Excerpts+Fidels+Speech+26-07-05




 * PRESS RELEASE**


 * TO ALL OUR READERS**

Excerpts of speech given by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic of Cuba, at the official function commemorating the 52nd anniversary of the assault on the “Moncada” and “Carlos Manuel de Cespedes” garrisons in the Karl Marx Theatre, July 26, 2005.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 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.

This past July 13, less than three weeks ago, five days after the hurricane had blown through the south, central and western regions of our country with its enormous power of destruction, the US Air Force transferred two EC-130J aircraft from the 193rd Special Operations Wing in Pennsylvania to the Naval Air station in Key West, Florida. One of these planes flew consecutively on Friday July 15, Saturday 16, Monday 18, Wednesday 20, Friday 22 and Saturday 23, broadcasting counterrevolutionary broadcasts in an escalation of provocation and aggression.


 * While the US administration, which so furiously imposes the genocidal blockade on our country, in an entirely hypocritical and shameless way “compassionately” offered Cuba 50,000 USD to alleviate the damage caused by the hurricane, the lawmakers who support the Bush government policies, introduced a bill in Congress that would allocate 37,931,000 USD for the fiscal year 2006 and 29,931,000 USD for the fiscal year 2007, for anti-Cuban broadcasts. According to the wording, the purpose of the bill is “to buy, rent, build and improve radio and television reception and transmission facilities and to buy, rent and install the necessary equipment, including aircraft, for radio and television reception and transmission”.


 * Dazed and delirious, a former spokesperson for the Cuban-American National Foundation and also one of Posada Carriles’ defenders has just brazenly announced on Miami television that Venezuela’s solidarity aid to Cuba to alleviate the effects of the hurricane “consists of a few thousand tons of masts to block US transmissions, equipment to rebuild the masts used for this type of jamming and the technology needed to establish repression”.

Such an abhorrent vision prevails in the US extreme right which is now also threatening to begin radio and television broadcasts to Venezuela, as a response to Telesur and to the Venezuelan government’s solidarity with Cuba.


 * When the country was involved in a historic battle for justice with the Empire as it denounced the covert entry of Posada Carriles —he and Orlando Bosch were responsible for the deaths of 73 people in the well-known Barbados tragedy— into the United States, under the protection of the Cuban-American mob and US authorities, and demanded his arrest and extradition to Venezuela, the Interests Section was working frantically to organize a so-called Assembly to Promote a Civil Society in Cuba officially convened for none other than May 20, a shameful, ill-starred date in our history. The whole thing was cooked up and funded by the US government.

The enemies of the Revolution, as I have already explained, have jubilantly tried to use these events to show that Cuba is going through a serious economic crisis. They never learn and are once again underestimating our people’s capacity to resist and struggle. The sound growth that our economy has started to display since last year has increased during the first half of 2005, as I can show with some irrefutable figures which confirm this and I will now read out: During the first half of the year the Cuban economy grew by 7.3% and an increase of around 9% is expected by the end of the year, as a result of the positive tendencies that have been observed.
 * During the first six months of this year, the country had to face a complex situation brought about by the drought, the power shortage and, most recently, the consequences of Hurricane Dennis.

This performance, recorded up until June, is based on the increase of 13 of the 22 sectors of the industry, among which ferrous metallurgy stands out with 15.5%, non-ferrous metallurgy with 9.2%; printing with 21.7%; the garments industry with 7.0%; the food industry with 3.6% and the beverage and tobacco industry with 4.4%.


 * As proof of the potential of our economy, in May the minimum wage went up from 100 to 225 pesos, benefiting 1,657,191 workers that account for 54% of state employees, costing an annual total of 1.06 billion Cuban pesos. At the end of the first half of the year the average wage rose to 334 pesos, from 282 at the end of 2004.

In July wages rose in the healthcare and education sectors, which benefited 857 thousand 400 workers, at an annual cost of more than 523 million Cuban pesos. In the Social Security sector the pensions of 1,468,000 went up, just over 97% of the total number of pensioners.

In the area of Social Assistance, 476,512 people benefited from an increase of 50 pesos monthly. Both measures annually cost 1.19 billion Cuban pesos.

These actions have benefited 4.4 million people, which accounts for 30.9% of the population, at an annual cost of 2.78 billion Cuban pesos. Wages continue to increase gradually in other sectors.


 * In response to an economic policy which ensures that social interests and the fundamental priorities of the country are met, a set of measures has been adopted in the monetary sector, aimed at strengthening the national currency.


 * The agreement between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Cuba, signed in accordance with the principles of ALBA, means a considerable step forward on the way to unity and the true integration of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Petrocaribe agreement is another extraordinary advancement and a true example of fraternal solidarity among peoples.

The commercial exchange between Venezuela and Cuba has already risen this year to no less than 3 billion USD.

Both countries will undoubtedly be the two that experience the most economic growth in the hemisphere this year.

Because of these noble, constructive and peaceful efforts, the imperialist government is accusing Venezuela and Cuba, Chávez and Castro, of destabilizing and subverting other countries in the region.

Faced with such accusations against Venezuela and Cuba, and if President Chávez agreed, a day like today would be most opportune to reply: Condemn us, it doesn’t matter, history will absolve us!


 * EMBASSY OF CUBA Pretoria, July 29, 2005.**