8-7-05,11:39am
July 26,2005
Dear people of Havana who, by your selfless, tenacious efforts and in hard-fought competition with the inhabitants of Villa Clara, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Camagüey and Granma, won the right to hold this official function here in the capital: I congratulate you all.
Fighters of yesterday and today:
Distinguished guests:
Dearest fellow Cubans:
I thank our generous and heroic people for the privilege of commemorating this anniversary of the assault on the “Moncada” and “Carlos Manuel de Cespedes” garrisons when so much time has passed since those events took place. It could be that no one has even received such a great honor. It would be unforgivable not to keep in mind that more than 70 percent of the Cubans who today keep the Revolution alive had not even been born back then. They took the banners which, I think, they will never drop, from those who gave their lives in that action. I dare to say thank you on my behalf and on behalf of all of them, because on my conscience lies the enormous weight of having persuaded them to undertake such a bold action and yet fate has not prevented me from traveling the long, long road of revolutionary struggle down to this emotional moment 52 years later.
The Revolution today is experiencing a moment worthy of that memorable date.
The months preceding the 52nd anniversary of the beginning of our armed struggle for Cuba’s final independence have characterized by an exceptional degree of hostility directed by the Bush administration against Cuba. The Nazi-Fascist extreme right that has taken control of the Empire has not ceased to brood over its powerless hatred of our country. We should remember that May 20, 2002 when, at a meeting with the Miami terrorist mob, Bush demanded with unprecedented insolence that Cuba get a new constitution which would renounce the socialist nature of the Revolution. Those attending that meeting included Orlando Bosch Avila, a bosom friend of that family dynasty, and the main culprit behind the mid air destruction of the Cuban plane just minutes after it took off from Barbados where all of the passengers died.
Cuba’s response to the imperial demand were enormous mass demonstrations all across the country in support of a draft amendment of the constitution, finally passed unanimously by the National Assembly of People’s Power on June 26, 2002, stating that the socialist nature of the Revolution and the political and social system enshrined in the Constitution were irrevocable.
The atrocious September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers had already happened.
Under pressure from that mob which had helped him win the presidency through a scandalous fraud, for more than four years, Mr. George W. Bush and his cronies did not cease for one minute from adopting cruel, hate-filled measures to destabilize and pound on Cuba and to try to do away with its independence and its people’s right to a truly human and fair political system.
Hideous resolutions were passed to tighten the blockade and suffocate Cuba’s economy. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans living in the United States were forbidden to visit their relatives in Cuba; they could only get permission to do so once every three years; family aid was reduced to almost nothing; the agreements on illegal immigration were breached; proposals for cooperating in such crucial areas as drug and persons trafficking and to hinder and prevent terrorist acts were rejected. Also, slanderous allegations rained down. Cuba was labeled a terrorist country. They made up insane lies about biological weapons production, plans to use electronic warfare to interfere with US government communications and other such things, the objective being to find excuses for a genocidal attack against our country, like they one they later launched in Iraq.
I couldn’t help mentioning these things which are only a small sample of the series of attacks on Cuba by US governments and of all these governments, the Bush administration represents the incarnation of the most repugnant, evil hatred for a heroic, decent people which is not cowed nor can be intimidated by the powerful empire’s threats and attacks.
One of Bush’s most cynical measures was to use the Guantanamo naval base, which the Unites States occupies illegally against our people’s will, to set up a concentration camp where he locks up, without trial or any kind of legal process, those whom he kidnaps anywhere in the world. And to top it all, that prison was turned into an experimental center of torture, the same as those later applied in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
An article in the October 17, 2004 edition of The New York Times admitted that abuse of prisoners in the Guantanamo naval base is “generalized and not limited to isolated cases as official versions claim”. Quoting soldiers, secret agents and other officials, the newspaper described “a series of highly abusive procedures which continued over a long period of time”. The world was amazed and shocked to hear about these unbelievable facts.
Democratic senator Joseph Biden, of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the Guantanamo naval base had become the “greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world”. Former president Jimmy Carter urged the Bush government to close the prison because the accusations of torture there are a “terrible embarrassment and a blow to the US reputation'.
On September 13, 2004, the British newspaper The Guardian revealed that “the highest levels of George W. Bush’s administration were informed of the bad treatment and possible war crimes at the base in the Fall of 2002”, according to an investigative report by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh included in his book Chain of Command.
When visiting this torture center, a US member of Congress of Cuban descent, known in our country as the Big Bad She-wolf, a friend and defender of Posada Carriles, told the press that “she wished the Cuban people had the rights that the detainees in Guantanamo are given”.
Another of Mr. Bush’s cynical actions is the constant, increasing radio and television attacks on our people that violate the most elementary standards regulating the use of radio and TV frequencies and is in breach of international law.
The US government has invested vast amounts of money to no avail in this crazy, failed exercise.
In addition to its actions from outside, Bush and his mob have invested in excess one hundred million dollars to promote subversion and destabilization inside Cuba. More than any other US administration it has used that country’s Interests Section in Cuba to do this. There was a time, years ago, when subversion and espionage were carried out rather discretely but in Bush Jr. truly gangster-like era, all standards have been thrown overboard. Disgusting characters like James Cason, following the instructions of Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and other unscrupulous officials, have gone beyond the limits of basic decency and carried out unprecedented provocations inside our country.
The heads of the Interests Section have assumed direct leadership of the groups of mercenaries that, by various methods and under various pretexts, are provided with high personal incomes in convertible currency which, in a country like Cuba where services such as healthcare and education are totally free and others like housing, recreational activities, medicines and a significant portion of food cost a virtually symbolic amount in Cuban pesos, means that those who have convertible currency can enjoy a living standard far higher than that of Cubans who are paid their salaries and pensions in domestic currency.
There is no country in the world where the empire’s mercenaries enjoy the privileges they do in Cuba. None of them works or does any useful service whatsoever for society. The US Interests Section offices and residence in Cuba, protected by diplomatic immunity, have become the venues for meetings to organize provocations, facilitate communications and openly give orders to mercenaries inside the country.
And none of this is done surreptitiously. The Interests Section’s diplomatic pouch is brazenly used to smuggle in computers, communications equipment, printed materials, libelous articles and all kinds of objects and goods to give to their hirelings. Never, perhaps, has any government so abused and offended its diplomatic status and immunity as the US government by writing signs and exhibiting offensive placards attacking our country.
When, for some reason or other, they don’t want to be directly involved in this type of activity, they use their Czech or some such lackeys to carry out these extremely rude acts.
Our Interests Section in Washington and our officials have never, ever, used their diplomatic immunity for such illegal and disgusting acts.
In the last few days, while our people were working tirelessly to clean up the damage caused by Hurricane Dennis —tens of thousands of homes fully or partially destroyed, breaks in the electricity transmission and distribution grid, major damage to agriculture and other branches of the economy— the US government stepped up its subversive radio and television broadcasts to Cuba by increasing the frequency of illegal, provocative flights by the EC-130J aircraft which transmits the anti-Cuban radio and television signals.
The first broadcast from a US armed forces aircraft took place on none other than May 20, 2003, a date in history singled out for imperialist interference in Cuban affairs. Later on, from August 2004 onwards, once the loathsome “Transition Plan” allocating millions of dollars for radio and television broadcasts attacking Cuba was approved, the US government began four-hour transmissions from the military aircraft every weekend. In so doing, it has not only interfered with our television broadcasts, but has grossly violated international telecommunication standards while posing a dangerous provocation because of the military nature of the aircraft which has been previously used by the United States in actions against Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq... (read more at the following link)
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005/ing/f260705i.html
