Amigos de Cuba se reúnen con familiares de los Cinco
El grupo multigeneracional conformado por brigadistas de una decena de países aclaró dudas sobre el amañado proceso judicial en Estados Unidos y manifestó su compromiso en la lucha por la liberación de los cinco luchadores antiterroristas cubanos-Nyliam Vázquez García El grito de libertad para los Cinco antiterroristas cubanos injustamente encarcelados en EE.UU. se escuchó en las voces de los casi 200 amigos solidarios con Cuba durante el encuentro con sus familiares en el campamento internacional Julio Antonio Mella.El grupo multigeneracional conformado por brigadistas de una decena de países se juntó en el teatro del lugar para aclarar dudas sobre el amañado proceso judicial, comentar las experiencias de trabajo en los comités de solidaridad de sus países y, especialmente, para renovar el compromiso de lucha permanente por la libertad de Gerardo, René, Tony, Fernando y Ramón.«Pensamos que ustedes van a llevarse el mensaje en el corazón y que nos van a ayudar», expresó Mirta Rodríguez, madre de Antonio Guerrero, a los brigadistas, a quienes recordó la importancia de la movilización internacional para que los Cinco regresen a la patria.Por su parte, Olga Salanueva, esposa de René, comentó que a estas alturas —tras casi 11 años de ensañamiento y con una larga lista de manipulaciones durante todo el proceso— los familiares no confían en la justicia de Norteamérica. También exhortó a crear nuevas iniciativas para romper el silencio en torno al caso por parte de las grandes trasnacionales mediáticas.«Tenemos que lograr que se hable de los Cinco dentro de EE.UU. (…) ellos representan el honor y la dignidad del pueblo cubano», indicó Olga.Por su parte, la colombiana Amparo Álvarez, presidenta del Comité Amigos de Cuba de la ciudad de Cali, leyó un mensaje a nombre de la XVI Brigada Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Trabajo Voluntario y Solidaridad con Cuba, de felicitación a René González por su 53 cumpleaños y a nuestro Comandante en Jefe por sus 83, en el que además se exigió la libertad inmediata para los Cinco. El texto también fue apoyado por la Brigada canadiense de Trabajo Voluntario Ernesto Guevara.

Cuban Five Send Happy Birthday Message to Fidel Castro
HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 13 (acn) The five Cuban antiterrorist fighters imprisoned in the US sent Happy Birthday letters to Cuban historical leader Fidel Castro in which they noted: “We’ll never stop being proud heirs to your work.”The letters sent on the occasion of the 83 birthday anniversary of the Commander in Chief were published today by Granma newspaper.Fernando Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five, wished Fidel “all the happiness of the world, as you deserve,” in his message sent from Indiana’s Terre Haute Federal Correctional Center, where he is serving an unfair sentence, like his colleagues.“It is moving your commitment to the people and mankind expressed through your tireless fight that is today held in the fields of ideas and others, when you could have, justifiably, decided to rest,” said Fernando.“Being the revolutionary fighter you are, the maker of your own dreams and hopes, the creator of works of justice, I’m sure that you, fairly enough, consider yourself a happy person, and it is that happiness, but multiplied and permanent, that I'm whishing you for today.” Meanwhile, Rene Gonzalez said in his message that “the Yankee’s latest mean action will not cast a shadow on our spirits depriving us from the happiness of celebrating your birthday together with all the progressive people of the world and as part of your people that admires you and love you.”He added: “Beyond the meanest actions of our captors, we’ll never stop being proud heirs to your work and bearers of your example. We can promise you that you will never hear from our cells a single expression of regret that would suggest the slightest concession of our principles to such a despicable enemy.”Another of the five Cuban prisoners, Gerardo Hernandez, sent a message to Fidel accompanied with a drawing that includes the Commander in Chief emblem, and he highlights Fidel’s universal magnitude. In the letter Gerardo wrote: “Your example guides us and we will never stray from our path no matter how long and steep it might be. Happy 83rd Birthday!”

La Historia no contada de los “Cinco”: Justicia en el país de las maravillas
Publicado originalmente en el diario digital Counterpunch: “The Cuban Five: Forbidden Heroes. Justice in Wonderland”
http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2009/08/14/la-historia-no-contada-de-los-cinco-justicia-en-el-pais-de-las-maravillas/,

Un regalo de Antonio Guerrero para Fidel
http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2009/08/14/un-regalo-de-antonio-guerrero-para-fidel/,

Pastores por la Paz publican nuevas fotos de Fidel en honor al cumpleaños del líder revolucionario
http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2009/08/13/pastores-por-la-paz-publica-nuevas-fotos-de-fidel-en-honor-al-cumpleanos-del-lider-revolucionario/,

Reflection by Fidel Castro
-A just cause to defend and the hope of moving forward
In the last few weeks, the current president of the United States has been striving to demonstrate that the crisis is yielding as a result of his efforts to confront the grave problem that the United States and the world inherited from his predecessor.Nearly all economists are making reference to the economic crisis that began in October 1929. The preceding one came at the end of the 19th century. The highly generalized tendency of U.S. politicians is to believe that as soon as the banks have sufficient dollars to grease the machinery of the productive apparatus, everything will march toward an idyllic and never-dreamed of world.The differences between the so-called economic crisis of the 30s and the current one are many, but I will confine myself to just one of the most important.At the end of World War I, the dollar, based on the gold standard, replaced the pound sterling, due to the vast sums in gold that Britain spent on the war. The great economic crisis in the United States came barely 12 years after that war.Franklin D. Roosevelt, from the Democratic Party, won to a good extent aided by the crisis, as did Obama in the present crisis. Following the Keynes theory, the former injected money into circulation, constructed public works such as highways, dams and others of unquestionable benefit, which increased spending, demand for products, employment and the GDP for years, but he did not obtain the funding by printing dollar bills. He obtained it from taxes and with part of the monies deposited in banks. He sold U.S. bonds with guaranteed interest, which made them attractive to buyers.The price of gold, which stood at 20 dollars per troy ounce in 1929, was raised by Roosevelt to 35 dollars as an internal guarantee of U.S. dollar bills.On the basis of that guarantee in physical gold, the Bretton Woods agreement emerged in 1944, giving the powerful country the privilege of printing hard currency at a time when the rest of the world was bankrupt. The United States possessed more than 80% of the world’s gold.I do not need to recall what came afterward, from the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the 64th anniversary of that act of genocide has just passed – to the coup d’état in Honduras and the seven military bases that the government of the United States proposes to install in Colombia. The real fact is that, in 1971, under the Nixon administration, the gold standard was eliminated and the unlimited printing of dollars turned into the greatest fraud of humanity. In virtue of the Bretton Woods privilege, by unilaterally suppressing convertibility, the United States is paying with paper for the goods and services that it acquires in the world. It is true that, in exchange for dollars it also provides goods and services, but it is also a fact that, since the elimination of the gold standard, that country’s dollar bill, quoted at $35 per troy ounce, has lost almost 30 times its value and 48 times the value that it had in 1929. The rest of the countries of the world have suffered those losses, their natural resources and money have financed rearmament and, to a large extent, underwritten the empire’s wars. Suffice it to note that, according to conservative calculations, the quantity of bonds supplied to other countries are in excess of $3 trillion, and the public debt, which continues growing, is in excess of $11 trillion.While competing amongst themselves, the empire and its capitalist allies have made people believe that the anti-crisis measures constitute formulas of redemption. But Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, China and India are raising funds not by selling Treasury bonds or printing money, but by applying other formulas to defend their currencies and their markets, sometimes with great austerity for their populations. The overwhelming majority of the developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are the ones who are paying for the broken dishes, by supplying non-renewable natural resources, sweat and human lives.The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the clearest example of what can happen to a developing country in the jaws of the wolf: in the most recent summit, Mexico was unable to obtain solutions for its immigrants in the United States, nor permission to travel to Canada without a visa.However, under the crisis, full force is being acquired by the largest FTA [Free Trade Agreement] on a world level: the World Trade Organization, which grew under the triumphant notes of neoliberalism to the lofty heights of world finances and idyllic dreams.On the other hand, BBC Mundo reported yesterday, August 11, that 1,000 UN officials, meeting in Bonn, Germany, announced that they are trying to prepare the way for an agreement on climate change in December of this year, but that time is running out.Ivo de Boer, the highest-ranking UN official on climate change, stated that the summit is only 119 days away and that "we have an enormous number of divergent interests, scant time for discussion, a complicated document on the table (200 pages) and funding problems…""The developing nations are insisting that the greatest volume of gases producing the greenhouse effect originate in the industrialized world."The developing world is affirming its need for financial aid to do battle with climatic effects.Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, stated: "If urgent measures are not taken to combat climate change, they could lead to violence and mass disturbances throughout the planet."Climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters.""The scarcity of water will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition is going to lay waste to a large part of the developing countries."A New York Times article on August 9 explained that "The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in the coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say."Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.""‘It gets real complicated real quickly,’ said Amanda J. Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning."One can deduce from The New York Times article that not everyone in the Senate is as yet convinced that it is a real problem, one that has been totally ignored by the U.S. government to date since it was approved 10 years ago in Kyoto.Some people are saying that the economic crisis is the end of imperialism; perhaps that should be proposed if it doesn’t signify something worse for our species.In my judgment, it will always be best to have a just cause to defend and the hope of moving forward.
-Fidel Castro Ruz - August 12, 2009

Hats off to Fidel Castro
Kamna Arora -
http://www.zeenews.com/zee-exclusive/2009-08-13/554737news.html,
For the USA, he is a brutal dictator. But for me, he is a living legend, a strongman I want to shake hands with. He is none other than Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, commonly known as Fidel Castro. The former president of Cuba is truly a great political survivor. Fidel Castro is a man of strength, a man of ideas, and a man of revolution. He is an inspirer of political moves. With military fatigues, beard and cigar, the charismatic Castro is sui generis. Believe me, he does not need any description. The name has been haunting the United States of America for years. But for Cubans, he is a revolutionary hero. Born on August 13, 1926, Castro is the world’s longest serving political leader. Reports claim that US agencies had pondered over many ‘poisonous’ ways to claim Castro’s life. Some of them included poisoned cigar, poisoned toiletries, poisoned scuba diving wet suit, and mind-altering drugs. But nothing could kill the hero. In fact, Castro survived no fewer than 10 US presidents since he assumed power in 1959 until he transferred the political seat to his brother, Raul Castro, in 2008. According to Fidel Castro’s ex-security chief, Fabian Escalante, the former Cuban president survived no lesser than 638 real or planned assassination attempts. Tired of making one-after-another failed attempts to kill Castro, the US is said to have become so fatigued that it is believed to have decided to give up all attempts on him and wait for his age to catch up and natural death to come. The story of Castro’s life is not only interesting, but motivating too. He is the man who has witnessed those moments and events that are said to be the turning points in the modern history. He has seen revolutionary movements, struggle between communism and capitalism, the darkest days of the Cold War, to name a few. Moreover, he still is a bearded irritant for the Yankees, located 90 miles to the north over the Straits of Florida. What interests me the most about Fidel Castro is the fact that he is the communist who successfully lived through the fall of communism. In this era of globalisation, he is still holding the hands of communism to ensure indifference within the Cuban society. Moreover, he is known for his hours-long passionate speeches. His first speech to the Cubans was seven-hours long. He is a miraculous orator, who is full of conviction and force. Nothing could break him, neither US embargoes nor any assassination attempts. He untiringly stood up for the exploited of Latin America and supported revolutions even in Angola and Ethiopia. His eternal struggle to bring revolutions against oppressors in any part of the world can never be forgotten. Graduated from the Havana University as a lawyer, Castro was shaken by the difference between his own affluent standard of living and the awful poverty of others around him. This made him a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. His efforts rooted out the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. "There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy," Castro had said at that time. Many criticise Castro for poor human rights record. But the US-style democracy cannot be the criterion for judging one-party Cuba. I see Castro as the man who has provided free medical and hospital care to all. Cuba’s literacy rate is more than 98%. And the country has achieved impressive developments in its own style. Officially, the ailing leader is no longer at the centre of the political scene in Cuba since he has handed over the power to his brother, Raul, in February 2008. But he is said to still have a strong hold over Cuban decisions. Albeit he no longer marks his presence in public forums, but his revolutionary thoughts will always light up Communism aura.

"The Fidel Castro I Know" Gabriel García Márquez
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs868.html,
http://mostlywaterorg/node/8918,