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<font size=3><b>Reflection and Manifesto for the People of Cuba<br>
THEY WILL NEVER HAVE CUBA<br><br>
June 17, 2007<br><br>
</b>"Aimara" <aimara@cubanmission.com><br><br>
<br><br>
I hope that no-one say that I am gratuitously
attacking Bush. Surely they will understand my reasons for strongly
criticizing his policies.<br>
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, <i>State
of Denial, </i>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:<br>
<i>“Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?<br>
“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."<br>
Bush laughed. “You got it. You got
Cuba.”<br>
</i> 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.<br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
“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.<br>
“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.<br>
We are not the first revolutionaries to
think that way! And we shall not be the last!<br>
One man may be bought, but never a people.<br>
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."
<br>
<br>
Mr. Bush, don’t you doubt that either!<br>
I assure you that you will never have Cuba!<br>
<br>
<br>
Fidel Castro Ruz<br>
June 17, 2007<br>
2:03 p.m.<br><br>
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