Jane Franklin http://www.janefranklin.info 

http://cuba-networkdefenseofhumanity.blogspot.com/
2014/06/open-letter-on-cuba-directed-to-john-d.html 

By: Pablo González Casanova

“Read by the author in the Forum “The Cuban 5 imprisoned in the United States: a blatant outrage of law and justice”, delivered in the Casa Lamm, Mexico on June 16, 2014.

TO MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, HONORARY DIRECTOR OF THE SOCIETY OF THE AMERICAS AND DISTINGUISHED GUESTS OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS OF THE FOUNDATIONS WHO SENT AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA TO SUPPORT CIVIL SOCIETY IN CUBA:

We have carefully read the request to President Obama. We are surprised by the sudden change of policy toward this small island and its great people. For more than fifty years you have made open and covert measures that will fail in your Project of Independence and Freedom. Today you see the possibility of achieving, with different policies the same objectives of before and intent of applying them with the same emotion you employ in “defense of your values and interests”… The measures you expound reveal, however, many errors and self-deceit by believing (and some believe) that you are going to boost “economic independence of Cuba” with “individual rights” and “human rights” when in reality it is about a country that you have not been able to conquer in spite of terrible pressures and open and covert actions against it and the unspeakable blockade for more than half a century that you have imposed.

Don’t you have eyes and can’t you see? Do you have ears and don’t hear. Everyone knows that in Cuba all children and young people of school age have schools, universities and institutes. All medically ill have medicines and hospitals. All workers have jobs and the elderly receive assistance…It is true that I use here the word “all” as defined by García Márquez as 80% or more of the population, or much more with limitations that Cubans assume the practice that you have not achieved with good intentions.

But, in the midst of pressures and blockade, much has been achieved and high level scientific research institutions, of world class, as well as hospital services as good and so many friends of the U.S. people who cured the firefighters wounded on “September 11” that your hospitals did not attend and who Michael Moore took them to public hospitals in Cuba.

What’s, more. Do you know that in this country of Our America that inhabitants receive free benefits that reach higher proportions than in the United States, Canada, England and the European Union? Our achievements were made with modest resources but stubbornly seeking to reach as many as possible and much can be done.

Your offers of “humanitarian aid”, “national security”, “prohibition of drugs and environment” you well know of the inhuman failures where you have tried to apply them in whole countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Southern Sudan, Nigeria, Libya and others. Or whole continents such as Africa, the Middle East, Latin America whose populations – a large majority or all – are immersed in the so called “war of complete spectrum” that your strategists design that increases hatred, confrontations and despair of huge population who have no human rights, live and die in conditions worse than animals, hunger and disease, famine and even bones showing through and the surprise of seeing them with sunken eyes, the look of lost children, without brightness, that skin wrinkled stuck to the bones. It hurts to see them in the television and imagine how they live from day to day, minute to minute, how they grow in the midst of hunger and terror, without water or roofs over their heads, with no chance of work that is not servile or slave, exhausting, risky or unhealthy among offenses of the white foremen, military or paramilitary that with other bandits, murderers and fanatic sadists very well armed and supplied for the glory of the arms industry, with the fright of children, adults and elderly, victims and candidates of the policy of growing ethnic cleansing and genocide constantly supported by the “neo conservatives” and by the “extreme rightwing” impassioned by xenophobia, visual repugnance and racism of the global world that you head.

In the midst of so inhuman events, confirmed by the “media” and even the intimate looks of your own children – with some who are prepared as successors with the same ferocity and others who protest and rebel with admirable strength – you add the error of believing that in this invincible Cuba after fifty years of blockade you can separate and even confront “civil society” against” its government. Are you unable to imagine governments that are not corporations or of bureaucrats.

But in Cuba, people and government are fused to soldiers so closely – to such a high proportion that there are no groups of adventurous “contras” that have been able to achieve success for such a long time with your terrorist and subversive actions.

The “people's government” of Cuba is a democratic phenomenon that if you understood it would cause you horror since, in fact – as written by David Brooks – democracy is what you fear most while enclosed in the true sense of the Greek etymology that corresponds to the definition that in practice a people who make great decisions and observe the achievement of its goals organizes like a people-government with the most varied collectives and most varied structures; some coordinated and others hierarchical, all to achieve in each task the objectives.

The organization and democratic practices in Cuba are very different to the governments of corporation since large and small structures value the dominant interests bonded to Independence and Freedom. All, of course, in the midst of contradictions, errors and weakness –smaller or larger – that the enemies of the Cuban process seek to increase expressing concern for the flaws that they or their sponsors stir up.

Think well and you will clearly understand that your large triumphs in the world have not occurred in Cuba. Look sharply into your political conscience that the Cubans have managed to survive in their emancipating project precisely through the kind of democracy that the inhabitants of Cuba have redefined, both in the creation and practice of its organizations. Creation and practice covers an immense population with thousands of cadres whose conscience, will and bravery include discipline of their convictions; they do not surrender or sell out.

Also such a small effort in the great homeland does not slacken and confronts – as we have said – these contradictions that interest you so much and, also, the recently recognized precision and admirable clarity of Mr. Warren Buffet, the third wealthiest millionaire of the United States of North America when he said “Undoubtedly there is a class war and it is in my class – the wealthy – the one that is winning”…

The fight continues and you – as signatories of the open letter to President Obama on Cuba. I repeat: the Class struggle continues and I confess that they are doing it very well, as possible, for now they want to change the war in the good way since they did not win in the bad way. In their proposal to President Obama they ask him to change the policy of blockade, of sanctions, prohibitions of the United States applied against Cuba for fifty years. They affirm that “The United States can help the Cuban people to determine their own future… they can empower the people; they can “strengthen the side spectrum of an independent civil society” and the organizations created to boost individual economy and the social necessities regardless of political orientation…”

In their open letter to President Obama the shameless propose a “radical change” in view of the policy followed by the United States in its relations with Cuba that has left the United States increasingly alone internationally. “It is the opportunity for a change – they say – of helping the Cuban people, the civil society of Cuba, the opportunity to increase trade with “independent companies” but “of helping and legalizing the use of credit cards:, of promoting “imports and exports of articles and services”, and NGOs to support small farmers”, and also support, of course, the small companies and even micro companies…”

Several times – I don’t know how many – you insist on the need to promote several projects of telecommunications and refer to several forms of cooperation of the NGOs with Cuban academic institutions through funds for education, scholarships for outstanding students and travel funds. In this instant the necessary authorization is required for those who travel to Cuba or who have families in Cuba that can use the credit cards and other U.S. banking services as well as open accounts in U.S. banks or send remittances to their families or offer professional services to “independent business persons”…

Of course, at the same time, they insist that you in the United States government be committed with the people of Cuba and, simultaneously fulfill the duty of continue applying pressure on the Cuban government regarding human rights. The government should give priority - they add to President Obama – to promote compromises in areas of “mutual interest and hold serious talks with their Cuban counterparts in issues of mutual security and humanitarian responsibilities”. Here they mention the liberation of a prisoner.

For any well informed reader, such as Mr. Warren Buffet, the whole message to which we refer seeks to continue winning the class struggle in Cuba. Their undeniable sagacity consists of granting privileges for individual interests, of groups, ideology confronting the interests of the national community in a country where people-government of the large majority are building a transition for a viable world since the one we live in is in the process of destruction by that 1% to which you belong, a process that the young people of the United States and the whole world are going to suffer and confront, threats such as this in their immediate future by a sick and hegemonic project of accumulation of power and wealth at the cost of the misery of the immense majority of humanity and the growing danger for the life of all humanity, and the situation of danger confirmed by the very “think tanks” of Harvard, MIT, Institute of Santa Fe and many scientific organizations of the world that include the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and much more rigorously and with scientific responsibility, in addition to the climate change, the growth of the ozone hole – that just seems to be contained – and many more dangers that include pollution of the seas and of drinking water; the destruction of the land and sub soils; of the forests, vegetables and sea and land fauna and even the whole biosphere. As the experts tell us there is danger of many irreversible damages and insist that these are increasing and as time passes it become more difficult to contain them. Important scientific journals in the United States and the World warn that these concerns are not merely alleged apocalyptic beliefs nor alleged errors or opinions of some specialists nor mere manipulation of tricky scientific data that are being accused, without the least basis, by a group of British scientists for having mentioned the “anthropogenic” character of the climate change that threatens the planet. Such rash accusations were denied by the large scientific journals of your own country and of the world. The danger and other threats against the Earth are anthropogenic. For the first time in the history of the solar system man is capable of destroying the earth. Man only thinks of improving the quality and number of nuclear bombs and launch systems with their lethal capacity, precision and reach that add irresponsibility in the game played by the large powers that threaten war.

Well…it is possible that you may win the class strugglers that this could be a pyrrhic victory if we destroy the movements that are battling to construct life such as the government-people of Cuba and many others that from farming communities and lost cities are building a transition for another possible and self-sustaining world.

With my best wishes I tell you. Stop the Freudian disqualifications and denials. Encourage the men who have confirmed the truth, Pay attention to the truth and think on your own that the democracy of corporations and groups is already unsustainable, that the organization of the world by business – military – political – media complexes whose most powerful boost is the “maximization of goods and wealth” moving into the terminal “transition phase”, “entropic” that is necessary to boost the transition of a system whose principal impulse is freedom and life.

On this road you will see that the people-government of Cuba is a pioneer; and the cyberspace from Wall Street to Washington D.C. fight for your own children. All, absolutely all, seek peaceful roads and continue, under new forms, the old battle of rebels for peace and for life to move through a viable, really human world…

To know and recognized them is to respect them and begin to honor your planet, something we also demand of Mrs. Hillary Clinton who has begun to organize her campaign for the presidency of the government of the United States and perhaps honor her word for a government she aspires as well as that of her husband, demanding the immediate release of the three young men still imprisoned in U.S. jails - Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino y Antonio Guerrero – who according to former president Clinton were part of a group to reveal the terrorist plans of Cuban Americans terrorists based in Miami.

The class struggle continues, the struggle for independence and autonomy of the peoples continues as well as the struggle to redefine actions of freedom, justice and democracy. None will stop. Only today’s world of human beings must begin to recover the use of the word for the transition for peace and life.

Bring to life the word that honors with actions… Make – to start something that seems to be small and will be great. Ask President Obama to free the three Cuban heroes imprisoned. Begin a new history of the word with actions such as these that force changes in the world where there is only a class struggle but also a struggle for life, the life of 99% and also 1% of humanity and our descendant’s.

Think again that at the beginning of the world this word will be there.

Glory to life and liberty.

Glory to the people of the United States and Cuba.

Long Live Humanity and transition for a more viable, possible and necessary world.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely

Pablo González Casanova Universtiy profesor

Translation by the Network in Defense of Humanity

-- Network in Defense of Humanity Habana, Cuba
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