Billionaire Elon Musk, who last week acquired the social network Twitter, announced a complete overhaul of the platform’s user account verification process. “The entire verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk wrote on Twitter last Sunday, without elaborating.

After a user’s account is verified or authenticated, a blue icon appears next to the name. According to the platform’s rules, the account must be active and “associated with a known person or brand” to pass verification.

According to familiar sources and internal correspondence seen by the specialized portal The Verge, the new directive is going to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional subscription of $4.99 per month, for one of $19.99 that also includes verification. of the users.

Employees working on the project were informed last Sunday that they have to meet a deadline of November 7 to launch the feature or they will be fired, according to the aforementioned media.

It was also learned that the billionaire Saudi prince Al Walid bin Talal has become the second largest investor in Twitter, after the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, completed the acquisition of the social network for 44 billion dollars. and now be in charge of the company.

According to a statement published last Friday in Al Waleed bin Talal’s account, his conglomerate Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), one of the most successful international investment companies, and the private office of the prince himself “announce the transfer of his ownership of existing Twitter stock (34,948,975 shares) valued at $1.89 billion to the ‘new’ Twitter, led by Elon Musk.”

At the same time, it is noted that KHC and the prince “are jointly the second largest investor”, after Musk. “This deal is in line with the long-term investment strategy for which Kingdom Holding Company is known,” the statement published under the prince’s comment concludes: “Dear friend ‘Chief Twit’ (Twitter boss), Elon Musk. Together all the way.”

In April, Twitter announced that it had reached a definitive agreement with Musk to sell the company for $44 billion, or $54.20 per share. In July, the tycoon suddenly canceled the acquisition agreement, for which the social network filed a lawsuit to force him to fulfill his offer. Later, he filed a counterclaim.

Last Thursday, the businessman confirmed the purchase of the platform less than 24 hours before the expiration of the term that a court had given him to open a process if the acquisition was not formalized.

TWP: Elon Musk could fire 25% of Twitter employees

Roughly a quarter of Twitter’s staff will lose their jobs in a first round of layoffs within the company, now that Elon Musk has taken over, says the US newspaper The Washington Post with reference to sources familiar with the matter.

Members of Musk’s inner circle met this weekend with company executives to discuss details about new policies that will govern the social network and initial plans to cut staff.

According to the WP report, attorney Alex Spiro, Musk’s longtime legal representative, led the talks, which were attended by David Sacks and Jason Calacanis, former associates of the tycoon.

It is estimated that about 2,000 people may be removed from the payroll of the company, whose workforce is estimated at more than 7,000 employees.

The layoffs in the coming days will affect all departments, but especially the sales, product, engineering, legal and security sections, detailed one of the sources on condition of anonymity.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that the layoffs will take place “by November 1, the date employees were supposed to start receiving stock grants as part of their severance pay.” However, the next day Musk himself described the report as “false”.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that the layoffs will take place “by November 1, the date employees were supposed to start receiving stock grants as part of their severance pay.” However, the next day Musk himself described the report as “false”.

On Thursday, the tycoon ruled out that he had plans to expel 75% of the workforce, something that some media had hinted at. Meanwhile, a third person put the percentage of layoffs at about 50%, citing Jared Birchall, Musk’s right-hand man.

So far, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has only fired a few top executives and sent engineers from his automaker to assess Twitter’s software code, saying he plans to form a content moderation expert council.

(With information from RT in Spanish)

Según el sitio web Down Detector, los usuarios comenzaron a reportar problemas con WhatsApp justo antes de las 7am (GTM) con más de 12 000 informes enviados al sitio en media hora.

“Somos conscientes de que algunas personas actualmente tienen problemas para enviar mensajes y estamos trabajando para restaurar WhatsApp para todos lo más rápido posible”, afirmó un portavoz de la empresa matriz de WhatsApp, Meta Platforms.

Poco después, el servicio fue reestablecido.

El año pasado, WhatsApp dejó de funcionar durante de seis horas, en una caída global que también afectó Facebook, Oculus e Instagram.

Facebook informó que el problema fue causado por un cambio de configuración.

WhatsApp es una de las plataformas de mensajería más populares en todo el mundo. Se estima que tiene más de dos mil millones de usuarios activos.

(Con información de BBC)

The media points out that the two-decade alliance between the tycoon and the Government allowed the US to establish global dominance in space, bet on the introduction of electric cars and gain ground in the world of technology.

However, today in Washington they are grateful to Musk for the progress he has made in areas of national security, but they also call the businessman “too powerful and reckless.”

Following certain statements by Musk directed at American public figures, including Joe Biden, many White House officials spoke out about the billionaire’s personality, describing him, for the most part, as an erratic and arrogant but brilliant man.

“He believes he is such a gift to humanity that he doesn’t need protective barriers, that he knows what is best,” said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“He sees himself above the presidency,” said Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian who has presented several podcasts about the businessman.

“The bottom line is that people hang on to his every word because he’s said it many times,” said Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin. “I hope he shows some respect for that responsibility,” he added.

Meanwhile, Musk himself has limited himself to stating on occasion that the objective of his comments is “to improve the future of humanity.”
But the truth is that Musk’s relationship with Washington began in 2008, after signing a major contract with NASA at a time when the businessman was heavily in debt. Washington subsequently poured billions of dollars into SpaceX, and in return, Musk rebuilt the US space program.

However, today the businessman is increasingly critical of the federal government and at the same time establishes more links with foreign policy. Musk also maintains commercial ties with South Korea, Turkey, Germany and China, in addition to owning and controlling more satellites than any country: more than 3,000 units.
As time goes by, Musk needs Washington less, while the US leadership remains dependent on him.

“The US military uses its rocket and satellite communications services for its drones, ships and aircraft. NASA currently has no way of getting American astronauts to the International Space Station without their space capsule. And, at a time when climate change is a top White House priority, it has more electric cars on US roads than any other manufacturer,” the article says.
In this context, reports emerged about Washington’s efforts to lessen its dependence on Musk through interaction with other companies.
However, few seek a direct confrontation with the tycoon.

Biden has already made this mistake by not inviting Musk to a White House conference on electric vehicles in August 2021. In response, the businessman called the decision “next level of insanity” and accused the US president of be controlled by the unions.

Subsequently, he dedicated himself for quite some time to calling attention to every blunder by Biden on his social networks and in public statements.
The media highlights that there are many people who do like to do business with Musk, not only for fear of his possible reaction, but also because of his achievements. In this way, the number of projects that the billionaire is working on is far from decreasing, but, on the contrary, increasing.

“We should be concerned, not because it is inevitable that his influence will be negative, but because it is inevitable that he will be a major influence,” Jill Lepore concluded.
After the publication of The Washington Post, one of the billionaire’s followers on social networks dedicated a tweet to the article.

“WP says that Elon Musk is a threat to national security. ‘Democracy dies in the dark,’ says his tagline, but instead ‘democracy dies when influential people use journalism to protect powerful interests while misleadingly claiming they are protecting the interests of ordinary people,’” the comment reads. .
“Exactly,” Musk responded on Sunday. “WP are very hypocritical,” he stated.

(Taken from RT in Spanish)

Other theorists have also referred to this concept, according to Elio Perera Pena, a researcher at the Center for International Policy Research (CIPI).

Speaking at the Round Table, the expert pointed out that the United States conceptualized this type of war through the terminology dictionary of the Department of Defense, in 1990, a conceptualization that continued to develop until today.

“Unconventional warfare is when there is a condition of a resistance movement in a target country and a completely worn-out population.”

According to Perera Pena, this concept began to be located for analysis in US governing documents, including Training Directive 1801 of the US Special Operations Forces.

According to that text, for unconventional warfare to occur, there must be at least two essential conditions:

Convenience: The war will go ahead if the resistance movement is going to serve US interests.
Feasibility: When the resistance movement is really strong, has the power, and the population is worn out, dissatisfied and diverted from their attention.
Regarding hybrid warfare, the CIPI researcher clarified that it refers to when regular and non-regular methods are used.

The former include first generation wars (since ancient times, with the use of uniforms), second generation wars (for example, the one applied in the First World War, where there are battle fronts with trenches) and third generation wars. , used in World War II, where there are flank maneuvers, by the rear, light and heavy weapons, and a further increase in the maneuverability of aviation.

The latter include fourth and fifth generation warfare. In both, it is proposed that physical space, digital space and cyberspace will be used.

“The new computerization and communications technologies change the meaning of generations of wars, because what it is about are battles where apparently no shots are fired, although in governing documents of the United States it is said that there could be armed confrontations ”, commented Perera Pena.

However, he reiterated, the fundamental thing is the destabilizing message using the new information and communication technologies.

“It is said that in the fourth generation of war the frequency of destabilizing messages increases and in the fifth the intensity increases, causing irreversible neuronal damage.

“What it is about is working on the subconscious of the individual, achieving that in the cognitive process the objective that, from the think tanks and information centers, they try when they launch a war is fulfilled: influence, persuasion and conviction in the subconscious of the individual.

“They put this guy in a glass capsule, so he’s in one physical space but his mind is somewhere else,” she argued.

The researcher noted that they take advantage of real situations in a given country to launch this type of attack.

Pedro Etcheverry Vázquez, deputy director of the State Security Historical Research Center, referred to the doctrine of the so-called soft coup, recalling that it was conceived by US neoconservatives and exposed for the first time in July 1982 by President Ronald Reagan, before the European Parliament, through the so-called democracy programme.

In 1983, the Alberto Einstein Institution Foundation was created in Boston, with resources from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and directed by the anti-communist ideologue Gene Sharp.

Etcheverry Vázquez said that the soft coup doctrine was present in the events that occurred in the European socialist camp, in 1989, and in the Soviet Union, in 1991.

According to the deputy director of the State Security Historical Research Center, the book From dictatorship to democracy (1993), by Gene Sharp, founded hundreds of methods of internal destabilization, beginning with a first phase with the use of protest actions through symbolic acts, assemblies, rallies and marches, supported by extensive media coverage.

He added that later the organizers of the protests move on to other forms of civil disobedience and non-cooperation that are a little more advanced. Later they resort to the so-called non-violent intervention, which has to do with the obstruction of streets, the “peaceful” occupation of official offices and institutions, disrespecting the country’s authorities.

“Many of these street demonstrations are geared towards a higher degree of aggressiveness, while others protest peacefully. However, in other places there can be events involving common criminals who go beyond the limits, heating up the atmosphere, with the closure of large avenues, the burning of vehicles and violent acts against police forces.

Etcheverry Vázquez pointed out that without media support, all of this “would remain mute,” “without the possibility of confusing the masses.”

The film images where the repression is observed cause contradictory visions in sectors of the population, which gives rise to large media campaigns against violence and the alleged violation of human rights.

“These international media transform the images and put audio on them that confuse the viewer. And this situation, repeated many times, projects an image of chaos with the purpose of questioning even the governability of a country. The so-called failed state.

In 1996, Gene Sharp had contacts with anti-Cuban groups in Miami, gave lectures at Florida International University and gave interviews for Radio Martí.

“Shortly afterwards, terrorist organizations such as Brothers to the Rescue, Democracy Movement and the Cuban Democratic Directorate, which had nothing to do with democracy, are illegally introducing Sharp publications into Cuba as if they were sports or religious literature.”

“So there could be a person in a park reading a Cuba Socialista magazine while the text indicated how to carry out sabotage, or open a supply book in a public place when what was inside was instructions,” the manager added.

According to Etcheverry Vázquez, during 2001 and 2002 different sectors of the counterrevolution carried out provocative acts and acts of public disorder, as well as called for alleged hunger strikes, commemorative marches and conferences before the foreign press that provoked the repudiation of the people, because “It was known that there was a show behind it to earn money.”

On January 28, 2009, USAID produced a document entitled Support for Cuban Civil Society, another “pleasing” title for the ear. “This document constitutes irrefutable proof of the seditious and interfering nature of the projects designed against Cuba.”

In December of that year, when working for USAID as a contractor, the North American Allan Gross was alerted in Havana, who illegally introduced -what was demonstrated in the trial- means of infocommunications with which he supplied and trained independent internal networks to guarantee a future interaction between the small cells created and free satellite access to the Internet, in the same style as the espionage network of the 1960s.

“That is why we say that it is nothing new, but that it is changing as science introduces development in the different techniques.”

Gross was charged in 2010 and convicted in 2011 of acts against the integrity and independence of the Cuban state.

The manager also referred to the ZunZuneo operation, which ran from 2009 to 2011, masked in a social messaging network. “Behind all this is the actions of US intelligence officers.”

“They have been doing everything for 60 years and everything has failed due to the action of the people,” he stressed.

Constructive chaos theory and the concept of failed state
The CIPI investigator added that these strategies have been “duly organized.” He added that one of the United States Security advisers compiled all the materials related to the so-called soft coup, giving rise to what would later be called Constructive Chaos Theory to overthrow governments under the color revolution formula.

“The first of these paradigms is the soft blow. This is based on the economic, political, military and all kinds of blockade; location of that attacked country on blacklists; the obstruction of economic and commercial relations, as well as the wear and tear of the population through all possible tactics”.

He added that the second paradigm of the Constructive Chaos Theory is carrying out a discrediting campaign, especially on issues such as human rights, freedom of the press and freedom of expression.

“The third paradigm is street demonstrations that would start out as peaceful but whose goal of destabilization is for them to become violent. For these demonstrations, they would use psychological tactics such as placing women and children in the first positions and then, through the media, show that the police were the ones who attacked the people and not the provocative core of the protests”, he maintained.

The expert explained that the next step is to request the resignation of the president and the fall of the government has passed.

Referring to the conceptualization of the so-called failed state, Perera Pena commented that a precedent is what happened in the National Assembly of Venezuela in 2015, where an attempt was made to overthrow Nicolás Maduro based on the judicialization of politics through the state decree failed.

“We have seen these types of elements later in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Brazil, Argentina. What it is about is that from the previous study of the judicial system of those countries a supposed internal movement is generated to propitiate a coup d’état since the president is not the one who agrees”.

He also explained that the concept of a failed state has already been used by the United States on other occasions throughout history to sacrifice “a partner”, such as in Panama, Argentina, Colombia.

Apply more pressure to the boiler

Cuban police cars that were overturned by protesters on a street in Havana. Photo: AFP

For his part, Pedro Etcheverry Vázquez elaborated that what happened on July 11, 2021 revealed that the design of the subversive program of the United States government and its intelligence services attempts to cover up the inability of the US government to destroy the Revolution.

“The propaganda influence against a society overwhelmed by the scarcity of basic products, inflation, the lack of public transportation and blackouts will continue to be used to motivate new destabilization attempts against Cuba.”

He added that both the CIA and the NED continue with a strong campaign to generate tensions “to put more pressure on the cauldron.”

“Influence programs on disaffected and dissatisfied groups and on youth sectors constitute a wear that worsens the internal situation in Cuba, trying to escalate to more shocking situations of provocation such as those denounced by our government.”

He warned that after a year of the riots of July 11, the enemies have not ceased to encourage acts of vandalism against the country, “because we are in the presence of an operation directed by the intelligence services of the United States with millionaire budgets of the USAID and the NED and the complicity of the Cuban American right”.

He also said that digital media has long promoted media terrorism, which instigates acts of vandalism by fringe groups with the aim of provoking a police response and putting on a media show. “False news was spread with the aim of promoting an opinion matrix about the apparent ungovernability in Cuba.”

The United States, social networks and double standards “à la carte”

Illustrative image.

Later, commenting on the use of digital social networks in the strategy of subversion, Elío Perera Pena, CIPI researcher, said that the United States handles them with double standards. “The United States is the main instigator, not ruling out other European powers that we know of.”

He also referred to how Agnotology is intended to be implemented, which is the study of deliberate acts to sow confusion and deception in the American educational system. “Those who went to Afghanistan were gallant soldiers in defense of the nation.”

As part of this double standard, said the expert, in 24 American states what can be said on social networks is regulated, and for some of these publications, citizens are taken to court.

He also said that Europe also has regulatory laws on networks.

Attorney General’s Office: “One of the purposes of the State is to protect national sovereignty”
Speaking at the Round Table this Tuesday, the chief prosecutor of the Directorate of Information and Analysis of the Attorney General’s Office, Ana Hernández Mur, pointed out that Cuba, like all States, has the right to defend itself in the framework of established regulatory systems.

Cuba is a State of law and social justice, she stressed and added that within this framework the country and the people have the purpose of defending the nation. She stressed that one of the purposes of the State is to protect national sovereignty.

“The Attorney General of the Republic’s fundamental mission is to exercise control over criminal investigations and the exercise of public criminal action before the courts on behalf of the State, in addition to the general control of legality,” he recalled, citing the Constitution of the Republic.

On the other hand, Hernández Mur pointed out that facts that constitute a crime are investigated, such as setting fire to facilities. “As a result of the investigations, decisions are made and, where appropriate, people are brought before the courts.”

Other facts that are being investigated are related to obstructing public roads, impeding vehicular traffic:

“There have been acts of aggression against the authorities, and we are not only talking about law enforcement, but also officials who were in those places.”

The prosecutor referred to the use of minors in situations of this type. In this sense, she stressed that families have a duty to protect minors. “Are we then going to reach danger or some situation with our minors?”

On this, she said that the Penal Code has answers for, once the investigation is concluded, make decisions and take the authors to court in this case.

“The Prosecutor’s Office will continue to defend the State and the interests of all citizens of our country,” she concluded.

(By: Randy Alonso Falcón, Oscar Figueredo Reinaldo, Edilberto Carmona Tamayo, Lissett Izquierdo Ferrer, Andy Jorge Blanco/ Cubadebate)

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)

The US Department of Commerce intends to include new regulations, based on the notification letters sent at the beginning of the year to three companies in the North American country: KLA Corp, Lam Research and Applied Materials. Those letters prohibited the sale of equipment to manufacture microcircuits to Chinese companies that produce advanced semiconductors with processes smaller than 14 nanometers.

The new restrictions would also apply to Nvidia and AMD, companies that were also notified in August to stop any sales of their chips used in artificial intelligence to the Russian and Chinese markets. Furthermore, the regulations could even apply to companies trying to challenge the two firms’ dominance of such technology.

A Commerce Department spokesman said the US is “taking a comprehensive approach to implement additional actions to protect its national security and foreign policy interests” as well as prevent China from obtaining applicable US technology in modernization. military.

For its part, from the Chinese Embassy in Washington they criticized the “export control abuses” by the US government, and pointed out that these measures “violate the rules of international trade, harm global growth and harm companies from both countries. ”.

According to the technology expert at the American Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jim Lewis, the US strategy “is to suffocate China” and they have discovered that chips are the “choke point”, since in the Asian giant “They can’t make these things, they can’t make manufacturing equipment” for semiconductors.

The sources quoted by Reuters added that the US government is pressuring its allies to enact similar policies so that their companies cannot sell technology to China either.

More fuel to the fire: the US “would defend Taiwan”
This Sunday, US President Joe Biden stated that his country would defend Taiwan in the event of an alleged military conflict with China, in an interview with the CBS television channel. Beijing regards Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory, and insists that any US negotiations with Taipei that bypass the Chinese central government violate the key principle of its one-China policy.

Although Washington does not diplomatically recognize Taiwan’s independence, it maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity towards the island, reserving the right to maintain special relations with Taipei, which, in its opinion, makes its own decisions.

Tensions around Taiwan were reignited in August due to the visit to Taipei by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Recently, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate approved a bill that would expand military aid to Taiwan and thus revives tensions with China today. With this rule, Taipei would receive 4.5 billion dollars in weapons and equipment within four years.

(With information from RT in Spanish)

By Flor de Paz

This Friday, August 26, Hugo Rius Blein, José Martí National Journalism Award winner for his life’s work, passed away. The interview that follows is just over five years old. From it emerged (and vice versa) a television capsule that we have placed at the end of the text. With it, the Union of Cuban Journalists remembers his life and his dedication to journalism.

 There is a photo in which Hugo Felipe Rius Blein is mounted on a camel, in front of the Great Sphinx of one of the pyramids of Giza, in Egypt. In 1953, exactly ten years before the moment he records the snapshot, he had contemplated them through a View-Master (3D slide viewer) that the wise men had “brought” to him. But the contraption came alone, without any of those cardboard discs and little windows through which the transparent images peeked out. To buy the first one, he scraped together 50 cents, coin by coin. And in a little store, located in San José between Galiano and Águila, in the heart of Havana at the time, he chose the “compact” of Egyptian landscapes. Prenuncio or luck? For Rius Blein, the initial assignment that they made him in Prensa Latina: to be a correspondent for the Agency in the mythical country of Northwest Africa.

“I wished for it, but it was life that took me there.” And if you go to Cairo, you have to go see the pyramids and ride a camel.

Hugo was born on August 23, 1940 in the Havana neighborhood of Luyanó, where he also became an adult. From his father, Ramón, a tobacco shop reader, of Catalan descent, he inherited a surname (it means rivers) with which he has little luck being spelled correctly. The legacy of her mother, Mercedes, a destemmer by trade who devoted herself to caring for her children at home, is a variation of the original Bleu. She was the granddaughter of a 19th century free-belly black woman who adopted the Blen (wrong) from her owners. And later, when Hugo, the second of a progeny of two, took out his birth registration for the first time, he knew that they had written him down as Blein, and he stayed with him. Ramón and Mercedes had offspring between the fourth and fifth decade of their lives, “they were very humble people and they gave me a lot of love.”

—Runs in my veins black blood, Chinese coolies[i] and Catalan. My maternal grandmother was a mixture of black and Chinese.

When he was able to read and write, it was the most important moment of Hugo’s childhood. “Because without being literate you don’t know the world, you don’t know life, you’re not going to grow up”. Later, he especially remembers his birthday days, because of his parents’ efforts to make him feel flattered, happy; and Christmas Eve and waiting for the new year, hours in which the family gathered around a table seized by attachment and simplicity.

From adolescence, he does not forget that he was the best record of the course in high school. This condition allowed him to win a scholarship and prepare to enter the Normal School for Teachers, at a time when he also managed to compartmentalize studies with the Márquez Sterling Professional School of Journalism. Later, at the age of 29, he graduated, and after a long period in teaching journalism, Full Professor and Master in Communication Sciences. Because he has always been a teacher and journalist.

His vocation for journalism? It comes from the job of Ramón, his father, who came home every day with a mountain of newspapers and a red and blue pencil to mark what he considered important to communicate to the cigar workers. Little Hugo accompanied him and lived this daily exercise intensely. Thus was born in him a feeling of appreciation for the paper, for the purpose of transmitting news.

—I perceived that newspapers were very important, like food and water.

An article in which he fought for Cuba to have a national merchant marine, in a mimeographed newspaper that he did in the Superior School was his first journalistic adventure; he was fourteen or fifteen years old. In the Normal, he created the student Horizonte, which only reached one or two runs. During his time at Márquez Sterling he also produced a small newspaper, until he collaborated with the real ones: Hoy, El Mundo, Revolución, Juventud Rebelde and Granma.

During the last years of the 50s, and as part of the masonic youth (Association of Young Hope of the Fraternity), Hugo was linked with some brothers, “which is what we called him then” incorporated into the Movement 26 of July. And so he performed some tasks in the field of propaganda; among them, sending proclamations to Batista’s military in which they were warned that the tyranny was not going to last long, that they take a social position in life. Also, he went to the houses of some members of the underground in the provinces who had had to flee, to inform their relatives about them and collect clothes and other items that they had left behind.

—The same way I brought food to the prisoners of the Prince’s Castle, of my own lodge, where the possible money was collected. They are the small tasks that I fulfilled in the fight against tyranny, small in my opinion, but with a lot of commitment.

…

He is almost 78 years old and has dedicated his life to journalism. He remembers his beginnings, in 1962, at the Agencia Prensa Latina (PL), with a sustained gaze and reflective cadence. “Then it was still a journalist project, because he was only 22.” And so, based on decades of professional experience, he usually explains to his students of the optional subject International Journalism, that even at thirty years old one is barely a promise and at forty is when one knows if one really is a journalist.

—Without ruling out precocity. But if precocity does not assume a fundamental value: humility, they can be lost along the way.

That is why he describes his work as PL’s correspondent in Egypt as premature, barely a year after joining the Agency; although he is proud of having put all his will and knowledge into this task to do the job to the best of his ability.

Egypt was a privilege for me. It gave me great opportunities, like covering the founding of what is now the African Union, then the Organization of African Unity. His first conference was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“I was able to make it to the royal palace and meet and greet then-legendary Emperor Haile Selassie; the real character of The Emperor, by Ryszard Kapuscinski. I was at the entrance of the palace where Selassie used to have a live lion chained to a tree. Even Rius Blein coincided in Ethiopia with the Polish journalist and witnessed some of the scenes that he narrates in his work. “And now I am passionate about Kapuscinski’s books.”

It is around three in the afternoon on February 4, 2018. The set of the interview is Hugo’s real work space in her apartment on Calle Línea, in which the audiovisual director has barely made any changes before to film. An art deco style bureau, in front of a huge wood and glass bookcase, identifies the place set with plants, framed photos and diplomas, writing devices, small figures carved in precious African woods and other bookcases and tables, one of them for the computer and dissimilar devices associated with the digital age.

Rius Blein speaks slowly and in a low voice, without moving his hands too much. He is not disturbed by the cameras that focus on him. He does not miss the rhythm of the speech. He doesn’t smile. He maintains the tone of someone who owns a great fortune: the quarries of human culture to which he has been able to access, immersed as he was always in the routines of the worlds he knew to try to catch them in his learning; or also in the sources of reading. “Just like Ulysses on his trip to Ithaca. He arrived without material wealth, but he has the wealth of experiences. They are footprints that stay with you forever.

During the interview, Hugo thanks his wife, María del Carmen Marín, with whom he has two children, for everything he has achieved in his profession; for the tranquility with which he has been able to do it, for the love and patience that he has had for her. “This work often implies a share of neglect and renunciation of family enjoyment, in pursuit of an informative task. We have been together in all correspondents; she has been involved in the work and she has also known those other worlds.”

…

In Algeria, its destination after Egypt, the PL correspondent was located in an old house with Moorish architecture, which had been the headquarters of the OAS (the terrorist group that tried to prevent that country’s independence), thanks to the help of the first president Ahmed Ben Bella. There, one night, Che appeared with the Cuban ambassador, who was Commander Serguera. And this is another of Hugo’s stories.

—I was a second journalist, learning from Gabriel Molina Franchossi, an important figure in Cuban journalism. Photography obsessed me at that time, to the point that I would spend hours in a room-studio developing, in addition to doing my work as a correspondent. As a photographer I was the only one who covered that second visit of Che to the North African nation. The images I took were also the only ones published by Algerian newspapers. So, that night Molina decided to show them to Che. He checked them very carefully, and suddenly asked:

“Who made them?”

I answered, and he told me:

—Better dedicate yourself to studying economics.

That hit me like a bucket of cold water, but he immediately clarified:

—It’s just that I’m very fat; It’s not the photographer’s fault.

Some time later I discovered that in the background of his comment was the disagreement with his physique, facing the guerrilla projects that he was already nesting.

As part of that conversation, Che also told Rius about the time he used to take photos in Mexico’s Zócalo. “People passed by and he photographed them. In addition, he sold little virgins of Guadalupe. And I, in my innocence of age, told him that he lost if he threw away the photo and then they didn’t want to buy it. And he replied mischievously:

— And you think I’m stupid? First I pretended to throw away the photo, and if they picked up the piece of paper I told them, wait, I’m going to take a better one for you, and that’s when I really threw it away.

“Molina and I had worried about making a small library on Africa in a corner of that house in Addis Ababa; Che discovered it and went crazy with the books we had. And of course he ransacked the shelf for us.”

…

In the scaffolding of his stories, Rius Blein places the time and space of his existence, substantiated by events of universal value that he has witnessed, and by the diversity of human ways of living appreciated in much of the planet, but especially on the African continent.

The First Congress of the ANC and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, is one of the events that he places among his significant emotions. “It was the first time that he went to the apartheid country and, furthermore, at the time that the ANC was no longer clandestine, he already had a formal citizenship card, because he always had a real one. And seeing that giant of history that was Nelson Mandela emerge up close, in a South Africa without apartheid, is a lesson in what it means to believe in a cause regardless of the sacrifice, the hardships. If you believe in it, you can achieve the sacred goal.”

From Ethiopia, he admires the kindness, affection and loyalty of that people with the Cubans. “At first I was crushed by the misery I found; but later, I got to know the nature of the Ethiopians, the respect they have for hierarchies, not only formal but also intellectual and human”. And that was the country where he most enjoyed professional accomplishments.

In addition to the founding of the African Union, Ethiopia, one of the oldest countries in the world, experienced the revolution led by Mengistu, Fidel’s visit, significant solidarity conferences and, finally, the arrival of the rebels when Mengistu fled and the country entered a situation of great violence and danger.

—Before that moment, there was an attempted coup and I was able to be the first to break the news. When my colleagues decided to say it, their communications had already been closed. I knew what happened through a boy who sold candy and chewing gum, whom I always bought to help him. We were near the Ministry of Defense and I asked him in Amharic: what’s going on? He, in his poor English, told me that they had killed the Minister of Defense. And indeed, they had killed him. That is why all sources must be respected.

Also in Ethiopia, he witnessed the extraordinary work of Cuban doctors, the presence of fighters from the island on the border and his contribution to defending the integrity of the country against the aggression of Somalia.

—That’s when they arrest Cardoso Villavicencio and take him to Somalia.

And in 1988, when the combatant’s long solitary captivity was broken, Hugo Rius was one of the first two Cuban reporters to receive him at the foot of the steps of an airplane upon his arrival at the Ethiopian Dire Dawa airport.

But Rius’s bond with Ethiopia is so deep that even he had the misfortune of closing the PL office in Addis Ababa, when the Agency went into crisis in the 1990s, due to the economic problems Cuba suffered. So he moved to Zimbabwe.

—It hurt me so much that, years later, when there was talk of reopening offices in several countries, I said: if they ask for a correspondent for Ethiopia, I’ll leave with what I’m wearing. At that time I was in the UN (2000-2005), and the people there did not believe me. But the idea of ​​going back to the country in the Horn of Africa was more valuable to me than staying at the United Nations, without letting me stop thinking that it was also important.

At the UN, he had to cover dramatic and significant events such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Cuba’s resounding victories in the votes against the United States blockade, and he also had to move in the host city within the restricted 25 miles, under the very hostile government of Bush Jr.

…

To exercise journalism, Rius has had the good fortune to be in various media. For Prensa Latina, he was a correspondent in Egypt, in Algeria; in Ethiopia, for the horn of Africa; in Zimbabwe, for Southern Africa, and at the UN and in Vietnam. He is now the editor of the PL English website.

“The Agency has given me the charm of immediacy. A spell that gravitates towards achieving, in a short time, the precise text; dense and brief at the same time. And those are also his challenges.

PL, where he has been for two stages (1962-65 and 1988 to date), opened doors to realities such as wars, conflicts, coups, calamities. By the way, he recalls an anecdote from the 19th century, by Henry Morton Stanley (a journalist for British and American publications), which he captured in his book The Search for Dr. Livingstone: Journey to the Middle of Africa. This great explorer had been lost for two years and was finally found by Stanley north of Lake Tanganyika. The man went with his arsenal of questions, and before he could ask the first, Livingstone told him: ‘Tell me, journalist, what’s going on in the world?’

—Well, that’s what a journalist on international affairs or from an agency like PL does. That is to say, he builds the “Imago world”, he says what happens, because the world is no longer wide and alien, now it is narrow and his own, thanks to the development of new communications technologies.

Through Bohemia (1972-87), Hugo Rius experiences a deep feeling of closeness. “It was the medium that trained me to write my books[ii], by having the possibility of recreating what happened, because it is a publication that is not limited to punctual, immediate information. So, you can play with literature a bit, make a bit of literature. There, I matured, grew up and felt very fulfilled professionally. I was also a writer specializing in Africa and the Middle East, chief information officer and deputy director”

As a special correspondent for the magazine, he covered the ECLAC conference in Guatemala and the UN General Assembly in 1977; Fidel’s visit to Ethiopia and Cozumel, and the first steps in the process of change in the country on the eastern end of Africa, in 1978. He toured Yemen, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and Benin, where he reported on Cuban internationalist work on different fronts. In Angola, he traveled with joint FAPLA and FAR troops to the Quibala-Eboe, Ambriz-Ambrizete fronts until the fall of Santo Antonio do Zaire, with the forces of the Cuban commander Zayas and the similar Angolan Antonio Dos Santos (N ´Give it). He was also in Benguela and Huambo. Based in Luanda, he accompanied President Neto to Santo Tomas and Principe as a journalist. And he toured Afghanistan at a time of clashes between a progressive government and the CIA-armed Taliban.

…

Vietnam was for Rius a pending issue. Because in 1965 he had a lapse in his journalistic work, he worked at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples as a French language guide, and later he was director of Afroasia there.

— I was part of the organization of the Tricontinental Conference in 1966, and then we were very concerned with Vietnam, with the entire solidarity movement that was generated. I wanted to go to Vietnam, what Cuban doesn’t want to go?

But the invitation came to him at a time when he was in Poland. The then President Jaruzelski had given him an interview, and he was unable to go to Vietnam. Until in 2011 he had the opportunity to visit the country he imagined: that of the Vietnamese walking through the streets with their sticks and a load of fruit, a very impoverished country.

—It was very surprising to see how in such a short time it had become a nation of medium consumption, according to the UN classification. That is, they raised the industry and take advantage of technology.

“They have solved the fundamental problems: food, clothing, transportation, and around the difficulties with housing, they have looked for alternatives, due to the little space they have left to develop. So, at every turn, I experienced a mixture of blue envy and shame. Because I think: Caramba, we were helping this people that was made of land and when they finally defeated the North Americans in ’75 there was a poverty level of fifty-nine percent, they had to import rice to eat, they had nothing . However, today they donate the rice to us, and the coffee also comes from there!”

…

Hugo Rius Blein, in 1970, gave Salvador Allende the first telephone interview for Cuban radio. After much insistence, the newly elected president answered the call.

— He spoke to me about what his victory meant on the third occasion that he was running, about the need to make changes in Chile. And it was obvious that he was very besieged by the press and by many people.

Rius’s journalistic career was then in a germinal phase and it was the most intense stage of his work on radio and television (1967-1972), when he also wrote scripts for the audiovisuals of the Teatro Testimonio program, which dramatized Latin American conflicts. At the same time, he made comments on Radio Rebelde, without disdaining that, during the 10 million harvest, he was a reporter and director of Radio Reloj, nor that he was an international commentator for NTV and the current affairs roundtables at the time.

From his current journalistic activity, La Coletilla highlights his contribution to Cubadebate. Rosa Miriam Elizalde involved him, and “it has been a pleasure to write various articles for that space, since “it is the most conceptually and practically advanced Cuban media.” However, he does not omit his exercise as an opinion columnist in Juventud Rebelde, and more recently in Granma.

Now, Hugo Rius Blein has many completed works and not a few in the pipeline; he has the respect of his colleagues and his students (especially when they call him Kapuscinski behind his back); he has life to live; He has children; has grandchildren; he has María del Carmen, he has journalism!

— Journalism?: Capturing the essences of life. Because without looking for the essence of what you are reporting, without transmitting a breath of guidance or at least a mobilizing breath of other people’s thinking, you cannot speak of journalism. Journalism is to contribute to the mobilization of other people’s intelligence, of human cognition.

Hugo Rius Blein, José Martí National Prize for Journalism 2008 for his life’s work, passed away on this day. A contributor to Cubadebate and a journalist for the Prensa Latina agency, he also served as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana.

He began his professional work in 1962 at the Prensa Latina agency. He was a correspondent for this agency in various countries in Africa and the Middle East.

He was the author in Cubadebate of the column La Coletilla, a brief comment on the sidelines of what is news in the world.

He worked for several years at Bohemia magazine and was a correspondent for Prensa Latina before the United Nations.

In Biology class, I don’t remember if it was in middle or high school, we learned about conditioned reflexes based on the work of the Russian scientist and Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, Ivan Pavlov. I think his experiment is quite well known: He would start a metronome before feeding his dog, and observed that, when the dog had not been fed for a while and heard the sound, it began to salivate. Later the legend grew that Pavlov used a bell and not a metronome, but the principle is the same: the induced association between certain stimuli and a subsequent response. Based on this, behavioral psychology was applied in education, advertising and many other arenas in the United States.

In his famous interview with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel refers to the use of this technique in anti-communist propaganda: “And being uninformed is not the same as having lost the ability to think, because your mind is dominated by reflexes: socialism is bad, socialism is bad, they take away your parental rights, they take away your house, they take away your wife.” And the ignorant, the illiterate, the poor, the exploited are repeating: Socialism is bad, socialism is bad. This is how parrots are taught to speak, bears to dance and lions to bow down respectfully.”

Noam Chomsky includes the effect of anti-communist propaganda among the five filters that determine contents in the media. Both he and Fidel were referring to the situation reigning before the advent of Internet social networks, which, although it has certainly democratized access to communication, has also strengthened pre-existing hegemonies.

In a scenario in which processes advance at great speed, the emotional tends to prevail over the rational, and so-called egomation – the promotion and predominance of the individual, along with information linked to what is pertinent or relevant to that person – is imposed over interest in dialogue, going deeper and getting to know others. Without taking into account politically motivated use of Internet social networks, networks like Facebook have consolidated a business model based on profiting from egomania and selling influence over individuals and groups. In the case of Cuba, added to this universal reality is the impact of an annual budget of half a hundred million dollars provided by the U.S. government to influence our society.

Anti-communist propaganda, historically promoted worldwide by the dominant discourse and the manipulated use of terms like “democracy,” “human rights” and “freedom,” has expanded its repertory with the construction of certain expressions about the Cuban reality which, based on an image developed in that isolated hamlet of intolerance that is Miami, are transferred to the Internet as common knowledge about the island. Situations that occurred more than four decades ago, rarely analyzed in depth among ourselves – UMAP, “the five grey years,” repudiation of those who emigrated from Mariel – are taken out of context and presented as permanent, systemic, current characteristics of Cuban socialism, while everything that capitalism around us does on a daily basis in terms of repression, censorship, violence, torture and exclusion against majorities and minorities remains unheard.

Using, with no evidence whatsoever, the words censorship or repression, or the expression “act of repudiation,” is enough to override the necessity of providing data and arguments, or analyzing the events cited, before a series of publications is immediately unleashed in which three indignant sentences written by someone on a Facebook profile turn the world upside down. And when arguments and data refuting hastily drawn conclusions appear, two things happen. The outraged person continues to cling to their “truth” like someone who insists that the earth is flat, and the machinery that multiplies this indignation attacks those who contribute a more analytical vision. This is how freedom of expression about Cuba works on the Internet.

Over just a few months’ time, we have seen this procedure used to justify throwing pig’s blood on busts of José Martí, various desecrations of the Cuban flag, attempts to recast the significance historical dates like November 27, manipulate the meaning of “Homeland or Death” and change the name of the Plaza de la Revolución on Google maps. But if you say that a cultural war against Cuba is being waged on digital social networks, then – according to the machinery triggering reflexes conditioned by propaganda of thousands of people on Facebook – you are an extremist, a tropical Stalinist who does not tolerate “thinking differently,” because, of course, their assertions are “thinking,” not propaganda. And don’t be surprised if you sadly find individuals among the subscribers to these statements who you considered critically minded, intelligent and well-informed. The ability to think has been replaced by emotional reaction and anything can happen. Trigger words have done their job and the intellectual task of establishing the truth is no longer important, in the age of egomania what is relevant is to get “likes,” even if many of them are from trolls with fake profiles; your ego is stroked and your brain will be content not having to make an effort.

For our part, in addition to continuing to promote comprehensive, profound education to train critical citizens, who cannot be manipulated by the professionals managing this hybrid war, it is important to understand that the scenario has changed radically. The endless stream of provocations that seek to create a situation of ungovernability, taking advantage of the technological and media superiority that imperialism puts at the disposal of its handful of servants in Cuba – even attempting to unleash violence and death – can only be exposed by a response based on intelligence, political consciousness and analysis, to avoid falling into the traps they are setting, and, while continuing to firmly defend our principles, be prepared, across the entire country, to foresee the course of every possible action, to document and disseminate the true version and cause of events, and to always insist that ethics, reason, and our people, are on the side of the Revolution. Let us act this way in this “chess game of a thousand pieces,” as Fidel liked to call the ideological struggle, which now moves, in part, to the Internet, where the Cuban people will once again triumph.

(Taken from Granma)

Indecency, despair and lack of scruples lead them to use the dirtiest and most heinous methods, to try to confuse. They have not been able and will not be able to with us, he wrote on his Twitter account, Ferro.

The false account under the name @TSupremoCUP, “is dedicated to usurping our profile and confusing the audience in relation to the mission of the Cuban judicial system,” remarked the TSP in @TSupremoCU.

As part of the aggressiveness of the United States, which is also reflected on the web, several leaders have false profiles on social networks.

The event coincides with the temporary closure of several accounts of Cuban institutions, including the press , in the largest microblogging network in the world.

(Source: Prensa Latina)