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[image: Umsebenzi Online]
*Volume 11, No. 3, 2 February 2012*
*In this Issue:*
- The fruit which did not fall<#1353dccd79f97b26_1353dcba3415e158_redpen>
*Red Alert *
*The fruit which did not fall*
*Reflections of Fidel*
(Taken from Cuba Debate)
CUBA was forced to fight for its existence facing an expansionist power,
located a few miles from its coast, and which was proclaiming the
annexation of our island, which was destined to fall into its lap like a
ripe fruit. We were condemned not to exist as a nation.
Within the glorious legions of patriots who, during the second half of the
19th century, fought against the abhorrent colonial status imposed by Spain
over 300 years, José Martí was the man who most clearly perceived such a
dramatic destiny. He confirmed it in the last lines that he wrote, the
night before the anticipated difficult combat against a battle-hardened and
well equipped Spanish column, when he declared that the fundamental
objective of his struggle was, "...to prevent the United States from
spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from
overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. Everything
that I have done up until now, and everything that I will do, is to this
end."
Without understanding this profound truth one cannot today be either a
patriot or a revolutionary.
Without any doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of many technical resources
and the substantial funds directed at dehumanizing the masses constitute
considerable but not invincible obstacles.
Cuba demonstrated - starting from its position as a colonial yankee trading
post, together with the illiteracy and generalized poverty of its people -
that it was possible to confront the country which was threatening the
definitive absorption of the Cuban nation. Nobody can even affirm that
there was a national bourgeoisie opposed to the empire; the bourgeoisie
developed in such close proximity to it that, shortly after the triumph, it
sent 14,000 totally unprotected children to the United States, although
that act was associated with the perfidious lie that parental custody was
to be suppressed. This is what history recorded as Operation Peter Pan,
described as the largest maneuver of child manipulation for political ends
recalled in the Western Hemisphere.
National territory was invaded, barely two years after the revolutionary
triumph, by mercenary forces - comprising former Batista soldiers and the
sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie - armed and escorted by the United
States with warships from its naval fleet, including aircraft carriers with
equipment ready to enter into action, and which accompanied the invaders to
our island. The defeat and capture of virtually all the mercenaries in less
than 72 hours and the destruction of their aircraft operating from bases in
Nicaragua and their naval transportation, constituted a humiliating defeat
for the empire and its Latin America allies, which had underestimated the
Cuban people's fighting capacity.
In the face of the termination of oil supplies on the part of the United
States, the subsequent total suspension of the historic sugar quota in that
country's market, and the prohibition of trade established over more than
100 years, the USSR responded to each one of these measures by supplying
fuel, buying our sugar, trading with our country and finally, supplying the
weapons that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.
The idea of a systematic campaign of CIA-organized pirate attacks, sabotage
and military actions by armed bands created and supplied by the United
States before and after the mercenary attack, and which would culminate in
a military invasion of Cuba by this country, gave rise to events which
placed the world on the brink of a total nuclear war, which neither of the
parties involved nor humanity itself could have survived.
Without any doubt, those events resulted in the removal from the presidency
of Nikita Khrushchev, who underestimated his adversary, disregarded
opinions presented to him and did not consult with those of us in the front
line concerning his final decision. What could have been an important moral
victory thus turned into a costly political setback for the USSR. For many
years the worst of crimes against Cuba continued and more than a few of
them, like the U.S. criminal blockade, are still being committed.
Khrushchev made exceptional gestures to our country. On that occasion, I
unhesitatingly criticized the non-consulted agreement with the United
States, but it would be ungrateful and unjust not to acknowledge his
exceptional solidarity at difficult and decisive moments for our people in
their historic battle for independence and revolution in the face of the
powerful empire of the United States. I understand that the situation was
extremely tense and he did not wish to lose any time when he made the
decision to withdraw the missiles and the yankees, very secretly, agreed to
give up the invasion.
Despite the decades gone by, already half a century, the Cuban fruit has
not fallen into yankee hands.
News reports currently coming in from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iran, Syria, the United Kingdom, the Malvinas and countless other
points on the planet are serious, and all of them augur a political and
economic disaster as a result of the stupidity of the United States and its
allies.
I will confine myself to a few subjects. I must note that, going by what
everyone is saying, that the selection of a Republican candidate to aspire
to the presidency of this globalized and far-reaching empire is, in its
turn - I am serious - the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that
I have ever heard. As I have things to do, I cannot devote any time to the
subject. I already knew it would be like that.
Some news agency cables better illustrate what I wish to analyze, because
they demonstrate the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the
West.
One of them, with amazing tranquility, talks of a Cuban political prisoner
who, it states, died after a hunger strike lasting 50 days. A journalist
with *Granma, Juventud Rebelde*, radio news or any other revolutionary
organ might be mistaken in any interpretation of any subject, but would
never fabricate an item of news or invent a lie.
A *Granma* informative note affirms that there was no hunger strike; the
man was an ordinary prisoner sentenced to four years for attacking and
injuring his wife in the face; that his own mother in law asked authorities
to intervene; family members were kept fully abreast of all procedures used
in his medical treatment and were grateful for the effort made by medical
specialists who treated him. He received medical attention, as the note
states, in the best hospital in the eastern region, as is the case with all
citizens. He died from secondary multi-organic failure related to a severe
respiratory infection.
The patient had received all the medical attention administered in a
country which has one of the finest medical services in the world, provided
free of charge in spite of the blockade imposed on our homeland by
imperialism. It is simply a duty that is fulfilled in a country where the
Revolution is proud of always having respected, for more than 50 years, the
principles which give it its invincible strength.
It would be more worthwhile for the Spanish government, given its excellent
relations with Washington, to travel to the United States and inform itself
as to what is taking place in yankee jails, the ruthless conduct meted out
to millions of prisoners, the policy of the electric chair and the horrors
perpetrated on detainees in the country's jails and those who are
protesting in its streets.
Yesterday, January 23, a strong Granma editorial titled "Cuba's truths,"
which occupied an entire page of the newspaper, explained in detail the
unprecedented shame of the campaign of lies unleashed against our
Revolution by certain governments "traditionally committed to anti-Cuba
subversion."
Our people are well aware of the norms which have governed the impeccable
conduct of our Revolution since the first battle and which has never been
stained over more than half a century. They also know that it can never be
pressured or coerced by enemies. Our laws and norms will be respected
unfailingly.
It is worth noting this with clarity and frankness. The Spanish government
and the shaky European Union, plunged into a profound economic crisis, must
know what should guide them. It is pitiful to read news agency reports of
the statements of both utilizing their barefaced lies to attack Cuba. First
concern yourselves with saving the euro if you can, resolve the chronic
unemployment from which young people are increasingly suffering, and
respond to the *indignados*, constantly attacked and beaten by the police.
We are not ignorant of the fact that Spain is now being governed by
admirers of Franco, who dispatched members of the Blue Division, together
with the Nazi SS and SA, to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them
participated in the cruel aggression. In the most cruel and painful
operation of that war: the siege of Leningrad, where one million Russian
citizens died, the Blue Division was among the forces attempting to
strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never pardon that
horrific crime.
The fascist right of Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire, must
know something about the 16,000 casualties of their predecessors in the
Blue Division and the Iron Crosses which Hitler awarded to officers and
soldiers from that division. There is nothing unusual about what the
Gestapo police are doing now to the men and women demanding the right to
work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.
Why are the mass media of the empire lying so barefacedly?
Those who manipulate the media are striving to deceive and dehumanize the
world with their crude lies, possibly thinking that it constitutes the
principal resource for maintaining the global system of domination and
plunder imposed, particularly upon victims in close proximity to the
headquarters of the metropolis, the close to 600 million Latin American and
Caribbean people living in this hemisphere.
The sister republic of Venezuela has become the fundamental objective of
this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would
have imposed its Free Trade Treaty on all the peoples of the continent who
inhabit it from the south of the United States, a region where the greatest
reserves of land, fresh water and minerals of the planet are to be found,
as well as large energy resources which, administered in a spirit of
solidarity toward other peoples of the world, constitute resources which
cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals imposing a
suicidal and infamous system on them.
For example, it is enough to look at the map to comprehend the criminal
dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its
territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British
deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine
recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United
States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them. Now,
just before the London Olympics, its Prime Minister David Cameron is also
proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines
to kill Argentines. The government of this country is unaware of the fact
that the world is changing, and the scorn of our hemisphere and that of the
majority of the peoples for the oppressors is increasing every day.
The case of the Malvinas is not the only one. Does anyone know how the
conflict in Afghanistan is going to end? Just a few days ago U.S. soldiers
desecrated the corpses of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone bombings.
Three days ago a European agency reported, "Afghani President Hamid Karzai
has given his backing to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, emphasizing
that this issue must be resolved by the citizens of his country." It went
on to add, "...the process of peace and reconciliation belongs to the
Afghani nation and no country or foreign organization can take away this
right from the Afghanis.
For its part, a cable published by our press communicated from Paris,
"France today suspended all its training and aid operations in Afghanistan
and threatened to expedite the withdrawal of its troops, after an Afghani
soldier shot four French soldiers in the Taghab valley, in Kapisa
province... Sarkozy instructed Defense Minister Gérard Longuet to travel
immediately to Kabul, and indicated the possibility of an early withdrawal
of the contingent."
After the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the U.S.
government imagined that Cuba would be unable to sustain itself. George W.
Bush had already prepared a counterrevolutionary government to govern our
country. On the very same day that Bush initiated his criminal war on Iraq,
I asked our country's authorities to end the tolerance afforded the
counterrevolutionary capos who, in those days, were hysterically demanding
the invasion of Cuba. In real terms, their attitude constituted an act of
treason against the homeland.
Bush and his stupidities prevailed for eight years and the Cuban Revolution
has already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has not
fallen into the empire's lap. Cuba will not be one more possession with
which the empire spreads through the lands of America. Martí's blood will
not have been spilled in vain.
Tomorrow I will publish another Reflection to complement this one.
*Fidel Castro Ruz*
*January 24, 2012*
