Fidel Castro on the Lies and Nonsense of George W. Bush (speech,6/26)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----From: "Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory"
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 2:52 AM
Subject: [107disc] Fidel Castro on the Lies and Nonsense of George W. Bush
(speech,6/26)



Permanent Mission of the Republic of Cuba to the United Nations
315 Lexington Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
(212) 689-7215 * FAX (212) 689-9073



PRESS RELEASE

SPEECH GIVEN BY DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA,
AT THE EXTRAORDINARY SESSION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF PEOPLE'S POWER,
HAVANA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTER, JUNE 26, 2002.


Comrades:

Everything has been said and much better than I could say it. The best I
can do is to make a summary and go over some points.

Around the time when he assumed office, we wanted to avoid any
rhetorical exchanges with the new president of the United States. Even
though we didn't have the slightest doubt about his Cuba policy, we
didn't see the point in casting the first stone. We would be patient.

A group from the extreme right had taken power in the United States and
we knew about the agreements and commitments it had made before the
elections with groups from the Miami Mob to destroy the Cuban Revolution
--these did not exclude assassinating me. Fate added the peculiar
circumstances that it was those groups that, using electoral fraud, were
decisive in getting Bush elected president.

In the first stage of his presidency there were the normal anti-Cuban
maneuvers in Geneva. Nothing new, only that the methods of pressuring
the delegations at the Commission on Human Rights were more brutal than
usual.

Almost all the first year went by without anything particularly new
happening: the most noteworthy events in our bilateral relations were
the traditional rhetorical attacks on Cuba, the FTAA meeting in Quebec
and Bush's incorrect reference there to Marti's ideas. This gave rise to
a flood of letters from Cuban children and adolescents explaining, as
politely as possible, our national hero and apostle and his philosophy
to the US president.

In the international arena, the decision to build a nuclear anti-missile
shield, the contempt shown for the commitments entered into at Kyoto and
the announcement of huge military expenditures to develop new
sophisticated weapons when the cold war no longer even existed gave the
world an early warning signal of the way of thinking, the style and the
methods of the hegemonic superpower's new administration.

The international economy began to show worrying symptoms all over the
place: all the indices and forecasts were pessimistic. The world was
entering an uncertain and distressing recession. The prices of primary
products, which are what the overwhelming majority of Third World
countries make their living from, were at rock bottom while neo-liberal
globalization, forced privatization, the foreign debt and the price of
petroleum were sky-high.

The tragic, absurd and unjustifiable events of September 11 took place
in the midst of this situation. The world gave its unanimous help and
solidarity to the U.S. people. Whatever errors and inconsistencies there
may have been in the foreign policy of that country's administrations,
nobody remained unmoved in face of the terrible massacre of thousands of
innocent Americans, both the U.S. native-born and those coming from the
widest variety of countries.

It was the moment for the super powerful nation to examine its
conscience, and not to stir up, multiply and capitalize on the
ridiculous hatreds accumulated over decades. It should have kept calm,
and the rest of the world should have been brave. The first depended on
the U.S. leaders, the second on elementary common sense and dignity.
Such virtues, however, are not abundant. Neither one nor the other did
as they should. The most powerful declared a world coup d'état on
September 20, 9 days after the condemnable terrorist act when, on the
warpath, it declared that every country had to decide whether it was its
ally or its enemy. The United Nations lost what little authority was
bestowed on it by a Charter rendered invalid by that most undemocratic
of instruments: the veto. The other 184 states, which usually spend time
voting for conventions that are almost always well meaning but never
implemented, this time lost even their right to speak.

Since then only the shocking sound of irrationality, of threats and
weapons has been heard.

The economic crises with their aftermath of poverty and hunger are
multiplying; selfishness is growing stronger, solidarity is growing
weaker; diseases, worse at times than war itself, threaten to wipe out
entire regions. Economic science finds itself up against problems that
it had never even imagined, tied as it is to concepts and categories
that, like a heavy burden, drag it down into a sea of uncertainty and
helplessness. It is what they have learned in the great and prestigious
universities of the economic and social system that today has become an
anachronistic world empire. Politics has ceased to offer the illusion of
a noble, useful art, an illusion that it always dreamed of using to
justify itself, only to become a futile and discredited entertainment.
This is a huge but not insuperable tragedy. The fact that the system is
unsustainable will lead human kind to look for solutions.

Coming back down to earth, in the limited area of the planet, which our
country occupies, we Cubans have the right to enjoy the modest privilege
of a duty done. We are the offspring of major events and historical
currents that have developed over many centuries. A little over a
century ago this was a colonial, slave-based society where there were
strong annexationist and anti-independence feelings among the richest
strata of the native born whites. Then, a titanic 30-year struggle by
the growing patriotic sector led them close to achieving their goal when
the U.S. troops intervened in that nation forged by the tenacity and
heroism of its best sons, which were thus betrayed and sold out, pushed
and pulled by infinitely superior forces, until today when we have a
small independent and absolutely free country that stands tall before
the most powerful imperial force that has existed, the same which is no
friend of peace nor of the rights of other peoples.

There was no record in any book of such a special case. The ideas, the
feelings and the strengths that have brought us where we are today, that
keep us and will keep us here, rose up from the deep abyss of the past.

Dangerous things started happening last May after the embarrassing
maneuvers in Geneva, where the U.S. government managed to win a Pyrrhic
victory by the smallest possible margin after using brutal pressure. On
May 6, the United States accused us of doing research into biological
weapons; on May 20, Bush's speeches in Washington and Miami; on May 21,
they once again included Cuba on their list of countries which sponsor
terrorism; on June 1, Bush's incredible statements in West Point.

On May 20, the president of the United States dedicated an entire day to
Cuba and the Revolution. What a great honor! He remembers us, therefore
we are!

I don't know when it is that the U.S. president writes his speeches, or
if he assigns this task to one of his closest advisors, or if they are a
hybrid of the two. Whatever the circumstances, arrogance, demagogy and
lies are usually an inseparable part of those speeches. He gave two
speeches on that day, one in the White House and the other in Miami. He
was disparaging, insulting, and showed little respect for his adversary.
The most significant part was not the offense and insults. Those who
lack valid arguments have no choice but to resort to lies and
adjectives. What must be considered as fundamental are his macabre
intentions, his reckless plans and his mistaken ideas.

A staggering example of falsehood and disrespect for international
public opinion took place when, in his White House speech, Mr. Bush
calmly announced that the United States and its friends and allies won
the freedom of countries like South Africa.

The whole world knows, and future generations should also know, that the
end of apartheid was decided in Cuito Cuanavale and in south east Angola
by more than 40,000 Cuban troops who fought there together with Angolan
and Namibian soldiers. The U.S. administrations armed Savimbi, who
planted millions of landmines and killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians. Those administrations kept a conspiratorial silence over
South Africa's possession of seven nuclear weapons in the hope that they
would be used against the Cuban troops.

Bush tends to mistake his wishes for the strangest fantasies.

"One hundred years ago", he said in Miami, "a proud island people
declared independence and put Cuba on a democratic course. We are here
today to celebrate this important anniversary".

As far as he is concerned the Platt Amendment never existed, nor did the
deceit, the betrayal, the right to intervention and the violation of
Cuban sovereignty that it meant. History didn't even exist.

He spoke of a "Peter Pan", today one of his ministers. But he didn't say
that 14,000 Cuban children were clandestinely taken out of Cuba in that
monstrous operation that bore the name of Peter Pan and that was
organized by U.S. authorities around a cynical and repulsive lie.

He went right on to relate the melodramatic tale of a Cuban boy who
arrived in the United States in 1995 when he was ten years old, who will
be graduating within a few weeks from a Miami senior high school and who
will be the first person to have graduated from that high school to
attend Harvard. He didn't have and couldn't have the minimal honesty
needed to admit that only a child from Cuba--the only country in the
hemisphere where all children attend school from kindergarten on and
where one hundred per cent of student graduate from sixth grade with
twice the average level in language and mathematics as in other
countries in the Americas according to an UNESCO survey--could go to
Harvard after only a few years study. This was not the case of an
immigrant from another Latin American country, educated in a public
school, nor a Native American or an African American.

He immediately added that no one had given anything to anybody in Cuba;
"They had brought Cuba's workers, farmers and families nothing--nothing
but isolation and misery", he said.

He didn't even try to explain why then, after four decades of U.S.
aggression, terrorism, blockade and economic war--and a good measure of
political conscience, education, heroism and popular support was needed
to withstand all that--they have not been able to destroy or weaken a
Revolution which has done nothing for the people.

Mr. Bush added, among other nonsense, that when every other nation in
the hemisphere has chosen the path to democracy, I chose, "to jail, to
torture and exile Cuban people for speaking their minds". This
slanderous reference to the use of torture in our country was made by
none other than the head of State whose government trained tens of
thousands of Latin Americans in special schools, the same who, in almost
all of the countries in our hemisphere, were responsible for hundreds of
thousands of cases of torture, disappearance and death. Our security
forces never received training from such experienced teachers. If Mr.
Bush were able to point to a single case of torture in Cuba over the
more than four decades of Revolution we would be prepared to erect a
solid gold statue in honor of his memory as the least dishonest of all
the liars in the world, even if we had to melt down our numismatic
museum's collection

Those who know our country and its long and hazardous history in depth
know that the Revolution?s ethical principles, which explain its amazing
strength and capacity for endurance, are far from being Mr. Bush's
principles.

In his incoherent speeches on May 20 he stated:

"My administration will also continue to look for ways to modernize
Radio and TV Martí".

As can be seen, whereas Cuba devotes a large number of hours every day
to school programming and to University for All and is investing
resources to expand to all of Cuba coverage of the educational channel,
which is gaining more and more prestige and support from the people, the
U.S. government, in addition to the offensive use of the name of the
most sacred figure in our history, is promising to invest more money to
modernize radio and TV stations to attack our culture and to sow
disinformation, lies, poison and subversion in our country.

In what seemed to be a flight of delirious fancy, Bush admitted he was
astounded to have read--nobody knows where he read it--that in this day
and age the Cuban regime forbids the sale of computers to the public. He
treats us as if we were a rich and developed country. Nevertheless, it
hasn't occurred to anyone to tell him that currently Cuba is the only
county in this hemisphere including, possibly, the United States where
one-hundred percent of schools and educational centers, from
kindergarten to the highest university level, have computer laboratories
and professors in spite of the cruel, ironclad economic and
technological blockade imposed on our country to prevent any progress in
any field whatsoever.

Mr. Bush could be justifiably astounded if he were capable of thinking
that our country is possibly the only one on earth that is striving for
a general comprehensive education where in a few years time those who
have only a first degree will be considered functionally illiterate.
Then, we shall be able to compete with people in the United States and
other developed countries not only in our ability to communicate via the
Internet in several languages but also in educational and cultural
levels. He would be better spending his time preparing the children and
young people in his country for this not too distant future and most of
all protecting them from the destructive and alienating effects of
commercial and consumerist advertising.

Something even more shameful and unacceptable: Mr. Bush said that "if
Cuba also begins to adopt meaningful market based reforms"--that is
capitalism--"then, and only then, I will work with the United States
Congress to ease the ban on trade and travel between our two countries."

"We will continue to prohibit U.S. financing for Cuban purchases of U.S.
agricultural goods, because this would just be a foreign aid program in
disguise, which would benefit the current regime."

"If Mr. Castro refuses our offer, he will be protecting his cronies at
the expense of his people. And eventually, despite all his tools of
oppression, Fidel Castro will need to answer to his people." This is
exactly what I am doing, Mr. Bush: responding to the people, accounting
for my life and revolutionary conduct in order to prepare the reply with
their help that we must give to the demands and threats which you had
and have no right to make of a people that has the dignity and decorum
the Cuban people has.

President Bush, either out of naiveté or insolent temerity, announced
that he will "offer scholarships in the United States for Cuban students
and professionals who try to build independent civil institutions in
Cuba, and scholarships for family members of political prisoners".

In Cuba our adolescents and young people are the beneficiaries of almost
half a million scholarships for all types of instruction. These
scholarships are awarded according to academic achievement or according
to the student's needs, depending on the institutions involved. No child
or young person is discriminated against. The idea that such awards
could be given for political reasons is insulting and inadmissible.

Mr. Bush offers scholarships that the country has absolutely no need of
and he does so with a hidden agenda. He shouldn't even think that we
would cooperate with a plan aimed at creating something similar to the
School of the Americas to train agents of subversion and destabilization
to serve his interventionist and imperial ends.

Additionally, Cuba grants every year thousands of scholarships to young
foreigners who are not discriminated against on ethnic or ideological
grounds. It would be preferable if Mr. Bush were to grant these
scholarships to young African or Native American students or to young
people of Latin American descent who are unable to study in the United
States.

The U.S. government is also making a mistake if it expects that people
who work as hired hands of a foreign power will go unpunished--that is
an offense punished harshly by U.S. law--nor should he think that those
who visit Cuba under some disguise or other to bring in money and to
conspire openly against the Revolution will find things easy; nor that
officials of his Interest Section have any right to run all over the
country as they please on the pretext of monitoring the situation of
illegal immigrants who are returned to Cuba, or to organize rings of
conspirators, breaking the rules that govern the conduct of diplomats.

We are not willing to allow our sovereignty to be violated or to allow
the norms that govern diplomatic behavior to be flouted in a humiliating
manner. Smuggling goods in the diplomatic pouches is also inadmissible.
The responsibility will lie with the U.S. government if its repeated
commission of such offenses leads to the cancellation of the migration
agreement and even to the withdrawal of the U.S. Interest Section from
Havana. This is not something we wish for, since it would be a
regrettable backward step in the few areas where progress has been made
in the relations between the two countries.

On the other hand, we are prepared to do without anything, including
life, except our country's dignity and sovereignty. We are not the ones
attacking, being hostile to or blockading the United States. We are not
demanding that its constitution and political and economic system be
changed. We show the strictest respect for the rights of other
countries. Our rights must also be respected.

We have given more than enough proof of a sincere spirit of cooperation
in matters of common interest. We proposed three draft bilateral
agreements to fight against narcotics traffic, trafficking in persons
and terrorism.

Another example: when the Guantánamo Naval Base was illegally turned
into a camp for foreign prisoners, we offered our help and took the
necessary measures in that uneven, mountainous territory to avoid
accidents which could affect both U.S. military personnel and the
prisoners.

In his speech Mr. Bush mentioned political prisoners in Cuba but he made
absolutely no mention of the Cuban heroes imprisoned by the empire and
unjustly given sentences of years upon years in jail and several terms
of life imprisonment. Thus, they speak of spies there and of political
prisoners here; we speak of political prisoners there and
counterrevolutionary prisoners and spies here.

Finally, a point that we cannot overlook: the slur and insult when he
said in Miami that "trade with Cuba would do nothing more than line the
pockets of Fidel Castro and his cronies".

Mr. Bush, I am absolutely not like those corrupt characters that you
honor with your friendship in this world, or like those who, following
capitalist and neo-liberal recipes, seized the State and transferred
billions of dollars abroad, a large part of them laundered by famous and
influential U.S. banks. Fond as you are of large fortunes, being a
millionaire yourself and the son of a millionaire, you will perhaps
never be able to understand that there are people who cannot be bribed
and who are indifferent to money.

I was not born completely poor. My father owned thousands of acres of
land. When the Revolution triumphed, this land was handed over to
workers and farmers. I take pride in saying that I do not have a single
dollar. All my fortune, Mr. Bush, would fit it your shirt pocket. If one
day I should need to store it somewhere well protected from pre-emptive
and surprise attacks, I will ask you to lend it to me, and if that is
too much, I will donate my fortune to you as a down payment on the rent.

It is strange to see that there was a subtle difference in President
Bush's ambidextrous May 20 speech, given twice on the same day. The
speech in the White House did not mention the word torture or the gross
remark about Castro's pocket and his cronies. These were included in the
speech at the James L. Knight Center to the great delight of his close
friends in Miami, the same people who, when Elian came back to his home
and his family, trampled on and set fire to U.S. flags in rage,
something that has never happened in Cuba after the triumph of the
Revolution.

I already spoke about his West Point speech in Santiago de Cuba. Today
there are quite a few people in the world and even in his own country
who share in the concerns over the philosophy that you explained there.
I shall not say more on this occasion. I am merely pleased to inform you
that in this dark corner of the world nobody is afraid of your threats
about an unannounced surprise attack.

Every person has a given life span. We gave every minute of life
remaining to us to our cause a long time ago.

As for you, Mr. President, you are losing authority. In theory, you are
empowered to bring death to a large part of the world, but you can't do
it alone. You need many other people to help you obliterate the rest of
the world and among the military and civilian leaders who operate in
your country's power structures there are many learned and talented
people. A simple order would not suffice. You would have to persuade
them, and they will be less and less willing to be persuaded as they see
that your political advisors lacking in capacity and military experience
make one mistake upon another. Dreadful and opportunistic lies do not
suffice to launch pre-emptive and surprise attacks against any of the 60
or more countries, or against several of them, or against them all.

Likewise, there are in your country millions of scientists,
intellectuals and professionals in the most diverse areas who know the
difference between right and wrong, who are aware of the history and
terrible realities in today's world, who have their opinions and who are
opinion-makers. There is also the rest of the world that will not forget
easily the tragedies to which your ideas and concepts may lead.

It is not my purpose to offend you personally, but I can tell you this
because I have the modest possibility of meditating with objectivity and
because, together with our valiant and heroic people, I lost long ago
any notion of fear.

Long live socialism!



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