CP of Cuba, Contribution to the Athens Meeting 21J2002

by Claudio Ramos Borrego

Dear Comrades:

On behalf of the Communist Party of Cuba, I would like to
begin my speech by expressing our gratitude for the
invitation to participate in this meeting and for the
hospitality accorded to me by the Greek Communists. At the
same time, I would like to seize this special occasion to
express our appreciation to you and to the parties that you
represent for the constant expressions of solidarity
towards the Cuban people and our Socialist Revolution.

In our opinion, the September 11 terrorist attacks on US
cities and the further development of the events have taken
us to a new world scene which is characterised by an
unprecedented US hegemonic domination. Those events, almost
unanimously condemned by the world public opinion, enabled
President the Bush Administration to emerge from the
relative international isolation brought about by its
arrogant diplomacy and its aspirations to unilaterally
impose its interests of world domination, even on its
closest allies. However, the profits that it has obtained
from these painful events -which we were among the first
ones to condemn- would not have been possible if it had not
been for the dramatic changes that took place as a result
of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

By the end of the 20th century, the transatlantic strategic
alliance showed signs of fissures. However, the European
leaders yield the USA during the war in Yugoslavia and
later on during the operations in Kosovo. But the Yankee
arrogant decisions, taken with a total contempt towards its
allies, ended up by irritating NATO, an institution which
was facing a serious identity crisis as a result of the
lack of understanding as to the role that it had to play
under the new circumstances created after the disappearance
of the USSR.

The distrust shown by US leaders in the face of the
announced creation of a European rapid deployment military
force of sixty thousand men is an example of the
deterioration in the relations of trust existing between
the USA and its European NATO allies, with the exception of
Great Britain, which was the only EU country that, together
with Australia and the USA, took part in "ECHELON", a vast
network of espionage on world communications which further
affected these relations.

Under the Bush Administration, the US foreign policy shows
a marked isolationist trend. The prestige of the USA has
been seriously damaged by its rejection of the Kyoto
Protocol, its refusal to the creation of an International
Court of Justice, its reluctance to ratify a great number
of international juridical instruments such as: the
International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
the Protocols of the Pact on Civil and Political Rights;
the Conventions on the Traffic of Persons, on the Status of
Refugees and on the Rights of Migrant Workers; the
Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory
Limitations to War Crimes; its refusal to sign the Treaty
for Banning the Production and Use of Land Mines; the
Convention on Children's Rights and the Protocol for
Monitoring Biological Weapons, and so on.

The economic dispute between the USA and the European Union
worsened as the new US Administration tried to impose its
viewpoints on its transatlantic partners and allies. The
list of their conflicts is endless. Let us mention just a
few: the banana issue, the use of some types of aircraft,
the additional tariff barriers, the agricultural subsidies,
the hormone-treated meat, the transgenic cereals and,
especially, the EU rejection of extraterritorial laws such
as the Helms-Burton and D'Amato Acts. Nowadays, without
having satisfied the demands of its European partners, the
US has imposed new tariff barriers and granted higher
subsidies to US agricultural farmers. These contradictions
take place amid the crisis of the capitalist model of
neoliberal globalization which began in peripheric
countries such as Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, South Korea
and Argentina, and which revealed the inability of the
mechanisms of the system to find proper solutions. When the
September 11 attacks occurred, the crisis had moved to the
core of the capitalist system and those events did nothing
else but to speed it up and widen its negative effects.

On the other hand, as a reaction to the perverse
consequences of the transnational domination and to the
economic and social policies of bourgeois governments,
peoples' movement against neoliberal globalization grew all
over the world. What at the beginning seemed to be a
spontaneous street demonstration in Seattle became a wide
movement of struggle and its objectives became a clear
criticism against the capitalist system. The movement
became more organised: Prague, Davos, Montreal and Genoa
were landmarks which were further inserted in a common
programme of action at the Porto Alegre Forum. This
movement, born outside the party system, has a common
denominator: the idea of the need for economic, social and
political changes.

A wide popular movement against the neo-colonialist project
of the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) was
emerging in Latin America. On the other hand, the advances
made by the progressive forces in several countries of the
region paved the way to changes which, although of a
limited scope, could challenge the neoliberal model and
improve the living conditions of the masses.

The US Administration has succeeded in assembling a broad
international coalition which, summoned under its
sponsorship to fight terrorism, is currently being used to
suppress the revolutionary and progressive forces
throughout the world. At present, its leadership is
unquestionable. It is true that peoples' opposition to its
war actions is on the rise, but -up to now- the majority of
the governments support its policy. The unrestrained arms
race it has unleashed and its key element, the ballistic
missile defence project, are aimed at imposing an
overwhelming military superiority which will allow the US
to exert its domination by means of terror. We are all
aware that, under the present circumstances, this
multimillionaire project is of no real value for national
defence and in no way can be justified with the alleged
terrorist threat.

The overwhelming avalanche of war propaganda, orchestrated
by the powerful US mass media, has made new room for the
reactionary forces which already showed an alarming rise in
Europe. The electoral victories and the progress made by
neofascist parties at the expense of the discredit of the
socialdemocrat governments, which had ruled by using the
same neoliberal recipes of their conservative predecessors,
are a serious threat to European democratic traditions and
one of the most worrying signs of our times. Since the
international response to all this situation has been
gaining momentum, nowadays -with the alleged justification
of the war against terrorism- governments are introducing
new repressive laws against this popular movement which
opposes neoliberal globalization. We denounce this
unacceptable linkage which confirms the true intentions of
this campaign.

The September 11 events and the campaign against the
supposed authors of terrorist actions have enabled the Bush
Administration to justify the implementation of a doctrine
which responds to its imperialistic hegemonic objectives.
However, the disease of the world capitalist system cannot
be cured by increasing military expenditures. The illusion
of a millennium of sustained economic growth is falling
into pieces because the system is not feasible from the
economic, social, ecological and moral point of view.
Likewise, the issue of terrorism cannot be solved just
through military and police means, without addressing the
causes which generate it.

The hypocrisy of the US Government in the face of the
terrorist phenomenon is clearly exposed by its systematic
opposition to any condemnation against the Zionist State of
Israel which, on a daily basis, has been carrying out
terrorist actions of ethnic cleansing in the
illegally-occupied Palestinian territories. In a useless
effort, it has tried to make people believe that they draw
a distinction between terrorists and Muslims; but -in
practice- it is quite evident that there has been a surge
of chauvinism, xenophobia, intolerance and racial
discrimination, not only in the USA, but also in many parts
of the world.

Another example of this is the attitude of tolerance,
protection and, in many cases, promotion of terrorist
actions against Cuba, which are organised and launched from
the State of Florida, in the USA. Counterrevolutionary
groups of Cuban exile are the ones which are responsible
for these terrorist actions and they have publicly claimed
their responsibility for these acts.

Recently, a law court in Miami, the centre of terrorist
actions against Cuba, condemned five Cuban young people who
lived in the USA and devoted their efforts to warn our
country about the activities of these terrorist elements in
order to prevent new bombings, acts of sabotage and other
criminal actions. Now they are serving long sentences in US
jails, while those who planted bombs in our aircraft, set
our schools on fire, attacked our tourist resorts and
introduced plagues and diseases in our country, are walking
freely in the streets of the city of Miami.

What moral does the US Government have to fight terrorism
when it gives shelter and protection to these criminals in
its own territory ?.

How can the US Government intend to give lessons to other
countries and make lists of terrorist States, when its own
territory is a nest of countless neofascist-oriented
terrorist organizations ?.

According to the US Government, terrorists are all those
who, in any way, are opposed to its imperialist designs.
All this is part and parcel of its totalitarian way of
thinking, which rejects any disagreement and which tries to
make all countries organize their societies after the image
and likeness of the US society, full of violence, injustice
and inequality. The huge expansion of the US military
apparatus, carried out under the pretext of the war against
terrorism, is aimed at suppressing peoples' desire of
freedom and protecting its imperialist interests
world-wide.

Comrades:

The Cuban Revolution has always been faithful to its
principles of social justice, equality and freedom, and is
facing the challenges of this new millennium with the
assurance that the future of mankind cannot lie in a
capitalist system which exploits and plunders the
environment, thus generating our self-destruction.

Communism is the only system that can open new horizons to
the preservation of our planet and provide endless
happiness for humanity. It shall be a society where all men
will be brothers, where everybody will have the opportunity
to develop its personal abilities, where the main objective
will be the creation of a new man that will achieve his
full human condition without the compulsion of the physical
need to sell himself as a merchandise.

This utopia is possible. It is the duty of every
revolutionary to fight for it because this means fighting
for the only possible future of mankind.

Thank you very much.

Athens, June 21 - 23, 2002.

Communist Party of Cuba
by Claudio Ramos Borrego

========================================================
Resumed version

Dear Comrades:

On behalf of the Communist Party of Cuba, I would like to
begin my speech by expressing our gratitude for the
invitation to participate in this meeting and for the
hospitality accorded to me by the Greek Communists. At the
same time, I would like to seize this special occasion to
express our appreciation to you and to the parties that you
represent for the constant expressions of solidarity
towards the Cuban people and our Socialist Revolution.

In our opinion, the September 11 terrorist attacks on US
cities and the further development of the events have taken
us to a new world scene which is characterised by an
unprecedented US hegemonic domination. Those events, almost
unanimously condemned by the world public opinion, enabled
President the Bush Administration to emerge from the
relative international isolation brought about by its
arrogant diplomacy and its aspirations to unilaterally
impose its interests of world domination, even on its
closest allies. However, the profits that it has obtained
from these painful events -which we were among the first
ones to condemn- would not have been possible if it had not
been for the dramatic changes that took place as a result
of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

Under the Bush Administration, the US foreign policy shows
a marked isolationist trend. The prestige of the USA has
been seriously damaged by its rejection of the Kyoto
Protocol, its refusal to the creation of an International
Court of Justice, its reluctance to ratify a great number
of international juridical instruments such as: the
International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
the Protocols of the Pact on Civil and Political Rights;
the Conventions on the Traffic of Persons, on the Status of
Refugees and on the Rights of Migrant Workers; the
Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory
Limitations to War Crimes; its refusal to sign the Treaty
for Banning the Production and Use of Land Mines; the
Convention on Children's Rights and the Protocol for
Monitoring Biological Weapons, and so on.

The economic dispute between the USA and the European Union
worsened as the new US Administration tried to impose its
viewpoints on its transatlantic partners and allies. The
list of their conflicts is endless. Let us mention just a
few: the banana issue, the use of some types of aircraft,
the additional tariff barriers, the agricultural subsidies,
the hormone-treated meat, the transgenic cereals and,
especially, the EU rejection of extraterritorial laws such
as the Helms-Burton and D'Amato Acts. Nowadays, without
having satisfied the demands of its European partners, the
US has imposed new tariff barriers and granted higher
subsidies to US agricultural farmers. These contradictions
take place amid the crisis of the capitalist model of
neoliberal globalization which began in peripheric
countries such as Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, South Korea
and Argentina, and which revealed the inability of the
mechanisms of the system to find proper solutions. When the
September 11 attacks occurred, the crisis had moved to the
core of the capitalist system and those events did nothing
else but to speed it up and widen its negative effects.

On the other hand, as a reaction to the perverse
consequences of the transnational domination and to the
economic and social policies of bourgeois governments,
peoples' movement against neoliberal globalization grew all
over the world. What at the beginning seemed to be a
spontaneous street demonstration in Seattle became a wide
movement of struggle and its objectives became a clear
criticism against the capitalist system. The movement
became more organised: Prague, Davos, Montreal and Genoa
were landmarks which were further inserted in a common
programme of action at the Porto Alegre Forum. This
movement, born outside the party system, has a common
denominator: the idea of the need for economic, social and
political changes.

On the other hand, as a reaction to the perverse
consequences of the transnational domination and to the
economic and social policies of bourgeois governments,
peoples' movement against neoliberal globalization grew all
over the world. What at the beginning seemed to be a
spontaneous street demonstration in Seattle became a wide
movement of struggle and its objectives became a clear
criticism against the capitalist system. The movement
became more organised: Prague, Davos, Montreal and Genoa
were landmarks which were further inserted in a common
programme of action at the Porto Alegre Forum. This
movement, born outside the party system, has a common
denominator: the idea of the need for economic, social and
political changes.

A wide popular movement against the neo-colonialist project
of the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) was
emerging in Latin America. On the other hand, the advances
made by the progressive forces in several countries of the
region paved the way to changes which, although of a
limited scope, could challenge the neoliberal model and
improve the living conditions of the masses.

The overwhelming avalanche of war propaganda, orchestrated
by the powerful US mass media, has made new room for the
reactionary forces which already showed an alarming rise in
Europe. The electoral victories and the progress made by
neofascist parties at the expense of the discredit of the
socialdemocrat governments, which had ruled by using the
same neoliberal recipes of their conservative predecessors,
are a serious threat to European democratic traditions and
one of the most worrying signs of our times. Since the
international response to all this situation has been
gaining momentum, nowadays -with the alleged justification
of the war against terrorism- governments are introducing
new repressive laws against this popular movement which
opposes neoliberal globalization. We denounce this
unacceptable linkage which confirms the true intentions of
this campaign.

The September 11 events and the campaign against the
supposed authors of terrorist actions have enabled the Bush
Administration to justify the implementation of a doctrine
which responds to its imperialistic hegemonic objectives.
However, the disease of the world capitalist system cannot
be cured by increasing military expenditures. The illusion
of a millennium of sustained economic growth is falling
into pieces because the system is not feasible from the
economic, social, ecological and moral point of view.
Likewise, the issue of terrorism cannot be solved just
through military and police means, without addressing the
causes which generate it.

The hypocrisy of the US Government in the face of the
terrorist phenomenon is clearly exposed by its systematic
opposition to any condemnation against the Zionist State of
Israel which, on a daily basis, has been carrying out
terrorist actions of ethnic cleansing in the
illegally-occupied Palestinian territories. In a useless
effort, it has tried to make people believe that they draw
a distinction between terrorists and Muslims; but -in
practice- it is quite evident that there has been a surge
of chauvinism, xenophobia, intolerance and racial
discrimination, not only in the USA, but also in many parts
of the world.

Another example of this is the attitude of tolerance,
protection and, in many cases, promotion of terrorist
actions against Cuba, which are organised and launched from
the State of Florida, in the USA. Counterrevolutionary
groups of Cuban exile are the ones which are responsible
for these terrorist actions and they have publicly claimed
their responsibility for these acts.

Recently, a law court in Miami, the centre of terrorist
actions against Cuba, condemned five Cuban young people who
lived in the USA and devoted their efforts to warn our
country about the activities of these terrorist elements in
order to prevent new bombings, acts of sabotage and other
criminal actions. Now they are serving long sentences in US
jails, while those who planted bombs in our aircraft, set
our schools on fire, attacked our tourist resorts and
introduced plagues and diseases in our country, are walking
freely in the streets of the city of Miami.

What moral does the US Government have to fight terrorism
when it gives shelter and protection to these criminals in
its own territory ?.

How can the US Government intend to give lessons to other
countries and make lists of terrorist States, when its own
territory is a nest of countless neofascist-oriented
terrorist organizations ?.

According to the US Government, terrorists are all those
who, in any way, are opposed to its imperialist designs.
All this is part and parcel of its totalitarian way of
thinking, which rejects any disagreement and which tries to
make all countries organize their societies after the image
and likeness of the US society, full of violence, injustice
and inequality. The huge expansion of the US military
apparatus, carried out under the pretext of the war against
terrorism, is aimed at suppressing peoples' desire of
freedom and protecting its imperialist interests
world-wide.

Comrades:

The Cuban Revolution has always been faithful to its
principles of social justice, equality and freedom, and is
facing the challenges of this new millennium with the
assurance that the future of mankind cannot lie in a
capitalist system which exploits and plunders the
environment, thus generating our self-destruction.

Communism is the only system that can open new horizons to
the preservation of our planet and provide endless
happiness for humanity. It shall be a society where all men
will be brothers, where everybody will have the opportunity
to develop its personal abilities, where the main objective
will be the creation of a new man that will achieve his
full human condition without the compulsion of the physical
need to sell himself as a merchandise.

This utopia is possible. It is the duty of every
revolutionary to fight for it because this means fighting
for the only possible future of mankind.

Thank you very much.