US-Cuba Labor Solidarity – Building Relations with Cuban Labor
Fact Sheet on US-Cuba Relations
Passing Resolutions in Labor Organizations
Liberal US press and propaganda disinform about Cuba
Liberal US press and propaganda disinform about Cuba
London, Nov 27 (Prensa Latina) Propaganda against Cuba and disinformation campaigns on the island are most effective when they are published by supposedly liberal media, Canadian writer Keith Bolender warned here today.The power of the press is in confidence, and the reader hopes that a medium such as, for example, The New York Times, which they identify as liberal, does not lie to him, added Bolender, who believes that the matter is even more dangerous in The United States, as its citizens, he said, have no chance of freely traveling to Cuba to contrast the information.
In this regard, the journalist recalled the articles favorable to the lifting of the US blockade published by the influential New York newspaper during the administration of President Barack Obama.
According to Bolender, for whom the American press is another corporate institution such as the Stock Exchange, those writings were part of the same government strategy that sought to cause a regime change on the island.
One of the biggest myths is that the corporate press always tells the truth, said the writer, who since the beginning of November has toured the United Kingdom to present his most recent book, as part of a tour sponsored by the Solidarity Campaign with Cuba.
In ‘Manufacturing the Enemy’… Bolender scrutinizes the origins of media hostility against the economic, political and socialist system established in the Caribbean country after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, and provides data on the propaganda of the so-called American and Western free press.
He says that one of the reasons that motivated him to write it was when it was made public that the United States Government paid journalists from The Miami Herald to write articles against the five Cubans who had been arrested in 1998 under assumptions of spying charges.
In the author’s opinion, it is scandalous the way in which the South Florida media tried to influence the jury, and public opinion, even before the trial.
The problem is there were so many incidents in 60 years of anti-Cuban propaganda, and every time I was going to publish it something else came out, such as the alleged sonic attacks against US diplomats in Havana, or the creation by Washington of The Zunzuneo social network, to try undermine the Cuban government, he said.
Although it mostly focuses on the coverage of Cuba made by the United States corporate press, the book refers to articles published in Canadian and British media.
Bolender, who worked for The Toronto Star, is also the author of Voices From the Other Side. An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba, it includes the testimony of 75 victims of the terrorist attacks against the Caribbean island; and from Cuba under Siege, about the effects on the Cuban people of more than 50 years of hostility from the United States.
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New U.S. slander campaign against Cuba
New U.S. slander campaign against Cuba
Given the resistance of the Cuban people, a media effort is mounted to distract attention from failed U.S. attempts to force the Cuban people to surrender by reinforcing the blockade and depriving us of fuel
For several weeks now, the United States government has been conducting a new slander campaign to discredit Cuba, as part of its policy of increased hostility toward our country. Given the resistance of the Cuban people, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the capitalwith optimism, a media effort is being mounted to distract attention from failed U.S. attempts to force the Cuban people to surrender by reinforcing the blockade and depriving us of fuel.
Being used as a pretext is the arrest of counter-revolutionary José Daniel Ferrer, a salaried agent of the United States, with a long history of provocative actions, disruption of public order, and violations of the law.
The U.S. embassy in Cuba has been the fundamental vehicle of attention, orientation, and financing of José Daniel Ferrer’s conduct, clearly interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs, openly inciting violence, promoting the disruption of order and contempt for the law by this citizen. The head of the diplomatic mission personally directs Ferrer’s activity.
It is well known that, far from devoting its efforts to promoting bilateral ties, protecting the interests of the U.S. people and their government, and the development of peaceful relations between states, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba, and particularly its chargé d’affaires, have in recent months focused on a failed effort to recruit mercenaries, promoting division and confusion among our people, identifying areas of the economy to attack with coercive measures, and attempting to slander and discredit the work of our government and the Revolution.
As usual, the practice of government officials repeating lies, over and over again, is a fundamental ingredient of the campaign.
José Daniel Ferrer was arrested by the police on October 1, in response to a complaint filed by a Cuban citizen, accusing Ferrer and three other individuals of abducting him for an entire night, and giving him such a severe beating that his subsequent hospitalization was required.
Ferrer is awaiting trial. He has received a visit from his wife and children, as appropriate in accordance with Cuban regulations on such legal situations. All references to his physical disappearance, to alleged physical abuse, to torture, or insufficient food, are absolutely false, lies deliberately conceived and disseminated by the United States government and its embassy in Havana. He has received proper medical assistance, performs regular physical exercises and, upon request, is provided religious attention.
For the record, it must be known, given his activity in the service of the United States government, that José Daniel Ferrer has a criminal history of violent behavior, totally unrelated to political motivations. He has recorded violations of the law dating back to 1993. These include attacks with physical violence on other citizens, including women, and public disorder, behaviors that have increased in recent years.
Clearly there is sufficient evidence of his crimes.
It is nothing new for the U.S. government to use people with these characteristics to conduct its subversive activities in Cuba, including slander campaigns with unscrupulous support from the corporate media.
Socialism must be anti-racist
Socialism must be anti-racist
Steps taken after the triumph of the Revolution, in January of 1959, dealt a devastating blow to the structural supports of racism • The other great battle is to implement educational and cultural methods that contribute to a new subjectivity
Sitting on a book fair shelf, the writing on a t-shirt caught my attention: Races do not exist; racism yes. In 1946, Fernando Ortiz wrote The Deception of Race, a key essay in the evolution of anthropological thought that led him to describe the Cuban ethnos in terms of full integration. He scientifically and conceptually dismantled the application of racial standards to classify human beings, and attempt to justify the superiority of one over another on the basis of skin color.
Half a century later, when the vanguard of the scientific community deciphered the human genome, the precocious assertion made by Ortiz was once again confirmed: there is only one race, the human race. External physical traits are determined by only 1% of our genes, thus it is absolutely unscientific and fallacious to attribute intellectual abilities or aptitudes to women and men of a certain pigmentation.
By that time, genetic studies of the Cuban population had advanced in the investigation of factors that affect human health. A rigorous investigation, led by Dr. Beatriz Marcheco, yielded, beyond the proposed initial objectives, a revealing result: “All Cubans,” emphasized the doctor after reporting the irrefutable data, “without a doubt” are mixed race, regardless of the color of the skin we have.”
Racism is a cultural construction that, in the Cuban case, is based on the heritage of a colonial past and the exploitation of African slave labor, forcefully brought to the island. The European white, who occupied the apex of the social pyramid, in the plantation economy, not only exploited and oppressed slaves, but also promoted the myth of racial inferiority of Blacks and their descendants. A myth that was accepted by most light-skinned Creoles and marked social practices during the colonial era, and later in the years of the neocolonial republic, a phenomenon linked to class divisions.
In a 1950 lecture, Ortiz also said, “In Cuba the most serious racism is undoubtedly against Blacks. Racisms are more aggravated against Blacks, in places where they are, or were, socially suppressed and some want to perpetuate this dependent condition. The blackest thing about being black lies not in the darkness of one’s skin, but in one’s social condition. The definition of black as a human type, as it is generally known and considered as the target of prejudice, departs from anthropology to enter politics. This must be done more for its social impact than its congenital nature. Blacks owe their blackness less to their dark ancestors, and more to their white contemporaries. Black is not so much about being born black but rather about being socially deprived of light. Being black is not only being black, but eclipsed and denigrated, as well.”
The revolutionary transformations that began after the January 1959 victory addressed this situation and largely reversed it. Many of the measures taken in those years dealt a devastating blow to the structural supports of racism.
On several occasions, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro publicly aired the issue. On March 29, 1959, when speaking during an event in Güines, he said: “We are a people of all colors and of no color; a people constituted of different racial components; how are we going to commit the stupidity and absurdity of harboring the discrimination virus? Here, in this crowd, I see whites, and I see blacks, because this is our people. The people are white, black, yellow, and this must be Cuba. This is what should prevail among us.”
However, the destruction of the foundation that gave rise to institutionalized and structural racism in the pre-revolutionary era was not accompanied by a transformation of subjectivity. It is not enough to proclaim equal rights and equal opportunity, to condemn acts of discrimination, if work is not done to change the mentality.
The historical leader of our Revolution, in the essential book One Hundred Hours with Fidel (2006), stated much later to Ignacio Ramonet: “We were naive enough to believe that establishing total, absolute equality before the law would put an end to discrimination. Because there are two discriminations, one that is subjective and one that is objective… The Revolution – despite the rights and guarantees achieved for all citizens of any ethnicity or origin – has not achieved the same success in the fight to eradicate differences in the social and economic status of the country’s black population. Blacks do not live in the best houses, they are still performing difficult and sometimes lower paying jobs, and fewer are receiving family remittances in foreign currency than their white compatriots. But I am satisfied with what we are doing to discover the causes, which, if we do not resolutely fight them, could tend to prolong marginalization in successive generations.”
The other great battle is to utilize educational and cultural methods that contribute, sooner rather than later, to this new subjectivity. At the same time, we cannot live with attitudes that, consciously or unconsciously, reveal the persistence of prejudices, evident in various areas of daily life, from work environments to television programs.
It is not possible to allow, for example, that in the essential non-state service sector, the hiring of young white women obviously predominates. In this case, sexism and racism join hands.
Nor is it possible to ignore, in a dialogue broadcast on television, that a black dancer is referred to as “blue” or that the presence of dancers of various skins colors in the country’s principal companies is described as “mulattocracy,” because when such things are taken lightly – irresponsibly, without thinking -sensibilities are injured.
The road is long, we know this, but it must be traveled step by step, without pause. On more than one occasion, over the years, Army General Raúl Castro has addressed the need to stimulate and promote the role of women and blacks and mixed race Cubans in the political, social and economic life of the country, and in the improvement of our social model. In the constitutive session of the National Assembly of People’s Power Ninth Legislature, April 18, 2018, after noting progress, he insisted that work must continue, and made a call to definitively resolve inherited problems related to the issue: “Things must be thought out,” he stated, “not just said and left to God’s goodwill. They are implemented or they are not implemented, insisting, looking for new methods, avoiding mistakes so we are not criticized in such a noble effort, and going back to think again and again, about another solution when we fail to solve the problem.”
Let us think and act accordingly. Let us recall a central concept expressed by that remarkable revolutionary intellectual who was Fernando Martínez Heredia: “The struggle for the deepening of socialism in Cuba must be anti-racist.”
National Network On Cuba Annual Meeting Final Declaration 10/20/19
National Network On Cuba Final Declaration October 20, 2019
The National Network On Cuba Annual Meeting took place in Washington DC on October 18-20, 2019.
The members who participated in this meeting representing 35 organizations in the United States met and shared activities from the previous year and planned for the coming year.
The Trump administration has made the blockade even more restrictive through the implementation of Title III of the Helms Burton Law and the further restrictions on travel, both by the ability of Cubans to travel to the U.S. and by the right of people from the U.S. to freely travel to Cuba. Furthermore, the recently announced measures prohibiting the use of U.S. manufactured spare parts may endanger air travel.
We were able to hear from Ambassador Cabañas and received updated information of the impact of the blockade from 1st Secretary Miguel Fraga.
We, NNOC member organizations having met in Washington DC re-affirm our commitment to raising awareness of the impact of U.S. policy toward Cuba and continue the campaign of defending Cuban sovereignty and self-determination.
Our members will attend and follow the Anti-Imperialist Conference taking place in Havana from November 1-3, and we salute the city of Havana on its 500th anniversary. We stand with the Cuban people who we are certain will again prevail in the November 2019 vote in the United Nations condemning United States policy toward Cuba.
Rafael Cancel Miranda Video re: Cuba
Please see video link with translations that was provided by the US Hands Off Venezuela South Florida Coalition for NNOC member use.
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Apreciada [compañera],
“Con mucho honor y gusto iría a la actividad en apoyo a Cuba y Venezuela pues en cuanto a ambos países hermanos pienso igual que ustedes. Desafortunadamente, existe una situación. Siempre he viajado con mi licencia de conducir y certificado de nacimiento, documentos que me identifican como lo que soy, puertorriqueño. Nunca he aceptado la imposición de la ciudadanía estadounidense, la cual fue rechazada por el parlamento puertorriqueño en su momento. Por lo tanto, nunca he usado pasaporte estadounidense y ya se ha anunciado que no se aceptará la licencia de conducir de Puerto Rico como identificación para abordar vuelos a Estados Unidos. Se aceptará una nueva tarjeta de conducir que identifica al viajero como ciudadano estadounidense, lo cual no soy. Por esta razón me es imposible estar presencialmente con ustedes.
“En cuanto a participar mediante videoconferencia, el 7 de noviembre estaré fuera de mi casa en San Juan para cumplir con un compromiso ya establecido. Lo que sí es posible, si ustedes lo entienden a bien, sería enviar un corto mensaje en vídeo previamente grabado a través de Whats App.
“Ahora, aparte, compañera, no sé si ustedes saben que por 4 años los agentes del gobierno estadounidense visitaron a Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores Rodríguez, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Oscar Collazo y a mi en nuestras respectivas prisiones federales para prometernos que si pedíamos perdón, nos excarcelarían inmediatamente. Todos respondíamos que los que tenían que pedir perdón eran ellos que fueron los que el 12 de mayo de 1898 bombardearon a San Juan matando a hombres y niños en las casas y en las calles de la ciudad. Al no lograr que pidiéramos perdón, nos ofrecían salir bajos condiciones. Nosotros respondíamos que ellos estaban en Puerto Rico ilegalmente y por lo tanto no aceptábamos condiciones. Salimos de la cárcel el 10 de septiembre de 1979 gracias a una intensa campaña y a un canje de prisioneros entre Fidel Castro y el Gobierno Revolucionario Cubano y la administración del presidente estadounidense James Carter. Así que salimos sin pedir perdón y sin aceptar condiciones.
“Defender a Cuba y a Venezuela es defender a toda Latinoamérica, incluyendo a Puerto Rico. Gracias por la solidaridad.”
Rafael Cancel Miranda — 13 octubre 2019 — San Juan, Puerto Rico
National Network On Cuba Forum: U.S. Imperialist Hands Off Cuba and Venezuela
African American Civil War Museum
1925 Vermont Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001
• José Ramón Cabañas, Cuban Ambassador
• Dr. Jourdy James, Cuban Economist
• James Harris, Delegate African-Cuba Solidarity Conference/Nigeria
• Nalda Vigezzi, Co-Chair NNOC
Endorsers: All African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), Socialist Workers Party, University of Maryland Latin American Studies Center, Partido Socialista por la Unidad/Socialist Unity Party, Peoples Power Assembly, African Awareness Association, Kwanzaa Association Inc, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Forum of Sao Paulo DC-MD-VA, and Pan-African Community Action (PACA).
Threats and coercion will not extract a single concession from Cuba
Threats and coercion will not extract a single concession from Cuba
Speech by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, during the general debate of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, September 28, 2019
Speech by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, during the general debate of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, September 28, 2019
(Council of State Transcript)
Mr. President;
Heads of state and government;
Distinguished delegates;
I would like to convey my sincere condolences to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas for the loss of life and the terrible destruction caused by Hurricane Dorian. I call upon the international community to mobilize resources in order to provide assistance to that country.
Mr. President:
I want to denounce, before this General Assembly of the United Nations, that just a few months ago the U.S. government began to implement, criminal, non-conventional measures to prevent the arrival of fuel shipments to our country from different markets, by resorting to threats and persecution against companies that transport fuel, flag states, states of registration, as well as shipping and insurance companies.
As a result, we are facing severe difficulties in ensuring the supply of fuel which the everyday-life of the country demands; and have been forced to adopt temporary emergency measures that could only be implemented in a well-organized country, with a united, solidary people, ready to defend itself from foreign aggression and preserve the social justice we have achieved.
In the course of last year, the U.S. government has steadily and qualitatively increased its hostile actions and the blockade of Cuba. Additional obstacles to foreign trade have been erected and persecution increased of banking and financial relations we have with the rest of the world. Extreme restrictions on travel have been imposed, and on any sort of interaction between the two peoples. Relations and contact with their home country have been hindered for Cubans living in the United States.
To date, the strategy of imperialism against Cuba has been guided by the infamous Memorandum issued in 1960 by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory, which I quote: “… There is no effective political opposition (…) The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support (from the government) is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship (…) every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life (…) denying money and supplies to Cuba to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government”.
The illegal Helms Burton Act of 1996 guides the aggressive behavior of the United States against Cuba. Its essence is a brazen attempt to question Cuba’s right to self-determination and national independence.
It likewise envisions the imposition of the U.S. legal authority and the jurisdiction of its courts on Cuba’s commercial and financial relations with any country, thus riding roughshod over international law and the national jurisdiction of Cuba and third states, while establishing the alleged supremacy of the law and the political will of the U.S.
The economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the U.S. continues to be the principal obstacle to our country’s development and progress in the process to update the socialist economic and social development model that our country has designed.
Every year the U.S. government allocates tens of millions of dollars from the federal budget to political subversion, with the purpose of creating confusion and weakening the unity of our people, articulated with a well-coordinated propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the Revolution, its leaders and glorious historical legacy; disparaging the economic and social policies that support development and justice, and destroying the ideas of socialism.
Last Thursday, on the basis of crude slanders, the State Department announced that the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, will not be granted a visa to enter this country. This is an action that is void of any practical effect, meant as an affront to Cuba’s dignity and the sentiments of our people. This is nothing but vote-catching crumb tossed to the Cuban-American right. Nonetheless, the offensive, obvious falsehoods being used in an attempt to justify this move, which we strongly reject, are a reflection of the lowness and degeneracy to which this administration resorts, drowning in a sea of corruption, lies, and immorality.
All of these are actions and behaviors that infringe upon international law and violate the UN Charter.
The most recent pretext, reiterated right here, last Tuesday, by the President of the United States Donald Trump was that Cuba is responsible for the failure of plans to overthrow the Bolivarian government of Venezuela. With the purpose of dismissing the heroic feats of the Venezuelan people, imperialist spokespersons repeat, over and over again, the vulgar slander that our country has “between 20 to 25 thousand troops in Venezuela,, and that “Cuban imperialism exercises control” over the country.
A few minutes ago, the President of Brazil, at this same podium, read a script of false allegations drafted in Washington, increasing that shameless figure to “around 60 thousand Cuban troops” in Venezuela.
As part of its anti-Cuban obsession, the current U.S. administration, echoed by Brazil, is attacking international medical cooperation programs that Cuba conducts with tens of developing countries, which are designed to assist the neediest communities, based on solidarity and the free and voluntary will of hundreds of thousands of Cuban professionals, programs which are being implemented according to cooperation agreements signed with the governments of those countries. These have enjoyed, for many years now, the recognition of the international community, the UN and the World Health Organization as a good example of South-South Cooperation.
As a result, many Brazilian communities were deprived of free quality health care which, under the “More Doctors” program was offered by thousands of Cuban professionals.
This period has not been exempted from the most shameless threats and coercion, or immoral invitations for our country to betray its principles and international commitments in exchange for oil under preferential conditions and questionable good friends.
In commemorating the 60th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, when Cubans achieved our true and final independence, First Secretary Raúl Castro said, and I quote: “…we Cubans are ready to resist a confrontational situation, which we do not want; and hope that more lucid minds in the U.S. government can prevent it,” end of quote.
We have reiterated that, even under the present circumstances, we will not renounce our determination to develop a civilized relation with the United States, based on mutual respect and the recognition of our profound differences. We know this is the desire of our people and the feelings shared by the majority of the U.S. people and Cubans who live in this country.
I likewise reiterate that no economic aggression, threats, or coercion, no matter how harsh, will extract a single concession from us. Those who know the history of Cubans during the long struggle to achieve emancipation and their steadfast defense of the freedom and justice they have conquered, will understand, beyond any doubt, the significance, honest,y and authority of these strong beliefs and ideas treasured by our people.
Mr. President:
Bilateral relations between Cuba and Venezuela are based on mutual respect and true solidarity. We support, without any hesitation, the legitimate government headed by Nicolás Maduro Moros and the civic- military union of the Bolivarian, Chavista people.
We condemn the behavior of the U.S. government toward Venezuela, focused on the encouragement of coups, assassination of the country’s leaders, economic warfare, and sabotage of power plants. We reject the implementation of unilateral, coercive measures and the seizure of the country’s assets, companies, and export revenues. These actions are a serious threat to regional peace and security, as well as a direct attack on the Venezuelan people, facing the cruelest aggression meant to force surrender.
We call upon everyone to raise awareness of these facts and demand the end of unilateral coercive measures, reject the use of force and encourage a respectful dialogue with the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela based on the principles of international law and the constitutional order of that country.
A few days ago, the United States and a handful of countries decided to activate the obsolete Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), which envisages the use of the military force. This is an absurd decision that jeopardizes regional peace and security while intending to justify, through a legal trick, interference in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
It is also a gross violation of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace that heads of state and government of Latin America and the Caribbean signed in Havana, in January of 2014. Of similar significance is the U.S. decision to bring resurrect the nefarious Monroe Doctrine, an instrument of imperialist domination, under which several military interventions and invasions, coups d’états, military dictatorships, and the most atrocious crimes were perpetrated in Our America.
As we witnessed a few days ago in this Assembly, the U.S. President usually attacks socialism in his public statements, with clearly electoral purposes, while promoting a McCarthyist intolerance of those who believe in the possibility of a better world and entertain the hope of living in peace in sustainable harmony with nature and in solidarity with all others.
President Trump ignores or intends to overlook the fact that neoliberal capitalism is responsible for the increasing social and economic inequality affecting even the most developed societies and that, given its nature, fosters corruption, social marginalization, a rise in crime, racial intolerance, and xenophobia. He forgets, or does not know, that capitalism begot fascism, apartheid, and imperialism.
The U.S. government leads gross persecution of political leaders and popular and social movements through disparaging campaigns and outrageously manipulated and politically motivated judicial processes to end policies that, through sovereign control over natural resources and the gradual elimination of social differences, made it possible to build more just and fraternal societies, thus becoming a way out of the economic and social crisis, and a hope for the peoples of the Americas.
Just as they did with former Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, whose freedom we demand.
We reject Washington attempts to destabilize the government of Nicaragua and reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with President Daniel Ortega.
We express our solidarity with all Caribbean nations calling for legitimate reparations for the horrendous scars of slavery, as well as the just, special, and differentiated treatment they deserve.
We ratify our historical commitment to the self determination and independence of the sister people of Puerto Rico.
We support Argentina’s legitimate claim for its sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia, and South Sandwich Islands.
Mr. President:
The behavior of the current U.S. administration and its strategy of military and nuclear domination are a threat to international peace and security, maintaining almost 800 military bases around the world; promoting projects to militarize outer space and cyberspace, as well as the covert and illegal use of ICTs to attack other states. The U.S. withdrawal from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Nuclear Missiles (INF) and the immediate commencement of intermediate range missiles tests are intended to launch a new arms race.
The President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, said last year, before this Assembly, and I quote: “…The exercise of multilateralism and the full respect for the principles and rules of international law to advance towards a multipolar, democratic, equitable world are required to ensure peaceful coexistence, preserve international peace and security, and find lasting solutions to systemic problems.”
We reiterate our unrestricted support to a comprehensive, just, and lasting solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, based on the creation of two states, so that the Palestinian people can exercise the right to self determination and have an independent , sovereign state based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. We reject the unilateral action of the United States to establish its diplomatic mission in the city of Jerusalem. We condemn violence by Israeli forces against civilians in Palestine and the threat of annexation of occupied territories in the West Bank.
We reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with the Saharan people and our support to a solution to the question of Western Sahara so that it can exercise the right to self-determination and live in peace in its own territory.
We support the search for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the situation imposed on Syria, without any foreign interference, with full respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We reject any direct or indirect intervention without the consent of the legitimate authorities of that country.
We express our solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran, facing an escalation of U.S. aggression. We reject the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the Iran Nuclear Agreement. We call for dialogue and cooperation based on the principles of international law.
We welcome the process of dialogue between the two Koreas. Only through dialogue, without pre-conditions, and negotiations, will it be possible to achieve a lasting political solution on the Korean peninsula. We strongly condemn the imposition of unilateral and unjust sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The continued expansion of NATO to the Russian borders creates serious dangers, which are further aggravated by the arbitrary sanctions that we reject.
Mr. President:
We support and admire the recent call made by students and youth for a march in New York. Climate change, with some its effects already irreversible, is a matter of survival, particularly for small developing island states.
Capitalism is unsustainable. Its irrational and unsustainable production and consumption patterns and the growing, unjust concentration of wealth constitute the main threat to the ecological balance of the planet. There can be no sustainable development without social justice.
Special and differentiated treatment for the countries of the South in international economic relations can no longer be overlooked.
The emergency in the Amazon compels us to look for solutions through the cooperation of all, without exclusions or politicization, with full respect for the sovereignty of states.
Mr. President:
There is a proliferation of corruption within political systems and electoral models, which are ever more distant from the will of peoples. Powerful and exclusive minorities, particularly corporate groups, decide the character and composition of governments, parliaments, justice systems, and law enforcement entities.
The U.S. government, after its failed attempt to dominate the Human Rights Council, decided to withdraw from the body to further hinder dialogue and cooperation on this matter.
This is not news that should surprise us. The U.S. is a country where human rights are systematically – and many a time deliberately and flagrantly – violated:
-36,383 persons -100 per day- were killed by firearms in this country in 2018, while the government protects those who manufacture and market them at the expense of citizens’ security.
– 91,757 persons die every year of heart diseases because they lack appropriate treatment.
– Infant and maternal mortality rates among African-Americans are twice as high as those of the white population.
– 28 million persons do not have medical insurance or real access to health services.
– 32 million citizens cannot read or write functionally.
– 2.2 million U.S. citizens are in prison.
-4.7 million are on probation and 10 million are arrested every year.
It is understandable why the President is concerned about attacking socialism.
We reject the politicization, selectivity, punitive approaches and double standards in addressing the human rights question. Cuba will remain committed to the realization of the rights of all persons and peoples to peace, life, self-determination, and development.
We must prevent the imposition of a single totalitarian, overpowering cultural model that destroys national cultures, identities, history, memory, symbols, and individualities and conceals the structural problems of capitalism that lead to increasing, lacerating inequality.
The so-called “cognitive” capitalism offers the same. Digital capitalism crowns the world’s value chains; concentrates the ownership of digital data; exploits identity, information, and knowledge, and jeopardizes the already analogically diminished freedom and democracy. We need to develop new types of humanistic and counter-hegemonic thinking of our own, as well as decisive political action to articulate popular mobilization on the web, in the streets, and at the ballot box.
Independent states need to exercise their sovereignty in cyberspace, abandon the illusion of the so-called “network society” or “access era” and democratize internet governance.
Mr. President:
The universal and profound thoughts of the Apostle of Cuba’s independence, José Martí, continue to inspire and guide younger generations of Cubans. His words, written a few hours before he was killed in combat, are particularly relevant, and I quote: “Every day now I am in danger of giving my life for my country and duty, as I understand it and have the spirit to carry it out – in order to prevent, by the timely independence of Cuba, that the United States extending its hold across the Antilles and falls with greater force on the lands of our America. All that I have done thus far, and all I will do, is for that purpose.”
Words written by Antonio Maceo in 1888 have a similar strength, and I quote: “Whoever tries to conquer Cuba will gather only the dust of her blood-soaked soil, if he does not perish in the fight.”
This is the same, only Cuban Revolution, commanded by Fidel Castro Ruz, which is now headed by First Secretary Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
And if at this point there is someone still attempting to force the Cuban Revolution to surrender, or hoping that the new generations of Cubans will betray their past and renounce their future, we repeat, with the same vigor as Fidel: Homeland or Death! We will triumph!
Cuban Foreign Minister: Warming with US is Irreversible
Cuban foreign minister: Warming with US is irreversible
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla talks during an interview with The Associated Press, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019 in New York. The foreign minister says he believes improvements in relations with the United States are irreversible despite the Trump administration’s hardening of the embargo on the island. (Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)
NEW YORK — Cuba’s foreign minister said Tuesday that he believes improvements in relations with the United States are irreversible despite the Trump administration’s hardening of the embargo on the island.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla told The Associated Press that while the U.S. administration has cut off most communication with Cuba and is trying to pressure the communist government by restricting the flow of oil, progress made under former U.S. President Barack Obama has not been undone.
“I would describe myself as extremely optimistic,” Rodríguez said. “There’s a historical trend that’s irreversible.”
He said relations between the two countries would never return to the way they were before December 2014, when Obama and then-Cuban President Raúl Castro declared that they would reestablish diplomatic relations.
“There have been levels of communication and mutual familiarity between the peoples of both countries that are irreversible,” Rodríguez said.
He said Cuba was prepared for a worsening of tensions during the presidential campaign season because the Trump administration believes that Cuban Americans in South Florida support a hard line on the island.
He called that an “erroneous political calculation.”
“I believe it’s proven that the majority of Cubans in Florida support the advances in the normalization of relations and the lifting of the blockade, and the younger they are, the more they support it,” Rodríguez said. “Regardless, political moments are ephemeral. We have the political will to advance without delay.”
He also says Cuba is finding ways to buy oil despite U.S. attempts to stop it by imposing sanctions on shipping firms and threatening third countries, insurance firms and others with retaliation for helping Cuba obtain petroleum.
Oil shortages led to cutbacks in government fuel consumption and distribution last month, resulting in long lines at gas stations and reductions in public transport.
“We’ve increased our ability to transport (oil). The way the world works today makes it impossible for the United States to impede the arrival of oil tankers in Cuba,” Rodríguez said.
The Trump administration says it is trying to force Cuba to stop supporting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the U.S. says receives military and intelligence help from Cuba.
The Cuban foreign minister flatly denied that his country was providing any military, security or intelligence help to Venezuela, contradicting Trump’s Sept. 24 accusation before the U.N. General Assembly that “Maduro is a Cuban puppet protected by Cuban bodyguards.”
“We don’t have a military presence in Venezuela. We don’t participate or assist military, security or intelligence operations,” Rodríguez said. “The relationship between Cuba and Venezuela is a pretext. … They’re attacking the successful (Cuban) political model, which works, which is a successful economic and social model, because it’s withstood six decades despite the (U.S.) blockade.”
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