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Another world is necessary, urgent and possible

By Communist Party of Cuba

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2006 – online

November – December 2006

Nov. 20 – Nov. 26 click here for related stories: imperialism/globalization

11-22-06, 9:55 a.m.

Contribution of the communist party of Cuba to the Lisbon Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties 10-12 November 2006

Comrades:

First, our thanks go to the comrades of the Portuguese communist party for organizing this event, which is becoming an important forum for reflection and discussion of the complex problems facing today's world.

We salute all the communist and workers' parties that are keeping up the fight for a better, fairer and more humane world.

Throughout all these difficult, complex years, our parties have resisted imperialism's attempts to impose a reactionary dictatorship, based on neoliberal globalization, at world level.

Today it is more necessary than ever that revolutionary and left-wing forces get together to analyze the current world situation and propose concrete actions.

We believe that as communist parties we must achieve a degree of coordination and joint effort appropriate to the globalized world in which we must struggle.

We must leave behind us the problems and conflicts that none of us here have created.

When we see the high degree of coordination marking the other political-ideological schools of thought now part of the world scene, we are perhaps the only ones who sometimes fail to arrive at a common position on matters of first importance to our parties.

On this occasion we are meeting to discuss issues that are of vital importance for the present and future of humanity, whose survival is under threat.

Amid wars and threats of more wars, the world we live in is increasingly marked by injustice and inequality.

The end of the cold war was not the beginning of the peace proclaimed by some and dreamed of by many. The real history has been that of increasing domination by a nation that exerts economic and political pressures without scruples, that claims the right to invade any country in the pursuit of its goals and which is leading the planet down the path to destruction.

Defence spending is running at 1,000 billion dollars annually, while every year 11 million children die of preventable or curable diseases and over 800 million people are starving.

Another 1,000 billion dollars goes on commercial advertising, while 860 million human beings worldwide cannot read or write.

The fossil fuels are running out. The growth in proven and probable oil and gas reserves is being outpaced by consumption.

The rich societies have been unable to undertake radical and far-reaching energy-saving programmes that would gain the time needed for developing new technologies.

The environment is deteriorating as a result of an irrational society that stimulates an extreme consumerism imposed by the rich nations for their own benefit and that of the elites among the poor nations.

The Bush administration unilaterally withdrew the united states from the Kyoto protocol, despite the fact that America is responsible for a quarter of the world's toxic gases and wastes.

Thousands of millions of people are thrown out of work, into poverty, starvation and disease. A new class, the human supernumeraries, has been created by neoliberalism.

A real world dictatorship is seeking to impose itself via war and economic might, twisting the truth with its domineering and deceitful pronouncements.

Democracy and human rights, treated as pretexts rather than aims, cannot exist in an increasingly unequal world in which those words are not read or understood by thousands of millions of people.

The concepts of limited sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, preventive war and change of regime are fascist; they are not modern theories for defending freedom and combating terrorism. "Human security" and "responsibility for protecting" are concepts used to disguise plans to violate sovereignty and undermine independence - among the poor countries of course, never the powerful.

Poverty in this world of globalized economics is the result of centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism and of an unjust, criminal international economic order.

The drugs trade and the mafias grow and develop in response to the rising demand for narcotics among the richest societies and are spawned by a consumption and money-based culture, as if these were the sole aspirations of human beings.

Terrorism results from injustice, from the lack of education and culture, from poverty and inequalities, from the humiliation suffered by entire nations, from contempt for and underestimation of a belief, from arrogance, abuse and criminal acts. It does not spring from radical ideologies that must be bombed out of existence.

Hypocrisy and double standards are what distinguish the discourse of the powerful.

The hegemonic power demands that the authors of crimes anywhere in the world must be judged and even extradited to the United States, while the U.S. Military must be exculpated of similar or worse crimes.

Third-world nations are not helped to emerge from poverty that forces millions of people to emigrate, while walls are built along borders, immigrants are persecuted and discriminated against, measures increasingly accompanied by the stealing of other nations' brainpower.

The dominant powers proclaim free trade while regarding as essential expenditure on agricultural subsidies of nearly a billion dollars a day - many times their spending on aid for development.

This is the world imposed by the capitalist system - neoliberalism. This is the world demanded by the transnationals, the imf, the World Bank, the U.S. Government and its subordinates.

A world based on an economic and political order which intensifies the inequalities that lead to chaos and which they seek to preserve because they benefit a handful of rich nations - and even within these, smaller and smaller minorities.

The present U.S. Administration, dominated by the neo-conservative, ultra right-wing thinking of the incumbent elite, manipulating the tragic events of September 11, 2001, have sought via the "war on terrorism" to impose its policy of unipolar hegemonism based on the philosophy of "preventive war" as a pretext for continual military invasions, occupation and exploitation of strategic natural resources.

This is a government that lies repeatedly, in putting into practice the reactionary agenda of the ultra-conservative factions that nursed it into power.

It lied shamelessly in seeking to justify the invasion of Iraq, showing utter contempt for international legality and for the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been massacred, along with nearly 3,000 young Americans, victims of their own government.

A regime that openly claims its right to prevent, by force if necessary, the resurgence of a country or group of countries that challenge its dominance, and to carry out preventive attacks - including the use of nuclear weapons-on any nation.

It is they who have presided over a four-fold rise in drugs production in Afghanistan, following an increase in the cultivation of opium there to 92% of the world total, a result of occupation by the armies of the U.S. And its allies

An administration that manipulates the issue of weapons of mass destruction, while it is responsible for half of the world's military spending; it blocks negotiations for a verification protocol on the biological arms convention, unilaterally abandoned the abm treaty on anti-missile defences and refuses to accept the total nuclear test ban treaty.

A regime that, well into the 21st century, has legalized clandestine flights, secret prisons and torture, in what amounts to an act of shameless infamy unparalleled in human history.

Washington and its allies manipulate or ignore the institutions of the u.n. System, systematically breaching their rules and using them as tools to "legalize" their selective, discriminatory policies against third-world countries, while setting themselves up as international judge and jury ostensibly in defence of the same human rights they themselves consistently violate.

We the peoples of Latin America have for many years been on the receiving end of the permanent policies of domination and plunder implemented by American imperialism.

The Bush administration is keeping up the offensive against the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean; it organizes and funds subversive and terrorist plans targeting the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, and interferes directly and blatantly in the electoral processes on our continent, where it openly supports its lackeys and tries to blackmail and publicly pressure peoples, to prevent the rise to power of left-wing alternatives that have resulted from the abject failure of the neoliberal model.

These conditions have brought the high point of the campaign by the Latin American popular movements - representing indigenous peoples, women, the landless, the homeless and many other groups; and of the new types of organization and political struggle developed by left-wing parties and coalitions.

Our country is part of that struggle, and has stood firm and reaffirmed that a socialist alternative is possible.

A Bolivarian revolution is underway in Venezuela.

The Venezuelan government under president Chavez has succeeded in consolidating and progressing its Bolivarian revolution, despite U.S. Acts of aggression, an attempted coup, industrial action in its oil industry, boycotting of many of the firms operating there, a virulent press campaign full of lies and distortions, and even terrorist and criminal acts.

Among the double standards being foisted on us, the western media are trying to ignore the fact that president Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution have won 10 consecutive elections outright, and should win again in the presidential elections scheduled for 3rd December this year.

Thanks to Venezuela's support, new integration projects, such as petrosur, telesur and petrocaribe, have emerged in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the Bolivarian alternative for the Americas ('alba').

We are convinced that this is the route to follow, and that our countries have no other option but economic integration.

In the case of our continent, new organizations and groupings have developed which include both social and ethnic movements that share many of our aims and with which we should be able to join forces.

The Bolivian revolution led by president EVO Morales is a clear example of our peoples' determination to put an end to centuries of exploitation and exclusion.

Just a few days ago, the Nicaraguan people gave a decisive boost to the Sandinista national liberation front, in a clear rejection of 16 years of neoliberal policies that have converted Nicaragua into the second poorest country (after Haiti) in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Latin American left has adopted as a priority the campaign to recover political and economic sovereignty, with the development of social programmes that benefit the large majorities.

In Latin America as elsewhere, unity among the revolutionary forces and sectors, left-wing and
progressives, is decisive. Division remains the Achilles heel and a weakness exploited by the right-wing and imperialist forces.

We the communist parties have a key role in achieving this essential unity.

Another of the issues identified for debate here, which is of vital importance, is unquestionably that of energy, a field in which Cuba has embarked on a new revolution.

This issue is of immense importance to the future of the human race, and clearly shows how the depletion of energy resources, initiated and intensified by the capitalist system and the neoliberal model, is a certain route to worldwide ecological disaster.

In Cuba, as a main priority of our socialism, we are undertaking an energy revolution, a summary of which is being circulated to the attendees.

We reaffirm the words of the commander-in-chief at this year's first-of-may celebrations:

"If the efforts now being made by Cuba were being reproduced all over the world the proven and probable hydrocarbon reserves would last twice as long; the pollutants now expelled by these into the atmosphere would be halved ; a moratorium of 15 years on the building of new nuclear generating plants could be proclaimed".

Comrades:

I would like to thank you for the messages wishing comrade Fidel a speedy recovery, received from many of the parties represented here.

This summer, our people has provided a solid example of unity and revolutionary maturity with its unconditional support for the revolution and recognition of the leading role of the party. This constitutes the most conclusive demonstration of Cubans' identification with and commitment to its socialist character and the defence of their independence.

Instead of the apocalyptic scenarios predicted by the imperialists, the country has passed this test in
conditions of complete normality.

In the wake of the complex and difficult years of the 1990s, our people has kept up its tremendous effort to restore the economy and expand and deepen the work of the revolution in the fields of education, public health and social security.

We have also continued to help other countries, via the selfless internationalist efforts of some 30,000 Cuban health-sector workers in 71 countries; operation Milagros (miracle), which has restored or improved the sight of 450,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, through free surgery; literacy campaigns in 11 countries, which have resulted in some 2.4 million people in Latin America learning to read and write; and the training in Cuba via university grants of 26,000 young people from our continent, including 21,000 studying medicine, with a target of 10,000 new Latin American doctors per year - not to practise private medicine but to bring health and life to millions, including those in the remotest locations.

In response to the colossal efforts of our people to consolidate the revolution and socialism, Washington has kept up its criminal aggression against our country.

Since last year when the parties met in Athens and approved a resolution denouncing the embargo and demanding the release of the five young Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the United States, the Bush administration has intensified is political and economic hostility towards Cuba.

Last June, Washington published the second report of the Bush plan, an unprecedented and infamous programme reflecting the superpower's public plan to overthrow a legitimate, sovereign foreign government. On this occasion, in addition to measures tightening the financial, economic and trade sanctions against Cuba - which have caused substantial human losses and a cost exceeding 86 billion dollars - there is reference to a secret chapter, whose content can only be the carrying out of new terrorist or military operations aimed at destabilizing the country.

For over 40 years the Cuban people has suffered the effects of actions of this kind, which have been fully supported by Washington, as demonstrated by the protection afforded by this administration for the last year to the known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Organizer of the attack 30 years ago on a cubana de aviacion aircraft, which cost the lives of 73 innocent people.

It was exactly the impunity enjoyed by the groups belonging to the Miami-based Cuban American mafia that made the work of our five anti-terrorist combatants necessary.

An expression of the strong pressures being brought to bear by the U.S. Government emerged last august, when a full session of the appeals court in Atlanta reversed the earlier unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the same court, which a year earlier had declared the Miami trial illegal and tainted.

This latest development shows that the freedom of these young Cubans will only be obtained through international solidarity, and most especially that of the American public.

Comrades:

Another world is necessary, urgent and possible, and there is no need for wars to achieve it. If we unite and fight for it intelligently and with conviction, we can get there.

We must strive for a world in which aggression towards and occupation of any country is unthinkable, in which acts of aggression such as those suffered by the Lebanese people or the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people are not allowed.

A world based on justice, peace and solidarity among men.

However great the challenges we face, we must not lose faith and optimism in our ability to win through. A better world isn't just possible, it's simply essential.

A better world for which millions of communists the world over have struggled and made sacrifices.

The founders of our communist parties and all those who have struggled under their flags did so in the hope of a better future for the whole of humanity.

We are faithful followers of the combatants who have gone before. May we keep up the fight until that better world has been achieved.

Many thanks.