.  Here at U of Michigan, the Bush Junta has tried to prevent an expert in
LAtin American history from traveling to Cuba. First forcing her travel
agent to cancel the itinerary. But when she fought back, they caved
in--then pressed her to meet with agents after her return so they could get
info on the people she met. She says she won't. That is the way these
recent "dissidents" were organized, funded  and set about their jobs in
Cuba. Right at a time the junta needs to invent other boogie men to attack
in the name of "freedom." Let's see if the big names who signed the
anti-Cuba statement not just condemn verbally but RESIST BY DEFYING the
efforts to curtail scholarly trips by US citizens to Cuba. When has any of
them done anything that takes courage?  The Black journalist William Worthy
in the 1950s-60s had more guts than the disgusting lot of 'em.
    Re: the Protocols. When it comes to racist ideologies and all of the
frauds, myths, "scientific research" and so on used to spread the
infection, it's better to set the bastards straight every time rather than
assume people out there are immune to old and innovative waves of spreading
garbage.
    And here is fitting rebuttal to Dolgin, Cornel West and the other
self-styled liberals who are, in their scurrying opportunism, willing to
see revolutionary Cubans attacked; so eager are they to strike a deal with
their talk-show neo-conservative counterparts, they'll sacrifice those
nasty old Cubans to show massa they're true-blue Americans:

Speech given by the Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic
of Cuba, at the May Day rally held in Revolution Square.
Havana, May 1, 2003

Distinguished guests;
Dear fellow Cubans:

CUBA AND  THE NAZI-FASCISM

     Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years from this
small Caribbean island just a few miles away from the most formidable
imperial power ever known by mankind. In so doing, they have
written an unprecedented chapter in history. Never has the world
witnessed such an unequal fight.

     Some may have believed that the rise of the empire to the
status of the sole superpower, with a military and technological
might with no balancing pole anywhere in the world, would frighten
or dishearten the Cuban people. Yet, today they have no choice
but to watch in amazement the enhanced courage of this valiant
people. On a day like today, this glorious international workers’
day, which commemorates the death of the five martyrs of Chicago,
I declare, on behalf of the one million Cubans gathered here,
that we will face up to any threats, we will not yield to any
pressures, and that we are prepared to defend our homeland and
our Revolution with ideas and with weapons to our last drop of
blood.

     What is Cuba’s sin? What honest person has any reason to
attack her?

     With their own blood and the weapons seized from the enemy,
the Cuban people overthrew a cruel tyranny with 80,000 men under
arms, imposed by the U.S. government.

     Cuba was the first territory free from imperialist domination
in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the only country in the
hemisphere, throughout post-colonial history, where the torturers,
murderers and war criminals that took the lives of tens of thousands
of people were exemplarily punished. [emphasis added--JW]

     All of the country’s land was recovered and turned over
to the peasants and agricultural workers. The natural resources,
industries and basic services were placed in the hands of their
only true owner: the Cuban nation.

     In less than 72 hours, fighting ceaselessly, day and night,
Cuba crushed the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion organized by
a U.S. administration, thereby preventing a direct military intervention
by this country and a war of incalculable consequences. The Revolution
already had the Rebel Army, over 400,000 weapons and hundreds
of thousands of militia members.

     In 1962, Cuba confronted with honor, and without a single
concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear
weapons.

     It defeated the dirty war that spread throughout the entire
country, at a cost in human lives even greater than that of the
war of liberation.

     It stoically endured thousands of acts of sabotage and terrorist
attacks organized by the U.S. government.

     It thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the
leaders of the Revolution.

     While under a rigorous blockade and economic warfare that
have lasted for almost half a century, Cuba was able to eradicate
in just one year the illiteracy that has still not been overcome
in the course of more than four decades by the rest of the countries
of Latin America, or the United States itself.

     It has brought free education to 100% of the country’s children.

     It has the highest school retention rate –over 99% between
kindergarten and ninth grade– of all of the nations in the hemisphere.

     Its elementary school students rank first worldwide in the
knowledge of their mother language and mathematics.

     The country also ranks first worldwide with the highest
number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of students
per classroom.

     All children with physical or mental challenges are enrolled
in special schools.

     Computer education and the use of audiovisual methods now
extend to all of the country’s children, adolescents and youth,
in both the cities and the countryside.

     For the first time in the world, all young people between
the ages of 17 and 30, who were previously neither in school
nor employed, have been given the opportunity to resume their
studies while receiving an allowance.

     All citizens have the possibility of undertaking studies
that will take them from kindergarten to a doctoral degree without
spending a penny.

     Today, the country has 30 university graduates, intellectuals
and professional artists for every one there was before the Revolution.

     The average Cuban citizen today has at the very least a
ninth-grade level of education.

     Not even functional illiteracy exists in Cuba.

     There are schools for the training of artists and art instructors
throughout all of the country’s provinces, where over 20,000
young people are currently studying and developing their talent
and vocation. Tens of thousands more are doing the same at vocational
schools, and many of these then go on to undertake professional
studies.

     University campuses are progressively spreading to all of
the country’s municipalities. Never in any other part of the
world has such a colossal educational and cultural revolution
taken place as this that will turn Cuba, by far, into the country
with the highest degree of knowledge and culture in the world,
faithful to Martí’s profound conviction that “no freedom is possible
without culture.”

     Infant mortality has been reduced from 60 per 1000 live
births to a rate that fluctuates between 6 and 6.5, which is
the lowest in the hemisphere, from the United States to Patagonia.

     Life expectancy has increased by 15 years.

     Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria,
neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, whooping
cough and dengue have been eradicated; others like tetanus, meningococcal
meningitis, hepatitis B, leprosy, hemophilus meningitis and tuberculosis
are fully controlled.

     Today, in our country, people die of the same causes as
in the most highly developed countries: cardiovascular diseases,
cancer, accidents, and others, but with a much lower incidence.

     A profound revolution is underway to bring medical services
closer to the population, in order to facilitate access to health
care centers, save lives and alleviate suffering.

     In-depth research is being carried out to break the chain,
mitigate or reduce to a minimum the problems that result from
genetic, prenatal or childbirth-related causes.

     Cuba is today the country with the highest number of doctors
per capita in the world, with almost twice as many as those that
follow closer.

     Our scientific centers are working relentlessly to find
preventive or therapeutic solutions for the most serious diseases.

     Cubans will have the best healthcare system in the world,
and will continue to receive all services absolutely free of
charge.

     Social security covers 100% of the country’s citizens.

     In Cuba, 85% of the people own their homes and they pay
no property taxes on them whatsoever. The remaining 15% pay a
wholly symbolic rent, which is only 10% of their salary.

     Illegal drug use involves a negligible percentage of the
population, and is being resolutely combated.

     Lottery and other forms of gambling have been banned since
the first years of the Revolution to ensure that no one pins
their hopes of progress on luck.

     There is no commercial advertising on Cuban television and
radio or in our printed publications. Instead, these feature
public service announcements concerning health, education, culture,
physical education, sports, recreation, environmental protection,
and the fight against drugs, accidents and other social problems.
Our media educate, they do not poison or alienate. They do not
worship or exalt the values of decadent consumer societies.

     There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary,
in the form of statues, official photographs, or the names of
streets or institutions. The leaders of this country are human
beings, not gods.

     In our country there are no paramilitary forces or death
squads, nor has violence ever been used against the people; there
are no extrajudicial executions or torture. The people have always
massively supported the activities of the Revolution. This rally
today is proof of that.

     Light years separate our society from what has prevailed
until today in the rest of the world. We cultivate brotherhood
and solidarity among individuals and peoples both in the country
and abroad.

     The new generations and the entire people are being educated
about the need to protect the environment. The media are used
to build environmental awareness.

     Our country steadfastly defends its cultural identity, assimilating
the best of other cultures while resolutely combating everything
that distorts, alienates and degrades.

     The development of wholesome, non-professional sports has
raised our people to the highest ranks worldwide in medals and
honors.

     Scientific research, at the service of our people and all
humanity, has increased several-hundredfold. As a result of these
efforts, important medications are saving lives in Cuba and other
countries.

     Cuba has never undertaken research or development of a single
biological weapon, because this would be in total contradiction
with the principles and philosophy underlying the education of
our scientific personnel, past and present.

     In no other people has the spirit of international solidarity
become so deeply rooted.

     Our country supported the Algerian patriots in their struggle
against French colonialism, at the cost of damaging political
and economic relations with such an important European country
as France.

     We sent weapons and troops to defend Algeria from Moroccan
expansionism, when the king of this country sought to take control
of the iron mines of Gara Djebilet, near the city of Tindouf,
in southwest Algeria.

     At the request of the Arab nation of Syria, a full tank
brigade stood guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the Golan
Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized from that country.

     The leader of the Republic of Congo when it first achieved
independence, Patrice Lumumba, who was harassed from abroad,
received our political support. When he was assassinated by the
colonial powers in January of 1961, we lent assistance to his
followers.

     Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was shed in the western
region of Lake Tanganyika, where Che Guevara and more than 100
Cuban instructors supported the Congolese rebels who were fighting
against white mercenaries in the service of the man supported
by the West, that is, Mobutu whose 40 billion dollars, the same
that he stole, nobody knows what European banks they are kept
in, or in whose power.

     The blood of Cuban instructors was shed while training and
supporting the combatants of the African Party for the Independence
of Guinea and Cape Verde, who fought under the command of Amilcar
Cabral for the liberation of these former Portuguese colonies.

     The same was true during the ten years that Cuba supported
Agostinho Neto’s MPLA in the struggle for the independence of
Angola. After independence was achieved, and over the course
of 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers participated
in defending Angola from the attacks of racist South African
troops that in complicity with the United States, and using dirty
war tactics, planted millions of mines, wiped out entire villages,
and murdered more than half a million Angolan men, women and
children.

     In Cuito Cuanavale and on the Namibian border, to the southwest
of Angola, Angolan and Namibian forces together with 40,000 Cuban
troops dealt the final blow to the South African troops. This
resulted in the immediate liberation of Namibia and speeded up
the end of apartheid by perhaps 20 to 25 years. At the time,
the South Africans had seven nuclear warheads that Israel had
supplied to them or helped them to produce, with the full knowledge
and complicity of the U.S. government.

     Throughout the course of almost 15 years, Cuba had a place
of honor in its solidarity with the heroic people of Viet Nam,
caught up in a barbaric and brutal war with the United States.
That war killed four million Vietnamese, in addition to all those
left wounded and mutilated, not to mention the fact that the
country was inundated with chemical compounds that continue to
cause incalculable damage. The pretext: Viet Nam, a poor and
underdeveloped country located 20,000 kilometers away, constituted
a threat to the national security of the United States.

     Cuban blood was shed together with that of citizens of numerous
Latin American countries, and together with the Cuban and Latin
American blood of Che Guevara, murdered on instructions from
U.S. agents in Bolivia, when he was wounded and being held prisoner
after his weapon had been rendered useless by a shot received
in battle.

     The blood of Cuban construction workers, that were nearing
completion of an international airport vital for the economy
of a tiny island fully dependent on tourism, was shed fighting
in defense of Grenada, invaded by the United States under cynical
pretexts.

     Cuban blood was shed in Nicaragua, when instructors from
our Armed Forces were training the brave Nicaraguan soldiers
confronting the dirty war organized and armed by the United States
against the Sandinista revolution.

     And there are even more examples.

     Over 2000 heroic Cuban internationalist combatants gave
their lives fulfilling the sacred duty of supporting the liberation
struggles for the independence of other sister nations. However,
there is not one single Cuban property in any of those countries.
     No other country in our era has exhibited such sincere and
selfless solidarity.

     Cuba has always preached by example. It has never given
in. It has never sold out the cause of another people. It has
never made concessions. It has never betrayed its principles.
There must be some reason why, just 48 hours ago, it was reelected
by acclamation in the United Nations Economic and Social Council
to another three years in the Commission on Human Rights, of
which it has now been a member for 15 straight years.

     More than half a million Cubans have carried out internationalist
missions as combatants, as teachers, as technicians or as doctors
and health care workers. Tens of thousands of the latter have
provided their services and saved millions of lives over the
course of more than 40 years. There are currently 3000 specialists
in Comprehensive General Medicine and other healthcare personnel
working in the most isolated regions of 18 Third World countries.
Through preventive and therapeutic methods they save hundreds
of thousands of lives every year, and maintain or restore the
health of millions of people, without charging a penny for their
services.

     Without the Cuban doctors offered to the United Nations
in the event that the necessary funds are obtained –without which
entire nations and even whole regions of sub-Saharan Africa face
the risk of perishing– the crucial programs urgently needed to
fight AIDS would be impossible to carry out.

     The developed capitalist world has created abundant financial
capital, but it has not in any way created the human capital
that the Third World desperately needs.

     Cuba has developed techniques to teach reading and writing
by radio, with accompanying texts now available in five languages
–Haitian Creole, Portuguese, French, English and Spanish– that
are already being used in numerous countries. It is nearing completion
of a similar program in Spanish, of exceptionally high quality,
to teach literacy by television. These are programs that were
developed in Cuba and are genuinely Cuban. We are not interested
in patents and exclusive copyrights. We are willing to offer
them to all of the countries of the Third World, where most of
the world’s illiterates are concentrated, without charging a
penny. In five years, the 800 million illiterate people in the
world could be reduced by 80%, at a minimal cost.

     After the demise of the USSR and the socialist bloc, nobody
would have bet a dime on the survival of the Cuban Revolution.
The United States tightened the blockade. The Torricelli and
Helms-Burton Acts were adopted, the latter extraterritorial in
nature. We abruptly lost our main markets and supplies sources.
The population’s average calorie and protein consumption was
reduced by almost half. But our country withstood the pressures
and even advanced considerably in the social field.

Today, it has largely recovered with regard to nutritional requirements
and is rapidly progressing in other fields. Even in these conditions,
the work undertaken and the consciousness built throughout the
years succeeded in working miracles. Why have we endured? Because
the Revolution has always had, as it still does and always will
to an ever-greater degree, the support of the people, an intelligent
people, increasingly united, educated and combative.

     Cuba was the first country to extend its solidarity to the
people of the United States on September 11, 2001. It was also
the first to warn of the neo-fascist nature of the policy that
the extreme right in the United States, which fraudulently came
to power in November of 2000, was planning to impose on the rest
of the world. This policy did not emerge as a response to the
atrocious terrorist attack perpetrated against the people of
the United States by members of a fanatical organization that
had served other U.S. administrations in the past. It was coldly
and carefully conceived and developed, which explains the country’s
military build-up and enormous spending on weapons at a time
when the Cold War was already over, and long before September
11, 2001. The fateful events of that day served as an ideal pretext
for the implementation of such policy.

     On September 20 of that year, President Bush openly expressed
this before a Congress shaken by the tragic events of nine days
earlier. Using bizarre terminology, he spoke of “infinite justice”
as the goal of a war that would apparently be infinite as well.

     “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign,
unlike any other we have ever seen.”

     “We will use every necessary weapon of war.”

     “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

     “I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there is a reason.
The hour is coming when America will act.”

     “This is civilization's fight.”

     “…the great achievement of our time, and the great hope
of every time --now depends on us.”

     “The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome
is certain … and we know that God is not neutral.”

Did a statesman or an unbridled fanatic speak these words?

Two days later, on September 22, Cuba denounced this speech as
the blueprint for the idea of a global military dictatorship
imposed through brute force, without international laws or institutions
of any kind.

“The United Nations Organization, simply ignored in the present
crisis, would fail to have any authority or prerogative whatsoever.
There would be only one boss, only one judge, and only one law.”

Several months later, on the 200th anniversary of West Point
Military Academy, at the graduation exercise for 958 cadets on
June 3, 2002, President Bush further elaborated on this line
of thinking in a fiery harangue to the young soldiers graduating
that day, in which he put forward his fundamental fixed ideas:

“Our security will require transforming the military you will
lead -- a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's
notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will
require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to
be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty
and to defend our lives.”

“We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries…”

“…we will send you, our soldiers, where you're needed.”

“We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the
planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. We will
lift this dark threat from our country and from the world.”

“Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak
the language of right and wrong. I disagree. … We are in a conflict
between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.
By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem,
we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.”

In the speech I delivered at a rally held in General Antonio
Maceo Square in Santiago de Cuba, on June 8, 2002, before half
a million people of Santiago, I said:

“As you can see, he doesn’t mention once in his speech (at West
Point) the United Nations Organization. Nor is there a phrase
about every people’s right to safety and peace, or about the
need for a world ruled by principles and norms.”

“Hardly two thirds of a century has passed since humanity went
through the bitter experience of Nazism. Fear was Hitler’s inseparable
ally against his adversaries… Later, his fearful military force
[led to] the outbreak of a war that would inflame the whole world.
The lack of vision and the cowardice of the statesmen in the
strongest European powers of the time opened the way to a great
tragedy.

“I don’t think that a fascist regime can be established in the
United States. Serious mistakes have been made and injustices
committed in the framework of its political system --many of
them still persist-- but the American people still have a number
of institutions and traditions, as well as educational, cultural
and ethical values that would hardly allow that to happen. The
risk exists in the international arena. The power and prerogatives
of that country’s president are so extensive, and the economic,
technological and military power network in that nation is so
pervasive that due to circumstances that fully escape the will
of the American people, the world is coming under the rule of
Nazi concepts and methods.”

“The miserable insects that live in 60 or more countries of the
world chosen by him and his closest assistants --and in the case
of Cuba by his Miami friends-- are completely irrelevant. They
are the ‘dark corners of the world’ that may become the targets
of their unannounced and ‘preemptive’ attacks. Not only is Cuba
one of those countries, but it has also been included among those
that sponsor terror.”

I mentioned the idea of a world tyranny for the first time exactly
one year, three months and 19 days before the attack on Iraq.

In the days prior to the beginning of the war, President Bush
repeated once again that the United States would use, if necessary,
any means within its arsenal, in other words, nuclear weapons,
chemical weapons and biological weapons.

The attack on and occupation of Afghanistan had already taken
place.

Today the so-called “dissidents”, actually mercenaries on the
payroll of the Bush’s Hitler-like government, are betraying not
only their homeland, but all of humanity as well.

In the face of the sinister plans against our country on the
part of the neo-fascist extreme right and its allies in the Miami
terrorist mob that ensured its victory through electoral fraud,
I wonder how many of those individuals with supposedly leftist
and humanistic stances who have attacked our people over the
legal measures we were forced to adopt as a legitimate defense
against the aggressive plans of the superpower, located just
a few miles off our coasts and with a military base on our own
territory, have been able to read these words. We wonder how
many have recognized, denounced and condemned the policy announced
in the speeches by Mr. Bush that I have quoted, which reveal
a sinister Nazi-fascist international policy on the part of the
leader of the country with the most powerful military force ever
imagined, whose weapons could destroy the defenseless humanity
ten times over.

The entire world has been mobilized by the terrifying images
of cities destroyed and burned by brutal bombing, images of maimed
children and the shattered corpses of innocent people.

Leaving aside the blatantly opportunistic, demagogic and petty
political groups we know all too well, I am now going to refer
fundamentally to those who were friends of Cuba and respected
fighters in the struggle. We would not want those who have, in
our opinion, attacked Cuba unjustly, due to disinformation or
a lack of careful and profound analysis, to have to suffer the
infinite sorrow they will feel if one day our cities are destroyed
and our children and mothers, women and men, young and old, are
torn apart by the bombs of Nazi-fascism, and they realize that
their declarations were shamelessly manipulated by the aggressors
to justify a military attack on Cuba.

Solely the numbers of children murdered and mutilated cannot
be the measure of the human damage but also the millions of children
and mothers, women and men, young and old, who remain traumatized
for the rest of their lives.

We fully respect the opinions of those who oppose capital punishment
for religious, philosophical and humanitarian reasons. We Cuban
revolutionaries also abhor capital punishment, for much more
profound reasons than those addressed by the social sciences
with regard to crime, currently under study in our country. The
day will come when we can accede to the wishes for the abolition
of such penalty so nobly expressed here by Reverend Lucius Walker
in his brilliant speech. The special concern over this issue
is easily understood when you know that the majority of the people
executed in the United States are African American and Hispanic,
and not infrequently they are innocent, especially in Texas,
the champion of death sentences, where President Bush was formerly
the governor, and not a single life has ever been pardoned.

The Cuban Revolution was placed in the dilemma of either protecting
the lives of millions of Cubans by using the legally established
death penalty to punish the three main hijackers of a passenger
ferry or sitting back and doing nothing. The U.S. government,
which incites common criminals to assault boats or airplanes
with passengers on board, encourages these people gravely endangering
the lives of innocents and creating the ideal conditions for
an attack on Cuba. A wave of hijackings had been unleashed and
was already in full development; it had to be stopped.

 We cannot ever hesitate when it is a question of protecting
the lives of the sons and daughters of a people determined to
fight until the end, arresting the mercenaries who serve the
aggressors and applying the most severe sanctions against terrorists
who hijack passenger boats or planes or commit similarly serious
acts, who will be punished by the courts in accordance with the
laws in force.

Not even Jesus Christ, who drove the traders out of the temple
with a whip, would fail to opt for the defense of the people.

I feel sincere and profound respect for His Holiness Pope John
Paul II. I understand and admire his noble struggle for life
and peace. Nobody opposed the war in Iraq as much and as tenaciously
as he did. I am absolutely certain that he would have never counseled
the Shiites and Sunni Muslims to let them be killed without defending
themselves. He would not counsel the Cubans to do such a thing,
either. He knows perfectly well that this is not a problem between
Cubans. This is a problem between the people of Cuba and the
government of the United States.

The policy of the U.S. government is so brazenly provocative
that on April 25, Mr. Kevin Whitaker, chief of the Cuban Bureau
at the State Department, informed the head of our Interests Section
in Washington that the National Security Council’s Department
of Homeland Security considered the continued hijackings from
Cuba a serious threat to the national security of the United
States, and requested that the Cuban government adopt all of
the necessary measures to prevent such acts.

He said this as if they were not the ones who provoke and encourage
these hijackings, and as if we were not the ones who adopt drastic
measures to prevent them, in order to protect the lives and safety
of passengers, and being fully aware for some time now of the
criminal plans of the fascist extreme right against Cuba. When
news of this contact on the 25 was leaked, it stirred up the
Miami terrorist mob. They still do not understand that their
direct or indirect threats against Cuba do not frighten anyone
in this country.

The hypocrisy of Western politicians and a large group of mediocre
leaders is so huge that it would not fit in the Atlantic Ocean.
Any measure that Cuba adopts for the purposes of its legitimate
defense is reported among the top stories in almost all of the
media. On the other hand, when we pointed out that during the
term in office of a Spanish head of government, dozens of ETA
members were executed without trial, without anyone protesting
or denouncing it before the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights, or that another Spanish head of government, at a difficult
moment in the war in Kosovo, advised the U.S. president to step
up the war, increase the bombing and attack civilian targets,
thus causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent people and tremendous
suffering for millions of people, the headlines merely stated,
“Castro attacks Felipe and Aznar”. Not a word was said about
the real content.

In Miami and Washington they are now discussing where, how and
when Cuba will be attacked or the problem of the Revolution will
be solved.

For the moment, there is talk of economic measures that will
further intensify the brutal blockade, but they still do not
know which to choose, who they will resign themselves to alienating,
and how effective these measures may be. There are very few left
for them to choose from. They have already used up almost all
of them.

A shameless scoundrel with the poorly chosen first name Lincoln,
and the last name Díaz-Balart, an intimate friend and advisor
of President Bush, has made this enigmatic statement to a Miami
TV station: “I can’t go into details, but we’re trying to break
this vicious cycle.”

What methods are they considering to deal with this vicious cycle?
Physically eliminating me with the sophisticated modern means
they have developed, as Mr. Bush promised them in Texas before
the elections? Or attacking Cuba the way they attacked Iraq?

If it were the former, it does not worry me in the least. The
ideas for which I have fought all my life will not die, and they
will live on for a long time.

If the solution were to attack Cuba like Iraq, I would suffer
greatly because of the cost in lives and the enormous destruction
it would bring on Cuba. But, it might turn out to be the last
of this Administration’s fascist attacks, because the struggle
would last a very long time.

The aggressors would not merely be facing an army, but rather
thousands of armies that would constantly reproduce themselves
and make the enemy pay such a high cost in casualties that it
would far exceed the cost in lives of its sons and daughters
that the American people would be willing to pay for the adventures
and ideas of President Bush. Today, he enjoys majority support,
but it is dropping, and tomorrow it could be reduced to zero.

The American people, the millions of highly cultivated individuals
who reason and think, their basic ethical principles, the tens
of millions of computers with which to communicate, hundreds
of times more than at the end of the Viet Nam war, will show
that you cannot fool all of the people, and perhaps not even
part of the people, all of the time. One day they will put a
straightjacket on those who need it before they manage to annihilate
life on the planet.

On behalf of the one million people gathered here this May Day,
I want to convey a message to the world and the American people:

We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans to be shed in
a war. We do not want a countless number of lives of people who
could be friends to be lost in an armed conflict. But never has
a people had such sacred things to defend, or such profound convictions
to fight for, to such a degree that they would rather be obliterated
from the face of the Earth than abandon the noble and generous
work for which so many generations of Cubans have paid the high
cost of the lives of many of their finest sons and daughters.

We are sustained by the deepest conviction that ideas are worth
more than weapons, no matter how sophisticated and powerful those
weapons may be.

Let us say like Che Guevara when he bid us farewell:

Ever onward to victory!

Carrol Cox wrote:

> Jonathan Julius Dobkin wrote:
> >
> > The drivel I refer to is the defense (or something--the whole rant is
> > rather incoherent) by F Leon Wilson imputing some significance to a
> > racist forgery.
> >
> > What the hell are you talking about?!
>
> The whole thing is a jolt. It had never occurred to me in my whole life
> (73 years) that anyone would take that forgery seriously. It should be
> no more necessary to argue that fact than to argue that the earth is
> round. But then about 50 years ago when my father was teaching in a
> rural elementary school, a father of a student came in very angry. He
> insisted that the world was flat. Wilson's questions about the Protocol
> is as outrageous and stupid as that man's insistence that the world was
> flat.
>
> Wilson utterly bewilders me. Why would anyone in 2003 defend a stupid
> racist forgery>?
>
> Carrol

--
John Woodford
Executive Editor, Michigan Today
412 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1399
Direct: 734-647-1838
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