Reflections by Comrade Fidel THE UNSUSTAINABLE POSITION OF THE EMPIRE

Nobody can assure us that in its agony, the empire won’t be dragging human beings down to catastrophe.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible. I remember well that one day, almost 20 years ago, I said that there was an endangered species: Man.

In front of a select group of bourgeois government leaders, flatterers of the empire, among them being the immense well-fed bulk of the German Helmut Kohl, and others like those forming the chorus of Bush Sr., less dismal and alienated than his own son, W. Bush, I couldn’t help but express that truth which I was seeing as being very real, even though it was more distant than it is today, with the greatest sincerity possible.

Turning on the television at about 12:15 at midday, because someone told me that Barack Obama was giving his announced speech on foreign policy, I paid attention to his words.

I don’t know why, despite the piles of dispatches and news I listen to on a daily basis, not one of them mentioned that the guy would be speaking at that time. I can assure the readers that there are not a few stupidities and lies that, among the dramatic truths and facts of all kinds, I read, I hear or see in pictures every day. But this case was something special. What was the guy going to say at that time in this world overwhelmed with imperial crimes, massacres or unmanned planes dropping deadly bombs, that not even Obama, now master of some life and death decisions, was imagining when he was a student at Harvard just a few decades ago?

Of course nobody should suppose that Obama is master of the situation; he merely handles some important words that the old system in its origin granted the “Constitutional President” of the United States. At this point, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Pentagon and the CIA still have the basic instruments of the imperial power created: technology capable of destroying the human race in a matter of minutes, and the means to penetrate those societies, dupe them and manipulate them shamelessly for as long as they need to do so, thinking that the power of the empire is boundless. They trust they are handling a docile world, without even a single disturbance, for all future time.

It is the absurd idea upon which they base tomorrow’s world, under “the kingdom of liberty, justice, equal opportunities and human rights”, incapable of seeing what is really happening with poverty, the lack of the basic services of education, health, jobs and something worse: meeting life’s needs such as food, drinking water, house and many others.

Strangely enough, can anyone wonder for example what would happen with the 10 thousand dead per year as a result of drug-related violence, basically in Mexico, to which we could add the countries of Central America and several of the most populated countries in the southern part of the continent?

I harbour absolutely no intention of offending those peoples; my purpose is just to point out what is happening to others almost on a daily basis.

There is one question that has to be asked almost immediately: what is going to happen in Spain where crowds are protesting in the country’s main cities against the unemployment of 40% of the young people, just to quote one of the causes of the demonstrations of that fighting people? Could it be perhaps that they are going to start bombing that NATO country?

Nevertheless, at this time, at 4:12 p.m., they still haven’t published the blessed official Spanish version of Obama’s speech.

I hope you will forgive me for this improvised reflection. I have other things to take care of.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 19, 2011

4:16 p.m.

Reflections by Comrade Fidel LIES AND MYSTERIES SURROUNDING BIN LADEN’S DEATH

The men who executed Bin Laden did not act on their own: they were following orders from the US Government. They had gone through a rigorous selection process and were trained to accomplish special missions. It is known that the US President can even communicate with a soldier in combat.

A few hours after accomplishing that mission in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to the most prestigious military academy of that country as well as important combat units, the White House offered the world’s public opinion a carefully drafted version about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the chief of Al Qaeda.

Of course, the world and the international media focused their attention on the issue, thus pushing all other public news into the background.

The US TV networks broadcast the President’s carefully drafted speech and showed images of the public’s reaction.

It was obvious that the world realized how sensitive the matter was. Pakistan is a country of 171 841 000 inhabitants –where the US and NATO have been carrying out a devastating war for ten years now- that has nuclear weapons and is a traditional ally of the United States.

There is no doubt that this Muslim country can not agree with the bloody war that the United States and its allies are waging against Afghanistan, another Muslim country with which it shares the troublesome and mountainous border traced by the British colonial empire. Common tribes live on both sides of the demarcation line.

The American press itself understood that the President was concealing almost the entire information.

The western news agencies –ANSA, AFP, AP, REUTERS and EFE- the press and important websites have published interesting reports about the incident.

The New York Times asserts that facts differed greatly from the official version announced on Tuesday by the White House and top intelligence officials, according to which Bin Laden’s death –who they finally recognized was unarmed, although they said he ‘resisted’- had occurred in the middle of an intense gun battle.

But, according to the New York daily, “the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy SEAL members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.”

The New York Times states that “the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, exactly when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.”

“After the SEAL members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again”, the newspaper states based on reports from said sources, whose identity was not revealed….

On Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, in an account of events, had asserted that in the early hours of Monday morning, the US commando “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.”

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “there were some firefights that were going on” as these US elite military were clearing the upper floors of the residential compound where Bin Laden was hiding.

However, the newspaper asserts that, although Bin Laden had not raised any weapon when he was gunned down, the commandos that found him in one of the rooms “saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in arm’s reach.”

Today, May 6, news continue to pour in.

From Washington, one of the agencies reports that a sole gunman had shot against the US forces. It continues to report that, on Sunday evening, “several helicopters ferry 79 commandos towards Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, flying low to avoid detection by radar, as Pakistan has not been told of the raid in advance.

“Two helicopters deliver more than 20 US Navy SEALs to the residence, which has four-to-six meter walls covered with barbed wire. One of the choppers, a MH-60 Blackhawk apparently modified to evade radar, is out of commission due to “mechanical failure,” according to initial reports from US officials.

“One group of commandos moves toward a smaller guest house next to the compound’s main building. Bin Laden’s trusted courier opens fire and is shot and killed, along with his wife.
The courier is the only man at the compound who fires on the Americans, contrary to earlier accounts from the White House that described a firefight throughout the nearly 40-minute operation.

“…Another US special forces team enters the main three-story house.”

“… They encounter the courier’s brother…who was shot and killed”, according to a US official who offered no further details. According to NBC news, the man “has one hand behind his back” when the team entered the room, “causing the SEALs to suspect he may have a gun, which turns out not to be the case.
“ The commandos move up the stairs and in one of the rooms meet up with Bin Laden’s adult son, Khalid, who is also killed…”
“On the top floor, they find Bin Laden and his wife in the bedroom. She reportedly tries to move between her husband and the commandos, and is shot in the leg. Bin Laden, who gives no signal of surrender, is shot in the head, and some media say he is also struck in the chest. Earlier versions of the raid said Bin Laden “resisted” and that he had used his wife as a human shield, but the White House later acknowledges those details are incorrect.
“President Barack Obama, following events from the White House, is told the SEALs have tentatively identified Bin Laden. A Time magazine report, based on an interview with CIA Director Leon Panetta, suggests Bin Laden was killed less than 25 minutes into the raid.

-“In Bin Laden’s room, the US team finds an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9 mm Russian pistol. Other weapons are discovered in the compound, but no further details are given.

“The special forces find cash and telephone numbers sown into Bin Laden’s clothing…”
“The Navy SEALs hauled away everything that could offer a lead to further information: note pads, the five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices (CDs, DVDs, USB).
“…The U.S. team destroys the downed helicopter after moving the women and children in the compound to a safe area.
“…Thirty eight minutes after the start of the raid, U.S. helicopters fly away, carrying away the corpse of Bin Laden.”
The AP published information of political and also human interest:

“One of three wives living with Osama Bin Laden told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the Al-Qaeda chief’s hideout for five years, and could be a key source of information about how he avoided capture for so long, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.”

“Bin Laden’s wife, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, said she never left the upper floors of the house the entire time she was there.

“She and Bin Laden’s other two wives are being interrogated in Pakistan after they were taken into custody following Monday’s American raid on Bin Laden’s compound in the town of Abbottabad. Pakistani authorities are also holding eight or nine children who were found there after the U.S. commandos left.

“Given shifting and incomplete accounts from U.S. officials about what happened during the raid, testimony from Bin Laden’s wives may be significant in unveiling details about the operation.

“Their accounts could also help show how Bin Laden spent his time and managed to stay hidden, living in a large house close to a military academy in a garrison town, a two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad.

“The Pakistani official said CIA officers had not been given access to the women in custody.”

“The proximity of Bin Laden’s hideout to the military garrison and the Pakistani capital has also raised suspicions in Washington that Bin Laden may have been protected by Pakistani security forces while on the run.”

The EFE news agency inquired what Pakistan citizens thought about that.

According to that agency, 66 per cent of Pakistanis do not believe that the US Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda; they think they killed another person, according to a joint poll ran by the British demoscopic institute, YouGov, and Polis, from Cambridge University.

The poll was said to have been carried out among Internet users, who usually have a higher educational level, in three big cities: Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. The poll excluded rural demographic groups, which makes results to be all the more surprising, according to researchers.

Reportedly, 75 per cent of those polled said they also disapproved the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the United States during the operation to capture and kill Bin Laden.
It was also reported that less than three fourths of those polled do not believe Bin Laden approved the 9/11 attacks against the United States, which justified the US invasion in Afghanistan and the war against Islamic terrorism.

According to the poll, 74 per cent think that Washington’s government does not have any respect for Islam and considers itself at war with the Islamic world; 70 per cent disapproves the Pakistani policy of accepting US economic aid.

Eighty six per cent are said to oppose also to the fact that the Pakistani government may in the future –and criticized the possibility that they may have done in the past- authorize attacks using drones against military groups.

Sixty one per cent of the Pakistanis who were interrogated said they sympathized with the Taliban or believed they could represent respectable viewpoints, against only 21 per cent who are radically opposed to them.

Reuters equally published some interesting reports:

“One of Osama bin Laden’s wives told Pakistani interrogators that the Al Qaeda leader and his family had been living for five years in the compound where he was killed by U.S. forces this week, a security official said on Friday.

“The official, who identified the woman as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, the youngest of Bin Laden’s three wives, told Reuters she was wounded in the raid.

“The security official said Abdulfattah told investigators: ‘We have been living there for the past five years’.”

“Pakistani security forces took between 15 and 16 people into custody from the compound after U.S. forces removed Bin Laden’s body, said the security official. Those detained included Bin Laden’s three wives and several children.”

According to a report published by ANSA, a US drone killed today no less than 15 persons in Waziristan, north of Pakistan. Others were seriously injured. But, who would care about those daily killings in that country?

However, I ask myself one question: Why is there so much coincidence between the assassination that was carried out at Abbottabad and the attempt to simultaneously assassinate Gaddafi?

One of Gaddafi’s youngest sons, who was not involved with political issues, Sarif al Arab, was accompanied by his little son and two little cousins at the house where he lived; Gaddafi and his wife had visited him shortly before the attacks launched by NATO bombers. The house was destroyed; Sarif al Arab and the three kids were killed. Gaddafi and his wife had left shortly before the attack. That was an unprecedented event. But the world has hardly known about that.

Was it a mere chance that such an event coincided with the attack against Osama Bin Laden’s refuge, which was perfectly known by the US government, which kept a close watch on it?

News released today by Vatican City reported as follows:

“May 6 (ANSA) – Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, said today to the Vatican’s agency FIDES: ‘I certainly do not want to interfere with the political activity of anyone, but I have the duty to declare that the bombings on Libya are immoral’.

“I am surprised that statements were made on the fact that I should deal only with spiritual matters and that the bombings have been authorized by the UN. The UN, NATO or the European Union doesn’t have the moral authority to decide to bomb Libya, he said.”

“Let mi stress that bombing is not dictated my moral or social conscience of the West or humanity in general. Bombing is always an immoral act.”

Another news published by ANSA on May 6 reports that the governments of China and Russia expressed their deep concern about the war in Libya and said they will work together to call for a cease fire.

According to the Chinese Foreign Minister Jechi Yang, they strongly believed that the most important goal was to achieve an immediate cease fire.

Truly worrying events are happening.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 6, 2011

8:17 p.m.

EDITORIAL Fabricating pretexts

The Cuban Revolution has been the object of hundreds of disinformation campaigns, usually orchestrated by the U.S. government with the complicity of European allies in conjunction with the powerful forces and interests which control the corporate media. However, they have not been able to divert Cubans from their ideals of independence and socialism, nor confuse the peoples of the planet who, despite everything, are led by wisdom and instinct to the truth. They are campaigns without political or ethical constraints which come up against the moral force of Cuba and merely tarnish their authors.

The most recent, which came from their prizewinning informants, was deflated in 72 hours. Lying politicians, the media which slandered out of political interest and journalists who reported an incident which never took place without even attempting to confirm it, must not be given impunity. At the very least, they should admit their error and apologize to the family whose grief they failed to respect.

Curiously, all of them remain silent in the face of the millions of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan which they define as “collateral damage,” as well as in the face of extrajudicial executions with drone aircraft in sovereign countries.

They have maintained a prudent silence in relation to the use of torture, have covered up the existence of secret U.S. prisons in Europe, have prevented investigations into the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib and the Guantánamo Naval Base – this latter usurped from Cuba – and the CIA secret flights transporting persons kidnapped in other states.

They remain unmoved at the brutal way in which European governments are inflicting the consequences of the economic crisis on the poorest members of society and immigrants. They look the other way when the unemployed or students in those wealthy societies are repressed with exceptional violence.

However, they are constantly hunting out pretexts for denigrating Cuba, and when these are lacking, they fabricate them.

They shamelessly converted a case of acute pancreatitis into political murder; a justified detention by police of less than three hours for public order offenses without any use of force into a fatal beating; a person with a criminal record sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for a common crime into a political dissident and the victim of a lengthy prison term.

The Cuban people share the protests of the family whose pain has been offended and the indignation of doctors virtually accused of complicity in a homicide. The world has more than sufficient examples of the humanistic vocation of our doctors, who have been unstinting in their efforts and, risking their own lives, have provided and are providing health services in many parts of the world.

American legislator David Rivera, famous for electoral corruption and his extremist campaigns to eliminate the right of émigré Cubans to travel to their country of origin, and who just a few weeks ago, accused former President Carter of being a Cuban agent, affirmed under oath in the U.S. Congress that the dead man was beaten to death in Villa Clara’s central Vidal Park last Sunday.

He didn’t even take the trouble to verify what even the most ill-intentioned acknowledge, that the deceased was in the park before and after his brief detention on Thursday, May 5, not on Sunday, when he was already in hospital. It is not surprising that Rivera should lie, but that he should do so with such stupidity.

Salafranca, a Euro deputy from Spain’s Partido Popular (PP), known for his anti-Cuban and pro-yankee attitudes, and who has said that reports on the CIA secret flights do not contribute any additional information and refrains from any condemnation of them, affirmed in the European Parliament that the individual “died after his detention and from a beating by the Cuban police.”

El País, from the Spain of the Prisa Group and PP conspiracies, published a cable titled “Cuba dissident dies after police beating.” The ABC, historically in the service of the worst causes, stated “Cuban opposition member dies after a beating from Castro’s police.” They are not interested in confirming the veracity of the alleged incidents and have not even bothered to disguise the conspiracy with different titles.

Even President Barack Obama himself, in response to a question from the highly tendentious Univisión network in Miami, referred to the events in Vidal Park which never took place, while stating that the details were not as yet clear.

It is strange that Obama, always so busy, retained in his memory the case of a person arrested in a Cuban park to which he was able to return shortly afterwards. However, he has not said anything and possibly does not even recall the anguished face or the account of young Iraqi Samar Hassan, published in The New York Times on May 7, concerning the terrible experience of the murder of her parents by a U.S. patrol when they were returning from the hospital after her little brother had received treatment for injuries.

But, in the case of Cuba, the worst offense is not the constant fabrication and reproduction of lies. What is unpardonable is the censuring of the great truths and the history of a heroic and blockaded people, who have been capable of achieving what for the great majority of humanity is still a dream.

In the past, there have been attempts to isolate Cuba or provoke internal disorders in order to create a pretext for U.S. intervention. What is the object of these campaigns? Just to denigrate, or something worse? Could it be that those pulling the strings and their paid internal agents would be delighted to invoke the “protection of civilians” in order to bomb Havana?

Our people will not allow themselves to be confused by internal counterrevolutionaries who are seeking a media pretext in order to promote a conflict with the United States, and they know how to respond with serenity and firmness to the actions of these mercenaries.

The arguments of the Cuban Revolution are not fabricated like the lies of our enemies, they are constructed with the dignity and integrity of our people, who have learnt that the truth is the cleanest weapon of humanity.

Translated by Granma International

EDITORIAL Fabricating pretexts

he Cuban Revolution has been the object of hundreds of disinformation campaigns, usually orchestrated by the U.S. government with the complicity of European allies in conjunction with the powerful forces and interests which control the corporate media. However, they have not been able to divert Cubans from their ideals of independence and socialism, nor confuse the peoples of the planet who, despite everything, are led by wisdom and instinct to the truth. They are campaigns without political or ethical constraints which come up against the moral force of Cuba and merely tarnish their authors.

Cuba Strongly Rejects Lies

FREDDY PÉREZ CABRERA

Just as denounced by the Cuban Revolutionary Government in a recent oficial release, the death, due to natural causes of a Cuban citizen in central Villa Clara province, continues to be the target of manipulation by the misinformation transnational companies.
Testimonies by relatives, medical experts and people in general confirm that Cuba is facing a vulgar media aggression.