Contradictions between the politics of Obama and ethics
THE other day I noted some of Obama’s ideas that point to his role within a system that is the negation of every just principle.
There are people who throw up their hands in horror at the expression of any critical opinion of this important figure, even when it is done decently and respectfully. This is always accompanied by subtle and not so subtle darts from those who possess the means to circulate and transform such opinions into components of media terrorism, which they impose on the peoples in order to sustain the unsustainable.
Without exception, any criticism of mine is qualified as an attack, a charge or other similar nouns that reflect a lack of consideration and courtesy toward the person to whom they are directed.
On this occasion, it is necessary to ask certain questions to which the new president of the United States should respond, among the many that could be formulated.
For example, the following:
Will he renounce or not his prerogative as president of the United States — and as exercised by many in the same office with very few exceptions as a per se right — of the power to order the assassination of foreign political adversaries, who always tend to be from underdeveloped countries?
Maybe one of his various collaborators has informed him at some point of the sinister actions against Cuba undertaken by presidents, from Eisenhower and those who followed him, in the years 1960, ‘61, ‘62, ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, ‘66 and ‘67, including the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion, campaigns of terror, the smuggling of vast quantities of weapons and explosives into our territory and other similar actions?
I do not wish to cast any blame on Barack Obama, the current president of the United States, for acts that his presidential predecessors carried out before he was born or when he was just a child of six, born in Hawaii to a Muslim, black Kenyan father and a white American Christian mother. On the contrary, in the society of the United States, that constitutes an exceptional merit, which I am one of the first to recognize.
Does President Obama know that for entire decades, our country was victim to the introduction of viruses and bacteria carrying diseases and plagues that affected humans, animals and plants, some of which — like hemorrhagic dengue fever — subsequently led to epidemics that cost the lives of thousands of children in Latin America, and plagues that affected the economy of the nations of the Caribbean and the rest of the continent, as collateral damage that it has not been possible to eliminate?
Was he aware that a number of politically subordinated Latin American countries — today ashamed of the damage that they caused — participated in these acts of terrorism?
Why has a disruptive Cuban Adjustment Act been imposed on our people, the only such case in the world, engendering the trafficking of humans and acts that have cost people’s lives, fundamentally women and children,?
Was it just to implement an economic blockade against our people that has lasted for close to 50 years?
Was it correct to arbitrarily demand of the world the extraterritorial extension of that blockade, which can only generate hunger and scarcity for any nation?
The United States cannot satisfy its vital needs without the extraction of vast mineral resources from a large number of countries which, in many cases, are restricted to exporting these without intermediary refining processes, an activity that, in general, if it suits the empire’s interests, is marketed by the large transnational corporations of yanqui capital.
Will that country renounce such privileges?
Is such a measure compatible with the developed capitalist system?
When Mr. Obama promises to invest considerable sums in order to become self-sufficient in oil, in spite of his county currently constituting the largest market in the world, what will happen to those nations whose basic income is derived from exporting that energy, many of them without any other significant source of income?
When, as after any crisis, the competing and battling for markets and sources of employment are once again unleashed among those who best and most efficiently monopolize technologies with sophisticated means of production, what possibilities are left to the underdeveloped countries that dream of industrialization?
However efficient the new vehicles that the automobile industry attains might be, will those procedures perhaps be what ecology requires for protecting humanity from the growing deterioration of the climate?
Can the blind philosophy of the market replace what only rationality can promote?
Obama is promising to print vast quantities of money in search of technologies that will multiply the production of energy, without which modern societies would be paralyzed.
The energy sources that he has promised to rapidly develop include nuclear plants, which already have a high number of opponents, given the large risk of accidents with disastrous effects on life, the atmosphere and human alimentation. It is absolutely impossible to guarantee that such accidents will not take place.
Without any need for such disastrous accidents, modern industry has contaminated all the seas of the planet with their toxic emissions.
Is it correct to promise the conciliation of such contradictory and antagonistic interests without transgressing ethics?
In order to please the trade unions that supported their campaign, the U.S. House of Representatives, dominated by Democrats, has launched the extremely protectionist slogan "Buy U.S. products," which casts aside a basic principle of the World Trade Organization, given that all the nations of the world, large or small, base their dreams of development on the exchange of goods and services for which, however, only the largest and those rich in natural resources have the privilege of surviving.
Republicans in the United States, hit hard by the discredit brought upon them by the blunders of the Bush government, have been neither slow nor tardy in forestalling Obama’s indulgencies to his trade union allies. Hence, the credit that voters granted the new president of the United States is being squandered.
As an old politician and fighter, I am committing no sin by modestly expounding these ideas.
Questions without easy answers could be formulated every day in line with the publication of hundreds of news items from the political, scientific and technological spheres that are reaching every country in the world.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 4, 2009
5:14 p.m.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Deciphering the thinking of the new president of the United States
Deciphering the thinking of the new president of the United States
IT isn’t too difficult. After his inauguration, Barack Obama stated that the return of the territory occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base to its legitimate owner had to be carefully considered, in the first place, in terms of whether it would affect the defense capacity of the United States in the most minimal way.
He immediately added that, in relation to the return to Cuba of the occupied territory, he would have to consider under which concessions the Cuban side would accede to that solution, which is equivalent to demanding a change in its political system, a price against which Cuba has fought for half a century.
Maintaining a military base in Cuba against the will of our people is in violation of the most elemental principles of international law. It is a faculty of the president of the United States to abide by that standard without any conditions. Not to respect it constitutes an act of arrogance and an abuse of his immense power against a little country.
If one wishes to better understand the abusive nature of the power of the empire, statements published on its official Internet website by the U.S. government on January 22, after Barack Obama’s inauguration, should be taken into account. Biden and Obama are resolutely decided on supporting the relations between the United States and Israel and believe that their incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, the principal U.S. ally in the region.
The United States will never distance itself from Israel, and its president and vice president "believe strongly in Israel’s right to protect its citizens," assures the statement of principles which, on those points, takes up the policy followed by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
It is the mode of sharing in the genocide of Palestinians into which our friend Obama has fallen. He is offering similar sweeteners to Russia, China, Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world, after the United States converted Israel into an important nuclear power that annually absorbs a significant part of the exports of the empire’s prosperous military industry, with which it is threatening, with extreme violence, the population of all countries of Muslim faith.
There are many similar examples; one does not need to be a fortune-teller. For more information, read the statements of the new Pentagon chief, an expert in military affairs.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 29, 2009
6:17 p.m.
IT isn’t too difficult. After his inauguration, Barack Obama stated that the return of the territory occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base to its legitimate owner had to be carefully considered, in the first place, in terms of whether it would affect the defense capacity of the United States in the most minimal way.
He immediately added that, in relation to the return to Cuba of the occupied territory, he would have to consider under which concessions the Cuban side would accede to that solution, which is equivalent to demanding a change in its political system, a price against which Cuba has fought for half a century.
Maintaining a military base in Cuba against the will of our people is in violation of the most elemental principles of international law. It is a faculty of the president of the United States to abide by that standard without any conditions. Not to respect it constitutes an act of arrogance and an abuse of his immense power against a little country.
If one wishes to better understand the abusive nature of the power of the empire, statements published on its official Internet website by the U.S. government on January 22, after Barack Obama’s inauguration, should be taken into account. Biden and Obama are resolutely decided on supporting the relations between the United States and Israel and believe that their incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, the principal U.S. ally in the region.
The United States will never distance itself from Israel, and its president and vice president "believe strongly in Israel’s right to protect its citizens," assures the statement of principles which, on those points, takes up the policy followed by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
It is the mode of sharing in the genocide of Palestinians into which our friend Obama has fallen. He is offering similar sweeteners to Russia, China, Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world, after the United States converted Israel into an important nuclear power that annually absorbs a significant part of the exports of the empire’s prosperous military industry, with which it is threatening, with extreme violence, the population of all countries of Muslim faith.
There are many similar examples; one does not need to be a fortune-teller. For more information, read the statements of the new Pentagon chief, an expert in military affairs.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 29, 2009
6:17 p.m.
The 11th president of the United States
The 11th president of the United States
THIS past Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Barack Obama took over the leadership of the empire as president No. 11 of the United Sates since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.
Nobody could doubt the sincerity of his words when he affirms that he will turn the country into a model of liberty, respect for human rights in the world and the independence of other peoples. Of course, without this offending barely anyone, except the misanthropes out there in the world. He now has said comfortably that imprisonment and torture on the illegally-occupied Guantánamo base will cease immediately, which is beginning to sow doubts among those who worship terror as a necessary instrument of their country’s foreign policy.
The intelligent and noble face of the first black president of the United States since its founding as an independent republic two and one-third centuries ago had transformed itself, with the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, becoming a living symbol of the American dream.
However, despite all the tests that he has withstood, Obama has not passed the central one. What will he do when the immense power in his hands proves absolutely useless for overcoming the system’s insoluble antagonistic contradictions?
I have shortened my "Reflections," just as I resolved to do this year, in order not to interfere or get in the way of the comrades of the Party and state as they make constant decisions about objective difficulties stemming from the world economic crisis. I am fine, but I insist, none of them should feel constrained by any of my Reflections, the seriousness of my condition or my death.
I am reviewing the speeches and materials I have elaborated over more than half a century.
I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long period of time. I receive information and meditate calmly on the events. I don’t expect to have that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term will have concluded.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 22, 2009
6:30 p.m.
THIS past Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Barack Obama took over the leadership of the empire as president No. 11 of the United Sates since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.
Nobody could doubt the sincerity of his words when he affirms that he will turn the country into a model of liberty, respect for human rights in the world and the independence of other peoples. Of course, without this offending barely anyone, except the misanthropes out there in the world. He now has said comfortably that imprisonment and torture on the illegally-occupied Guantánamo base will cease immediately, which is beginning to sow doubts among those who worship terror as a necessary instrument of their country’s foreign policy.
The intelligent and noble face of the first black president of the United States since its founding as an independent republic two and one-third centuries ago had transformed itself, with the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, becoming a living symbol of the American dream.
However, despite all the tests that he has withstood, Obama has not passed the central one. What will he do when the immense power in his hands proves absolutely useless for overcoming the system’s insoluble antagonistic contradictions?
I have shortened my "Reflections," just as I resolved to do this year, in order not to interfere or get in the way of the comrades of the Party and state as they make constant decisions about objective difficulties stemming from the world economic crisis. I am fine, but I insist, none of them should feel constrained by any of my Reflections, the seriousness of my condition or my death.
I am reviewing the speeches and materials I have elaborated over more than half a century.
I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long period of time. I receive information and meditate calmly on the events. I don’t expect to have that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term will have concluded.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 22, 2009
6:30 p.m.
The meeting with Cristina
The meeting with Cristina
THE conversation lasted 40 minutes, the exchange of ideas was as intense and interesting as I had expected. She is a person of profound convictions. There were no disagreements.
When she spoke at the University of Havana’s Aula Magna, she swiftly replied to the students’ questions, demonstrating talent and an ability to respond.
The encounter at the Latin American School of Medicine was emotive; the songs of the campesino students of Guaraní origin, with typical music and instruments from that ethnic group, gave the event a special tone. They presented her with a white coat and she put it on over her orange trouser suit.
She left ELAM to come and converse with me.
Discussing the United States, I mentioned the historic importance for Cuba of 12.00 p.m. the previous day, the fact that 10 U.S. presidents had been sworn in over the past 50 years and that, despite that country’s immense power, they have been unable to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
I said that, on a personal level, I did not harbor the slightest doubt over the honesty with which Obama, the eleventh president since January 1, 1959, expressed his ideas but, despite his noble intentions, there are still many individuals to whom he will have to respond. By way of example, I wondered: ‘how can such a wasteful and materialistic system par excellence protect the environment?’
We discussed many other aspects of the national and international policies of Cuba and Argentina.
Argentina’s ability to produce food and industrial products using advanced technology are decisive factors in the country’s development. She mentioned the capacity of computer engineering in relation to trading on the international market, in countries such as India, of much interest to her, and which is very strong in terms of creating programs.
Cristina likes to dedicate herself and all her time to work. Nevertheless, she protects her personal rights when traveling to another country by insisting on a number of hours for physical exercise and adaptation, something which everyone respects.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 21, 2009
6.30 p.m.
THE conversation lasted 40 minutes, the exchange of ideas was as intense and interesting as I had expected. She is a person of profound convictions. There were no disagreements.
When she spoke at the University of Havana’s Aula Magna, she swiftly replied to the students’ questions, demonstrating talent and an ability to respond.
The encounter at the Latin American School of Medicine was emotive; the songs of the campesino students of Guaraní origin, with typical music and instruments from that ethnic group, gave the event a special tone. They presented her with a white coat and she put it on over her orange trouser suit.
She left ELAM to come and converse with me.
Discussing the United States, I mentioned the historic importance for Cuba of 12.00 p.m. the previous day, the fact that 10 U.S. presidents had been sworn in over the past 50 years and that, despite that country’s immense power, they have been unable to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
I said that, on a personal level, I did not harbor the slightest doubt over the honesty with which Obama, the eleventh president since January 1, 1959, expressed his ideas but, despite his noble intentions, there are still many individuals to whom he will have to respond. By way of example, I wondered: ‘how can such a wasteful and materialistic system par excellence protect the environment?’
We discussed many other aspects of the national and international policies of Cuba and Argentina.
Argentina’s ability to produce food and industrial products using advanced technology are decisive factors in the country’s development. She mentioned the capacity of computer engineering in relation to trading on the international market, in countries such as India, of much interest to her, and which is very strong in terms of creating programs.
Cristina likes to dedicate herself and all her time to work. Nevertheless, she protects her personal rights when traveling to another country by insisting on a number of hours for physical exercise and adaptation, something which everyone respects.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 21, 2009
6.30 p.m.
The Republican Candidate (Part Four)
When in the previous reflection I asked McCain what he thought of the Five antiterrorist Cuban Heroes, I did so because I remembered what he had published on page 206 of his book Faith of My Fathers, co-written with his assistant Mark Salter:
“It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment. Having no one else to rely on, to share confidences with, to seek counsel from, you begin to doubt your judgment and your courage. But you eventually adjust to solitary, as you can to almost any hardship, by devising various methods to keep your mind off your troubles and greedily grasping any opportunity for human contact.”
“When in 1970 my period of solitary confinement was finally ended, I was overwhelmed by the compulsion to talk nonstop..."
If this is a subject of interest to you, in the United States today there are five Cuban prisoners, separated one from the other by thousands of miles. They have no area that can be sarcastically called the “Hanoi Hilton”. Their suffering and the injustice of which they are victims will be known the world over; don't doubt it for a minute. I decided to revisit the subject remembering that, in one of your many declarations, you were trying to locate the spot turned into a prison for the pilots of the bombers brought down as they were attacking Vietnam.
I was housed in the former residence of the French Governor of all Indochina when I visited Vietnam in 1973, a country where I arrived on September 12 after the agreement between the United States and Vietnam, to which you referred. There I was visited by Pham Van Dong, the Prime Minister at the time, who wept as he remembered the human and material sacrifices imposed on his country; from there I left to visit the South –not yet totally liberated– up to the McNamara Line, where the steel bunkers had been taken by the Vietnamese combatants, despite the bombings and the continued U.S. air attacks.
All the bridges along the road, without exception, between Hanoi and the South visible from the air, were destroyed; the villages razed, and every day the cluster bomb grenades dropped for that purpose, were blowing up in the rice paddies where children, women and even very old people were working to produce food.
A great number of craters could be seen in each one of the entrances to the bridges. At that time there were no laser guided bombs, much more precise. I had to insist on making that trip. The Vietnamese were afraid that I would be the victim of some Yankee plot if they learned of my presence in that area. Pham Van Dong accompanied me at all times.
We flew over Nghe-An Province where Ho Chi Minh was born. In that province, as well as in Ha Tinh, two million Vietnamese starved to death in 1945, the last year of World War II. We landed in Dong Hoi. A million bombs were dropped over the province where that destroyed city lies. We crossed the Nhat Le on a raft. We visited an assistance center for the wounded of Quang Tri. We saw numerous captured M-48 tanks. We took wooden roads over what was once the National Highway that had been destroyed by bombs. We got together with young Vietnamese soldiers who covered themselves with glory at the Battle of Quang Tri. Calm, resolute, seasoned by the sun and the war, a slight tic quivered the eyelid of the battalion captain. No one knows how they could have stood up to so much bombing. They were worthy of praise. On that same afternoon on September 15, returning by a different route, we picked up three wounded children, two of which were in very serious condition; a 14 year old girl was in a state of shock with a metal fragment in her abdomen. The children were working in the fields when one of their tools accidentally touched a grenade. The Cuban doctors accompanying the delegation cared for them directly for hours and saved their lives. I was a witness, Mr. McCain, to the heroic deeds of the bombing raids on North Vietnam, the same ones you are so proud of.
During those days in September, Allende had been overthrown; the Presidential palace was attacked and many Chileans were tortured and murdered. The coup was promoted and organized from Washington.
All that unfortunately happened.
The basic problem at this time is to know whether the Republican candidate McCain is aware of the economic crisis which, shortly or immediately, will beset the United States. Only from that point of view will it be possible to evaluate any candidate with the possibility of assuming the leadership of that powerful country.
Two days ago on February 12, the international news agency IAR published an article signed by Manuel Freytas, a journalist, researcher and analyst, entitled “Why a recession in the United States can turn into a global crisis.”
There is no need for many proofs to argue the case.
“In the current bleak forecast of the U.S. economy –he writes– key institutions of today’s economic-financial system come together, such as the Federal Reserve and the United States Treasury, the World Bank, the WMF, the G-7 (the 7 wealthiest nations) and the central banks of Europe and Asia, seeing in the confluence of credit crisis-collapsing dollar-escalating oil prices, a potential central detonator in a recessive process in capitalism on a world scale.
“The fear of a U.S. recession and its impact on the world economy…has negatively impacted on the confidence of the system’s economic and political elite.
“The Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that his country could fall into a recessive process and that it faces the double challenge of a falling real estate market, and at the same time the necessity of making sure that inflation does not push up the prices of oil and foods.
“In January, the United Nations Organization warned of the existence of an elevated risk of falling into a global economic recession…”
“At the Davos Forum held in January in the Swiss Alps, the leaders of the richest and most powerful world powers have just warned of a recession in the United States with worldwide implications, predicting a bleak forecast for this year.
“The Finance Ministers and the central banks of the seven wealthiest countries in the world (G-7) considered last Saturday that their economies are going to shortly suffer deceleration, according to the final communiqué at a meeting in Tokyo…”
“There are two key elements that explain why a recessive crisis in the United States would be immediately projected upon the entire world economy, both in the central countries as well as in the ‘emerging’ and ‘peripheral’ countries.
“a) In the current world economy globalized model, the United States is the principal buyer and consumer of products and energy resources, and represents 22.5 percent of the world economy, according to the latest calculations of the World Bank.
“b) The capitalist world economy is ‘dollarized’. The dollar is the standard currency for all commercial and financial transactions on a world scale.
“These two central factors explain why any economic-financial oscillation or imbalance having the United States as its protagonist impacts and immediately spreads throughout the ‘system’.
“A recessive crisis in the United States…would immediately impact on the stock exchanges and the globalized money markets…completing the cycle of the collapse of today’s model of capitalist economy on a world scale.
“The collapse of the model would break the equilibrium of political ‘governability’ and would unleash a wave of social and trade union conflicts that would equally affect the United States and the central powers as well as the 'emerging' countries."
Yesterday, February 13, various articles by well-known American journalists were pointing in the same direction, even though they took up different arguments. I shall quote only two; of these I have selected paragraphs that reflect the topicality and importance of their contents, using concepts that are completely accessible for the educational levels of our people.
Under the title of “The American Model is an Idea whose Time has Come”, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, an international daily news show broadcast by 650 radio and television stations in the U.S. and the world, wrote:
“Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., made it personal: “Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?” “I would feel that it was,” Mukasey responded. Though he deflected questions, before and after Kennedy’s, his personal answer rang true.
“Our attorney general should not have to be waterboarded to know that it is torture.
“Suharto ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years, shored up by the most powerful country on Earth, the United States.
“Throughout Suharto’s reign, U.S. administrations—Democratic and Republican—armed, trained and financed the Indonesian military. In addition to the million Indonesians killed, hundreds of thousands were also killed during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, a small country 300 miles above Australia.
“On Nov. 12, 1991, when I was covering a peaceful Timorese procession in Timor’s capital, Dili, Suharto’s occupying army opened fired on the crowd, killing 270 Timorese.
“The soldiers beat me with their boots and the butts of their U.S. M-16s. They fractured the skull of my colleague Allan Nairn, who was writing for The New Yorker magazine at the time.
“Transparency International estimated Suharto’s fortune to be between $15 billion and $35 billion. The current U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron Hume, praised Suharto’s memory this week, saying, “President Suharto led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development.
“Whether it’s waterboarding, waging an illegal war or holding hundreds of prisoners without charge for years at Guantanamo Bay or at CIA black sites around the world, I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the world’s greatest nonviolent leaders. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,” he asked, “whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
“When asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi responded, “I think it would be a good idea.”
That same day, in CounterPunch, Robert Weissman wrote another article titled “The Shameful State of the Union”, translated for Rebelión by S. Seguí, where among other things he stated:
“The United States is spending more than $700 billion a year on the military. The 2008 appropriations bills include $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, plus an additional $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Congress has approved nearly $700 billion to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the appropriated amount. It doesn't include costs to society -- loss of life, injuries, etc.
“Depending on how you count, more than half of all discretionary federal spending is now directed to the military.
“Wealth is concentrating in the United States at a startling rate.
“In 1976, the top 1 percent of the population received 8.83 percent of national income. In 2005, they grabbed 21.93 percent.
“In the hyper-financialized economy, it's the finance guys who are getting truly rich…despite the huge losses being wracked up on Wall Street.
“But even the traditional investment banks can't match the outrageous compensation captured by private equity and hedge fund managers, a few of whom manage to pull in more than $1 billion in a single year. Thanks to a tax loophole, these characters pay income tax at a rate less than half of what a dentist making $200,000 a year pays.
“Corporations are capturing more of the nation's wealth.
“The housing bubble and the subprime mortgage meltdown are driving millions of families from their homes.
“The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that 2.2 million subprime home loans made in recent years have already failed or will end in foreclosure. Homeowners will lose $164 billion from these foreclosures, the Center projects. Overall losses from deflated housing values may top $2 trillion.
“The racial wealth divide remains a chasm with little prospect of being bridged -- and is likely growing worse.
“It would take 594 more years for African Americans to achieve parity with whites, according to United for a Fair Economy. But the subprime debacle is hitting minority communities disproportionately hard causing what United for a Fair Economy believes may be the worst deprivation of people of color's wealth in modern U.S. history.
“More than one in six children lives in poverty.
“More than 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance.
“The 2006 U.S. trade deficit totaled $763.6 billion. The trade deficit will eventually have to be balanced -- sooner than later, it now seems. As the dollar continues to swoon, expect to see inflation and higher interest rates over the medium term. The real standard of living, in economic terms, will decline as a result.
“U.S. fuel efficiency is worse now than it was two decades ago.
“The nation's infrastructure is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition.
“Most of these conditions are worse now than at the start of the Bush administration, many dramatically worse. But they have their roots in a bipartisan policy approach over the last three decades, favoring deregulation, handover of government assets to corporations (privatization), corporate globalization, hyper-financialization, lunatic military expenditures, tax cuts for the rich and a slashed social safety net.”
Robert Weissman, author of the article, is editor of the Washington D.C.-based Multinational Monitor and director of Essential Action.
So as not to impose on my readers, all that remains is Part Five.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 14, 2008.
8:12 p.m.
“It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment. Having no one else to rely on, to share confidences with, to seek counsel from, you begin to doubt your judgment and your courage. But you eventually adjust to solitary, as you can to almost any hardship, by devising various methods to keep your mind off your troubles and greedily grasping any opportunity for human contact.”
“When in 1970 my period of solitary confinement was finally ended, I was overwhelmed by the compulsion to talk nonstop..."
If this is a subject of interest to you, in the United States today there are five Cuban prisoners, separated one from the other by thousands of miles. They have no area that can be sarcastically called the “Hanoi Hilton”. Their suffering and the injustice of which they are victims will be known the world over; don't doubt it for a minute. I decided to revisit the subject remembering that, in one of your many declarations, you were trying to locate the spot turned into a prison for the pilots of the bombers brought down as they were attacking Vietnam.
I was housed in the former residence of the French Governor of all Indochina when I visited Vietnam in 1973, a country where I arrived on September 12 after the agreement between the United States and Vietnam, to which you referred. There I was visited by Pham Van Dong, the Prime Minister at the time, who wept as he remembered the human and material sacrifices imposed on his country; from there I left to visit the South –not yet totally liberated– up to the McNamara Line, where the steel bunkers had been taken by the Vietnamese combatants, despite the bombings and the continued U.S. air attacks.
All the bridges along the road, without exception, between Hanoi and the South visible from the air, were destroyed; the villages razed, and every day the cluster bomb grenades dropped for that purpose, were blowing up in the rice paddies where children, women and even very old people were working to produce food.
A great number of craters could be seen in each one of the entrances to the bridges. At that time there were no laser guided bombs, much more precise. I had to insist on making that trip. The Vietnamese were afraid that I would be the victim of some Yankee plot if they learned of my presence in that area. Pham Van Dong accompanied me at all times.
We flew over Nghe-An Province where Ho Chi Minh was born. In that province, as well as in Ha Tinh, two million Vietnamese starved to death in 1945, the last year of World War II. We landed in Dong Hoi. A million bombs were dropped over the province where that destroyed city lies. We crossed the Nhat Le on a raft. We visited an assistance center for the wounded of Quang Tri. We saw numerous captured M-48 tanks. We took wooden roads over what was once the National Highway that had been destroyed by bombs. We got together with young Vietnamese soldiers who covered themselves with glory at the Battle of Quang Tri. Calm, resolute, seasoned by the sun and the war, a slight tic quivered the eyelid of the battalion captain. No one knows how they could have stood up to so much bombing. They were worthy of praise. On that same afternoon on September 15, returning by a different route, we picked up three wounded children, two of which were in very serious condition; a 14 year old girl was in a state of shock with a metal fragment in her abdomen. The children were working in the fields when one of their tools accidentally touched a grenade. The Cuban doctors accompanying the delegation cared for them directly for hours and saved their lives. I was a witness, Mr. McCain, to the heroic deeds of the bombing raids on North Vietnam, the same ones you are so proud of.
During those days in September, Allende had been overthrown; the Presidential palace was attacked and many Chileans were tortured and murdered. The coup was promoted and organized from Washington.
All that unfortunately happened.
The basic problem at this time is to know whether the Republican candidate McCain is aware of the economic crisis which, shortly or immediately, will beset the United States. Only from that point of view will it be possible to evaluate any candidate with the possibility of assuming the leadership of that powerful country.
Two days ago on February 12, the international news agency IAR published an article signed by Manuel Freytas, a journalist, researcher and analyst, entitled “Why a recession in the United States can turn into a global crisis.”
There is no need for many proofs to argue the case.
“In the current bleak forecast of the U.S. economy –he writes– key institutions of today’s economic-financial system come together, such as the Federal Reserve and the United States Treasury, the World Bank, the WMF, the G-7 (the 7 wealthiest nations) and the central banks of Europe and Asia, seeing in the confluence of credit crisis-collapsing dollar-escalating oil prices, a potential central detonator in a recessive process in capitalism on a world scale.
“The fear of a U.S. recession and its impact on the world economy…has negatively impacted on the confidence of the system’s economic and political elite.
“The Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that his country could fall into a recessive process and that it faces the double challenge of a falling real estate market, and at the same time the necessity of making sure that inflation does not push up the prices of oil and foods.
“In January, the United Nations Organization warned of the existence of an elevated risk of falling into a global economic recession…”
“At the Davos Forum held in January in the Swiss Alps, the leaders of the richest and most powerful world powers have just warned of a recession in the United States with worldwide implications, predicting a bleak forecast for this year.
“The Finance Ministers and the central banks of the seven wealthiest countries in the world (G-7) considered last Saturday that their economies are going to shortly suffer deceleration, according to the final communiqué at a meeting in Tokyo…”
“There are two key elements that explain why a recessive crisis in the United States would be immediately projected upon the entire world economy, both in the central countries as well as in the ‘emerging’ and ‘peripheral’ countries.
“a) In the current world economy globalized model, the United States is the principal buyer and consumer of products and energy resources, and represents 22.5 percent of the world economy, according to the latest calculations of the World Bank.
“b) The capitalist world economy is ‘dollarized’. The dollar is the standard currency for all commercial and financial transactions on a world scale.
“These two central factors explain why any economic-financial oscillation or imbalance having the United States as its protagonist impacts and immediately spreads throughout the ‘system’.
“A recessive crisis in the United States…would immediately impact on the stock exchanges and the globalized money markets…completing the cycle of the collapse of today’s model of capitalist economy on a world scale.
“The collapse of the model would break the equilibrium of political ‘governability’ and would unleash a wave of social and trade union conflicts that would equally affect the United States and the central powers as well as the 'emerging' countries."
Yesterday, February 13, various articles by well-known American journalists were pointing in the same direction, even though they took up different arguments. I shall quote only two; of these I have selected paragraphs that reflect the topicality and importance of their contents, using concepts that are completely accessible for the educational levels of our people.
Under the title of “The American Model is an Idea whose Time has Come”, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, an international daily news show broadcast by 650 radio and television stations in the U.S. and the world, wrote:
“Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., made it personal: “Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?” “I would feel that it was,” Mukasey responded. Though he deflected questions, before and after Kennedy’s, his personal answer rang true.
“Our attorney general should not have to be waterboarded to know that it is torture.
“Suharto ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years, shored up by the most powerful country on Earth, the United States.
“Throughout Suharto’s reign, U.S. administrations—Democratic and Republican—armed, trained and financed the Indonesian military. In addition to the million Indonesians killed, hundreds of thousands were also killed during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, a small country 300 miles above Australia.
“On Nov. 12, 1991, when I was covering a peaceful Timorese procession in Timor’s capital, Dili, Suharto’s occupying army opened fired on the crowd, killing 270 Timorese.
“The soldiers beat me with their boots and the butts of their U.S. M-16s. They fractured the skull of my colleague Allan Nairn, who was writing for The New Yorker magazine at the time.
“Transparency International estimated Suharto’s fortune to be between $15 billion and $35 billion. The current U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron Hume, praised Suharto’s memory this week, saying, “President Suharto led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development.
“Whether it’s waterboarding, waging an illegal war or holding hundreds of prisoners without charge for years at Guantanamo Bay or at CIA black sites around the world, I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the world’s greatest nonviolent leaders. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,” he asked, “whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
“When asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi responded, “I think it would be a good idea.”
That same day, in CounterPunch, Robert Weissman wrote another article titled “The Shameful State of the Union”, translated for Rebelión by S. Seguí, where among other things he stated:
“The United States is spending more than $700 billion a year on the military. The 2008 appropriations bills include $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, plus an additional $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Congress has approved nearly $700 billion to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the appropriated amount. It doesn't include costs to society -- loss of life, injuries, etc.
“Depending on how you count, more than half of all discretionary federal spending is now directed to the military.
“Wealth is concentrating in the United States at a startling rate.
“In 1976, the top 1 percent of the population received 8.83 percent of national income. In 2005, they grabbed 21.93 percent.
“In the hyper-financialized economy, it's the finance guys who are getting truly rich…despite the huge losses being wracked up on Wall Street.
“But even the traditional investment banks can't match the outrageous compensation captured by private equity and hedge fund managers, a few of whom manage to pull in more than $1 billion in a single year. Thanks to a tax loophole, these characters pay income tax at a rate less than half of what a dentist making $200,000 a year pays.
“Corporations are capturing more of the nation's wealth.
“The housing bubble and the subprime mortgage meltdown are driving millions of families from their homes.
“The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that 2.2 million subprime home loans made in recent years have already failed or will end in foreclosure. Homeowners will lose $164 billion from these foreclosures, the Center projects. Overall losses from deflated housing values may top $2 trillion.
“The racial wealth divide remains a chasm with little prospect of being bridged -- and is likely growing worse.
“It would take 594 more years for African Americans to achieve parity with whites, according to United for a Fair Economy. But the subprime debacle is hitting minority communities disproportionately hard causing what United for a Fair Economy believes may be the worst deprivation of people of color's wealth in modern U.S. history.
“More than one in six children lives in poverty.
“More than 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance.
“The 2006 U.S. trade deficit totaled $763.6 billion. The trade deficit will eventually have to be balanced -- sooner than later, it now seems. As the dollar continues to swoon, expect to see inflation and higher interest rates over the medium term. The real standard of living, in economic terms, will decline as a result.
“U.S. fuel efficiency is worse now than it was two decades ago.
“The nation's infrastructure is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition.
“Most of these conditions are worse now than at the start of the Bush administration, many dramatically worse. But they have their roots in a bipartisan policy approach over the last three decades, favoring deregulation, handover of government assets to corporations (privatization), corporate globalization, hyper-financialization, lunatic military expenditures, tax cuts for the rich and a slashed social safety net.”
Robert Weissman, author of the article, is editor of the Washington D.C.-based Multinational Monitor and director of Essential Action.
So as not to impose on my readers, all that remains is Part Five.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 14, 2008.
8:12 p.m.
The Republican Candidate (Part Three)
YESTERDAY, I said that while Bush was speaking to Congress, McCain was being honored at the Versailles Restaurant of Little Havana.
It was there that most of the fiercest enemies of the Cuban Revolution and their families took up residence, Batista’s followers, the big landowners, owners of apartment buildings and millionaires who tyrannized and plundered our people. The United States government has used them at will, to organize invaders and terrorists who have shed our people’s blood through almost 50 years. Later, illegal emigrants joined that stream, along with the Cuban Adjustment Act and the brutal blockade imposed on the people of Cuba.
It is incredible that, in this day and age, the Republican candidate, honored as a hero, is turned into an instrument of that Mafia. Nobody having an ounce of self-esteem would commit such a serious lapse in ethics.
Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Senator Mel Martínez, also of Cuban descent, Governor Charles Christ and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman have become the candidate’s linchpins in the attempt to win Florida and his main advisors for Latin America policy.
What can Latin Americans possibly hope for with such advisors?
Ros-Lehtinen described McCain as being "strong on national defense" and "also understanding the threat posed by the Castro regime".
McCain shone in his participation at a hearing on Cuba which he held on May 21, 2002, at the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Trade and Tourism of the Science and Transportation Committee; there he reiterated that our country poses a threat to the United States because of its capacity to produce biological weapons, something James Carter demonstrated to be ridiculous.
As for the proposals to relax the travel to Cuba policy, in October of 2003 McCain introduced a motion to interrupt the debate on these topics.
Particularly interesting was the introduction in March 2005 of a bill entitled "Advance Democracy Act of 2005", authorizing funds, reinforcing subversion, establishing new structures and proposing additional mechanisms to exert pressure on Cuba.
Alluding to the light pirate planes downed on February 24, 1996, he declared: "If I were President of the United States, I would order an investigation on the downing of those brave men who were murdered under orders of Fidel and Raúl Castro, and I would indict them."
In another one of his capricious declarations he stated that "when freedom comes to Cuba, he would like to meet the Cubans who tortured some of his comrades during the Vietnam War". The nerve of that obsessive candidate!
Let’s move on to the crux of his thinking.
What kind of political education did he get? None. He was trained as a war pilot based on his physical attributes for flying an attack plane. What was his predominant trait? Family traditions and his strong political motivation.
In his memoirs, he writes: "My father rose to high command when communism had replaced fascism as the dominant threat to American security. He hated it fiercely and dedicated himself to its annihilation. He believed that we were locked on inescapably in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviets. One side or the other would ultimately win total victory, and sea power would prove critical to the outcome. He was outspoken on the subject."
"In 1965, violent clashes between warring factions, one of which was believed to be a Communist front, had brought the Dominican Republic to the verge of civil war. President Johnson ordered my father to command the amphibious assault on Operation Steel Pike 1, the invasion and military occupation of the Caribbean nation. The operation was controversial. Critics judged it, with good reason, to be an unlawful intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation. My father, typically, was undeterred by domestic opposition.
"’Some people condemned this as an unwarranted intervention,’ he observed, ‘but the Communist were all set to move in and take over. People may not love you for being strong when you have to be, but they respect you for it and learn to behave themselves when you are.’
"His subsequent assignment at the United Nations, however, was regarded by the Navy as a dead end and was expected to be his last. He was a three-star admiral, and the prospects for a fourth star were remote. But two years later he was ordered to London to assume command of all U.S. naval forces in Europe. A fourth star came with the job... Within a year, he was given command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, the largest operational military command in the world."
When McCain was returning from his training flight as a cadet, he passed through the occupied territory of Guantánamo.
"Guantánamo in those pre-Castro days was a wild place. Everyone went ashore and headed immediately for huge tents that had been set up on the base as temporary bars, where great quantities of strong Cuban beer and an even more potent rum punch were served to anyone who professed a thirst and could afford a nickel a drink."
"I was proud to graduate from the Naval Academy. But at that moment, relief was the emotion I felt most keenly. I had already been accepted for flight training in Pensacola. In those days, all you had to do was pass the physical to qualify for flight training, and I was eager to embark on the life of a carefree naval aviator."
"In October 1962, I was just returning to home port at Norfolk after completing a Mediterranean deployment aboard the Enterprise. My squadron had flown off the Enterprise and returned to Oceana Naval Air Station while the ship put in at Norfolk".
"A few days after our return, we unexpectedly received orders to fly our planes back to the carrier. Our superiors explained the unusual order by informing us that a hurricane was headed our way."
"We flew all our planes back to the carrier within 24 hours and headed out to sea. In addition to our A-1s, the Enterprise carried long-range attack planes, which typically had a hard time managing carrier takeoffs and landings. We embarked on our mysterious deployment without them."
"Our air boss turned to a representative of the Marine squadron and said we didn’t have time to wait for all their planes to land; some of them would have to return to their base.
"I was quite puzzled by the apparent urgency of our mission, we’d been hustled back in one day, leaving some of our planes behind; the Marine squadron has been ordered to join us with only enough fuel to land or ditch. The mystery was solved a short while later when all pilots were assembled in the Enterprise’s ready room to listen to a broadcast of President Kennedy informing the nation that the Soviets were basing nuclear missiles in Cuba."
This time he was referring to the well-known October Missile Crisis of 1962, more than 45 years ago; it left him with the underlying desire to attack our country.
"The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba. For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We have never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission. The atmosphere aboard ship was fairly tense, but not overly so. Pilots and crew men alike adopted a cool-headed business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved and fearless American at war."
"After five days the tension eased, as it became apparent the crisis would be resolved peacefully. We weren’t disappointed to be denied our first combat experience, but our appetites were whetted and our imaginations fueled. We eagerly anticipated the occasion when we would have the chance to do what we were trained to do, and discover, at last, if we were brave enough for the job."
Further on, he describes the accident on the nuclear aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, in the Gulf of Tonkin. One hundred and thirty-four young Americans, many of them 18 and 19 years old, died in a huge effort to save the vessel. The carrier, peppered with perforations from the exploded bombs, had to sail to the United States to be reconstructed. It would be necessary to check what was published at the time and the approach taken on the subject.
McCain is then moved on to another conventional type of aircraft carrier in the same waters, with the same objective. Each one of the author’s self-definitions warrants close observation.
"On September 30, 1967, I reported for duty to the Oriskany and joined VA-163 –an A-4 attack squadron nicknamed ‘the Saints’. During the three years of Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign of North Vietnam begun in 1965, no carrier’s pilots saw more action or suffered more losses than those on the Oriskany. When the Johnson administration halted Rolling Thunder in 1968, 38 pilots on the Oriskany had been either killed or captured. Sixty planes had been lost, including twenty-nine A-4s. The Saints suffered the highest casualty rate. In 1967, one-third of the squadron’s pilots were killed or captured. Every single one of the Saints’ original 15 A-4s had been destroyed. We had a reputation for aggressiveness, and for success. In the months before I joined the squadron, the Saints had destroyed all the bridges to the port city of Haiphong."
"Like all combat pilots, we had a studied, almost macabre indifference to death that masked a great sadness in the squadron, a sadness that grew more pervasive as our casualty list lengthened.
"We flew the next raid with greater determination to do as much damage as we could.
"I was just about to release my bombs when the tone sounded.
"I knew I was hit. My A-4, traveling at about 550 miles an hour, was violently spiraling to earth"
"I reacted automatically the moment I took the hit and saw that my wing was gone. I radioed, "I’m hit," reached up, and pulled the ejection seat handle."
"I struck part of the airplane, breaking my left arm, my right arm in three places, and my right knee, and I was briefly knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection. Witnesses said my chute had barely opened before I plunged into the shallow water of Truc Back Lake. I landed in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day."
"My father wasn’t much of a believer in fighting wars by half measures. He regarded self-restraint as an admirable human quality, but when fighting wars he believed in taking all necessary measures to bring the conflict to a swift and successful conclusion. The Vietnam War was fought neither swiftly nor successfully, and I know this frustrated him greatly."
"In a speech he gave after he retired, he argued that "two deplorable decisions" had doomed the United States to failure in Vietnam: "The first was the public decision to forbid U.S. troops to enter North Vietnam and beat the enemy on his home ground...The second was...to forbid the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong until the last two weeks of the conflict..."
"These two decisions combined to allow Hanoi to adopt whatever strategy they wished, knowing that there would be virtually no reprisal, no counterattack."
"When the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive in December 1971, at a time when U.S. forces in Vietnam had been reduced to 69,000 men, President Nixon finally directed my father to mine Haiphong and other northern ports immediately. The Nixon administration had dispensed with much of the micromanaging of the war that had so ill served the Johnson administration, particularly the absurd target restrictions imposed on American bomber pilots."
"Relations between military commanders and their civilian superiors improved when President Nixon and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird entered office. The new administration was clearly more interested in and supportive of the views of the generals and admirals who were prosecuting the war. My father had a good relationship with both Nixon and Laird, as well as with the President’s National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger."
He does not hide his feelings when speaking of the bombing victims. His words ooze intense hatred.
"Our situation improved even more in April 1972, when President Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and, on my father’s orders, the first bombs since March 1968 began falling on Hanoi. Operation Linebacker, as the campaign was called, brought B-52s, with their huge payload of bombs."
"The misery we had endured prior to 1972 was made all the worse by our fear that the United States was unprepared to do what was necessary to bring the war to a reasonably swift conclusion. We could never see over the horizon to the day when the war would end. Whether you supported the war or opposed it –and I met a few POWs who argued the latter position –no one believed the war should be prosecuted in the manner in which the Johnson administration had fought it."
"The B-52s terrorized Hanoi for eleven nights. Wave after wave they came. During the days, while the strategic bombers were refueled and rearmed, other aircraft took up the assault. The Vietnamese got the point."
"Our senior officers, knowing that this moment was imminent, had warned us not to demonstrate our emotions when the agreement was announced."
He oozes hatred of the Vietnamese. He was ready to exterminate them all.
"By the time the end did come, with the signing in Paris of the peace accords, my father had retired from active duty. No longer restrained by his role as a subordinate to civilian superiors, he dismissed the agreement. ‘In our anxiety to get out of the war, we signed a very bad deal.’"
These paragraphs reflect McCain’s most intimate thoughts. The worst comes when he yields to the idea of making a declaration against the war being waged by his country. He cannot help but mention that in his book. How does he do this?
"He (his father) had received a report that a heavily edited propaganda broadcast, purported to have been made by me, had been analyzed, and the voice compared to my taped interview with the French journalist. The two voices were judged to be the same. In the anguished days right after my confession, I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.
"After I came home, he never mentioned to me that he had learned about my confession, and, although I told him about it, I never discussed it at length. I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father.
"If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did. But in the years that have passed since the event, my regard for my father and for myself has matured. I understand better the nature of strong character.
"My father was a strong enough man not to judge too harshly the character of a son who had reached his limits and found that they were well short of the standards of the idealized heroes who had inspired us as boys."
I don’t criticize him for this. It would be heartless and inhuman. That’s not my aim. What we need to do now is to unmask a policy which is not an individual one, but one that is shared by many, since the objective truth will always be difficult to understand.
Has McCain ever thought about the anti-terrorist Five Cuban Heroes who were imprisoned in solitary cells just like the ones he says he hates, forced to appear before a jury from Little Havana for crimes they never committed, with three of them sentenced to one and even two life sentences, and the others to 19 and 15 years in prison?
Does he know that the United States authorities received information that could prevent death by terrorism of U.S. citizens?
Is he aware of the activities of Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, the men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airliner in mid-flight, killing its 73 occupants?
Why doesn’t he talk about that to the cadets at Annapolis?
The Cuban heroes are about to complete 10 years in prison. They have never murdered or tortured anyone. Don’t accuse them now of being in Vietnam torturing American pilots.
I know about your declarations at the school where you graduated as a cadet. I appreciate your noble wish to not answer me so as not to dignify me. The only sad mix-up –and it was not the intent of some news agencies that ran my first reflection on the subject– is that I asked for proof. You can’t prove something that didn’t happen. I asked for ethics.
I shall continue.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 12, 2008
7:26 p.m.
It was there that most of the fiercest enemies of the Cuban Revolution and their families took up residence, Batista’s followers, the big landowners, owners of apartment buildings and millionaires who tyrannized and plundered our people. The United States government has used them at will, to organize invaders and terrorists who have shed our people’s blood through almost 50 years. Later, illegal emigrants joined that stream, along with the Cuban Adjustment Act and the brutal blockade imposed on the people of Cuba.
It is incredible that, in this day and age, the Republican candidate, honored as a hero, is turned into an instrument of that Mafia. Nobody having an ounce of self-esteem would commit such a serious lapse in ethics.
Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Senator Mel Martínez, also of Cuban descent, Governor Charles Christ and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman have become the candidate’s linchpins in the attempt to win Florida and his main advisors for Latin America policy.
What can Latin Americans possibly hope for with such advisors?
Ros-Lehtinen described McCain as being "strong on national defense" and "also understanding the threat posed by the Castro regime".
McCain shone in his participation at a hearing on Cuba which he held on May 21, 2002, at the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Trade and Tourism of the Science and Transportation Committee; there he reiterated that our country poses a threat to the United States because of its capacity to produce biological weapons, something James Carter demonstrated to be ridiculous.
As for the proposals to relax the travel to Cuba policy, in October of 2003 McCain introduced a motion to interrupt the debate on these topics.
Particularly interesting was the introduction in March 2005 of a bill entitled "Advance Democracy Act of 2005", authorizing funds, reinforcing subversion, establishing new structures and proposing additional mechanisms to exert pressure on Cuba.
Alluding to the light pirate planes downed on February 24, 1996, he declared: "If I were President of the United States, I would order an investigation on the downing of those brave men who were murdered under orders of Fidel and Raúl Castro, and I would indict them."
In another one of his capricious declarations he stated that "when freedom comes to Cuba, he would like to meet the Cubans who tortured some of his comrades during the Vietnam War". The nerve of that obsessive candidate!
Let’s move on to the crux of his thinking.
What kind of political education did he get? None. He was trained as a war pilot based on his physical attributes for flying an attack plane. What was his predominant trait? Family traditions and his strong political motivation.
In his memoirs, he writes: "My father rose to high command when communism had replaced fascism as the dominant threat to American security. He hated it fiercely and dedicated himself to its annihilation. He believed that we were locked on inescapably in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviets. One side or the other would ultimately win total victory, and sea power would prove critical to the outcome. He was outspoken on the subject."
"In 1965, violent clashes between warring factions, one of which was believed to be a Communist front, had brought the Dominican Republic to the verge of civil war. President Johnson ordered my father to command the amphibious assault on Operation Steel Pike 1, the invasion and military occupation of the Caribbean nation. The operation was controversial. Critics judged it, with good reason, to be an unlawful intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation. My father, typically, was undeterred by domestic opposition.
"’Some people condemned this as an unwarranted intervention,’ he observed, ‘but the Communist were all set to move in and take over. People may not love you for being strong when you have to be, but they respect you for it and learn to behave themselves when you are.’
"His subsequent assignment at the United Nations, however, was regarded by the Navy as a dead end and was expected to be his last. He was a three-star admiral, and the prospects for a fourth star were remote. But two years later he was ordered to London to assume command of all U.S. naval forces in Europe. A fourth star came with the job... Within a year, he was given command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, the largest operational military command in the world."
When McCain was returning from his training flight as a cadet, he passed through the occupied territory of Guantánamo.
"Guantánamo in those pre-Castro days was a wild place. Everyone went ashore and headed immediately for huge tents that had been set up on the base as temporary bars, where great quantities of strong Cuban beer and an even more potent rum punch were served to anyone who professed a thirst and could afford a nickel a drink."
"I was proud to graduate from the Naval Academy. But at that moment, relief was the emotion I felt most keenly. I had already been accepted for flight training in Pensacola. In those days, all you had to do was pass the physical to qualify for flight training, and I was eager to embark on the life of a carefree naval aviator."
"In October 1962, I was just returning to home port at Norfolk after completing a Mediterranean deployment aboard the Enterprise. My squadron had flown off the Enterprise and returned to Oceana Naval Air Station while the ship put in at Norfolk".
"A few days after our return, we unexpectedly received orders to fly our planes back to the carrier. Our superiors explained the unusual order by informing us that a hurricane was headed our way."
"We flew all our planes back to the carrier within 24 hours and headed out to sea. In addition to our A-1s, the Enterprise carried long-range attack planes, which typically had a hard time managing carrier takeoffs and landings. We embarked on our mysterious deployment without them."
"Our air boss turned to a representative of the Marine squadron and said we didn’t have time to wait for all their planes to land; some of them would have to return to their base.
"I was quite puzzled by the apparent urgency of our mission, we’d been hustled back in one day, leaving some of our planes behind; the Marine squadron has been ordered to join us with only enough fuel to land or ditch. The mystery was solved a short while later when all pilots were assembled in the Enterprise’s ready room to listen to a broadcast of President Kennedy informing the nation that the Soviets were basing nuclear missiles in Cuba."
This time he was referring to the well-known October Missile Crisis of 1962, more than 45 years ago; it left him with the underlying desire to attack our country.
"The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba. For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We have never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission. The atmosphere aboard ship was fairly tense, but not overly so. Pilots and crew men alike adopted a cool-headed business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved and fearless American at war."
"After five days the tension eased, as it became apparent the crisis would be resolved peacefully. We weren’t disappointed to be denied our first combat experience, but our appetites were whetted and our imaginations fueled. We eagerly anticipated the occasion when we would have the chance to do what we were trained to do, and discover, at last, if we were brave enough for the job."
Further on, he describes the accident on the nuclear aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, in the Gulf of Tonkin. One hundred and thirty-four young Americans, many of them 18 and 19 years old, died in a huge effort to save the vessel. The carrier, peppered with perforations from the exploded bombs, had to sail to the United States to be reconstructed. It would be necessary to check what was published at the time and the approach taken on the subject.
McCain is then moved on to another conventional type of aircraft carrier in the same waters, with the same objective. Each one of the author’s self-definitions warrants close observation.
"On September 30, 1967, I reported for duty to the Oriskany and joined VA-163 –an A-4 attack squadron nicknamed ‘the Saints’. During the three years of Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign of North Vietnam begun in 1965, no carrier’s pilots saw more action or suffered more losses than those on the Oriskany. When the Johnson administration halted Rolling Thunder in 1968, 38 pilots on the Oriskany had been either killed or captured. Sixty planes had been lost, including twenty-nine A-4s. The Saints suffered the highest casualty rate. In 1967, one-third of the squadron’s pilots were killed or captured. Every single one of the Saints’ original 15 A-4s had been destroyed. We had a reputation for aggressiveness, and for success. In the months before I joined the squadron, the Saints had destroyed all the bridges to the port city of Haiphong."
"Like all combat pilots, we had a studied, almost macabre indifference to death that masked a great sadness in the squadron, a sadness that grew more pervasive as our casualty list lengthened.
"We flew the next raid with greater determination to do as much damage as we could.
"I was just about to release my bombs when the tone sounded.
"I knew I was hit. My A-4, traveling at about 550 miles an hour, was violently spiraling to earth"
"I reacted automatically the moment I took the hit and saw that my wing was gone. I radioed, "I’m hit," reached up, and pulled the ejection seat handle."
"I struck part of the airplane, breaking my left arm, my right arm in three places, and my right knee, and I was briefly knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection. Witnesses said my chute had barely opened before I plunged into the shallow water of Truc Back Lake. I landed in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day."
"My father wasn’t much of a believer in fighting wars by half measures. He regarded self-restraint as an admirable human quality, but when fighting wars he believed in taking all necessary measures to bring the conflict to a swift and successful conclusion. The Vietnam War was fought neither swiftly nor successfully, and I know this frustrated him greatly."
"In a speech he gave after he retired, he argued that "two deplorable decisions" had doomed the United States to failure in Vietnam: "The first was the public decision to forbid U.S. troops to enter North Vietnam and beat the enemy on his home ground...The second was...to forbid the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong until the last two weeks of the conflict..."
"These two decisions combined to allow Hanoi to adopt whatever strategy they wished, knowing that there would be virtually no reprisal, no counterattack."
"When the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive in December 1971, at a time when U.S. forces in Vietnam had been reduced to 69,000 men, President Nixon finally directed my father to mine Haiphong and other northern ports immediately. The Nixon administration had dispensed with much of the micromanaging of the war that had so ill served the Johnson administration, particularly the absurd target restrictions imposed on American bomber pilots."
"Relations between military commanders and their civilian superiors improved when President Nixon and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird entered office. The new administration was clearly more interested in and supportive of the views of the generals and admirals who were prosecuting the war. My father had a good relationship with both Nixon and Laird, as well as with the President’s National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger."
He does not hide his feelings when speaking of the bombing victims. His words ooze intense hatred.
"Our situation improved even more in April 1972, when President Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and, on my father’s orders, the first bombs since March 1968 began falling on Hanoi. Operation Linebacker, as the campaign was called, brought B-52s, with their huge payload of bombs."
"The misery we had endured prior to 1972 was made all the worse by our fear that the United States was unprepared to do what was necessary to bring the war to a reasonably swift conclusion. We could never see over the horizon to the day when the war would end. Whether you supported the war or opposed it –and I met a few POWs who argued the latter position –no one believed the war should be prosecuted in the manner in which the Johnson administration had fought it."
"The B-52s terrorized Hanoi for eleven nights. Wave after wave they came. During the days, while the strategic bombers were refueled and rearmed, other aircraft took up the assault. The Vietnamese got the point."
"Our senior officers, knowing that this moment was imminent, had warned us not to demonstrate our emotions when the agreement was announced."
He oozes hatred of the Vietnamese. He was ready to exterminate them all.
"By the time the end did come, with the signing in Paris of the peace accords, my father had retired from active duty. No longer restrained by his role as a subordinate to civilian superiors, he dismissed the agreement. ‘In our anxiety to get out of the war, we signed a very bad deal.’"
These paragraphs reflect McCain’s most intimate thoughts. The worst comes when he yields to the idea of making a declaration against the war being waged by his country. He cannot help but mention that in his book. How does he do this?
"He (his father) had received a report that a heavily edited propaganda broadcast, purported to have been made by me, had been analyzed, and the voice compared to my taped interview with the French journalist. The two voices were judged to be the same. In the anguished days right after my confession, I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.
"After I came home, he never mentioned to me that he had learned about my confession, and, although I told him about it, I never discussed it at length. I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father.
"If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did. But in the years that have passed since the event, my regard for my father and for myself has matured. I understand better the nature of strong character.
"My father was a strong enough man not to judge too harshly the character of a son who had reached his limits and found that they were well short of the standards of the idealized heroes who had inspired us as boys."
I don’t criticize him for this. It would be heartless and inhuman. That’s not my aim. What we need to do now is to unmask a policy which is not an individual one, but one that is shared by many, since the objective truth will always be difficult to understand.
Has McCain ever thought about the anti-terrorist Five Cuban Heroes who were imprisoned in solitary cells just like the ones he says he hates, forced to appear before a jury from Little Havana for crimes they never committed, with three of them sentenced to one and even two life sentences, and the others to 19 and 15 years in prison?
Does he know that the United States authorities received information that could prevent death by terrorism of U.S. citizens?
Is he aware of the activities of Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, the men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airliner in mid-flight, killing its 73 occupants?
Why doesn’t he talk about that to the cadets at Annapolis?
The Cuban heroes are about to complete 10 years in prison. They have never murdered or tortured anyone. Don’t accuse them now of being in Vietnam torturing American pilots.
I know about your declarations at the school where you graduated as a cadet. I appreciate your noble wish to not answer me so as not to dignify me. The only sad mix-up –and it was not the intent of some news agencies that ran my first reflection on the subject– is that I asked for proof. You can’t prove something that didn’t happen. I asked for ethics.
I shall continue.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 12, 2008
7:26 p.m.
The Republican Candidate (Part Two)
ONE of the most hostile U.S. newspapers when it comes to Cuba, headquartered in Florida, offers the following report:
“Taking advantage of the negotiations to free the Bay of Pigs’ prisoners, the CIA tried to use a key person in the talks, American lawyer James B. Donovan, to deliver a lethal gift to Fidel Castro: a wetsuit contaminated with a fungus that lacerates the skin and an underwater breathing device infected with tuberculosis...the gear in fact was given to the Cuban leader in November 1962.
“The revelation is one of many anecdotes in After the Bay of Pigs, a book on the negotiations held between the Committee of Relatives for the Liberation of Prisoners and Havana from April to December 1962.
“The 238-page book, published late last year, was written by Cuban exile Pablo Pérez-Cisneros with businessman John B. Donovan, son of the late negotiator, and Jeff Koenreich, a veteran member of the Red Cross who has promoted humanitarian missions between the United States and Cuba.
“Pérez-Cisneros is the son of Berta Barreto de los Heros, who was coordinator in Cuba of the Families Committee and interceded with Castro to trade off the 1,113 prisoners from the failed April 1961 invasion.
“Barreto de los Heros started the book but died in March of 1993. Her son, who spent eight years researching and finishing the book, was the person who bought the wetsuit and scuba gear at the end of 1962, not knowing that both were destined for Castro.
“In June 1962, Pérez-Cisneros visited James B. Donovan's office in Brooklyn for the first time to request his intervention in the negotiations with Cuba. The meeting was arranged by Robert W. Kean, son of a former congressman and brother-in-law of Joaquín Silverio, a jailed member of Brigade 2506. Donovan agreed to work for the Families Committee at no charge.
“Two months later, Donovan made the first of 11 trips to Havana for mediation with the Cuban government.
''When Donovan returns to Cuba in October 1962, Castro tells him he wants to have an aqualung (scuba gear) and wetsuit for diving,'' Pérez-Cisneros told El Nuevo Herald in an interview to expand on the case. “So, Donovan tells me he wants to get quality equipment for a person, but without telling me they are for Castro.''
“Pérez-Cisneros, who had been a champion underwater spearfisherman in Cuba, bought a $130 wetsuit and scuba equipment for $215 in a well-known store in Times Square, New York.
“Castro received them in November 1962, and some weeks later, on another one of Donovan's trips, the Cuban President told the lawyer that he had used them.
“Only months after the negotiations had concluded did Pérez-Cisneros learn all the details about the real story.
“During World War II, James Donovan had worked for the Office of Strategic Services, which preceded the CIA. He was later named one of the prosecutors in the Nazi war-crimes trials in Nuremberg. In February 1962, he was the chief mediator in the most spectacular spy trade of the Cold War: the trade of Russian Col. Rudolf Abel for Americans Frederick Prior and captured U-2 pilot Gary F. Powers.
“When Donovan informed the CIA that Castro had requested diving equipment, the U.S. agency said it would take care of it. But the lawyer rejected any involvement in the proposal to contaminate the wetsuit and scuba equipment and preferred to give Castro the equipment bought in Times Square.
“In May of 1963, Castro invited Donovan and lawyer John E. Nolan, who represented then-Justice Secretary Robert Kennedy, to a day of diving in the Bay of Pigs area and again used the U.S. equipment.
“In late 1963, ''Donovan told me that the idea of an attempt against Castro gave him goose bumps, and he refused to take the equipment from the CIA, thinking that if Cuba detected the operation, all the negotiations could be ruined and that he could be executed,'' …
“The book, sprinkled with curious and unexpected events, is a tense story of how love, determination and cleverness made possible the exchange of the Brigade 2506 prisoners for $53 million in food, medicine and medical equipment.
“The efforts of Donovan and the Families Committee came at a moment of uncertainty over the prisoners' fates…
“The committee's first meeting with Castro took place in Barreto de los Heros' house in Miramar on April 10, 1962. Four days later, 60 wounded Brigade members were flown to Miami.
“Donovan's entry into the negotiations accelerated the release process.
“Knowing that Barreto de los Heros' telephone was tapped, Donovan arranged a secret code for communications.
“In mid-December, Castro agreed to an exchange and handed over a 29-page list of food and medicine that was to be sent to Cuba by the American Red Cross. The last 10 days of negotiations were very intense because Donovan brought in a group of 60 lawyers in order to ensure all of the donations promised by 157 American companies.
“On Dec. 23, 1962, the first five planes left for Miami, carrying 484 members of the brigade. A day later, the 719 prisoners that remained flew in nine more flights.”
I have literally transcribed the article’s words. I wasn’t aware of some of the specific information. Nothing that I remember is far from the truth.
My relationship with the Cienaga de Zapata (wetland) began very early. I learned about the place thanks to some American visitors who would talk to me about the “black fish", a very dark trout that was very abundant in the Laguna del Tesoro, at the heart of the marsh, at a maximum depth of 6 meters. In those days we were considering the development of tourism and possibly ‘polders’ like the land reclaimed from the sea by the Dutch.
The spot was famous from my days as a high school student, when the marsh was populated by tens of thousands of crocodiles. Indiscriminate catch had almost exterminated the species. It was necessary to protect it.
We were impelled above all by the desire to do something for the charcoal burners of the marsh. That was how my relationship with the Bay of Pigs began, a bay that is so deep it reaches almost a thousand meters. There I met old Finalé and his son Quique, who were my teachers in underwater fishing. I used to go all over those keys. I came to know that area like the back of my hand.
When the invaders landed there, three roads crossed the marsh, some facilities had already been built and others were being built for tourism, even an airport in the vicinity of Giron Beach, the last stronghold of the enemy forces which our combatants took by assault on the evening of April 19, 1961. I have told that story before. We were at the point of recovering it in less than 30 hours. Diversion maneuvers by the U.S. Marines delayed our crushing tank attack in the early morning of the 18th.
In order to deal with the issue of captured prisoners, I met Donovan, who seemed to me –and I am pleased to confirm it with his son’s testimony– to be an honorable man; I indeed once invited him to go fishing, and without a doubt I talked to him about a wetsuit and diving equipment. I cannot remember the other details too clearly; I would have to make some inquiries. I was never concerned with writing my memoirs, and today I understand that was a mistake.
For example, I was not able to remember the exact number of wounded so precisely. What stayed in my mind was the memory of those hundreds of our wounded; quite a few died because of a shortage of equipment, medicines, specialists and the lack of suitable facilities in those days. The wounded men who were sent earlier surely required rehab or better care, but that was not available to us.
From our first victorious battle, on January 17, 1957, it became our tradition to look after the enemy’s wounded. The history of our Revolution records that fact.
In the book of memoirs called Faith of my Fathers, written by McCain with the omnipresent help of Mark Salter, technically very well written, the main author states:
“I was often accused of being an indifferent student, and given some of my grades, I can appreciate the charity in that remark. But I was not so much indifferent as selective. I liked English and history, and I usually did well in those classes. I was less interested and less successful in math and science.”
Further along, he assures us:
“A few months prior to graduation, I had taken the Naval Academy entrance exams…did surprisingly well, even on the math exam.
“My reputation as a rowdy and impetuous young man was not, I’m embarrassed to confess, confined to Academy circles. Many upstanding residents of lovely Annapolis, witnesses to some of our more extravagant acts of insubordination, disapproved of me as did many Academy officials.”
Earlier, upon describing some of the events of his childhood, he tells us that:
“At the smallest provocation, I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious.
“The doctor prescribed a treatment that seems a little severe by modern standards of child care. He instructed my parents to fill a bathtub with cold water whenever I commenced a tantrum, and when I appeared to be holding my breath to drop me, fully clothed, into it.
Upon reading this, one has the impression that the methods that were applied to us in those days –both in my case, living in that pre-war era, just as in his –were not exactly the most fitting to deal with children. In my case, there was no doctor advising the family; they were ordinary people, some were illiterate, and many of them only applied traditional treatments.
Other episodes narrated by McCain relate to his adventures as a cadet on training trips. I am not mentioning them because they stray from the contents of my analysis and they have nothing to do with personal matters.
Naturally, McCain was not in the Congress hall on the night of Bush’s speech last January 28th, because some things in this man’s policies are compromising to him. He was in Little Havana, at the Versailles Restaurant, where he received the tribute of the Cuban community. It is just as well that we don’t look too closely into the background of several people who were there.
McCain supports the war in Iraq. He believes that the threat of Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea and the growth of Russia and China oblige the United States to strengthen its attack force. He would work together with other countries to protect the nation from Islamic extremism and continue in Iraq until victory.
He recognizes the importance of keeping strong relations with Mexico and the other Latin American countries. He is in favor of continuing the current aggressive Cuba policy.
He would reinforce security on United States borders, not just for the entry and exit of people, but also for the products that enter the country. He thinks that immigrants ought to learn English and the history and culture of the United States.
He wants the Latino vote, unfortunately most of these don’t vote or do it exceptionally; they are always fearful of deportation, of their children being taken away or of losing their jobs. On the Texas wall, more than 500 continue to die each year. He is not promising an ‘adjustment act’ to those who go after the “American dream”.
He supports Bush’s “The No Child Left Behind Act.” He supports the allocation of more federal funding for low interest scholarships and university grants.
In Cuba we offer everyone solid knowledge, an artistic education and the right to graduate from university without paying any tuition. More than 50 thousand children with learning disabilities receive special education. Computer science is extensively taught. Hundreds of thousands of well qualified people are employed in these tasks. But Cuba must be blockaded to free it from such a terrible tyranny.
Like any other candidate, he has his little government platform. He promises to reduce dependence on foreign energy. It is easy to say, but these days it is difficult to do.
He opposes subsidized ethanol production. Fantastic: I suggested just that to Brazilian President Lula Da Silva, that he demand the United States to suspend the hefty agricultural subsidies for corn and other cereals destined for the production of ethanol from foods. But that is not what is being proposed, on the contrary, it’s to export U.S. ethanol to compete with Brazil. Only he and his advisors know it, because ethanol from corn can never compete in cost with that of Brazil which comes from sugarcane as the raw material, at the expense of the tremendous efforts of its workers who in any case improve their lot without the U.S. tariff barriers and subsidies.
Many other Latin American nations were set on the path of producing ethanol from sugarcane by the United States. What would they do with the new decisions coming down from the North?
And we can’t miss the promises ensuring quality of air and water, the suitable use of green areas, the protection of the national parks that would become just a memory of what once used to be the nation’s natural splendor, victim of the unrelenting dictates of the market laws. The Kyoto Protocol, nevertheless, would not be signed.
These sound like the dreams of a castaway in the middle of a storm.
He would reduce taxes for middle class families, keeping the Bush policy of cutting back the permanent taxes and leaving rates at their current level.
He wants greater control over the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. He thinks that families should be in charge of their healthcare dollars. He would carry out health and prevention campaigns. He supports the plan of the current President allowing workers to move money from social security taxes to private retirement funds.
Social security would suffer the same fate as the stock market.
He is in favor of the death penalty, the growth and build-up of the armed forces, and the expansion of the FTAs.
Some McCain maxims:
“Things are tough now, but we're better off than in 2000.” (Jan 2008)
“I'm well-versed in economics; I was at the Reagan Revolution.” (Jan 2008)
“To avoid recession, stop unchecked spending.” (Jan 2008)
“Loss of economic strength leads to losing military strength.” (Dec 2007)
“Republicans have forgotten how to control spending.” (Nov 2007)
“Certify border is secure; only then allow guest workers.” (Jan 2008)
“2003 "amnesty" didn't mean rewarding illegal behavior.” (Jan 2008)
“Round up and deport two million aliens who committed crimes.” (Jan 2008)
“Do everything I can to help all immigrants learn English.” (Dec 2007)
“No official English; Native Americans use own languages.” (Jan 2007)
“Immigration reform needed for national security.” (Jun 2007)
“Bipartisanship shows preparedness for presidency.” (May 2007)
“Maintain Cuban embargo; indict Castro.” (Dec 2007)
“Cuba: No diplomatic and trade relations.” (Jul 1998)
“Naive to exclude nukes; naive to exclude attacking Pakistan.” (Aug 2007)
“War in Iraq ‘we have diverted attention from our hemisphere and we have paid a price for that’.”(Mar 2007)
He promises to visit his properties on the continent. He said that after being elected to the White House in 2008, his first trip would be to Mexico, Canada and Latin America to “reaffirm my commitment to our hemisphere and the importance of relations within our hemisphere."
In his entire book, an obligatory reference in my Reflections, he states that he was good in history. There is not one single reference to any political philosopher, not even to one of those who inspired the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies on July 4, 1776; in 4 months and 23 days it will celebrate its 232nd birthday.
More than 2400 years ago, Socrates, the famous Athenian wise man, celebrated for his method and martyr to his ideas, conscious of human limitations, said: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” Today, McCain, the Republican candidate, proclaims before his fellow citizens: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know everything.”
I shall continue.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 11, 2008.
5:35 p.m.
“Taking advantage of the negotiations to free the Bay of Pigs’ prisoners, the CIA tried to use a key person in the talks, American lawyer James B. Donovan, to deliver a lethal gift to Fidel Castro: a wetsuit contaminated with a fungus that lacerates the skin and an underwater breathing device infected with tuberculosis...the gear in fact was given to the Cuban leader in November 1962.
“The revelation is one of many anecdotes in After the Bay of Pigs, a book on the negotiations held between the Committee of Relatives for the Liberation of Prisoners and Havana from April to December 1962.
“The 238-page book, published late last year, was written by Cuban exile Pablo Pérez-Cisneros with businessman John B. Donovan, son of the late negotiator, and Jeff Koenreich, a veteran member of the Red Cross who has promoted humanitarian missions between the United States and Cuba.
“Pérez-Cisneros is the son of Berta Barreto de los Heros, who was coordinator in Cuba of the Families Committee and interceded with Castro to trade off the 1,113 prisoners from the failed April 1961 invasion.
“Barreto de los Heros started the book but died in March of 1993. Her son, who spent eight years researching and finishing the book, was the person who bought the wetsuit and scuba gear at the end of 1962, not knowing that both were destined for Castro.
“In June 1962, Pérez-Cisneros visited James B. Donovan's office in Brooklyn for the first time to request his intervention in the negotiations with Cuba. The meeting was arranged by Robert W. Kean, son of a former congressman and brother-in-law of Joaquín Silverio, a jailed member of Brigade 2506. Donovan agreed to work for the Families Committee at no charge.
“Two months later, Donovan made the first of 11 trips to Havana for mediation with the Cuban government.
''When Donovan returns to Cuba in October 1962, Castro tells him he wants to have an aqualung (scuba gear) and wetsuit for diving,'' Pérez-Cisneros told El Nuevo Herald in an interview to expand on the case. “So, Donovan tells me he wants to get quality equipment for a person, but without telling me they are for Castro.''
“Pérez-Cisneros, who had been a champion underwater spearfisherman in Cuba, bought a $130 wetsuit and scuba equipment for $215 in a well-known store in Times Square, New York.
“Castro received them in November 1962, and some weeks later, on another one of Donovan's trips, the Cuban President told the lawyer that he had used them.
“Only months after the negotiations had concluded did Pérez-Cisneros learn all the details about the real story.
“During World War II, James Donovan had worked for the Office of Strategic Services, which preceded the CIA. He was later named one of the prosecutors in the Nazi war-crimes trials in Nuremberg. In February 1962, he was the chief mediator in the most spectacular spy trade of the Cold War: the trade of Russian Col. Rudolf Abel for Americans Frederick Prior and captured U-2 pilot Gary F. Powers.
“When Donovan informed the CIA that Castro had requested diving equipment, the U.S. agency said it would take care of it. But the lawyer rejected any involvement in the proposal to contaminate the wetsuit and scuba equipment and preferred to give Castro the equipment bought in Times Square.
“In May of 1963, Castro invited Donovan and lawyer John E. Nolan, who represented then-Justice Secretary Robert Kennedy, to a day of diving in the Bay of Pigs area and again used the U.S. equipment.
“In late 1963, ''Donovan told me that the idea of an attempt against Castro gave him goose bumps, and he refused to take the equipment from the CIA, thinking that if Cuba detected the operation, all the negotiations could be ruined and that he could be executed,'' …
“The book, sprinkled with curious and unexpected events, is a tense story of how love, determination and cleverness made possible the exchange of the Brigade 2506 prisoners for $53 million in food, medicine and medical equipment.
“The efforts of Donovan and the Families Committee came at a moment of uncertainty over the prisoners' fates…
“The committee's first meeting with Castro took place in Barreto de los Heros' house in Miramar on April 10, 1962. Four days later, 60 wounded Brigade members were flown to Miami.
“Donovan's entry into the negotiations accelerated the release process.
“Knowing that Barreto de los Heros' telephone was tapped, Donovan arranged a secret code for communications.
“In mid-December, Castro agreed to an exchange and handed over a 29-page list of food and medicine that was to be sent to Cuba by the American Red Cross. The last 10 days of negotiations were very intense because Donovan brought in a group of 60 lawyers in order to ensure all of the donations promised by 157 American companies.
“On Dec. 23, 1962, the first five planes left for Miami, carrying 484 members of the brigade. A day later, the 719 prisoners that remained flew in nine more flights.”
I have literally transcribed the article’s words. I wasn’t aware of some of the specific information. Nothing that I remember is far from the truth.
My relationship with the Cienaga de Zapata (wetland) began very early. I learned about the place thanks to some American visitors who would talk to me about the “black fish", a very dark trout that was very abundant in the Laguna del Tesoro, at the heart of the marsh, at a maximum depth of 6 meters. In those days we were considering the development of tourism and possibly ‘polders’ like the land reclaimed from the sea by the Dutch.
The spot was famous from my days as a high school student, when the marsh was populated by tens of thousands of crocodiles. Indiscriminate catch had almost exterminated the species. It was necessary to protect it.
We were impelled above all by the desire to do something for the charcoal burners of the marsh. That was how my relationship with the Bay of Pigs began, a bay that is so deep it reaches almost a thousand meters. There I met old Finalé and his son Quique, who were my teachers in underwater fishing. I used to go all over those keys. I came to know that area like the back of my hand.
When the invaders landed there, three roads crossed the marsh, some facilities had already been built and others were being built for tourism, even an airport in the vicinity of Giron Beach, the last stronghold of the enemy forces which our combatants took by assault on the evening of April 19, 1961. I have told that story before. We were at the point of recovering it in less than 30 hours. Diversion maneuvers by the U.S. Marines delayed our crushing tank attack in the early morning of the 18th.
In order to deal with the issue of captured prisoners, I met Donovan, who seemed to me –and I am pleased to confirm it with his son’s testimony– to be an honorable man; I indeed once invited him to go fishing, and without a doubt I talked to him about a wetsuit and diving equipment. I cannot remember the other details too clearly; I would have to make some inquiries. I was never concerned with writing my memoirs, and today I understand that was a mistake.
For example, I was not able to remember the exact number of wounded so precisely. What stayed in my mind was the memory of those hundreds of our wounded; quite a few died because of a shortage of equipment, medicines, specialists and the lack of suitable facilities in those days. The wounded men who were sent earlier surely required rehab or better care, but that was not available to us.
From our first victorious battle, on January 17, 1957, it became our tradition to look after the enemy’s wounded. The history of our Revolution records that fact.
In the book of memoirs called Faith of my Fathers, written by McCain with the omnipresent help of Mark Salter, technically very well written, the main author states:
“I was often accused of being an indifferent student, and given some of my grades, I can appreciate the charity in that remark. But I was not so much indifferent as selective. I liked English and history, and I usually did well in those classes. I was less interested and less successful in math and science.”
Further along, he assures us:
“A few months prior to graduation, I had taken the Naval Academy entrance exams…did surprisingly well, even on the math exam.
“My reputation as a rowdy and impetuous young man was not, I’m embarrassed to confess, confined to Academy circles. Many upstanding residents of lovely Annapolis, witnesses to some of our more extravagant acts of insubordination, disapproved of me as did many Academy officials.”
Earlier, upon describing some of the events of his childhood, he tells us that:
“At the smallest provocation, I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious.
“The doctor prescribed a treatment that seems a little severe by modern standards of child care. He instructed my parents to fill a bathtub with cold water whenever I commenced a tantrum, and when I appeared to be holding my breath to drop me, fully clothed, into it.
Upon reading this, one has the impression that the methods that were applied to us in those days –both in my case, living in that pre-war era, just as in his –were not exactly the most fitting to deal with children. In my case, there was no doctor advising the family; they were ordinary people, some were illiterate, and many of them only applied traditional treatments.
Other episodes narrated by McCain relate to his adventures as a cadet on training trips. I am not mentioning them because they stray from the contents of my analysis and they have nothing to do with personal matters.
Naturally, McCain was not in the Congress hall on the night of Bush’s speech last January 28th, because some things in this man’s policies are compromising to him. He was in Little Havana, at the Versailles Restaurant, where he received the tribute of the Cuban community. It is just as well that we don’t look too closely into the background of several people who were there.
McCain supports the war in Iraq. He believes that the threat of Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea and the growth of Russia and China oblige the United States to strengthen its attack force. He would work together with other countries to protect the nation from Islamic extremism and continue in Iraq until victory.
He recognizes the importance of keeping strong relations with Mexico and the other Latin American countries. He is in favor of continuing the current aggressive Cuba policy.
He would reinforce security on United States borders, not just for the entry and exit of people, but also for the products that enter the country. He thinks that immigrants ought to learn English and the history and culture of the United States.
He wants the Latino vote, unfortunately most of these don’t vote or do it exceptionally; they are always fearful of deportation, of their children being taken away or of losing their jobs. On the Texas wall, more than 500 continue to die each year. He is not promising an ‘adjustment act’ to those who go after the “American dream”.
He supports Bush’s “The No Child Left Behind Act.” He supports the allocation of more federal funding for low interest scholarships and university grants.
In Cuba we offer everyone solid knowledge, an artistic education and the right to graduate from university without paying any tuition. More than 50 thousand children with learning disabilities receive special education. Computer science is extensively taught. Hundreds of thousands of well qualified people are employed in these tasks. But Cuba must be blockaded to free it from such a terrible tyranny.
Like any other candidate, he has his little government platform. He promises to reduce dependence on foreign energy. It is easy to say, but these days it is difficult to do.
He opposes subsidized ethanol production. Fantastic: I suggested just that to Brazilian President Lula Da Silva, that he demand the United States to suspend the hefty agricultural subsidies for corn and other cereals destined for the production of ethanol from foods. But that is not what is being proposed, on the contrary, it’s to export U.S. ethanol to compete with Brazil. Only he and his advisors know it, because ethanol from corn can never compete in cost with that of Brazil which comes from sugarcane as the raw material, at the expense of the tremendous efforts of its workers who in any case improve their lot without the U.S. tariff barriers and subsidies.
Many other Latin American nations were set on the path of producing ethanol from sugarcane by the United States. What would they do with the new decisions coming down from the North?
And we can’t miss the promises ensuring quality of air and water, the suitable use of green areas, the protection of the national parks that would become just a memory of what once used to be the nation’s natural splendor, victim of the unrelenting dictates of the market laws. The Kyoto Protocol, nevertheless, would not be signed.
These sound like the dreams of a castaway in the middle of a storm.
He would reduce taxes for middle class families, keeping the Bush policy of cutting back the permanent taxes and leaving rates at their current level.
He wants greater control over the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. He thinks that families should be in charge of their healthcare dollars. He would carry out health and prevention campaigns. He supports the plan of the current President allowing workers to move money from social security taxes to private retirement funds.
Social security would suffer the same fate as the stock market.
He is in favor of the death penalty, the growth and build-up of the armed forces, and the expansion of the FTAs.
Some McCain maxims:
“Things are tough now, but we're better off than in 2000.” (Jan 2008)
“I'm well-versed in economics; I was at the Reagan Revolution.” (Jan 2008)
“To avoid recession, stop unchecked spending.” (Jan 2008)
“Loss of economic strength leads to losing military strength.” (Dec 2007)
“Republicans have forgotten how to control spending.” (Nov 2007)
“Certify border is secure; only then allow guest workers.” (Jan 2008)
“2003 "amnesty" didn't mean rewarding illegal behavior.” (Jan 2008)
“Round up and deport two million aliens who committed crimes.” (Jan 2008)
“Do everything I can to help all immigrants learn English.” (Dec 2007)
“No official English; Native Americans use own languages.” (Jan 2007)
“Immigration reform needed for national security.” (Jun 2007)
“Bipartisanship shows preparedness for presidency.” (May 2007)
“Maintain Cuban embargo; indict Castro.” (Dec 2007)
“Cuba: No diplomatic and trade relations.” (Jul 1998)
“Naive to exclude nukes; naive to exclude attacking Pakistan.” (Aug 2007)
“War in Iraq ‘we have diverted attention from our hemisphere and we have paid a price for that’.”(Mar 2007)
He promises to visit his properties on the continent. He said that after being elected to the White House in 2008, his first trip would be to Mexico, Canada and Latin America to “reaffirm my commitment to our hemisphere and the importance of relations within our hemisphere."
In his entire book, an obligatory reference in my Reflections, he states that he was good in history. There is not one single reference to any political philosopher, not even to one of those who inspired the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies on July 4, 1776; in 4 months and 23 days it will celebrate its 232nd birthday.
More than 2400 years ago, Socrates, the famous Athenian wise man, celebrated for his method and martyr to his ideas, conscious of human limitations, said: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” Today, McCain, the Republican candidate, proclaims before his fellow citizens: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know everything.”
I shall continue.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 11, 2008.
5:35 p.m.
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