FIDEL ON OBAMA'S SPEECH: "The Empire's Hypocritical Politics"

[magbana]

REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL

THE EMPIRE’S HYPOCRITICAL POLITICS

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f250508i.html

It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech
Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American
National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his
speech, as I did McCain’s and Bush’s. I feel no resentment towards
him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against
Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries
an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing
him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly.

What were Obama’s statements?

“Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression
in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known
freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the
people of Cuba known democracy. (…) This is the terrible and tragic
status quo that we have known for half a century – of elections that
are anything but free or fair (…) I won't stand for this injustice,
you won't stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for
freedom in Cuba,” he told annexationists, adding: “It's time to let
Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the
Castro regime. (…) I will maintain the embargo.”

The content of these declarations by this strong candidate to the
U.S. presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason
for this reflection.

José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation
directives who Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the
owner of the 50-calibre automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and
infrared sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other
deadly weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the
Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an
international meeting held in Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of
Nueva Esparta.

Pepe Hernández’ group wanted to renegotiate a former pact with
Clinton, betrayed by Mas Canosa’s clan, who secured Bush’s electoral
victory in 2000 through fraud, because the latter had promised to
assassinate Castro, something they all happily embraced. These are
the kinds of political tricks inherent to the United States’ decadent
and contradictory system.

Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows:
hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable hand-outs and visits
to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of
life behind it.

How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food
crisis? The world’s grains must be distributed among human beings,
pets and fish, which become smaller every year and more scarce in the
seas that have been over-exploited by the large trawlers which no
international organization could get in the way of. Producing meat
from gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates
technology’s potential in the fight against climate change, though he
is more conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than
Bush. He could seek the advice of Gore, who is also a democrat and is
no longer a candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at
which global warming is advancing. His close political rival Bill
Clinton, who is not running for the presidency, an expert on
extra-territorial laws like the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, can
advice him on an issue like the blockade, which he promised to lift
and never did.

What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is doubtless,
from the social and human points of view, the most progressive
candidate to the U.S. presidency? “For two hundred years,” he said,
“the United States has made it clear that we won't stand for foreign
intervention in our hemisphere. But every day, all across the
Americas, there is a different kind of struggle --not against foreign
armies, but against the deadly threat of hunger and thirst, disease
and despair. That is not a future that we have to accept --not for
the child in Port au Prince or the family in the highlands of Peru.
We can do better. We must do better. (…) We cannot ignore suffering
to our south, nor stand for the globalization of the empty stomach.”
A magnificent description of imperialist globalization: the
globalization of empty stomachs! We ought to thank him for it. But,
200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin American unity and, more than
100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the struggle against the
annexation of Cuba by the United States. What is the difference
between what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims and
resuscitates in his speech two centuries later?

“I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House
who will work with my full support. But we'll also expand the Foreign
Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the
Americas. We'll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans
to go abroad to deepen the trust and the ties among our people,” he
said near the end, adding: “Together, we can choose the future over
the past.” A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at
least the fear, that history makes figures what they are and not all
the way around.

Today, the United States have nothing of the spirit behind the
Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies
that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic
empire undreamed of by the country’s founders at the time. Nothing,
however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former
were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be
auctioned at the marketplace —men, women and children—for nearly a
century, despite the fact that “all men are born free and equal”, as
the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world’s objective
conditions favored the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic
and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact
same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations
have used again and again to justify their crimes against our
country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I
don’t want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful
values.

An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without
the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism
visited upon Cuba.

The revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be
accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could
have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its
own workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an
eight-hour work shift, which stemmed from the development of
productive forces.

The first thing the leaders of the Cuban revolution learned from
Martí was to believe in and act on behalf of an organization founded
for the purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound
by previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of
this organization, we were elected by more than 90 percent of voters,
as has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the
least resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation
which, many a time, as in the case of the United States, stay short
of 50 percent of the voters. No small and blockaded country like ours
would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of
ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its
neighbor has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of
our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debate skills or
his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in
the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls,
who accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is
indeed a touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to
raise a number of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish
only to raise them for the record.

1. Is it right for the president of the United States to order the
assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext
may be?

2. Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the
torture of other human beings?

3. Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the
United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?

4. Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country,
Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it
costs innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why
is this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and
other peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn’t the same Act applied to
Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who die like
flies against the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the
Atlantic and the Pacific?

5. Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables,
fruits, almonds and other delicacies for U.S. citizens? Who would
sweep their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst
and lowest-paid jobs?

6. Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect
children born in the United States?

7. Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best
scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and
justifiable?

8. You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection,
that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would
not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that
this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene
anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and
naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet. I
ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect
for freedom, democracy and human rights?

9. Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark
corners of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may
be?

10. Is it honorable and sound to invest millions and millions of
dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that
can destroy life on earth several times over?

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its
education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented
not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around
the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity
towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial
blockade and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that
much can be done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the
Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have.

The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other
nations consist in the sending of military professionals to those
countries. It cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient
number of people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer
substantial aid to a country in need (though Cuba has known and
relied on the cooperation of excellent U.S. doctors). They are not to
blame for this, for society does not inculcate such values in them on
a massive scale.

We have never subordinated cooperation with other countries to
ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when
hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our
internationalist medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry
Reeve, a young man, born in the United States, who fought and died
for Cuba’s sovereignty in our first war of independence.

Our revolution can mobilize tens of thousands of doctors and health
technicians. It can mobilize an equally vast number of teachers and
citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to
fulfill any noble purpose, not to usurp people’s rights or take
possession of raw materials.

The good will and determination of people constitute limitless
resources that cannot be kept and would not fit in a bank’s vault.
They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 25, 2008

10:35 p.m.