[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reflections by Comrade Fidel

[Bill Totten]

The Empire's Hypocritical Politics

by Fidel Castro Ruz

www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones (May 25 2008)


It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech
Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American
National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his speech,
as I did McCain's and Bush's. I feel no resentment towards him, for he
is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity.
Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I
have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about
expressing my points of view on his words frankly.


What were Obama's statements?

"Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in
Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom.
Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of
Cuba known democracy ( ... ) This is the terrible and tragic status quo
that we have known for half a century - of elections that are anything
but free or fair ( ... ) I won't stand for this injustice, you won't
stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in
Cuba", he told annexationists, adding: "It's time to let Cuban American
money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime ( ... )
I will maintain the embargo".

The content of these declarations by this strong candidate to the US
presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason for this
reflection.

José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation directives
who Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the owner of the
fifty-calibre automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and infrared
sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other deadly
weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the
Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an
international meeting held in Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of
Nueva Esparta.

Pepe Hernández' group wanted to renegotiate a former pact with Clinton,
betrayed by Mas Canosa's clan, who secured Bush's electoral victory in
2000 through fraud, because the latter had promised to assassinate
Castro, something they all happily embraced. These are the kinds of
political tricks inherent to the United States' decadent and
contradictory system.

Presidential candidate Obama's speech may be formulated as follows:
hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable hand-outs and visits to
Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life
behind it.

How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food
crisis? The world's grains must be distributed among human beings, pets
and fish, which become smaller every year and more scarce in the seas
that have been over-exploited by the large trawlers which no
international organization could get in the way of. Producing meat from
gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates technology's
potential in the fight against climate change, though he is more
conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than Bush. He
could seek the advice of Gore, who is also a democrat and is no longer a
candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at which global
warming is advancing. His close political rival Bill Clinton, who is not
running for the presidency, an expert on extra-territorial laws like the
Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, can advice him on an issue like the
blockade, which he promised to lift and never did.

What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is doubtless, from
the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate to
the US presidency? "For two hundred years", he said, "the United States
has made it clear that we won't stand for foreign intervention in our
hemisphere. But every day, all across the Americas, there is a different
;kind of struggle - not against foreign armies, but against the deadly
threat of hunger and thirst, disease and despair. That is not a future
that we have to accept - not for the child in Port au Prince or the
family in the highlands of Peru. We can do better. We must do better
( ... ) We cannot ignore suffering to our south, nor stand for the
globalization of the empty stomach." A magnificent description of
imperialist globalization: the globalization of empty stomachs! We ought
to thank him for it. But, 200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin
American unity and, more than 100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the
struggle against the annexation of Cuba by the United States. What is
the difference between what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims
and resuscitates in his speech two centuries later?

"I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House who
will work with my full support. But we'll also expand the Foreign
Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the
Americas. We'll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans to
go abroad to deepen the trust and the ties among our people", he said
near the end, adding: "Together, we can choose the future over the
past". A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at least the
fear, that history makes figures what they are and not all the way around.

Today, the United States have nothing of the spirit behind the
Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the thirteen
colonies that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a
gigantic empire undreamed of by the country's founders at the time.
Nothing, however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The
former were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to
be auctioned at the marketplace  - men, women and children - for nearly
a century, despite the fact that "all men are born free and equal", as
the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world's objective
conditions favored the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic
and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact
same argument which, almost without exception, US administrations have
used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The
blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don't want to see
US children inculcated with those shameful values.

An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without
the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism
visited upon Cuba.

The revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be
accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could
have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its own
workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an eight-hour
work shift, which stemmed from the development of productive forces.

The first thing the leaders of the Cuban revolution learned from Martí
was to believe in and act on behalf of an organization founded for the
purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound by
previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of this
organization, we were elected by more than ninety percent of voters, as
has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least
resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a
time, as in the case of the United States, stay short of fifty percent
of the voters. No small and blockaded country like ours would have been
able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity,
deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbor has. To
state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama's great intelligence, his debate skills or
his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in
the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who
accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a
touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number
of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise
them for the record.

1. Is it right for the president of the United States to order the
assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

2. Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the
torture of other human beings?

3. Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United
States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?

4. Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country,
Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it costs
innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why is this
right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and other
peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn't the same Act applied to Mexicans
and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against
the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific?

5. Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables,
fruits, almonds and other delicacies for US citizens? Who would sweep
their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and
lowest-paid jobs?

6. Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect
children born in the United States?

7. Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific
and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?

8. You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that
your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not
tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right
be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the
world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and
spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: is that the way in
which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and
human rights?

9. Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark corners
of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be?

10.  Is it honorable and sound to invest millions and millions of
dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can
destroy life on earth several times over?

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its
education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented
not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around
the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity
towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade
and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be
done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was
able to achieve what we have.

The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other nations
consist in the sending of military professionals to those countries. It
cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people
willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to
a country in need (though Cuba has known and relied on the cooperation
of excellent US doctors). They are not to blame for this, for society
does not inculcate such values in them on a massive scale.

We have never subordinated cooperation with other countries to
ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when
hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our internationalist
medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry Reeve, a young man,
born in the United States, who fought and died for Cuba's sovereignty in
our first war of independence.

Our revolution can mobilize tens of thousands of doctors and health
technicians. It can mobilize an equally vast number of teachers and
citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to
fulfill any noble purpose, not to usurp people's rights or take
possession of raw materials.

The good will and determination of people constitute limitless resources
that cannot be kept and would not fit in a bank's vault. They cannot
spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f250508i.html


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