama of those who try to interpret the last hours of American international politics under Trump and discover that Kave Coffee received the full attention of the president in the final agony of his term, for the sin of selling. Cubita coffee. It is an insult even to the memory of Nero. Remember the final litany of TS Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”: “This is how the world ends / This is how the world ends / This is how the world ends / Not with a bang but with a groan.”

(By Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Taken from La Jornada)