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Casa, Cuba US Blockade

The United States theft of Cuban theft talent

An idea as noble as the Refugee Olympic Team cannot fall prey to manipulation

Today, the IOC, and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, are mixing oil with vinegar. To put it more clearly, they are complicit in the aggressive and criminal policy of the United States against Cuba

Author:  | oscar@granma.cu

may 24, 2024 08:05:03

 

Demographic trends, armed conflicts, natural disasters, structural inadequacies of development, inequalities in national economies, conditions of poverty in broad sectors, inequities of an unjust and predatory world order, lack of job opportunities and, in general, the growing gap between poverty and wealth, stimulate the mobility of human beings.
I take up again the quote of Dr. Antonio Díaz Aja, director of the Center for Demographic Studies of the University of Havana, which I used a few years ago in a similar context, because, as he stated, “migratory dysfunctionality is a product of the basic contradictions of the world we live in”. Sport is no exception, it has become a means to extirpate the South of its best children; that is why many of the sending geographies were former colonies of today’s receiving ones.
Until April 2019, in football, Brazil, with 1 330 players, was the most exporting country, with presence in 147 tournaments. Argentina had more than 800 players in the English and Italian leagues. In the MLB that season, there were 256 players who were not born in the United States (28%), and 228 of them were Latin American. In basketball, the NBA had 116 players of other nationalities.
A study by the University of Maryland showed that in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, more than 300 migrants won medals, or were part of a team that won medals. In the Pyeongchang-2018 Winter Olympics, 178 athletes participated for countries where they were not born.
Cuba has already had Olympic champions under a flag that is not its own, such as Pedro Pablo Pichardo, in Tokyo-2020, in the triple jump; in Paris-2024, the now Portuguese will have as rival his fellow countryman Andy Diaz, now Spanish. In 2016, we saw Osmani Juantorena in the Italian volleyball sextet, and in July the same will happen with the “Pole” Wilfredo Leon. In the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, there were several duels between Cubans representing their homeland and those representing another.
But the “story” of the Cubans on the world sports map is longer. Athletes from the largest of the Antilles have been victims of the crime of human trafficking; there are countless examples of baseball players who have been, and still are, victims of this scourge. Discrediting campaigns and incitement to desertion of delegations have been organized, also through crime, in the venues of multisport events, such as Central American (Ponce-1993), Pan American (Indianapolis-1987 and Winnipeg-1999) and Olympic (Rio de Janeiro-2016), without the International Olympic Committee (IOC) showing any ethical stance.
Today, the IOC, and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, are mixing oil with vinegar. To put it more clearly, they are making themselves accomplices of the aggressive and criminal policy of the United States against Cuba, which has used the theft of talent and organized irregular migration – with all its human cost on top, because life does not interest them -, with the aim of discrediting it, attacking one of its great conquests: its sports movement.
Since 2016, the IOC, in a beautiful and humane initiative, created the Olympic Refugee Team (EOR). The first retinue participated in the Games of that year, in Rio de Janeiro; the second, in Tokyo-2020, and Paris will host the third. It is a delegation made up basically of young people uprooted by war or persecuted for reasons of ethnicity, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions.
For more than 75 years, the Palestinian people have been victims of this persecution, violence and death. What is happening in Gaza today is happening in full view of the world, and the displaced people in Rafah make up half of the population of that region. But in none of the three editions has a Palestinian been in the EOR.
In the three rosters, including the one that will participate in the French capital, there are 75 athletes; 58 of them, 77%, reside in countries of the developed world. Of those who will go to the City of Light, only three live in underdeveloped nations.
Then, the presence of two Cuban athletes in the EOR is not serious, because it is based on a lie: Fernando Dayán Jorge, Olympic champion in Tokyo-2020, in canoeing, and Ramiro Mora Romero, in weightlifting.
Can one be a refugee, according to the concept of the United Nations, and be an Olympic, World, Pan-American and Central American and Caribbean champion, at only 22 years of age? Can one achieve that being a persecuted or uprooted by war? The IOC and the UNHCR are wrong or lend themselves to the farce against Cuba, which defends the Olympic Refugee Team, because it should be an expression of peace through sport, one of the noblest ideas in the face of the injustice that these people live.
Cuba has not claimed the presence of its nationals with other delegations, when they comply with the provisions of the Olympic Charter. But not only that, it has helped, as it has just done with the Chilean wrestling team, the preparation of those who were born in its entrails and now compete for that geography, as the gladiator Yasmani Acosta. Cuba proudly receives the dedication of those who live abroad and wear the national jersey, as did the baseball Team Asere.
What it does not accept, and that is why it denounces it, is manipulation. We Cubans are not surprised that campaigns against our country are fed, but the fact that the International Olympic Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees appear in these dirty maneuvers is outrageous.
It is not Cuba that uses sports as politics, it is the empire defeated for 65 years that resents that, after wanting to starve it to death, to leave it without fuel, to speculate with its finances against an entire people, a black man like Mijaín López, or one like Idalys Ortiz rises to the top of the podium, reserved for the rich world, for those who exploit.
The Olympic Charter states that: “As sport is an activity that is part of society, sports organizations within the Olympic Movement must apply the principle of political neutrality”. But this is the most violated precept.

Genocide, Palestine

Genocide in Palestinian

While asking for respect and peace, the United States denies genocide

Cuba demanded at the UN not to remain inert in the face of the massacre in progress

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

may 23, 2024 09:05:27

Photo: Artwork by Michel Moro

Although the International Criminal Court (ICC) had to “lump together” the Zionist government of Israel and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, in order to propose a detention agreement to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for the genocide being committed in Gaza against the Palestinian population, the ruling clashed with the position of the United States, which does ñnot allow any sanction against Israel.
The reaction, both from President Joe Biden and á of State Antony Blinken, and even within the U.S. Congress, has surpassed everything imaginable: U.S. sanctions against the ICC itself, for seeking to act against Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense.
The U.S. president described as “outrageous” the request of the prosecutor of the international justice entity, Karim Khan, for issuing the arrest warrants.
“And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor may imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel,” said the U.S. president, while denying that genocide is being committed in Gaza.
The U.S. Congress, for its part, is promoting bipartisan legislation that would impose sanctions on anyone involved in the case of the arrest warrants.
In light of this situation, the Attorney General of the Hague Court has warned that threats against him and his institution constitute a criminal offense, after receiving a threatening letter from Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. Congress.
While the incumbent occupant of the White House reaffirms his position on the side of the massacre, Cuba, like most countries, demands respect for Palestinian civilians caught in the conflict by demanding that the UN Security Council fulfill its mandate for peace, Cubaminrex reported.
The island’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberón, called on the 15-member body not to remain inert in the face of the ongoing massacre, and on the international community not to stop its call to halt the Israeli offensive.

U.S. sanctions on Cuba

White House tries to asphyxiate the Cuban people

The list that is not and the measures that remain

The deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, described as genocidal the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

may 23, 2024 09:05:19

Photo: Prensa Latina

The deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, described as genocidal the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
In an interview granted to the Cuban News Channel, the diplomat explained that the recent exclusion of the island from a list of nations that “do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism” does not mean its elimination from the general list of the State Department that imposes measures against this Caribbean country.
That unilateral measure constitutes one of the main genocidal tools of the White House to asphyxiate the Cuban people, and it persists, in spite of the fact that more and more voices are being raised against such injustice, she pointed out.
She affirmed that Washington uses the presence of Cuba in such a list as a justification for the unilateral coercive measures derived from them, which are associated with the purpose of asphyxiating the Island’s economy and holding the Government responsible for their impact.
She also pointed out that the U.S. Executive is simultaneously promoting a well-financed systematic communicational operation, in the mainstream press and digital platforms, to hold the victim country responsible for the impact of these inhumane measures, which significantly affect the population.

Terrorism against Cuba is state policy

The United States continues to protect terrorists

FOREIGN MINISTRY STATEMENT

The United States continues to protect terrorists

U.S. judge acquits terrorist who machine-gunned the Cuban Embassy in the U.S. in 2020

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

may 10, 2024 08:05:33

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has learned with deep concern the decision of a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued on May 1, 2024, which acquitted Alexander Alazo Baró of the four charges against him, as a result of the terrorist attack perpetrated by him against the Cuban Embassy in the United States in the early morning of April 30, 2020, for which he alleged insanity conditions of the perpetrator.

Alazo, a Cuban-born individual who has lived in the United States since 2010, fired all 32 rounds from a magazine of a semi-automatic rifle ak-47 into Cuba’s diplomatic headquarters in Washington, causing extensive property damage to the exterior and interior of the building and endangering the lives of several people inside the building.

Alazo himself confessed that he intended to shoot whatever was in front of him, including human beings if they had been in his line of fire. This was a terrorist act in the capital city of the United States against a permanent diplomatic headquarters.

At the time of his arrest, Alazo’s regular association with the Doral Jesus Worship Center in Miami Dade, where people with known behavior in favor of aggression, hostility, violence and extremism against Cuba meet, was well known.

The terrorist was arrested immediately at the scene and the U.S. government charged him with four offenses under the U.S. Federal Code. However, it has been unable to qualify the action for what it is: a terrorist act.

The politicization by the United States of the attack perpetrated against the Cuban Embassy in Washington was evident from the very first moments. This is demonstrated by the lengthy process of analyzing proven facts.

Four years after the events and in a criminal process full of opacity, the judge accepted a joint report from the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense of the terrorist Alexander Alazo Baró, which presents the perpetrator as someone who, at the time of the events, was not in possession of his mental faculties and, therefore, declares him innocent.

This decision sends a dangerous message of impunity to those who intend to take violent actions against diplomatic headquarters in Washington.

On September 24, 2023, in the evening hours, an individual threw two Molotov cocktails over the perimeter fence of the Cuban Embassy in Washington and against the front facade of that facility. It is an event that occurred three years and five months after the attack perpetrated by Alazo. Even U.S. law enforcement authorities claim not to know the perpetrator or have details of what happened.

These terrorist acts are a direct result of the aggressive policy and discourse of the U.S. government against Cuba, of the permanent incitement to violence and hatred by U.S. politicians and anti-Cuban extremist groups.