Castro speech: CUBA AND THE NAZI-FASCISM

2003-05-17

Richard Moore

---<fwd>---
7 Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 08:13:22 -0700
From: William Mandel <•••@••.•••>
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Fidel Castro has never been one to cry wolf. In recent
years he has been, if anything, more diplomatic toward
existing great-power governments. and specifically
Washington, than his well-wishers would like. In the
film COMANDANTE, in which Oliver Stone boils thirty
hours of interviews last year down to ninety minutes of
essentials, Castro is essentially an old man presenting
the distilled essence of what he has learned in his
three-quarters of a century of life involving an
extraordinary richness of experience in world affairs.

Now he has clearly decided that Bush' success in
eliminating the ruler of Iraq and the statements of
intent by the occupant of the White House, many of
which Castro quotes in this speech, means that an
American attempt at "regime change" in Cuba by shock
and awe can be expected at any time. So the Cuban
president sets forth his country's record (we would say
his record) foreign and domestic, in a manner and with
specifics never previously presented by anyone,
including himself, anywhere. 
---<snip>---


With respect to the United States he describes Bush as
neo-fascist. But he expresses the view, quite clearly
as a thought-through opinion and not a p.r. compliment,
that the traditions of this country can lead to defeat
of that trend. He also points out that corporate
control of the media to the contrary notwithstanding,
access of millions here to the Internet offer an
effective means of preventing a monopoly of ideas.

This speech is Castro's legacy but also his challenge.
He declares that his country will not be defeated, no
matter what his personal fate, and he challenges
humanity to prevent the attack against it and to
support it if that attack comes.

William Mandel

---<fwd>---


Speech given by the Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of
the Republic of Cuba, at the May Day rally held in
Revolution Square.

Havana, May 1, 2003

Distinguished guests;

Dear fellow Cubans:

CUBA AND THE NAZI-FASCISM

Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years from this
small Caribbean island just a few miles away from the
most formidable imperial power ever known by mankind.
In so doing, they have written an unprecedented chapter
in history. Never has the world witnessed such an
unequal fight.

Some may have believed that the rise of the empire to
the status of the sole superpower, with a military and
technological might with no balancing pole anywhere in
the world, would frighten or dishearten the Cuban
people. Yet, today they have no choice but to watch in
amazement the enhanced courage of this valiant people.
On a day like today, this glorious international
workers' day, which commemorates the death of the five
martyrs    of Chicago, I declare, on behalf of the one
million Cubans gathered here, that we will face up to
any threats, we will not yield to any pressures, and
that we are prepared to defend our homeland and our
Revolution with ideas and with weapons to our last drop
of blood.

What is Cuba's sin? What honest person has any reason
to attack her?

With their own blood and the weapons seized from the
enemy, the Cuban people overthrew a cruel tyranny with
80,000 men under arms, imposed by the U.S. government.

Cuba was the first territory free from imperialist
domination in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the
only country in the hemisphere, throughout
post-colonial history, where the torturers, murderers
and war criminals that took the lives of tens of
thousands of people were exemplarily punished.

All of the country's land was recovered and turned over
to the peasants and agricultural workers. The natural
resources, industries and basic services were placed in
the hands of their only true owner: the Cuban nation.

In less than 72 hours, fighting ceaselessly, day and
night, Cuba crushed the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion
organized by a U.S. administration, thereby preventing
a direct military intervention by this country and a
war of incalculable consequences. The Revolution
already had the Rebel Army, over 400,000 weapons and
hundreds of thousands of militia members.

In 1962, Cuba confronted with honor, and without a
single concession, the risk of being attacked with
dozens of nuclear weapons.

It defeated the dirty war that spread throughout the
entire country, at a cost in human lives even greater
than that of the war of liberation.

It stoically endured thousands of acts of sabotage and
terrorist attacks organized by the U.S. government.

It thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the
leaders of the Revolution.

While under a rigorous blockade and economic warfare
that have lasted for almost half a century, Cuba was
able to eradicate in just one year the illiteracy that
has still not been overcome in the course of more than
four decades by the rest of the countries of Latin
America, or the United States itself.

It has brought free education to 100% of the country's
children.

It has the highest school retention rate -over 99%
between kindergarten and ninth grade- of all of the
nations in the hemisphere.

Its elementary school students rank first worldwide in
the knowledge of their mother language and mathematics.

The country also ranks first worldwide with the highest
number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of
students per classroom.

All children with physical or mental challenges are
enrolled in special schools.

Computer education and the use of audiovisual methods
now extend to all of the country's children,
adolescents and youth, in both the cities and the
countryside.

For the first time in the world, all young people
between the ages of 17 and 30, who were previously
neither in school nor employed, have been given the
opportunity to resume their studies while receiving an
allowance.

All citizens have the possibility of undertaking
studies that will take them from kindergarten to a
doctoral degree without spending a penny.

Today, the country has 30 university graduates,
intellectuals and professional artists for every one
there was before the Revolution.

The average Cuban citizen today has at the very least a
ninth-grade level of education.

Not even functional illiteracy exists in Cuba.

There are schools for the training of artists and art
instructors throughout all of the country's provinces,
where over 20,000     young people are currently
studying and developing their talent and vocation. Tens
of thousands more are doing the same at vocational
schools, and many of these then go on to undertake
professional studies.

University campuses are progressively spreading to all
of the country's municipalities. Never in any other
part of the world has such a colossal educational and
cultural revolution taken place as this that will turn
Cuba, by far, into the country with the highest degree
of knowledge and culture in the world, faithful to
Martí's profound conviction that "no freedom is
possible without culture."

Infant mortality has been reduced from 60 per 1000 live
births to a rate that fluctuates between 6 and 6.5,
which is the lowest in the hemisphere, from the United
States to Patagonia.

Life expectancy has increased by 15 years.

Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria,
neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps,
whooping cough and dengue have been eradicated; others
like tetanus, meningococcal meningitis, hepatitis B,
leprosy, hemophilus meningitis and tuberculosis are
fully controlled.

Today, in our country, people die of the same causes as
in the most highly developed countries: cardiovascular
diseases, cancer, accidents, and others, but with a
much lower incidence.

A profound revolution is underway to bring medical
services closer to the population, in order to
facilitate access to health care centers, save lives
and alleviate suffering.

In-depth research is being carried out to break the
chain, mitigate or reduce to a minimum the problems
that result from genetic,    prenatal or
childbirth-related causes.

Cuba is today the country with the highest number of
doctors per capita in the world, with almost twice as
many as those that follow closer.

Our scientific centers are working relentlessly to find
preventive or therapeutic solutions for the most
serious diseases.

Cubans will have the best health care system in the
world, and will continue to receive all services
absolutely free of charge.

Social security covers 100% of the country's citizens.

In Cuba, 85% of the people own their homes and they pay
no property taxes on them whatsoever. The remaining 15%
pay a wholly symbolic rent, which is only 10% of their
salary.

Illegal drug use involves a negligible percentage of
the population, and is being resolutely combated.

Lottery and other forms of gambling have been banned
since the first years of the Revolution to ensure that
no one pins their hopes of progress on luck.

There is no commercial advertising on Cuban television
and radio or in our printed publications. Instead,
these feature public  service announcements concerning
health, education, culture, physical education, sports,
recreation, environmental protection, and the fight
against drugs, accidents and other social problems. Our
media educate, they do not poison or alienate. They do
not worship or exalt the values of decadent consumer
societies.

There is no cult of personality around any living
revolutionary, in the form of statues, official
photographs, or the names of  streets or institutions.
The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods.

In our country there are no paramilitary forces or
death squads, nor has violence ever been used against
the people; there are no extrajudicial executions or
torture. The people have always  massively supported
the activities of the Revolution. This rally today is
proof of that.

Light years separate our society from what has
prevailed until today in the rest of the world. We
cultivate brotherhood and solidarity among individuals
and peoples both in the country and abroad.

The new generations and the entire people are being
educated about the need to protect the environment. The
media are used to build environmental awareness.

Our country steadfastly defends its cultural identity,
assimilating the best of other cultures while
resolutely combating everything that distorts,
alienates and degrades.

The development of wholesome, non-professional sports
has raised our people to the highest ranks worldwide in
medals and honors.

Scientific research, at the service of our people and
all humanity, has increased several-hundredfold. As a
result of these efforts, important medications are
saving lives in Cuba and other countries.

Cuba has never undertaken research or development of a
single biological weapon, because this would be in
total contradiction with the principles and philosophy
underlying the education of our scientific personnel,
past and present.

In no other people has the spirit of international
solidarity become so deeply rooted.

Our country supported the Algerian patriots in their
struggle against French colonialism, at the cost of
damaging political and economic relations with such an
important European country as France.

We sent weapons and troops to defend Algeria from
Moroccan expansionism, when the king of this country
sought to take control of the iron mines of Gara
Djebilet, near the city of Tindouf, in southwest
Algeria.

At the request of the Arab nation of Syria, a full tank
brigade stood guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the
Golan Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized
from that country.

The leader of the Republic of Congo when it first
achieved independence, Patrice Lumumba, who was
harassed from abroad,  received our political support.
When he was assassinated by the colonial powers in
January of 1961, we lent assistance to his followers.

Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was shed in the
western region of Lake Tanganyika, where Che Guevara
and more than 100 Cuban instructors supported the
Congolese rebels who were fighting against white
mercenaries in the service of the man supported by the
West, that is, Mobutu whose 40 billion dollars, the
same that he stole, nobody knows what European banks
they are kept in, or in whose power.

The blood of Cuban instructors was shed while training
and supporting the combatants of the African Party for
the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, who fought
under the command of Amilcar Cabral for the liberation
of these former Portuguese colonies.

The same was true during the ten years that Cuba
supported Agostinho Neto's MPLA in the struggle for the
independence of Angola. After independence was
achieved, and over the course of 15 years, hundreds of
thousands of Cuban volunteers participated in defending
Angola from the attacks of racist South African troops
that in complicity with the United States, and using
dirty war tactics, planted millions of mines, wiped out
entire villages, and murdered more than half a million
Angolan men, women and children.

In Cuito Cuanavale and on the Namibian border, to the
southwest of Angola, Angolan and Namibian forces
together with 40,000 Cuban troops dealt the final blow
to the South African troops. This resulted in the
immediate liberation of Namibia and speeded up the end
of apartheid by perhaps 20 to 25 years. At the time,
the South Africans had seven nuclear warheads that
Israel had supplied to them or helped them to produce,
with the full knowledge and complicity of the U.S.
government.

Throughout the course of almost 15 years, Cuba had a
place of honor in its solidarity with the heroic people
of Viet Nam, caught up in a barbaric and brutal war
with the United States. That war killed four million
Vietnamese, in addition to all those left wounded and
mutilated, not to mention the fact that the country was
inundated with chemical compounds that continue to
cause incalculable damage. The pretext: Viet Nam, a
poor and     underdeveloped country located 20,000
kilometers away, constituted a threat to the national
security of the United States.

Cuban blood was shed together with that of citizens of
numerous Latin American countries, and together with
the Cuban and Latin American blood of Che Guevara,
murdered on instructions from U.S. agents in Bolivia,
when he was wounded and being held prisoner after his
weapon had been rendered useless by a shot received in
battle.

The blood of Cuban construction workers, that were
nearing completion of an international airport vital
for the economy of a tiny island fully dependent on
tourism, was shed fighting in defense of Grenada,
invaded by the United States under cynical pretexts.

Cuban blood was shed in Nicaragua, when instructors
from our Armed Forces were training the brave
Nicaraguan soldiers confronting the dirty war organized
and armed by the United States against the Sandinista
revolution.

And there are even more examples.

Over 2000 heroic Cuban internationalist combatants gave
their lives fulfilling the sacred duty  of supporting
the liberation struggles for the independence of other
sister nations. However, there is not one single Cuban
property in any of those countries. No other country in
our era has exhibited such sincere and selfless
solidarity.

Cuba has always preached by example. It has never given
in. It has never sold out the cause of another people.
It has never made concessions. It has never betrayed
its principles. There must be some reason why, just 48
hours ago, it was reelected by acclamation in the
United Nations Economic and Social Council to another
three years in the Commission on Human Rights, of which
it has now been a member for 15 straight years.

More than half a million Cubans have carried out
internationalist missions as combatants, as teachers,
as technicians or as doctors and health care workers.
Tens of thousands of the latter have provided their
services and saved millions of lives over the course of
more than 40 years. There are currently 3000
specialists in Comprehensive General Medicine and other
health care personnel working in the most isolated  
regions of 18 Third World countries. Through preventive
and therapeutic methods they save hundreds of thousands
of lives every year, and maintain or restore the health
of millions of people, without charging a penny for
their services.

Without the Cuban doctors offered to the United Nations
in the event that the necessary funds are obtained
-without which entire nations and even whole regions of
sub-Saharan Africa face the risk of perishing- the
crucial programs urgently needed to fight AIDS would be
impossible to carry out.

The developed capitalist world has created abundant
financial capital, but it has not in any way created
the human capital that the Third World desperately
needs.

Cuba has developed techniques to teach reading and
writing by radio, with accompanying texts now available
in five languages-Haitian Creole, Portuguese, French,
English and Spanish- that are already being used in
numerous countries. It is nearing completion of a
similar program in Spanish, of exceptionally high
quality, to teach literacy by television.  These are
programs that were developed in Cuba and are genuinely
Cuban. We are not interested in patents and exclusive
copyrights. We are willing to    offer them to all of
the countries of the Third World, where most of the
world's illiterates are concentrated, without charging
a penny. In five years, the 800 million illiterate
people in the world could be reduced by 80%, at a
minimal cost.

After the demise of the USSR and the socialist bloc,
nobody would have bet a dime on the survival of the
Cuban Revolution. The United States tightened the
blockade. The Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts were
adopted, the latter extraterritorial in nature. We
abruptly lost our main markets and supplies sources.
The population's average calorie and protein
consumption was reduced by almost half. But our country
withstood the pressures and even advanced considerably
in the social field.

Today, it has largely recovered with regard to
nutritional requirements and is rapidly progressing in
other fields. Even in these conditions, the work
undertaken and the consciousness built throughout the
years succeeded in working miracles. Why have we
endured? Because the Revolution has always had, as it
still does and always will to an ever-greater degree,
the support    of the people, an intelligent people,
increasingly united, educated   and combative.

Cuba was the first country to extend its solidarity to
the people of the United States on September 11, 2001.
It was also the first to warn of the neo-fascist nature
of the policy that the extreme right in the United
States, which fraudulently came to power in November of
2000, was planning to impose on the rest of the world.
This policy did not emerge as a response to the
atrocious terrorist attack perpetrated against the
people of the United States by members of a fanatical
organization that had served other U.S. administrations
in the past. It was coldly and carefully conceived and
developed, which explains the country's military
build-up and enormous spending on weapons at a time
when the Cold War was already over, and long before
September 11, 2001. The fateful events of that day
served as an ideal pretext for the implementation of
such policy.

On September 20 of that year, President Bush openly
expressed this before a Congress shaken by the tragic
events of nine days earlier.  Using bizarre
terminology, he spoke of "infinite justice" as the goal
of a war that would apparently be infinite as well.

"Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy
campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen."

"We will use every necessary weapon of war."

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to
make. Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists."

"I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there is a
reason. The hour is coming when America will act."

"This is civilization's fight."

"...the great achievement of our time, and the great
hope of every time --now depends on us."

"The course of this conflict is not known, yet its
outcome is certain ... and we know that God is not
neutral."

Did a statesman or an unbridled fanatic speak these
words?

Two days later, on September 22, Cuba denounced this
speech as the blueprint for the idea of a global
military dictatorship imposed through brute force,
without international laws or institutions of any kind.

"The United Nations Organization, simply ignored in the
present crisis, would fail to have any authority or
prerogative whatsoever. There would be only one boss,
only one judge, and only one law."

Several months later, on the 200th anniversary of West
Point Military Academy, at the graduation exercise for
958 cadets on June 3, 2002, President Bush further
elaborated on this line of thinking in a fiery harangue
to the young soldiers graduating that day, in which he
put forward his fundamental fixed ideas:

"Our security will require transforming the military
you will lead -- a military that must be ready to
strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the
world. And our security will require all Americans to
be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for
preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty
and to defend our lives."

"We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more
countries..."

"...we will send you, our soldiers, where you're
needed."

"We will not leave the safety of America and the peace
of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and
tyrants. We will lift this dark threat from our country
and from the world."

"Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite
to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree.
... We are in a conflict between good and evil, and
America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil
and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we
reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in
opposing it."

In the speech I delivered at a rally held in General
Antonio Maceo Square in Santiago de Cuba, on June 8,
2002, before half a million people of Santiago, I said:

"As you can see, he doesn't mention once in his speech
(at West Point) the United Nations Organization. Nor is
there a phrase about every people's right to safety and
peace, or about the need for a world ruled by
principles and norms."

"Hardly two thirds of a century has passed since
humanity went through the bitter experience of Nazism.
Fear was Hitler's inseparable ally against his
adversaries... Later, his fearful military force [led
to] the outbreak of a war that would inflame the whole
world. The lack of vision and the cowardice of the
statesmen in the strongest European powers of the time
opened the way to a great tragedy.

"I don't think that a fascist regime can be established
in the United States. Serious mistakes have been made
and injustices committed in the framework of its
political system --many of them still persist-- but the
American people still have a number of institutions and
traditions, as well as educational, cultural and
ethical values that would hardly allow that to happen.
The risk exists in the international arena. The power
and prerogatives of that country's president are so
extensive, and the economic, technological and military
power network in that nation is so pervasive that due
to circumstances that fully escape the will of the
American people, the world is coming under the rule of
Nazi concepts and methods."

"The miserable insects that live in 60 or more
countries of the world chosen by him and his closest
assistants --and in the case of Cuba by his Miami
friends-- are completely irrelevant. They are the 'dark
corners of the world' that may become the targets of
their unannounced and  'preemptive' attacks. Not only
is Cuba one of those countries, but it has also been
included among those that sponsor terror."

I mentioned the idea of a world tyranny for the first
time exactly one year, three months and 19 days before
the attack on Iraq.

In the days prior to the beginning of the war,
President Bush repeated once again that the United
States would use, if necessary, any means within its
arsenal, in other words, nuclear weapons, chemical
weapons and biological weapons.

The attack on and occupation of Afghanistan had already
taken place.

Today the so-called "dissidents", actually mercenaries
on the payroll of the Bush's Hitler-like government,
are betraying not only their homeland, but all of
humanity as well.

In the face of the sinister plans against our country
on the part of the neo-fascist extreme right and its
allies in the Miami terrorist mob that ensured its
victory through electoral fraud, I wonder how many of
those individuals with supposedly leftist and
humanistic stances who have attacked our people over
the legal measures we were forced to adopt as a
legitimate defense against the aggressive plans of the
superpower, located just a few miles off our coasts and
with a military base on our own territory, have been
able to read these words. We wonder how many have
recognized,    denounced and condemned the policy
announced in the speeches by Mr. Bush that I have
quoted, which reveal a sinister Nazi-fascist
international policy on the part of the leader of the
country with the most powerful military force ever
imagined, whose weapons could destroy the defenseless
humanity ten times- over.

The entire world has been mobilized by the terrifying
images of cities destroyed and burned by brutal
bombing, images of maimed children and the shattered
corpses of innocent people.

Leaving aside the blatantly opportunistic, demagogic
and petty political groups we know all too well, I am
now going to refer fundamentally to those who were
friends of Cuba and respected fighters in the struggle.
We would not want those who have, in our opinion,
attacked Cuba unjustly, due to disinformation or a lack
of careful and profound analysis, to have to suffer the
infinite sorrow they will feel if one day our cities
are destroyed and our children and mothers, women and
men, young and old, are torn    apart by the bombs of
Nazi-fascism, and they realize that their declarations
were shamelessly manipulated by the aggressors to
justify a military attack on Cuba.

Solely the numbers of children murdered and mutilated
cannot be the measure of the human damage but also the
millions of children and mothers, women and men, young
and old, who remain traumatized for the rest of their
lives.

We fully respect the opinions of those who oppose
capital punishment for religious, philosophical and
humanitarian reasons. We Cuban revolutionaries also
abhor capital punishment, for much more profound
reasons than those    addressed by the social sciences
with regard to crime, currently    under study in our
country. The day will come when we can accede to the
wishes for the abolition of such penalty so nobly
expressed here by Reverend Lucius Walker in his
brilliant speech. The special concern over this issue
is easily understood when you know that the majority of
the people executed in the United States are African
American and Hispanic, and not infrequently they    are
innocent, especially in Texas, the champion of death
sentences, where President Bush was formerly the
governor, and not a single life has ever been pardoned.

The Cuban Revolution was placed in the dilemma of
either protecting the lives of millions of Cubans by
using the legally established death penalty to punish
the three main hijackers of a passenger ferry or
sitting back and doing nothing. The U.S. government,
which incites common criminals to assault boats or
airplanes with passengers on board, encourages these
people    gravely endangering the lives of innocents
and creating the ideal conditions for an attack on
Cuba. A wave of hijackings had been unleashed and was
already in full development; it had to be stopped.

We cannot ever hesitate when it is a question of
protecting the lives of the sons and daughters of a
people determined to fight until the end, arresting the
mercenaries who serve the aggressors and applying the
most severe sanctions against terrorists who hijack
passenger boats or planes or commit similarly serious
acts, who will be punished by the courts in accordance
with the laws in force.

Not even Jesus Christ, who drove the traders out of the
temple with a whip, would fail to opt for the defense
of the people.

I feel sincere and profound respect for His Holiness
Pope John Paul II. I understand and admire his noble
struggle for life and peace. Nobody opposed the war in
Iraq as much and as tenaciously as he did. I am
absolutely certain that he would have never counseled
the Shiites and Sunni Muslims to let them be killed
without defending themselves. He would not counsel the
  Cubans to do such a thing, either. He knows perfectly
well that this is not a problem between Cubans. This is
a problem between the people of Cuba and the government
of the United States.

The policy of the U.S. government is so brazenly
provocative that on April 25, Mr. Kevin Whitaker, chief
of the Cuban Bureau at the State Department, informed
the head of our Interests Section in Washington that
the National Security Council's Department of Homeland
Security considered the continued    hijackings from
Cuba a serious threat to the national security of  
the United States, and requested that the Cuban
government adopt all of the necessary measures to
prevent such acts.

He said this as if they were not the ones who provoke
and encourage these hijackings, and as if we were not
the ones who adopt drastic measures to prevent them, in
order to protect the lives and safety of passengers,
and being fully aware for some time now of the criminal
plans of the fascist extreme right against Cuba. When
news of this contact on the 25 was leaked, it stirred
up the Miami terrorist mob. They still do not
understand that    their direct or indirect threats
against Cuba do not frighten anyone in this country.

The hypocrisy of Western politicians and a large group
of mediocre leaders is so huge that it would not fit in
the Atlantic Ocean. Any measure that Cuba adopts for
the purposes of its legitimate defense is reported
among the top stories in almost all of the media. On
the other hand, when we pointed out that during the
term in office of a Spanish head of government, dozens
of ETA members were executed without trial, without
anyone protesting or denouncing it before the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights, or that another
Spanish head of government, at a difficult moment in
the war in Kosovo, advised the U.S. president to step
up the war, increase the bombing and attack civilian
targets, thus causing the deaths of hundreds of
innocent     people and tremendous suffering for
millions of people, the    headlines merely stated,
"Castro attacks Felipe and Aznar". Not a word was said
about the real content.

In Miami and Washington they are now discussing where,
how and when Cuba will be attacked or the problem of
the Revolution will be solved.

For the moment, there is talk of economic measures that
will further intensify the brutal blockade, but they
still do not know which to choose, who they will resign
themselves to alienating, and how effective these
measures may be. There are very few left for them to
choose from.  They have already used up almost all of
them.

A shameless scoundrel with the poorly chosen first name
Lincoln, and the last name Díaz-Balart, an intimate
friend and advisor of President Bush, has made this
enigmatic statement to a Miami TV station: "I can't go
into details, but we're trying to break this vicious
cycle."

What methods are they considering to deal with this
vicious cycle? Physically eliminating me with the
sophisticated modern means they have developed, as Mr.
Bush promised them in Texas before the elections?  Or
attacking Cuba the way they attacked Iraq?

If it were the former, it does not worry me in the
least. The ideas for which I have fought all my life
will not die, and they will live on for a long time.

If the solution were to attack Cuba like Iraq, I would
suffer greatly because of the cost in lives and the
enormous destruction it would bring on Cuba. But, it
might turn out to be the last of this Administration's
fascist attacks, because the struggle would last a very
long time.

The aggressors would not merely be facing an army, but
rather thousands of armies that would constantly
reproduce themselves and make the enemy pay such a high
cost in casualties that it would far exceed the cost in
lives of its sons and daughters that the American
people would be willing to pay for the adventures and
ideas of President Bush. Today, he enjoys majority
support, but it is dropping, and tomorrow it could be
reduced to zero.

The American people, the millions of highly cultivated
individuals who reason and think, their basic ethical
principles, the tens of millions of computers with
which to communicate, hundreds of times more than at
the end of the Viet Nam war, will show that you cannot
fool all of the people, and perhaps not even part of
the people, all of the time. One day they will put a
straightjacket on those who need it before they manage
to    annihilate life on the planet.

On behalf of the one million people gathered here this
May Day, I want to convey a message to the world and
the American people:

We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans to be
shed in a war. We do not want a countless number of
lives of people who could be friends to be lost in an
armed conflict. But never has a people had such sacred
things to defend, or such profound convictions to fight
for, to such a degree that they would rather be
obliterated from the face of the Earth than abandon the
noble and generous work for which so many generations
of Cubans have    paid the high cost of the lives of
many of their finest sons and    daughters.

We are sustained by the deepest conviction that ideas
are worth more than weapons, no matter how
sophisticated and powerful those weapons may  be.

Let us say like Che Guevara when he bid us farewell:

Ever onward to victory!

-- 

============================================================================

    For the movement, the relevant question is not, "Can we
    work through the political system?", but rather, "Is
    the political system one of the things that needs to be
    fundamentally transformed?"


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