Almeida lives today more than ever

Fidel Castro

I have been watching for hours now on television the tribute that the entire country is paying to Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque. I think that facing death was for him just another duty as so many others he discharged throughout his life. He did not know neither did we how much sadness the news of his physical absence would bring to us.

I was privileged to know that young black militant worker who would successively be the leader of a revolutionary group, a combatant at the Moncada, a comrade in prison, a platoon captain at the time of the Granma landing, an officer with the Rebel Army  –held back by a shot on his chest during the violent combat at Uvero— the Commander of a column marching on to create the Third Eastern Front, and the comrade sharing the leadership of our forces in the last successful battles to overthrow the tyranny.

I was an exceptional witness to his exemplary conduct for over half a century of heroic and victorious resistance in the struggle against the bandits, during the Giron counteroffensive, the Missile Crisis, the internationalist missions and the resistance to the imperialist blockade.

It was a pleasure to listen to some of his songs, especially the one particularly emotional where he bade farewell to human dreams in response to the homeland’s call to “win or die”. I was not aware that he had composed over 300 songs in addition to his literary work, a source of historical narratives and enjoyable readings. He defended principles of justice that will be defended at any time and age while human beings breathe on Earth.

Let’s not say that Almeida is dead! Almeida lives today more than ever!

Fidel Castro Ruz

September 13, 2009

3:12 P.M.

Source: AIN

The 30th Sandinista anniversary and the San José proposal

Reflection of Fidel Castro

THE Honduran coup d’état promoted by the ultra-right wing of the United States – which was maintaining the structure created by Bush in Central America – and supported by the Department of State, was not developing well due to the energetic resistance of the people.
The criminal adventure, unanimously condemned by world opinion and international agencies, could not be sustained.

The memory of the atrocities committed in recent decades by dictatorships that the United States promoted, instructed and armed in our hemisphere, was still fresh.

During the Clinton administration and in subsequent years the empire’s efforts were directed toward the plan of imposing the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) on all the Latin American countries via the so-called Summits of the Americas.

The intention to compromise the hemisphere with a free trade agreement failed. The economies of other regions of the world grew at a good rate and the dollar lost its exclusive hegemony as a privileged hard currency. The brutal world financial crisis complicated the situation. It was in those circumstances that the military coup came about in Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere.

After two weeks of growing popular struggle, the United States maneuvered to gain time. The Department of State assigned Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, the task of aiding the military coup in Honduras, under siege from vigorous but peaceful popular pressure. Never had a similar action in Latin America met such a response.
The fact that Arias holds the title of Nobel Peace Prize laureate had weight in the calculations of the government of the United States.
The real history of Oscar Arias indicates that he is a neoliberal politician, talented and with a facility for words, extremely calculated and a loyal ally of the United States.

Defend Comrade Mengistu!

On the struggle of our Ethiopian brothers

by

Ahmed Khan

Comrade Mengistu Haile Mariam, a prominent opponent of colonialism, whose regime provided invaluable assistance to the liberation of Zimbabwe from the colonialist white supremacist regime of Ian Smith, now faces an uncertain future within the very country he helped liberate. Since 1991, when the Derg regime was overthrown and replaced by the neo-colonialist regime of Meles Zinawi, Comrade Mengistu has been in refuge in Zimbabwe. Seldom has a historical figure been maligned on the scale that comrade Mengistu has been. On December 2006, the Federal High Court in Ethiopia tried Mengistu and 24 other members of the Derg regime (1974-1991) in absentia. This kangaroo court brought forward charges ranging from genocide, homicide and illegal imprisonment to illegal property seizure. Mengistu and 11 other members of the Derg, including Legesse Afsaw, former Ethiopian vice-president Fisseha Desta and former Prime Minister Fikresellassie Wogderes, were sentenced to death. However, the ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, appreciative of the historical role of this great man and the progressive regime he headed, has refused to extradite him to Ethiopia, where he faces certain torture and death at the hands of a vindictive regime representing the interests of the very classes he waged a titanic struggle against. However, with Zimbabwe itself the victim of an insidious policy of regime-change, the future for the revolutionary looks increasingly uncertain. True to its nature, the pro-imperialist opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has included as part of its future policy the extradition of Mengistu back to Ethiopia. One can only remark that this is a shameless example of utter ingratitude.

To understand why Comrade Mengistu remains such a threatening figure for Zinawi’s compradorial regime, we must go beyond the historical re-writing of Ethiopian history that the Imperialists and Zinawi’s regime have attempted and reclaim the progressive, indeed revolutionary, legacy of the Derg regime.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

The following news item caught my attention lately due to the reference to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg:

The Cuban and the US flags fluttered together on June 19 by a monument dedicated to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were unjustly executed 55 years ago by fascist forces in the United States.

The vice-president of the Cuban Friendship Institute, Basilio Gutiérrez, and Georgina Chavau, an official from the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, placed a wreath by the monolith located at Zapata and Paseo Streets, in Havana, as a tribute of the Cuban people to the first victims of US fascism.

The president of the Cuban Peace and Sovereignty Movement, José Ramón Rodríguez, condemned the act of genocide and repressive policy by the US administration, which acted with absolute impunity by condemning the married couple -Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – to the electric chair. He added that it is the same policy that maintains five young Cubans incarcerated in the US for fighting terrorism, while at the same time that country protects and supports perpetrators of crimes against humanity, like Luis Posada Carriles.

Surrounded by a network of lies, denunciations, and false evidence, the Rosenbergs were treated by McCarthyism as two dangerous pro-Soviet spies. Declared guilty of giving the former Soviet Union military secrets, related to the construction of the atomic bomb, Ethel and Julius were executed on June 19, 1953.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg faced their death with an impressive courage and dignity while standing strong to their principles. In the last letter to their children, they wrote:

Your lives must teach you, too, that good cannot flourish in the midst of evil; that freedom and all the things that go to make up a truly satisfying and worthwhile life, must sometime be purchased very dearly. Be comforted then that we were serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.

So powerful was their message that the couple found an permanent place in the poetry of sub-continent as Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote one of his most famous poems after being inspired by the letters of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The enligh translation of the poem, Hum jo tareeq rahoon mein mare gaye, is as follows:

We, Who Were Slain In Unlit Pathways

Wishing for the roses of your lips
we offered ourselves to a gallows’ twig
Longing for the radiance of your glowing hands
we let ourselves be slain in unlit pathways

On the gallows away from our face
darted the redness of your ruby lips,
waved the playfulness of your youthful locks,
shone the glow of the silver palms.

When the evening of suffering settled in your alleys
we came, as far as our steps could bring
Words of poetry on our lips, a lamp of anguish in our hearts
Our suffering was a testimony to your beauty
See, we were faithful to our pledge
We, who were slain in unlit pathways.

If failure was our destined end
your love was indeed our own doing.
Who is to blame if all the roads of passion
led to the killing grounds of separation.

Picking up our flags from these grounds
will march forth more caravans of your lovers
For whose journeys’ sake, our footsteps have
shortened the lengths of the agonizing quest
For whose sake we have made universal
by losing our lives, the pledge to your faithfulness
We, who were slain in unlit pathways.