Reflections and Manifesto for the Peopleof Cuba--By Fidel Castro

[XXPANTHAXX]

Reflection and Manifesto for the People of Cuba

I hope that no-one say that I am gratuitously attacking Bush.

Surely they will understand my reasons for strongly criticizing his
policies.

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, State of Denial, 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:

“Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?

“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."

Bush laughed. “You got it. You got Cuba.�

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Freedom costs dearly, and it is necessary to either resign ourselves to
live without it or to decide to buy it for its priceâ€�, said MartÃ*.

“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.

We are not the first revolutionaries to think that way! And we shall
not be the last!

One man may be bought, but never a people.

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."

Mr. Bush, don’t you doubt that either!

I assure you that you will never have Cuba!

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 17, 2007
2:03 p.m.