[News] Fidel - They Will Never Have Cuba

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Reflection and Manifesto for the People of Cuba
THEY WILL NEVER HAVE CUBA

June 17, 2007

"Aimara" <aimara at cubanmission.com>



      I hope that no-one say that I am 
gratuitously attacking Bush. Surely they will 
understand my reasons for strongly criticizing his policies.
      Robert Woodward is an American journalist 
and writer who became famous for the series of 
articles published by The Washington Post, 
written by him and Carl Bernstein, and which 
eventually led to the investigation and 
resignation of Nixon.  He is author and co-author 
of ten best-sellers.  With his fearsome style he 
manages to wrench confessions from his 
interviewees.  In his book, State of Denial, he 
says that on June 18, 2003, three months after 
the Iraq war had begun, as he was on the way out 
of his White House office following an important 
meeting, Bush slapped Jay Garner on the back and said to him:
    “Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?
    “Sir, the boys and I talked about that and we 
want to hold out for Cuba.  We think the rum and 
the cigars are a little better...The women are prettier."
     Bush laughed.  “You got it.  You got Cuba.”
      Bush was betrayed by his subconscious.  It 
was in his mind when he declared what scores of 
dark corners should be expecting to happen and 
Cuba occupies a special place among those dark corners.
      Garner, a recently retired three-star 
general who had been appointed Head of the 
Post-War Planning Office for Iraq, created by 
secret National Security Presidential Directive, 
was considered by Bush an exceptional man to 
carry out his war strategy.  Appointed for the 
post on January 20, 2003, he was replaced on May 
11 of that same year at the urging of 
Rumsfeld.  He didn’t have the nerve to explain to 
Bush his strong disagreements on the matter of 
the strategy to be pursued in Iraq.  He was 
thinking of another one with identical purpose. 
In the past few weeks, thousands of marines and a 
number of US aircraft carriers, with their naval 
supporting forces, have been maneuvering in the 
Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian territory.
      It will very soon be 50 years since our 
people started suffering a cruel blockade; 
thousands of our sons and daughters have died or 
have been mutilated as a result of the dirty war 
against Cuba, the only country in the world to 
which an Adjustment Act has been applied inciting 
illegal emigration, yet another cause of death 
for Cuban citizens, including women and children; 
more than 15 years ago Cuba lost her principal 
markets and sources of supply for foods, energy, 
machinery, raw materials and long-term low-interest financing.
      First the socialist bloc collapsed followed 
almost immediately by the USSR, dismantled piece 
by piece. The empire tightened and 
internationalized the blockade; the proteins and 
calories which were quite well distributed 
despite our deficiencies were reduced 
approximately by 40 percent; diseases such as 
optical neuritis and others appeared; the 
shortage of medicines, also a result of the 
blockade, became an everyday reality. Medicines 
were allowed to enter only as a charitable act, 
to demoralize us; these, in their turn, became a 
source of illegal business and black-market dealings.
      Inevitably, the “special period” struck. 
This was the sum total of all the consequences of 
the aggression and it forced us to take desperate 
measures whose harmful effects were bolstered by 
the colossal media machine of the 
empire.  Everyone was awaiting, some with sadness 
and others with oligarchic glee, the crumbling of the Cuban Revolution.
      The access to convertible currency greatly 
harmed our social consciousness, to a greater or 
a lesser degree, due to the inequalities and ideological weaknesses it created.
      Throughout its lifetime, the Revolution has 
taught the people, training hundreds of thousands 
of teachers, doctors, scientists, intellectuals, 
artists, computer engineers and other 
professionals with university and post-graduate 
degrees in dozens of professions.  This 
storehouse of wealth has allowed us to reduce 
infant mortality to low levels, unthinkable in 
any Third World country, and to raise life 
expectancy as well as the average educational 
level of the population up to the ninth grade.
      By offering Cuba oil under favorable terms 
of payment at a time when oil prices were 
escalating dramatically, the Venezuelan 
Bolivarian Revolution brought a significant 
relief and opened up new possibilities, since our 
country was already beginning to produce her own 
energy in ever-growing amounts.
          Concerned over its interests in that 
country, the empire had for years been planning 
to destroy that Revolution, and so it attempted 
to do it in April 2002, as it will attempt to do 
again as many times as it can.  This is why the 
Bolivarian revolutionaries are preparing to resist.

      Meanwhile, Bush has intensified his plans 
for an occupation of Cuba, to the point of 
proclaiming laws and an interventionist 
government in order to install a direct imperial administration.
      Based on the privileges granted to the 
United States in Bretton Woods and Nixon’s 
swindle when he removed the gold standard which 
placed a limit on the issuing of paper money, the 
empire bought and paid with paper tens of 
trillions of dollars, more than twelve digit 
figures.  This is how it preserved an 
unsustainable economy.  A large part of the world 
currency reserves are in US Treasury bonds and 
bills.  For this reason, many would rather not 
have a dollar crisis like the one in 1929 that 
would turn those paper bills into thin 
air.  Today, the value of one dollar in gold is 
at least eighteen times less than what it was in 
the Nixon years.  The same happens with the value 
of the reserves in that currency.
      Those paper bills have kept their low 
current value because fabulous amounts of 
increasingly expensive and modern weapons can be 
purchased with them; weapons that produce 
nothing.  The United States exports more weapons 
than anyone else in the world.  With those same 
paper bills, the empire has developed a most 
sophisticated and deadly system of weapons of 
mass destruction with which it sustains its world tyranny.
      Such power allows it to impose the idea of 
transforming foods into fuels and to shatter any 
initiative and commitment to avoid global 
warming, which is visibly accelerating.
      Hunger and thirst, more violent hurricanes 
and the surge of the sea is what Tyranians and 
Trojans stand to suffer as a result of imperial 
policies.  It is only through drastic energy 
savings that humanity will have a respite and 
hopes of survival for the species; but the 
consumer societies of the wealthy nations are absolutely heedless of that.
      Cuba will continue to develop and improve 
the combative capacities of her people, including 
our modest but active and efficient defensive 
weapons industry which multiplies our capacity to 
face the invaders no matter where they may be, 
and the weapons they possess.  We shall continue 
acquiring the necessary materials and the 
pertinent fire power, even though the notorious 
Gross Domestic Product as measured by capitalism 
may not be growing, for their GDP includes such 
things as the value of privatizations, drugs, 
sexual services and advertising, while it 
excludes many others like free educational and 
health services for all citizens.
      From one year to the next the standard of 
living can be improved by raising knowledge, 
self-esteem and the dignity of people.  It will 
be enough to reduce wastage and the economy will 
grow.  In spite of everything, we will keep on 
growing as necessary and as possible.
      “Freedom costs dearly, and it is necessary 
to either resign ourselves to live without it or 
to decide to buy it for its price”, said Martí.
      “Whoever attempts to conquer Cuba will only 
gather the dust of her soil soaked in blood, if 
he does not perish in the fight”, exclaimed Maceo.
       We are not the first revolutionaries to 
think that way!  And we shall not be the last!
      One man may be bought, but never a people.
      Fate decreed that I could survive the 
empire’s murderous machine.  Shortly, it will be 
a year since I became ill and, while I hovered 
between life and death, I stated in the 
Proclamation of July 31, 2006:  “I do not harbor 
the slightest doubt that our people and our 
Revolution will fight until the last drop of blood."

      Mr. Bush, don’t you doubt that either!
      I assure you that you will never have Cuba!


Fidel Castro Ruz
June 17, 2007
2:03 p.m.




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