NATO’S GENOCIDAL ROLE

A comrade Fidel Castro’s Reflection 

That brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.

NATO took on that global repressive role as soon as the USSR, which had served the United States as an excuse for its creation, ceased to exist.  Its criminal purpose became obvious in Serbia, a Slavic country, whose people had so heroically fought against Nazi troops in WW II.

When in March of 1999 the countries of this ill-fated organization, in its efforts to disintegrate Yugoslavia after the death of Josip Broz Tito, sent their troops in support of the Kosovar secessionists, they ran into strong resistance from that nation whose experienced forces were still intact.

The Yankee administration, advised by the Spanish right-wing government of José María Aznar, attacked the Serbian TV stations, the bridges over the Danube River and Belgrade, that country’s capital.  The embassy of the People’s Republic of China was destroyed by Yankee bombs, several of the officials died and there could not have been any error as the authors alleged. Many Serbian patriots lost their lives.  President Slobodan Miloševiс, overwhelmed by the power of the aggressors and the disappearance of the USSR, ceded to NATO demands and admitted to the presence of that alliance’s troops in Kosovo under the UN mandate; this finally led to his political downfall and subsequent trial by The Hague courts which were less than impartial.  He died a strange death in prison.  Had the Serbian leader resisted a few more days, NATO would have entered into a serious crisis which was on the point of exploding.  The empire thus had much more time to impose its hegemony among the every more subordinated members of that organization.

Between February 21st and April 27th of this year, I published nine Reflections on the subject on the CubaDebate website; in them I amply dealt with NATO’s role in Libya and what, in my opinion, was going to happen.

Therefore I find myself obliged to synthesize the essential ideas that I put forth, and the events that have been happening as foreseen, just that now the central figure in that story, Muammar Al-Gaddafi, was seriously wounded by the most modern NATO fighter-bombers which intercepted and incapacitated his vehicle, he was captured while still alive and murdered by men that organization had armed.

His body has been kidnapped and exhibited as a trophy of war, conduct that violates the most basic principles of the norms of Muslim and other religious beliefs in the world. It is being announced that very soon Libya shall be declared a “democratic state and defender of human rights.”

I find myself obliged to dedicate several Reflections to these important and significant events.

  

A little over eight months ago, on February 21st of this year, I stated with complete conviction: “The NATO plan is to occupy Libya”.  With that title I dealt with the subject for the first time in a Reflection whose content seemed to be the product of a fantasy.

I include in these lines the elements for the opinion that led me to that conclusion.

“Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.”

“Upon this energy source today’s civilization was developed.  Venezuela was the nation in this hemisphere that paid the highest price.  The United States became the lord and master of the huge oil fields that Mother Nature had bestowed upon that sister country.”

“At the end of the last World War, it started to extract greater amounts of oil from the oil fields of Iran, as well as those in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Arab countries located around them.  These became the main suppliers.  World consumption progressively increased to the fabulous figure of approximately 80 million barrels a day, including those being extracted on United States territory, to which later gas, hydro and nuclear energies were added.”

“The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.”

“In December of 1951, Libya becomes the first African country to attain its independence after WW II, during which its territory was the stage for important battles between the troops of Germany and the United Kingdom…”

“Ninety-five percent of its territory is completely made up of desert.  Technology permitted the discovery of vital oilfields of excellent quality light oil that today reach one million 800 thousand barrels a day along with abundant deposits of natural gas. […] Its harsh desert is located over an enormous lake of fossil waters, equivalent to more than three times the land area of Cuba; this has made it possible to construct a broad network of pipelines of fresh water that stretch from one end of the country to the other.”

“The Libyan Revolution took place in the month of September of the year 1969. Its main leader was Muammar al-Gaddafi, a soldier of Bedouin origin who, in his early years, was inspired by the ideas of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.  Without any doubt, many of his decisions are associated with the changes that were produced when, as in Egypt, a weak and corrupt monarchy was overthrown in Libya.”

“One can agree with Gaddafi or not.  The world has been invaded with all kinds of news, especially using the mass media.  One has to wait the necessary length of time in order to learn precisely what is the truth and what are lies, or a mixture of events of every kind that, in the midst of chaos, were produced in Libya.  For me, what is absolutely clear is that the government of the United States is not in the least worried about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate in giving NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a matter of hours or a few short days.”

“Those who with perfidious intentions invented the lie that Gaddafi was headed for Venezuela, just as they did yesterday afternoon on  Sunday the 20th of February, today received an fitting response from Foreign Affairs Minister  Nicolás Maduro...”

“As for me, I cannot imagine that the Libyan leader would abandon his country; escaping the responsibilities he is charged with, whether or not they are partially or totally false.”

“An honest person shall always be against any injustice being committed against any people in the world, and the worst of all, at this moment, would be to remain silent in the face of the crime that NATO is getting ready to commit against the Libyan people.”

“The leadership of that war-mongering organization has to do it.  We must condemn it!”

At that early date I had realized something that was absolutely obvious.

Tomorrow, on Tuesday October 25th, our chancellor Bruno Rodríguez will speak at UN Headquarters to denounce the criminal blockade of the United States against Cuba.  We shall be closely following that battle which will once again make clear the necessity of putting an end to, not just the blockade, but the system that spawns injustice on our planet, squanders its natural resources and puts human survival at risk.  We shall be paying particular attention to Cuba’s declaration.  

I shall continue on Wednesday the 26th.  

Fidel Castro Ruz

Monday, October 24^th, 2011

The two Venezuelas

REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL (Taken from CubaDebate)

YESTERDAY I spoke of the Venezuela allied with the empire, where Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch organized the brutal in-flight explosion of a Cubana aircraft, which led to the death and disappearance of all its passengers, including the juvenile fencing team which had won all the gold medals at the Central American and Caribbean Championship hosted by that country, sadly recalled now with the Pan American Games in Guadalajara.

It was not the Venezuela of Rómulo Gallegos and Andrés Eloy Blanco, but that of the turncoat, traitorous and venomous Rómulo Betancourt, resentful of the Cuban Revolution, allied with imperialism, and which cooperated so fully with acts of aggression on our homeland. After Miami, that oil property of the United States was the principal center of the counterrevolution against Cuba; historically, it is responsible for a significant part of the imperialist adventure in Girón [Bay of Pigs], the economic blockade and the crimes against our people. That was the beginning of the dark era, which ended on the day when Hugo Chávez took the oath of office over the "moribund constitution" held with trembling hands by ex-president Rafael Caldera.

Forty years had passed since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and more than a century of yankee plunder of oil, natural resources and the sweat of Venezuelans.

Many of them died in the ignorance and misery imposed by U.S and European gunboats!

Fortunately, the other Venezuela now exists, that of Bolívar and Miranda, that of Sucre and a host of brilliant military leaders and thinkers who were capable of conceiving the great Latin American homeland of which we feel part and for which we have resisted more than half a century of aggressions and blockades.

"…with the independence of Cuba, to prevent in time the expansion of the United States throughout the Antilles, allowing that nation to fall, ever more powerfully, upon our American lands. Everything I have done, everything I will do, is toward this end," revealed José Martí, our hero of independence, the day before his death in combat.

Among us during these days is Hugo Chávez, as a visitor to a piece of the great Latin American and Caribbean homeland conceived by Simón Bolívar; he understands better than anyone the Martí principle of "…what he left undone, remains undone until today: because Bolívar still has things to do in America."

I had long conversations with him yesterday and today. I explained to him the intensity with which I am devoting my remaining energies to dreams of a better and more just world.

It is not difficult to share dreams with the Bolivarian leader when the empire is already showing the symptoms of a terminal illness.

Saving humanity from an irreversible disaster, these days, could depend on the stupidity of any mediocre president among those who have led the empire in the most recent decades, or even one or another of the constantly more powerful heads of the military-industrial complex which controls the destiny of that country.

Friendly nations of growing weight in the world economy, given their economic and technological advances and their position as permanent members of the Security Council, such as the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, together with the peoples of the so-called Third World in Asia, Africa and Latin America could attain that objective. The peoples of the developed and rich nations, constantly more impoverished by their own financial oligarchies, are beginning to play their role in this battle for human survival.

Meanwhile, the Bolivarian people of Venezuela are organizing and uniting to confront and defeat the nauseating oligarchy in the service of the empire which is once again attempting to take government power in that country.

Given its exceptional educational, cultural, social development and its immense energy and natural resources, Venezuela is called upon to become a revolutionary model for the world.

Chávez, who came from the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and untiring. I have observed him for 17 years, since he visited Cuba for the first time. He is a supremely humanitarian person and respectful of the law; he has never taken revenge against anyone. The poorest and most forgotten sectors of his country are profoundly grateful to him for responding – for the first time in history – to their dreams of social justice.

I see clearly, Hugo—I said to him—that in an extremely brief period of time, the Bolivarian Revolution can create jobs, not only for Venezuelans, but also for its Colombian brothers and sisters, a hardworking people who, alongside you, fought for the independence of America, 40% of whom live in poverty and a significant portion in conditions of extreme poverty.

I had the honor to discuss with our illustrious visitor, the symbol of the other Venezuela, these and many other issues.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 18, 2011

10:15 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

- REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL

Fidel Castro Autograph

The Will of Steel (Part Two)

When in 1976 the most serious acts of terrorism against Cuba took place, especially the destruction of a Cuban airliner in mid-flight that had taken off from Barbados with 73 persons onboard – including pilots, flight attendants and auxiliary personnel who were providing their noble services on that airline, the complete youth team that had obtained all the gold medals that were being contested at the Central American and Caribbean Fencing Championship, passengers from Cuba and other countries who were travelling full of confidence in that plane – the facts caused such great indignation that during the wake held at Revolution Square the most extraordinary and overflowing crowd ever seen came together and we have photographic records of this. Perhaps the United States leaders and many in the world had no possibility of seeing them.  It would be illustrative that those scenes were to be broadcast by the mass media in order to understand full well the motivations driving our heroic anti-terrorist combatants.

Bush Sr. was already an important official in the US intelligence services when they received the mission of organizing the counter-revolution in Cuba. In Florida the CIA created the largest base of operations in the western hemisphere.  It became responsible for all the subversive actions carried out in Cuba, including the assassination attempts on leaders of the Revolution and it became responsible for plans and calculations that, had they been successful, would have meant an enormous number of casualties on both sides given the decision of our people, as demonstrated at Girón, of fighting to the last drop of blood.  Bush never understood that Cuba`s victory saved many lives, both Cuban and American.

The monstrous Barbados crime was produced when he was already head of the CIA, with almost as much authority as President Ford. 

In June of that year he called a meeting at Bonao in the Dominican Republic in order to create the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations with the personal supervision of Vernon Walters, then deputy director of the CIA.  Take note: “United Revolutionary Organizations”.

Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles, active agents in that organization, were appointed leaders of that organization. Thus begins a new phase of terrorist activities against Cuba.  On October 6^th of 1976, Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles personally direct the sabotage for the blowing up of the Cuban airliner in mid-flight.

The authorities arrested the men involved and sent them to Venezuela.

The scandal was so big that the government of that country, then a US ally and accomplice to crimes inside and outside of Venezuela, had no other alternative than to place them at the disposal of the Venezuelan courts. 

The Sandinista Revolution triumphed in July of 1979. The bloody dirty war promoted by the United States broke out in that country.  Reagan was by then the President of the United States.

When Gerald Ford replaced Nixon, such was the scandal caused by the assassination attempts on foreign leaders that he prohibited the participation of US officials in such actions.  Congress denied funding for the dirty war in Nicaragua. They needed Posada Carriles. The CIA, through the so-called Cuban-American National Foundation, bribed the jailers involved with copious sums and the terrorist got out of jail as just another visitor.  Urgently moved to Llopango in El Salvador, not only did he direct arms supplies that caused thousands of dead and wounded among the Nicaraguan patriots, but also, with CIA cooperation, he acquired drugs in Central America, brought them into the United States and bought American weapons for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.

In the interest of brevity, I am omitting numerous facts in the brutal story.

It is not possible to understand why the illustrious Nobel Prize laureate who presides over the government of the United States is pleased to reiterate the stupid idea that Cuba is a terrorist country, keeping four Cuban anti-terrorists isolated in prisons and in inhumane conditions, a punishment that nowadays is not applied to any US enemy country, much less if no US military force admits to having being put at risk by them and prohibits René from returning to his homeland and to the heart of his family.

 The same Sunday October 9th that René sent his valiant message to the people of Cuba, he taped another fraternal “Message to Fidel and Raúl”. Under advice of Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, neither of the two messages was made public until the Probation Official of the Federal Court of Florida should formally communicate the conditions being imposed on him for the three years of “supervised liberty”.

Now that this requisite has been fulfilled, I am pleased to inform our people about the textual content of that message that so much honours our heroes and expresses their exemplary conduct and will of steel:

Dear Commander:

First of all, an embrace, my thanks, the feeling of appreciation not only for the support with which you have showered us, for the way in which you have mobilized an entire people and mobilized international solidarity in favour of our cause but, in the first place, for having served as our inspiration, for having been the example we have followed during these 13 years and for having been for us a flag behind which we were never going to stop marching.

For us this mission has been nothing other than the continuation of everything you have done, what your generation did for the Cuban people and for the rest of humankind.

For me it is an enormous pleasure to send this message to you, to send you a temporary embrace, that goes to you by this channel because I know that we shall embrace at the end; no matter how much our adversaries try to prevent it, I know that we are going to be able to have that embrace. I know that we, the Five, shall return because you promised and because you have mobilized the energy, the best of humankind, the will of the entire world so that it may happen.

For us it is an honour to serve the cause that you have inspired in the people of Cuba, to be your followers, followers on the road that you and Raúl opened up, and we shall never stop being worthy of that trust you have deposited in us. 

To the two of you, to you Fidel, to Raúl who is now guiding us in this new difficult stage, a complicated but glorious stage in which we are embroiled to break the economic dependency that ties us down still and which prevents us from building the society we want, I send you an embrace on behalf of the Five, I tell you that we always had trust in you.  When we were alone in The Hole, when we were put in solitary confinement, when we weren`t getting any news, when my four brothers knew nothing about their families because they couldn`t be told, we always trusted you, we always knew that you would not abandon your sons because we always knew that the Revolution never abandons those who defend it. That is why it deserves to be defended and that is why we are always going to do that.

And even though I am not sure we deserve all the honours we have been receiving, I can say that the rest of our lives shall be dedicated to deserving it, because you two inspire us, because you are the flag that taught us how to conduct ourselves and until the end of our days we shall try to deserve the trust you have deposited in us.

For me now this is a trench in which I shall continue in the same battle for which you have called me and I shall be there until the end, until justice is done, following your orders, doing whatever needs to be done.

And I say to Fidel and to Raúl: Commanders, both of you, at your orders!

Fidel Castro Ruz

        October 17, 2011

The Will of Steel (Part One)

Oct 18th, 2011    

By: Fidel Castro Ruz

Two days ago on Friday October 14th, Granma and Juventud Rebelde, the Communist Party and Youth League newspapers, published a brave and energetic message from René González, Hero of the Republic,  to the people of Cuba, after the odious and unfair 13-year punishment  had finished, separately, like the other four heroes who are serving longer sentences in prisons that are hundreds of miles away from each other.  Not for one instant did the unshakeable steadfastness of each one of them falter, even when they were repeatedly thrown into punishment cells, veritable sepulchres, without any space to move, just as “Yankee justice” decreed, with no crime or any kind of evidence. If there was anything in which such “justice” didn’t make a mistake, it was in the selection of the type of men it was punishing.

René was additionally prohibited from returning to his Homeland to be with his family and his people for three years. He will have to remain in the territory of the country that had imposed such unfair punishment on him.

For everyone, and especially for those of us who have lived through critical years in the history of our Homeland, René’s words profoundly sized it up.

“The fact that I am now out of prison – he stated – only means that one avenue of abuse to which I was subjected has been closed, […] we still have four brothers whom we have to rescue and whom we need with us with their families, to be among you giving the best of themselves…”

“For me, this is only a trench, a new place in which I am going to continue fighting for justice so that the Five of us can return together to you.”

“…to all the people who have accompanied us over the years, who have been thousands, and through whom we have been able, little by little, to break through this information blockade, to break through the wall of silence that the corporate media have built around the case, I extend to you, on behalf of the Five, my most profound gratitude, my commitment to continue representing you as you deserve, which is definitely what we Five are doing, because we are not only Five, we are a whole people who have resisted for 50 years, and it is thanks to that that we are still resisting, […]  and will never fail you and will always rise to the heights that you deserve René’s sincere, steadfast and energetic words, the unmistakable tone of voice of a fighter who has withstood 13 infinite years of brutal and unfair punishment without faltering for one second, are really impressive.

Imperial tyranny will not be able to sustain its gross lies about the injustice committed against the Five Cuban Anti-terrorist Heroes. It doesn’t matter how treacherously the information media in its control does its best to present them as agents and spies that placed United States security at risk. The President of the National Assembly and the prestigious lawyer José Pertierra have been in charge of pulverizing the gross Yankee lies about the heroic Cuban anti-terrorists.

The memory of the victorious battle our people waged for the return of the boy Elián González to his family and homeland crossed my mind.  In the face of the monstrous behaviour of the Cuban counter-revolutionary mafia of Miami and its contempt of the country’s authorities, the very president of the United States at that time, Bill Clinton, was forced to send security forces in order to impose American law and order on the fascist groups who were being contemptuous and setting symbols and flags of that country on fire, headed by the “ferocious she-wolf” Ileana Ros, among others, who today is nothing less than the Chairperson of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives and dictates rules on that country’s foreign policy.

René González’ message to the people of Cuba, at his own initiative and bravely taking on any risk, reinforces our profound conviction that the position of the US government in terms of the Five Cuban heroes is by now unsustainable, just as its justification of the criminal economic blockade against our homeland and the punitive measures it applies on foreign enterprises that do business with our country.

Such a policy, brutal and unusual, has been transformed by the powerful empire into an international norm, despite the practically unanimous opinion of all the members of the United Nations, with the exception of the US and Israel.

Facts irrefutably show that in the globalized world of today, under the aegis of the Yankee empire, no security guarantee exists for any other country. In the UN one can repeat time and time again the unanimous rejection of the economic blockade on Cuba, or any other measure such as the right of the Palestinian people to their constitution as a state, but unless such a right, or any other, fits in with the empire’s interests, it has no validity whatsoever.

Without it being a deliberate purpose of the Revolution, our country has become an example of what a small state can achieve if it steadfastly sustains a policy of principles even when scientific and technological advances, its patents and the distribution of the planet’s wealth is in the hands of the most developed and richest nations, that in times past were the colonial powers, disseminators of looting and poverty in our countries.

In its long struggle against the empire, our country’s combatants have been at the point of being the target for nuclear weapons at the service of that power: the first time in October of 1962; and the second time in mid-1988. On neither of these two occasions did our Homeland succumb to Yankee blackmail: in 1962, it permitted no inspection of any sort on its territory, and in 1988, after the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the advance of 50,000 Cuban and Angolan soldiers over the South African forces equipped by the West and provided with nuclear missiles, they decided to negotiate the independence of Namibia and the end of Apartheid.

The peoples of the Third World recognize and are thankful for the unselfish solidarity of Cuba in areas that are so important such as health and education.

Who can believe the strange lie about Cuba supporting terrorism?

Such a dull and stupid fib on the part of the powerful country which, only 90 miles away from its shores, not only applied against it a criminal blockade but also perpetrated the most grotesque acts of terrorism. The fires set in educational, recreational and business centres; the live phosphorus in the sugar cane plantations; the use of explosives in factories; the pirate attacks against port facilities and fishing and cargo vessels; the organizing of counter-revolutionary gangs; infiltrations by agents and providing weapons to mercenary gangs began in 1959, after the First Agrarian Reform Law, leaving a trail of death and destruction in our Homeland.

The bombing of our air force bases and the landing of mercenary troops at the Bay of Pigs, escorted by American aircraft carriers and warships cost innumerable victims when our revolutionary process was barely starting. Can the United States deny these facts?

Assassination plans on the leaders of the Revolution organized by US intelligence services were innumerable; in fact their gross actions didn’t limit themselves to that. Viruses and bacteria were introduced into our country to sabotage the production of plants and animals; even worse, diseases that didn’t even exist in this hemisphere were introduced into Cuba against the population. Haemorrhagic dengue affected hundreds of thousands of persons and around 150 of them, mainly children, died. That disease still creates havoc in this hemisphere.

The tale of what the United States has committed against our people would be endless. (To be continued) 

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 16, 2011

9:05 p.m.