The Cubans are coming!
Cuban communist youth to visit Britain
On tour with Rock around the Blockade 1-18 March 2002

Today, socialist Cuba stands at the head of a growing movement of global resistance to barbaric imperialism that is ravaging our planet. In the international forums of the world, Cuba has been the voice of the oppressed, speaking out against increasing world poverty, against the destruction of the environment, against Zionism's war against the Palestinian people, against the grotesque opulence of a tiny minority in the powerful nations set against the increasing squalor and degradation in the developing world. Cuba offers hope, because it offers an alternative.

The speaking tour by two Cubans from the Union of Young Communists, organised by Rock around the Blockade for Spring 2002, offers an opportunity to hear more about that alternative. The aim of Rock around the Blockade is to build a movement in Britain which shares the socialist values of the Cuban Revolution. The experience of Cuba's revolution can provide answers for those of us questioning the current world order because it is an example of a viable socialist society.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the global ruling class has revelled in its freedom to exploit. Meanwhile, the capitalist propaganda machine has attempted to purge our minds of even the idea of another form of society. Cuba is a spanner in the works of this monstrous machine. Not only is it surviving, despite economic and political isolation and the experience of terrorist attacks at the hands of the US, but it is leading an ideological fightback against globalisation.

In Britain one third of children live in poverty. The working class get third-rate healthcare and education and are forced into low-paid insecure jobs. Immigrants escaping economic and political persecution are criminalised and racists and police attack black and Asian people every day. Sick of it? Come and hear about the alternative.

Meetings are planned in Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, the Midlands and Scottish cities, with a final meeting and rally in London. We plan to include visits to hospitals, youth centres, schools and universities, as well as film showings, gigs and social events - a revolutionary mix of music and politics. If you can help with venues, publicity, sound systems, transport, bands etc, or if you want to organise something in your community, workplace or place of study, give us a ring and get involved.

I would like to help with the Cuban speaking tour in March 2002 by

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Return to Rock around the Blockade, BCM Box 5909, London WC1N 3XX
E-mail: office@ratb.org.uk or Tel: 020 7837 1688 or fax 020 7837 1743

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 163 October/November 2001

Counting the cost of the illegal US blockade

The Cuban government recently issued a report to the United Nations on the effects of the US blockade. The issue is due to be debated again at the UN this October. Every year since 1992 the UN General Assembly has voted by a huge majority against the US blockade. Only the United States, Israel and one or two other lackeys vote in favour. The US then always vetoes the resolution.

The blockade was imposed by the US after the declaration of the socialist nature of the Cuban revolution in April 1960 with the express aim of causing 'hunger, desperation and the demise of the government' in Cuba. The Cubans regard the blockade as an act of genocide under item C of Article II of the Geneva Convention. Two years ago the Cuban government submitted a compensation claim of of $121 billion to the US government for losses caused by their economic warfare against Cuba.

The costs, both in human and economic terms, to the Cuban people include:

US policy towards Cuba is deliberately creating shortages and suffering for the Cuban people at every level. It must be lifted. As the Cuban report states, however, all the signs are that Bush and his friends in the Miami mafia have every intention of tightening, not slackening, the blockade.

Jim Craven

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 163 October/November 2001

Statement from the government of the Republic of Cuba on the attacks in the USA

The government of the Republic of Cuba has received with pain and sadness the news of the violent and surprise attacks this morning (11 September) on civilian and official installations in the city of New York and Washington, and the resultant numerous casualties.

Cuba's position against any act of terrorism is well-known. It is impossible to forget that our people have been the victims of such actions, promoted from US territory itself, for more than 40 years.

For both historical reasons and ethical principles, the government of our country totally rejects and condemns the attacks mounted on the above-mentioned installations and offers its sincerest condolences to the US people for the painful and unjustified human losses those attacks provoked.

At this bitter time, our people express their solidarity with the US people and their total disposition to cooperate, as far as their modest capabilities allow, with that country's public health or any other institution of a medical or humanitarian nature, in terms of attention, care and rehabilitation of the victims of this morning's incidents.

City of Havana, 11 September 2001

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 163 October/November 2001

A call for reflection, restraint and responsibility
Extracts from the statement from Radio Havana Cuba

...The most powerful nation on earth has been put on a war footing and history has taught us all what to expect when Washington starts waving the cudgel self-righteously. The families of almost a million Japanese, four million Koreans, three million Vietnamese, and thousands of Iraqis and Yugoslavians can all attest to what occurs when the Oval Office scrambles its bombers.

...But who is the 'enemy'? The enemy are successive Washington administrations that have for more than five decades promoted terrorism on an enormous scale across the globe. Administrations that have trained international military personnel in techniques of torture and terrorism in its meek-sounding School of the Americas. Administrations that have for 40 years permitted and supported terrorist attacks against its island neighbour whose only crime was to advocate a different socio-political system. Administrations that introduced the world to nuclear holocaust, to carpet bombing, to horrendous use of phosphorous and napalm bombs. Administrations that maintain an economic blockade that is directly responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children's lives. Administrations that support one of the most repressive, brutal and racist regimes on earth with massive flows of money and weapons to use against the Palestinian people. Administrations that financed the Latin American dictatorships of the eighties and then later 'apologised' for some of the unspeakable crimes they committed in the name of 'democracy'

Tuesday was the anniversary of the US-sponsored coup in Chile in which a legitimately elected government was brought down with extreme violence. The man behind this event and the covert wars within Cambodia and Argentina, Henry Kissinger, is one of those that today clamour for a 'tough and decisive' response to the attacks in New York and Washington, who clamours for a blind war against an invisible enemy.

...No solution will be forthcoming in the destruction of those deemed responsible. The enemy will still be there because the enemy comes from within. The CIA supported Noriega, Marcos, Suharto, the Shah, Idi Amin, Mobutu, the Contras, Pinochet, the Argentinian generals, d'Aubuison, Somoza, Batista, Stroessner et al - the list is long and represents the obliteration of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

...The chickens have come home to roost and there is no smugness or satisfaction in saying it - just very sincere anxiety in what may follow.

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 163 October/November 2001

So farewell then, arch-reactionary Jesse Helms

Senator Jesse Helms, one of the most implacable enemies of the Cuban people and their socialist revolution, has announced that he will not stand in next year's elections and will retire when his mandate expires in 2003.

Helms' name will forever live in infamy, together with that of Senator Dan Burton, for his leading role in the 1996 Act which intensified and tightened the US blockade of Cuba that has become known as the Helms Burton Act. This law extends the blockade to third countries by threatening and penalising any non-US company that trades with the island.

Helms, now 79 and a senator for North Carolina, began his political career in 1950 when he helped segregationist politician Willis Smith to win a seat in the Senate. From there he eventually rose to become Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where he championed the most reactionary causes, such as opposition to the rightful return of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. Earlier he had been an important supporter of US aid being funnelled to the counter-revolutionary Contras waging a brutal war against the progressive Sandinista National Liberation Front government of Nicaragua.

In the same period, and also in the name of 'democracy' and 'freedom', Helms supported economic, political and military aid to the military governments and paramilitary death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in their bloody repression of popular rebellions. These destroyed over half a million lives in massacres, thousands disappeared and hundreds of children were kidnapped from their murdered parents in these two small nations. Helms was also a great admirer of the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile.

In this and his role in the blockade of Cuba, Helms demonstrated how the concepts of 'democracy' and 'freedom' are infinitely elastic, prostituted and expendable under imperialism.

Meanwhile at home Helm's role was just as reactionary, opposing measures to reduce discrimination against ethnic minorities, promoting militarisation, spreading anti-communism, combating employment rights, denying aid to the poorest families and eliminating all measures favouring environmental protection. He also rejected credits for research into AIDS and even such an innocuous move as making Martin Luther King's birthday into a national holiday.

Helms was a great ally of the terrorist and very wealthy Cuban American National Foundation, responsible for a wave of bombings against Cuban hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist as well as many other similar acts. He regularly had his campaign funds topped up by CANF.

The Cuban media has stressed that the retirement of Helms will not change Washington's anti-Cuba policies. For these policies are not merely the product of reactionary individuals but of the imperialist system which by its very nature could never reconcile itself to socialism in Cuba or anywhere else. However, during his political life, Jesse Helms failed to achieve his longed-for goal - the destruction of the Cuban Revolution.

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 163 October/November 2001