Washington, Jun 19 (Prensa Latina) Non-governmental and solidarity organizations in the United States have reiterated their demand to exclude Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, where it arbitrarily remains under the administration of President Joe Biden.
The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization IFCO-Pastors for Peace, the Cuba Si New York/New Jersey Coalition, and the December 12th Movement agreed in recent public statements on the harm caused to the Cuban people by such a designation amid a tightened US blockade.
They also agreed that the US Government has no moral or legal capacity to include Cuba on its false list when the Caribbean nation has been a victim of direct and indirect terrorist attacks by violent individuals based or trained in that northern country for decades.
The US Department of State announced on May 15 that Cuba was not included in its 2023 report of “countries that do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism,” IFCO recalled, and stated that the document was sent to the federal Congress.
Havana, Jun 18 (Prensa Latina) Major Spanish hotel chains, including Iberostar and Melia, are participating in the 17th International Seminar on Journalism and Tourism, which started in Havana on Tuesday.
Executives from both companies expect to meet on Tuesday with all 45 participants from Latin America, Canada and Cuba, who are attending the event from June 17 to 21. In addition to the hosts, the largest delegations came from Colombia and Mexico.
Maria Alexis Rivero, president of the event’s organizing committee and a Cuban radio journalist, expressed satisfaction with the meeting’s reception, the first talks, and exchanges.
The first issues discussed were tourism in the Caribbean, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its effect on the travel industry.
Tuesday’s meeting highlighted the presence of more than 25 years of the Melia chain, which has renewed its commitment to Cuba every year, and Iberostar’s vow of permanent evolution, judging by the opinions of its executives, regarding the Cuba branch for both.
In addition to lectures and academic exchanges, participants will visit the country’s tourist attractions, such as the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Old Havana, the Tropicana Cabaret, and Varadero beach, about 140 kilometers east of Havana and Cuba’s leading sun and beach destination.
Rome, Jun 19 (Prensa Latina) The Italy for Cuba information channel, a new initiative of an organization in solidarity with that country, is a new platform from Rome to fight against the hostile media campaigns and disclose that country’s reality.
The Italy-Cuba Friendship Association (ANAIC) launched “Episode 0” of this new project on social media and YouTube a few hours ago, in which communicators Luigi Basile, Walter Persello, and Anika Persiani participated.
Persiani, a member of the ANAIC Circle in Florence, stated in this first broadcast that the project aims to publicize Cuba’s stances on essential issues such as health, education, science, and the environment, among many others, which are also of interest to Italy.
It will also address current issues affecting Cuba, such as the impact of the US economic, commercial, and financial blockade on energy supplies, the availability of imported products, and the complexity of satisfying the population’s needs following the tightening of those measures.
Cuban and Italian jurists will be invited to talk about the Constitution approved in that country in 2019 and the new Family Code, among other issues that illustrate the deep humanism of the Cuban Revolution since its triumph in January 1959, the activist expressed.
ANAIC President Marco Papacci highlighted the importance of this new channel as “disinformation is currently one of the worst weapons, not only against this nation but also against many others that today seek a different path.”
Port of Spain, Jun 18 (Prensa Latina) Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday expressed support for Cuba in its struggle against the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States and its inclusion on the unilateral State Sponsors of Terrorism list, diplomatic sources confirmed.
Foreign Minister Amery Browne ratified this position when receiving Cuban Ambassador Gustavo Véliz at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to a press release from the Cuban Embassy, Véliz expressed his country’s interest in further expanding the relations of friendship and solidarity between the two countries and thanked Trinidad and Tobago and the members of the Caribbean Community against the hostile blockade imposed by Washington for more than six decades.
During the meeting, the parties reviewed several issues on the bilateral agenda and ratified the bonds of brotherhood that unite the two Caribbean nations.
Havana, Jun 17 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced the Group of Seven (G7)’s attempts to interfere in Venezuela and pointed out that the bloc seeks to impose its imperialist and neocolonizing interests on the Bolivarian nation.
Rodríguez shared on his X account statements by his Venezuelan counterpart, Yván Gil, who described the leadership of that group of nations as “poor and ridiculous” in the international concert.
“Rejected by their own peoples, they pretend to resort to colonial practices and meddle in matters that do not concern them,” Gil pointed out on the social network in response to a joint statement by the G7.
The Venezuelan government spokesman stressed that “our revolutionary democracy will tell them this July 28, once again, that we are free and sovereign and that their lackeys will not return”, referring to the presidential elections scheduled for that date.
Through the digital platform, the Foreign Minister reiterated Cuba’s support for the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution.
Havana, Jun 17 (Prensa Latina) The 17th International Seminar on Journalism and Tourism opened in this capital on Monday with a strong presence of Latin American and Canadian communicators.
Some 45 journalists from those regions and delegates from national and provincial media are attending the opening session, along with delegations from Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico.
The Cuban members of the Circle of Tourism Journalists at the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) are participating, with representatives nationwide.
The Seminar is taking place at the Jose Marti International Institute of Journalism, which organizes meetings, seminars, workshops, and courses on this sector during the year.
The three-day seminar will consist of debates and lectures with the participation of prominent speakers such as scholars from the University of Ottawa, Canada; Cuban academic Jose Luis Perello, and Pavel Pavon, director of Technologies at the Tourism Ministry (MINTUR).
In addition to academic exchanges, participants will visit tourist attractions such as La Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita restaurants, the Havana Club Rum Museum, and the Tropicana Cabaret. They will also travel to Varadero beach, in western Matanzas province.
Brussels, Jun 17 (Prensa Latina) Belgian’s Friends of Cuba and the Coordinating Committee for the Lifting of the Blockade against Cuba on Monday demanded the Caribbean island’s immediate removal from the US unilateral State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list.
In separate statements, they agreed on describing as cynical the position of the US government, which on May 15 acknowledged that Cuba cooperates with the fight against terrorism, but did not remove it from a list they described as arbitrary.
The Friends of Cuba association set its position on the issue during its general assembly, at which it celebrated its 55 anniversary, a period during which solidarity deploy with the Antillean nation includes sending containers and actions to denounce and condemn the economic, commercial and financial blockade.
The approved text condemns Washington’s aggressiveness and the tightening of the blockade with more than 240 measures dictated by Donald Trump during his administration (2017-2021) and maintained in essence by his successor in the White House, Joe Biden, among them the reinclusion in the list of sponsors of terrorism.
This policy affects the population in every aspect of their daily lives, and in the case of the unilateral list, it has a negative effect on the economy, by hindering the island’s access to the international financial system, to credits and loans, he stressed.
For the Friends of Cuba, the US manipulates and acts with cynicism, because it declares that the Caribbean country fights terrorism and that both nations collaborate in its confrontation, however, it does not eliminate it from the list of alleged sponsors of it.
The Belgian Coordinating Committee for the Lifting of the Blockade against Cuba, made up of some 40 organizations, recalled that it has been Cuba that has suffered from terrorism, having had to deal with assassinate attempts whose leaders, bacteriological warfare, destabilizing actions, sabotage, attacks and a failed invasion (Playa Girón).
Cienaga de Zapata, Matanzas, Cuba, Jun 15 (Prensa Latina) Nature and adventure tourism is growing in the world nowadays, but Cuba joined the bandwagon some time ago, with extremely interesting places such as swamps.
Precisely, there are a couple of swamps that, in addition to constituting wetlands of relevance, allow many tourists to organize vacations in an active way, with the practice of hiking, bird watching and generally get in touch with nature.
Cuba has charming places, when tour operators such as ECOTUR propose priority sites, such as the Lanier and Zapata swamps.
The former is located on the Isla de la Juventud municipality, and the latter in Matanzas province, both in western Cuba.
The Isla de la Juventud is one of the most amusing places in Cuba, as it has the charm of a perfect scenery for ecotourism trips. It is a small island, second in extension of the Cuban archipelago, with 3,056 square kilometers. There is the second crocodile hatchery in the country, located in Cayo Potrero, in the Lanier Swamp, southern part of the island.
In this hatchery, 21 people work to take care of cocodriles, 80 of them in the captivity area, including 27 females and seven males for reproduction, especially of the Rhombifer species, typically Cuban.
For all these treasures, it was declared a biosphere reserve, a true paradise for a demanding traveler in search of active vacations.
Havana, June 14 (Prensa Latina) Although Prensa Latina was predicted only only to last a few months of life predicted, 65 years later the Latin American Information Agency is still alive with new vigour, as a Latin American expression of the Cuban Revolution.
This was recognized this Friday by the vice head of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Marydé Fernández, during the commemorative event for the agency’s 65th anniversary.
Below Prensa Latina transmits in full the speech of the vice head of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Comrades and colleagues:
History wanted us to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Prensa Latina on the same day that two of the most extraordinary men of the revolution were born. Both figures are worthy exponents of intransigence and revolutionary radicalism. From Maceo we learned that whoever tries to take over Cuba will only collect the dust of its blood-soaked soil if he does not perish in the struggle, and Che said the same regarding imperialism. We also remember Che today because together with Fidel they made it possible for this news agency to be born in 1959, and keep up its spirit of struggle and combat in these 65 years.
In the auditorium of the University of Caracas, Fidel, during his visit to Venezuela in January, 1959, expressed the need to counteract the confusionist campaigns of the enemies of the Latin American progressive movements.
On June 16, 1959, Prensa Latina was born, determined to enter international information flows with a vision of the world different from that of the media monopolies of that time, despite the disadvantage in financial and technological resources compared to its adversaries.
The coverage of Latin American news events and especially of the Cuban emancipation project; were priorities of the agency, which had the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, and Commander Ernesto Che Guevara as its main promoters, and Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti, its first director, who considered that “it is cowardice to be impartial, because you cannot be impartial between good and evil.
As the story goes, “when the first cable dispatch with the PL identification was transmitted, on June 16, 1959, everyone stood in front of the machines to watch how the teletype operator ‘striked out’ the news and, the next day, they reviewed it carefully.
I eagerly scanned the pages of the newspapers to see that they were no longer only publishing cables with the acronyms AP and UPI. Thus began a fight to break the information monopoly.
Mechanical typewriters, the photographic cameras of that time, a shortwave radio to capture stations from neighboring countries, a Morse telegraph transmitter and two teletypewriters for international information traffic were the tools in that initial stage.
There is a lot of history in those early years. The name of the agency, a suggestion from Che. The presence of the journalist Gabriel García Márquez, on his way to becoming one of the great Latin American novelists, and the Argentine Rodolfo Walsh, who discovered the first signs that a force was being prepared in Guatemala to invade Cuba.
In terms of news, Prensa Latina was another expression of the Latin American vocation of the Cuban Revolution, as was Casa de las Américas, headquarters of the event for this anniversary, which also recently reached its 65th anniversary.
The Cuban people trust their media and journalists, revolutionary journalists are and will continue to be key actors to improve ourselves as a society and to mobilize citizens.
Operation Truth is more valid today than ever, because we have every right to confront the lie that is the antidote with which national unity has been forged, as our beloved Abel Prieto expressed: Prensa Latina is the weapon of the people against the empire.
A team of editors, editors, reporters, photographers, as well as correspondents and collaborators in more than 35 countries work in this effort, who nourish the information flow of Prensa Latina, supported by highly qualified engineers and technicians, who make it possible for the signal of the agency to travel the planet carrying messages on the most diverse topics, spreading the truth.
Almost 65 years after its foundation, Prensa Latina has a solid and modern structure that allows it to successfully insert itself into the complex and competitive world of international news agencies.
Prensa Latina is also an important publishing house with more than 20 periodical publications, some of which are its own and others made to order, it has an online radio station and a television studio, and it has active participation in digital networks.
New York, Jun 15 (Prensa Latina) The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the G77+China Group demanded on Saturday in a joint statement the removal of Cuba from the U.S. States Sponsoring Terrorism (SST) list.
Both alliances described such inclusion as an unjust and unfounded accusation that serves as a pretext to impose additional unilateral coercive measures on Cuba, tightening to unprecedented levels the economic, commercial and financial U.S. blockade against the Cuban people.
The communiqué urged the Government of Joe Biden to put an end to this blockade of over six decades, which constitutes the greatest impediment to the full development of the country.
In that regard, they called for compliance with the 31 resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the need to put an end to the blockade against Cuba.
The communiqué reaffirmed their steadfast rejection of the imposition of laws and regulations with extraterritorial impact and all other forms of coercive measures, including unilateral sanctions on developing countries, and stressed the imperative need to eliminate them.
At the end of May, the U.S. State Department confirmed the removal of Cuba from the alleged list of countries that “do not fully cooperate” in the fight against terrorism.
However, both the international community and the Cuban Government consider the provision insufficient, as it is not equivalent to the elimination of the States Sponsoring Terrorism (SST) list, which implies serious limitations for the economic and commercial exchange of Cuba.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel insisted that removing his country from the SST list would be the most correct and coherent action to take.
“The United States must do what is right and consistent with that position: remove Cuba from the State Department’s arbitrary SST list and put an end to coercive economic measures that go along with it,” the president wrote in his reaction to the announcement.
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez assured that Joe Biden’s administration “must cease all political manipulation of the issue and put an end to our arbitrary and unjust inclusion on the SST list.”
Cuba was first included on the State Department’s SST list during the administration of President Ronald Reagan in 1982.
In 2015, then President Barack Obama deemed that appointment to be without merit in the case of Cuba and removed it.
Four years later, Donald Trump reinstated Cuba just days before leaving the White House, something his Democratic successor maintains despite calls for him to rectify that stance in his policy toward the nation.
