MORE SOLIDARITY AGAINST THE AGGRESSIONS OF NEOLIBERAL
FASCISM
Speech by Raul Valdes Vivo, member of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of Cuba at the International
Conference in Athens,
21- 23 May 1999

Comrades:

In this gathering of so many workers' parties in Athens,
where twenty five centuries ago the most advanced
philosophers were searching for the ultimate truths of
nature and society, it is only fitting that the truth of
truths be in the forefront in these decisive moments with a
martyr Yugoslavia at the center of world events.
The Communist Party of Cuba appreciates the work carried
out by the fraternal Communist Party of Greece in the
preparation of this very important meeting and states that
among these truths are the following:
In the genocidal war against Yugoslavia, the United States
are using military force to impose a unipolar world, seeing
that its imposition proved impossible through the declining
power of the dollar. From the cold war they have advanced
towards a Hot War, and if the peoples cannot defeat this
strategy, a Third World War could be unleashed, meaning
suicide for humanity given the nuclear weapons arsenal.
The instrument used by the United States in this dirtiest
of all wars ever is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
especially the European countries that coincide with
Washington's hegemonic attitude. Even those that in
different arenas are more competitors than allies of the
North American superpower, favoring a united Europe with
its own policies, as can be seen in the creation of the
Euro.
The United Nations Organization and its Security Council,
marginalized by the United States when seeing that this
time these bodies could not be manipulated, have been
reduced to the role of silent witnesses of the dismembering
of a founding nation of the UN and of the Non Aligned
Movement. The aggressors are trying to transform the
Balkans region into a support base to dominate completely
the Eastern zone of the Mediterranean Sea, the south of
Europe and the Middle East.
Not without reason does Russia feel threatened. The pretext
of ethnic and religious conflicts could be used against it
to further the dismembering that already took place in the
USSR. The reasons are now clear for widening NATO and
modernizing its weaponry currently being tested in
Yugoslavia and to welcome the 300 billion dollars stolen by
the Russian Mafia. It is a sustained plan to weaken the
country that until recently was a socialist superpower and
try to bend it, the same why Napoleon and Hitler tried, to
no avail. Imperialism dreams with grabbing its oil,
forests, riches, markets and highly qualified and cheap
labor. The latter would be fatal regarding employment,
income and social security for the workers of the West. The
threat reaches China, with its provinces in Tibet, falsely
alleging religious problems, and Taiwan, still to be
reincorporated to the rest of the country. If China were
disintegrated, Vietnam, Korea, India, the whole of Asia
would be endangered, and thus, all the Third World. The
premeditated destruction of the Chinese Embassy in
Belgrade, by the very same forces that systematically
destroy schools, hospitals, factories, churches, bridges,
radio and TV stations, buses and trains full of civilian
passengers, confirms the arrogance of those genocidal
forces.
This military conflict is associated to the real essence of
neoliberalism. On the one hand, everything is to be
privatized. The State pushed away from the control of the
economy, because the workers' struggle for reivindications
can exert more pressure over the State given the electoral
pressures. Absolute freedom to be given to the market
forces, dominated by monopolies, with the circulation of
capitals to benefit speculators with currencies and
financial market activities. On the other hand,
neoliberalism allows the State to be the domestic and
international police, to shamelessly apply State terrorism
even while declaring international terrorism a public
enemy.
The most reactionary and adventurous circles of the large
financial capital utilize neoliberalism to gradually impose
a new fascism while the world is still not yet aware.
Neoliberal fascism uses INTERNET, ganging way on behalf of
human rights, through governments with leftist parties and
figures that betray, as happened during World War I that
began precisely in the Balkans, the ideal of peace, the
essence not only of socialism - to which many have
renounced - but also of democracy, when it is not just
mere fiction to cover the power of large monopolies.
Instead of preaching the superiority of a race, this new
fascism states that it is against ethnic cleansing. It
accuses others of carrying it out, like now, accusing the
Serbs, to isolate and assault them. This demagogy could not
be more cynical for these aggressors promote xenophobia,
racism and hatred to immigrants in their own countries. The
unjust war unleashed by the United States and NATO is
launched against a country that cannot even be accused,
like in the case of Iraq, of having attacked another. This
motive has long disappeared but Iraq continues to be
punished savagely with air attacks while the blockade kills
its population through hunger.
The pretext of defending the Albanian minority in
Yugoslavia, that the secessionists in Kosovo, province in
which they are a majority, have been upholding, crumbles
before the reality of the bombings against Pristina, its
capital, and even the very caravans of refugees. Humanism,
and nobody more humane than the revolutionaries, demands
the finding of a solution for the problems this minority is
facing, that should enjoy autonomy within the territorial
integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. What autonomy
could it have as a NATO protectorate, becoming a veritable
prison of peoples and a permanent base for new bloody
adventures?
Among the first truths we must recognize the bitter fact
that the mass media of transnationals have managed to fool
large sectors of the populations of the aggressors'
countries and of the world. With admirable heroism the
Serbs are resisting on behalf of all the peoples of the
world. The international situation would be even worse had
the United States and NATO obtained a quick victory with
this monstrous aggression. If it persists in a war of all
the people, as during the nazi invasion, Yugoslavia shall
not be subjected. That was also the lesson the Greeks
taught the world during the era of fascism, and that of the
Vietnamese people, in their struggle against the Yankees.
Due to confusion, the world movement of protest has just
begun to demand to end this genocide immediately. Every day
of delay to end this war means more Serb and Albanian
children assassinated, and more Christian-Orthodox or
Muslims or Catholics left without homes, water, electricity
and food, in the midst of despair. Only with the ceasing of
the bombings can a solution be negotiated to the benefit of
all the nations of the Balkan region, guaranteeing the
Kosovars the autonomy they enjoyed in the prosperous
Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia.
It would be a mistake not to link the attacks against
Yugoslavia with the very nature of international
imperialism and neoliberalism. On the contrary, it is
inserted in the objectives of a unipolar world imposed by
force, for economic development tends to multipolarity. It
is not possible not to link the hegemonic policy, turned
war of aggression, of capitalism's economics. Undoubtedly
United States' urgency, to follow once more, the military
path, dragging international imperialism with it, is due to
the imminent world financial and economic crisis, and the
desire to be ahead of the inexorable recovery of the world
revolutionary movement-evidence of which is already
apparent-and to try to avoid it by all means.
The Multilateral Investments Agreement (MIA) is the
economic equivalent of the military route. With this
Agreement the ex metropolis would resuscitate under the
form of transnational enterprises, but within the states
that would be mere protectorates where national culture and
identities would be taken to the very verge of extinction,
as has happened to so many ecological factors. The
enslaving content of the MIA is obvious and in keeping with
the Helms Burton Act. Hence, the United States, once more,
is trying to make Europe an accomplice of its criminal
policies. This is a groundless claim, as foreign
investments in Cuba and the actually unanimous vote at the
General Assembly of the United Nations and the Security
Council against the blockade have confirmed, besides the
progress in Caribbean integration and other facts that
confirm that Cuba cannot be isolated. Before the
denunciations of diverse political forces and the fear of
several European governments, the MIA has been withdrawn
but the United States, its main promoter, is awaiting for
the moment to impose it in yet again another violation of
international law.

Comrades:

Cuba condemns the genocide against Yugoslavia, demands its
unconditional cessation and supports a political solution,
for a military solution is absurd. The political solution
is to reestablish peace and benefit all Yugoslavs on an
equal footing, as well as all peoples, religions and ethnic
groups of the region. Comrade Fidel offered one thousand
medical doctors to assist the Albanian-Kosovar refugees
while sending hundreds of doctors to the sister nations of
our own region, victims of hurricanes and the poverty that
capitalism generates all over the world.
We ratify our invariable solidarity with all that oppose
the terrible machinations of imperialism in Latin America,
Africa, Middle East and Asia, as well as with the workers
of industrialized countries undermined by the great
capital.
Our solidarity consists above all in safeguarding the Cuban
Revolution and to continue being loyal to the confidence
and the support that we receive from all the peoples. We
shall never retrocede in the least, as Che Guevara asked.
The United States increases its brutal blockade, infused
with its genocide flair while speaking of flexibilization,
with its usual hypocrisy.
It bribed voters and exerted pressure on governments to
condemn Cuba at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. It
was a pyrric victory. It is imperialism's response to more
severe Cuban laws against paid fifth columnists and
criminals, part of US destabilizing plans.
At a moment where the world goes from bad to worse, Cuba,
on the contrary, is going well.
But we shall never ignore our defects and mistakes. We are
now strengthening our ideas, with the absolute conviction
of the justness of Marxism-Leninism, whenever applied
creatively.
Step by step we are achieving more efficiency and showing
signs of economic recovery, though the difficulties and
inequalities of the special period still persist but we
shall overcome them.
We resist the onslaughts of imperialism and of nature, and
besides we advance thanks to the fact that our people was
able to conquer, on its own, and has known how to defend,
its own revolutionary power, expression of the most genuine
socialist democracy that we widen incessantly.
If our country has been able to challenge during 40 years
the hostility of the mightiest superpower that has ever
existed it is thanks to enjoying greater unity, without
being shattered by multi-partisanism, as stated by Jose
Marti, of the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people.
Precisely all the conspiracies of the enemies of Cuba are
directed towards reestablishing a dividing
multi-partisanism and reintroducing a new bourgeois class
that would again be powerful, counterrevolutionary and
annexationist. Its repugnant image is that of the Miami
terrorist Mafia.
The time has come for more solidarity against the
aggressions of Neoliberal fascism and this requires that
revolutionaries avoid being misled by enemy propaganda
traps, designed to justify their misdeeds, outrages and
crimes.
The Cuban Revolution is confident that all peoples,
starting with the revolutionary, progressive or simply
realist peoples of the world, will learn the lessons
derived of the change in world situation produced in
Yugoslavia.
On our part, the Cuba communists have done so and stronger
than ever before we proclaim:

Socialism or death!
Homeland or death! We shall overcome!

Note: As part of a military solution for a unipolar world,
the US is fine-tuning its plan for a total cyberspace
attack to completely paralyze the defense systems of its
enemies.