Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

This paper intends to recognize political ideologies as influential determinants of international humanitarian assistance by examining the Cuban case. Ideologies have both internal and external modus operandi. Internally, according to Destutt de Tracy’s original conceptualization, it had five characteristics: it contains an explanatory theory about human experience and the external world; it sets out a program of social and political organization; it recognizes the need for struggle to bring it about; it seeks to recruit loyal adherents, demanding their commitment to the worth of their claims; and it usually confers leadership on intellectuals. While multiple definitions and approaches to the concept of ideology exist, John Thompson’s “external” view of ideology as systems of beliefs, symbols, and language mobilized rhetorically to advance the interest of specific constituencies seems most apt for this case study. For Thompson, the goals of ideologies are to obtain specific social and economic interests and acquire power-overvalued entities: they have to do with the setting of public policy, are supra-individual entities and the property of groups, and are engaged in conflict with other ideologies and systems of social control over the state. Ideologies aim to obtain social and economic interests and control valued ends. Ideologies are used rhetorically to help or justify domination over others in what Thompson calls “systematically asymmetrical power relations.” This process occurs in specific social-historical settings and has five primary ways: 'legitimation,' 'dissimulation,' 'unification,' 'fragmentation,' and 'reification.' Thompson's emphasis on competition for power is a more proper approach when trying to understand struggles among multiple ideologies and the international humanitarian assistance of state actors, as is the case of humanitarian aid to Cuba.

It is newsworthy to note that what follows is neither a history of Cuba and the revolution nor an evaluative, analytical, and critical account of the pros and cons of its economic development programs and practices. Instead, it examines Cuba’s current disaster-related predicaments brought in part by climate change and how the struggle among three main ideologies affects Cuba’s receipt of international disaster aid. Here, the doers of these ideologies are absent, and the ideologies are understood as abstract and idealized conceptual constructions used to try to understand the lack of international disaster aid for Cuba.

Cuba. The present-day setting for international aid to Cuba is minimal and incapable of bringing about effective and long-lasting remedies for the victims of disasters. Cuba is excluded from disaster assistance from US government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In fiscal year 2020, Cuba did not receive aid from the USAID “LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN USAID/BHA Development and Disaster Risk Reduction Assistance” program. The same is true of USAID’s Climate Change Subcommittee members; none are from Cuba despite the presence of excellent Cuban scientists working in this area. While the agency has supplied limited assistance to needy families and encourages people to organize, its involvement in Cuba is minor: USAID’s 2015 budget for programs in Cuba was $6.25 million. Cuba is also discriminated against by other international agencies, like the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), and it is excluded from the list of countries that are members of the IDB. It is also infrequently mentioned in available reports of the World Bank, which gives countries in the developing world financial resources for disaster reconstruction and development.

This dire situation is aggravated enormously by the significant increases in the risks of hurricane exposure in Cuba and all other countries in the Caribbean basin due to climate change.

Centralization

America’s Founders set out to build a government entirely upon the will of the great body of the people. This had never been done before. And they set out to accomplish this across a great continent —George Washington’s army was strikingly called the Continental Army— despite the prevailing idea at the time that popular governments could only work in small areas. They succeeded in doing both these things, and the way they succeeded is contained in the American Constitution, the longest-living and the greatest constitution ever written.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution contains 18 paragraphs that enumerate the powers of Congress. Seven of these have to do with national defense, and one with piracy. The rest, save one, mostly have to do with commerce—weights and measures, currency, unimpeded trade between the states, post offices, and post roads. The last power has to do with the federal government’s authority over the District of Columbia. Other powers were reserved for the states and localities.

In Federalist 63, James Madison writes proudly of the fact that ours will be the first purely representative government. This doesn’t just mean that instead of a king being sovereign, as in England, we would elect our rulers. It means that no one inside the government—none of the people carrying on the activities of the government—would be sovereign. The sovereign would be located outside the government. As Abraham Lincoln would later put it, the constitutional majority is the only true sovereign of a free people. All powers are to be delegated from the society to the government.

A diagram of this system would consist of a large circle representing American society. Inside that large circle, government at all levels would be represented by a much smaller circle, about one-tenth the size in terms of gross domestic product. This smaller circle would be divided then into parts. It would be divided vertically with the federal government on one side and states on the other—that’s federalism—and the federal side would be divided horizontally into the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. It was a brilliant and novel system for gathering authority to a national center for limited national purposes and distributing all other authority outwards. And it worked for a very long time.

2 de diciembre de 2023 8:56h. 

Asunto: El Plan América & El Mito de la Dolarización

Señores, 

El dinero es, en su más pura esencia, intercambio de trabajo. Por eso la política monetaria debería ser neutral. La emisión de dinero no debería conocer de ideologías.
 
Acaba de salir al mercado el libro El Plan América. Este libro explica los pasos que debe seguir Argentina para salir del agujero monetario en el que se encuentra. El Plan América es la única vía que, sin aplicar con rigor el Consenso de Washington, permite reactivar la economía, recobrar la soberanía monetaria, atraer inversiones no especulativas, controlar la dominancia fiscal y la dominancia monetaria, estabilizar el valor de cambio y evitar la inflación, etc. Este libro cambiará la historia de Argentina por basarse en el Patrón Interés, un novedoso sistema de emisión de dinero que dota valor a la moneda basándose en los activos nacionales, con un ancla o límite de emisión monetaria más robusto que el propio oro. 
 
Uno de los capítulos del libro está dedicado a analizar el mito de la dolarización. Resumimos brevemente las reflexiones que el libro ofrece sobre esta tramposa herramienta monetaria. 
 
Errores técnicos flagrantes de la dolarización

Resulta totalmente incomprensible para cualquier análisis racional que se esté divulgando la idea de que los países democráticos que apoyan a Ucrania en la defensa de su territorio invadido, puedan abandonarla o, en el mejor de los casos, reducir considerablemente los suministros para el esfuerzo bélico de su defensa.

Estos rumores sólo sirven para alentar al invasor a persistir en su esfuerzo agresivo, prolongando la guerra precisamente en momentos en que se nota el agotamiento de su capacidad militar, el fracaso total de sus ofensivas y la gradual pérdida de los territorios que había ocupado. Sencillamente, la realidad es que Ucrania ha estado ganando la guerra desde principios de este año y sólo se requiere que se le preste la asistencia militar necesaria hasta agotar no sólo a las fuerzas enemigas sino el vapuleado prestigio del dictador Putin, responsable de llevar a su país a una costosa guerra que , además, le está costando centenares de miles de vidas de los mejores soldados de sus fuerzas armadas, sin contar buques de guerra hundidos, decenas de miles de misiles utilizados con muy pobres resultados estratégicos y más de un millar de tanques de guerra destruidos.

Es un hecho que Rusia está perdiendo la guerra y su capacidad para sostenerla se está agotando rápidamente. Incluso puede verse obligada a retirarse de Crimea ante la ofensiva ucraniana prevista en la primavera de 2024. En realidad, Crimea no es tan importante como un peón de la geopolítica rusa sino que es para Putin y para muchos ultranacionalistas rusos una cuestión de prestigio y orgullo nacional. Crimea es el símbolo de los grandes confines del imperio que Putin está tratando de reconstruir a sangre y fuego. Pero Crimea ya no es esencial para el dominio del Mar Negro, y controlar el Mar Negro significa muy poco cuando los rusos no pueden controlar el Bósforo.