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Mahmoud Siddiqi
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The Revolution and The Empire
Fidel Castro declares that it is important to expose Washington's conspiracies and continue to demolish their lies in a Battle of Ideas
LIES were demolished again during a special presentation on Wednesday, May 24, when President Fidel Castro affirmed that the Bush administration was left with a “no hit, no run” after failing to provide any answer or defense against the irrefutable truths of the Cuban Revolution.
For six hours, Fidel and several guests revealed the maneuver used by Forbes magazine in its attempt to smear Cuba’s prestige, at a time when the country is attaining new victories and extending its help and potential to other peoples of the world.
“I know this people, its state of mind during each one of our battles, and it has never been this elevated; that is the result of the Revolution’s work,” affirmed the Cuban president, explaining why it was important to expose Washington’s conspiracy, via which Forbes claimed that Fidel had a fortune of $900 million.
“We must continue demolishing their lies. It is an ideological battle; all of this is the Battle of Ideas. They don’t have anything, they don’t have one word. They have no defense,” he emphasized.
Fidel explained that the special presentation was aimed primarily at international public opinion, because the Cuban people do not allow themselves to be deceived or manipulated, given that their awareness has multiplied. “That is a people that defends its Revolution, that understands lies and rejects them,” he noted.
Referring to his previous appearance, during which he urged the Bush administration and its intelligence agencies to prove their disgraceful claims, Fidel commented, “They are remaining silent.”
“Bush is staying quiet, just like the State Department, Congress and the CIA. The only one defending (the lie) is El Nuevo Herald, the libelous newspaper of the terrorist mafia in Miami. Look at how weak and rickety the Bush administration is; it hasn’t been able to say one word.”
“That was how it was when we demanded that they say where Posada Carriles illegally entered (the country); they stayed absolutely silent then, too,” he added.
ALL OF THE COUNTRY’S INCOME IS FOR THE REVOLUTION
Fidel emphasized that all of the country’s income, whatever its source, is utilized to support the Revolution’s development, in a country that is blockaded but has carried out education and healthcare for the entire people; that has trained the human capital via which it resisted the Special Period and the fall of the socialist bloc, particularly that of the USSR.
“That is a fundamental reason that is not understood by those who advocated our end when we lost our markets and the U.S. blockade was intensified.”
The Cuban president noted that at that time, there were almost 30,000 students in the medical schools, almost all of whom graduated. Today, the country is educating 40,000 computer programmers, as well as thousands of other experts in services that the country is providing to other nations, and charting a new economic course.
He affirmed that the income from tourism, from the hard-currency stores and from thousands of other enterprises during all of these years has been used to buy fuel, food and other necessary items to first be able to resist and then to advance toward new heights of development.
The banking system is now administrating what was previously done by 3,000 entities that operated in hard currency. It receives, credits, and approves all investments, Fidel explained. Here, spending is accounted for, and with increasing discipline.
BUCKETS OVER THEIR HEADS
Fidel commented that Forbes and El Nuevo Herald should put buckets over their heads to cover up the discredit of their spurious arguments. With respect to the Miami newspaper, he commented on one article in it that refers to him as a murderer, terrorist and person guilty of acts of genocide.
“Let them find one war in the history of humanity, in the history of revolutions, where there was an army like our Rebel Army, which took thousands of prisoners without a blow; and during Girón (the Bay of Pigs invasion) it was the same: not one blow, we did not hit a single mercenary with the butt of a rifle.”
“Yes, we have punished in an exemplary way those who tortured and murdered the people. We promised justice, and justice was done, and the maximum sentence was given to those criminals, in accordance with the law, carried out by a country that did not have death squads, that even suspended the death penalty, subjected to a dirty war that killed thousands of its citizens,” Fidel affirmed.
He said that the criminals and those guilty of genocide are those who imposed the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws on the Cuban people, those who paid Posada Carriles for his criminal actions and have not stopped carrying out assassination attempts during all these years of the Revolution.
“We knew they had prepared the assassination attempt in Panama, and we revealed it there, because we could not violate the sovereignty of that country by capturing him or eliminating him. We never would have done that. But yes, we have helped the Angolans, the Namibians and many other peoples; we have combated apartheid and contributed to other revolutionary causes, some of which took power.”
THEY CANNOT DO WHAT CUBA DOES
“We know down to the cent what the Henry Reeve Contingent has cost in Pakistan: every flight, every hospital. I never would have spoken if the president, foreign minister and prime minister had not spoken and asked for help from the world. For us, we were doing our duty, just like the 1,600 doctors we offered to the United States when (Hurricane) Katrina hit, or the hundreds we offered to Guatemala and Mexico after Stan,” Fidel said.
“If we had not had the doctors, we could not have helped Pakistan with anesthesiologists, surgeons and intensive-care experts, and I maintain that the United States and Europe together could not do what Cuba has done, because their doctors are private property.”
In that sense, the Cuban president noted that Cuba is contributing to the training of doctors and other professionals from all over the world, and gave the example of the 1,600 Bolivians studying medicine in Holgu*n, or the 700 Cuban doctors lending their services in Evo Morales’ country, or who are turning their workplaces into universities in remote sites of Sub-Saharan Africa, where 700 million people have fewer doctors than does Cuba.
In response to these realities, and because of the Revolution’s broad prestige, the conspiracy was created via which Forbes is repeating its lies. And this is the right moment for a response, at a time when, moreover, the book by Ignacio Ramonet has come out and has had a big impact, Fidel commented.
“Today, the empire’s discredit is greater than ever; they wage wars in the name of democracy; they are liars, shameless.”
“We are facing the challenge of the most complicated world ever, when there are perils that are endangering the existence of the human species, with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and climactic changes associated with a disorganized world, in which a minority controls the wealth and dominates technology and scientific advances.”
“Many of these ideas are in Ramonet’s book, which does not contain a single lie or exaggeration,” the Cuban president commented. “If that were not the case, we would be betraying our conscience.”
With respect to the Forbes calumny and his demands for a U.S. response, Fidel said that perhaps they thought that he would not answer them. “They should be more prudent, and be quiet, and be a little more careful, because we are living during exceptional times,” he added.
And he concluded: “That piece of garbage magazine should ask for an apology from world public opinion. I don’t have an account in dollars in any Cuban bank, nor do I have a single dollar. We will continue demanding an answer from them, and we are sure that many in the world are going to speak out against these lies.”
“Forbes should ask for an apology from the world for its lies and infamies,” Fidel emphasized.
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