Message from the Commander in Chief: Fidel Castro Ruz =2-18-2008 +

Que Viva Che Fidel! Venceremos!

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/febrero/mar19/mensaje-i.html

Havana. February 19, 2008

Message from the Commander in Chief Dear compatriots: Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message. The moment has come to nominate and elect the State Council, its President, its Vice-Presidents and Secretary. For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition. It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply. Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs. Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery "was not without risks." My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That's all I can offer. To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief. In short letters addressed to Randy Alonso, Director of the Round Table National TV Program, --letters which at my request were made public-- I discreetly introduced elements of this message I am writing today, when not even the addressee of such letters was aware of my intention. I trusted Randy, whom I knew very well from his days as a student of Journalism. In those days I met almost on a weekly basis with the main representatives of the University students from the provinces at the library of the large house in Kohly where they lived. Today, the entire country is an immense University. Following are some paragraphs chosen from the letter addressed to Randy on December 17, 2007: "I strongly believe that the answers to the current problems facing Cuban society, which has, as an average, a twelfth grade of education, almost a million university graduates, and a real possibility for all its citizens to become educated without their being in any way discriminated against, require more variables for each concrete problem than those contained in a chess game. We cannot ignore one single detail; this is not an easy path to take, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society is to prevail over instinct. "My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in. "Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end." Letter from January 8, 2008: "…I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen." And I reiterated in that letter that "…I never forget that 'all of the world's glory fits in a kernel of corn." Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama. Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution. The path will always be difficult and require from everyone's intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century. This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of 'Reflections by comrade Fidel.' It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful. Thanks. Fidel Castro Ruz February 18, 2008 5:30 p.m.

Click Related Links=
Fidel Castro Resigns as Cuba's President
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20castro.html?hp

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1105-21.htm

Published on Saturday, November 5, 2005 by the World Policy Institute

Flashback> The Bush Effect: U.S. Military Involvement in Latin America Rises, Development and Humanitarian Aid Fall

by Frida Berrigan and Jonathan Wingo

While President George W. Bush is in Latin America to push his controversial free trade agenda, there is another type of trade to be concerned about. U.S. military aid, training and arms sales to the region have all increased sharply since the beginning of the war on terrorism and threaten to exacerbate conflict, empty national coffers and sidetrack development programs. Through the Foreign Military Financing program, military aid has drastically increased during the Bush administration. In 2000, U.S. military aid to Latin America was $3.4 million, a tiny share of worldwide FMF spending of $4.7 billion. By 2006, overall spending on Foreign Military Financing actually decreased to $4.5 billion, after peaking at $6 billion in 2003. But military aid to Latin America increased to over 34 times its year 2000 levels, to $122 million. After the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, President Bush will visit Brazil and Panama. Argentina is the third largest recipient of military aid in Latin America, with a total of $6.3 million between 2000 and 2006. Panama, where the United States long controlled the canal area, is also a major recipient of military aid, with a total of $5 million for the same period. Argentina's population is ten times that of Panama, making the near parity in their military aid levels striking. But, when looking at military aid to the region, it is most noteworthy that El Salvador tops the list of recipients, with almost $23 million in FMF since 2002. This relatively large amount of military aid can be explained at least in part by looking at Salvadoran support for the war on terrorism. El Salvador is one of the Bush administration's few remaining allies with troops in Iraq, and six Salvadoran Special Forces soldiers have been awarded the Bronze Star. The administration has also sought to draw a parallel between El Salvador's transition to democracy and Iraq's rocky progress toward that goal. While in San Salvador last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld praised the country's progress, saying "when one looks at this country and recognizes the fierce struggle that existed here 20 years ago and the success they've had despite the fact that there was a war raging during the elections, it just proves that the sweep of human history is for freedom." He added, "We've seen it in [El Salvador], we've seen it in Afghanistan and I believe we'll see it in Iraq." El Salvador, which emerged from a U.S.-backed civil war in 1992, is also the second largest recipient on military training though IMET, and it is 11th on the list of arms sales recipients, purchasing a total of $46.8 million in weaponry between 2000 and 2003. During the civil war, in which 75,000 people were killed over 12 years, Washington contributed $1.5 million a day in military and economic aid to support the dictatorship's fight against guerillas. Military Training In fiscal year 2000, the United States distributed almost $50 million in military training funding through International Military Education and Training (IMET), with $9.8 million or 18% allocated to the Western Hemisphere. This funding trained 2,684 soldiers from Latin American countries. Fast forward six years and into the midst of the war on terrorism; overall IMET funding worldwide has increased 75% to $86.7 million. Funding for military training in Latin America has increased at a proportional rate, to $13.6 million for 2006. This will fund training for 3,221 Latin American soldiers in everything from counterintelligence to helicopter repair. Colombia tops the list for IMET, with $9.3 million in military training aid since 2000, an increase of almost 90% over six years. But other countries have received larger percentage increases over the same period. IMET funding to El Salvador and Nicaragua increased more than 200%, and their neighbor Panama received a 400% increase between 2000 and 2006. At the same time that military aid and training are on the rise, U.S. economic aid to the region is dropping-- the 2006 foreign aid request foresees a sharp drop especially in development assistance, child survival and health programs. Weapons Sales to Latin America: Hundreds of Millions and Counting In addition to aid programs such as FMF and IMET, the United States sells military hardware through arms sales programs such as Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS). The top 15 recipients of arms sales in Latin America took delivery of more than $3.5 billion in military hardware and weaponry between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which full data is available). Brazil topped the list with almost $720 million in arms from the United States. The top five U.S. arms sales recipients - Brazil plus Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina-accounted for two thirds of all U.S. weapons sold in the region. Southern Command U.S. Southern Command is the hub of the military's presence in Latin America. Now based in Miami and headed by General Brantz Craddock, SOUTHCOM operates on a budget of $800 million a year and considers 19 countries in Central and South America and 13 in the Caribbean as its area of concern. The Command's size and budget, especially given the current military preoccupation with the Middle East, speaks to the United States' enduring influence in the Western Hemisphere-- Washington's backyard. The Southern Command is staffed by 1,470 people-- more than are tasked with the region by the Departments of State, Commerce, Treasury and Agriculture and the Joint Chiefs office and the Office of the Secretary of Defense combined. Ungoverned Spaces: Al Qaeda in Latin America? According to its public documents, Southern Command is interested in improving "effective sovereignty" in Latin America's "ungoverned spaces" like the "Triborder Area" between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where national governments have little power, smuggling is rampant, and U.S. military experts allege that fundraising for Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is taking place. Former SOUTHCOM head James Hill states that "branches of Middle East terrorist organizations conduct support activities in the Southern Command area of responsibility." But, many Latin America and security experts say that the terrorist threat there is overstated. Adam Isaacson, an analyst with the well-regarded Center on International Policy, says that with the exception of Colombia, "terrorists are rather scarce in Latin America, and terrorists who threaten U.S. citizens on U.S. soil are scarcer still*To portray terrorism as a region-wide threat, from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, seems like a tough sell." The lack of a significant threat has done little to cool the rhetoric. Isaacson notes that "the word 'terrorism' appears as a justification for military aid in 16 of the Western Hemisphere country narratives in the State Department's 2005 Congressional Presentation document for foreign aid programs." Radical Populism: Latin America Tilting Left? While fanning concerns about the growing role of Islamic fundamentalists in Latin America and keeping a wary eye on "ungoverned spaces," what seems to concern Washington most is the leftward tilt of many Latin American countries. In its 2004 Posture Statement, SOUTHCOM noted that "radical populism" is a major threat to stability in the region. At a briefing before the House Armed Services Committee in April 2004, then- SOUTHCOM Commander James Hill said that "terrorists throughout Latin America bomb, murder, kidnap, traffic drugs, transfer arms, launder money, smuggle humans." He elaborated that there are both "traditional terrorists," like the criminal gangs in Central America and paramilitary and guerilla groups in Colombia; and "emerging terrorists" like the "radical populists" who tap into "deep seated frustrations of the failure of democratic reforms to deliver expected results." Radical populists apparently include Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, a former leader in the Bolivian coca growers' union who now heads that country's main opposition party. In June, CIA Director Porter Goss testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. should paying greater attention to threats "in our own back yard." He noted that presidential elections will be held in eight South American and Central American countries in 2006 and warned that "destabilization or a backslide away from democratic principles...would not be helpful to our interests and would be probably threatening to our security in the long run." As Tom Barry, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, said, "Latin America is a continent that is drifting to the left, maybe out of U.S. control." To many in Washington, that seems to be at least as scary as a robust terrorist network in their backyard. On The Ground in Latin America: The U.S. Military in Paraguay and Elsewhere U.S. military bases, forward operating locations and radar stations like the ones listed on page five try to keep a low profile, but they are not as elusive as on-again, off-again military "training missions," like those taking place in Paraguay this summer. The United States military and the Armed Forces of Paraguay are conducting joint operations at a Paraguayan military base, including one that involves U.S. soldiers providing counterterrorism training to 65 Paraguayan air force officers. While U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have denied Washington's interest in a permanent military base in Paraguay, the location of the exercises raise suspicions. The military base is 200 miles from the Bolivian border and almost as close to the country's natural gas reserves and fresh water aquifers. It is also close enough to Brazil to be threatening. In late July, the Brazilian army launched military maneuvers along its border with Paraguay, parallel to the arrival of U.S. troops in Paraguay. According to InterPress Service, the United States has conducted 46 military operations in Paraguay since 2002. U.S. BASES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN In addition to strengthening the militaries of Latin America through aid, training and equipment, the United States continues to stake out a claim on the use of Latin American territory for its own foreign policy objectives. Some of these bases are well-known (and in the case of the U.S. base at Guantanamo, notorious), while others- in Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador and Caribbean islands- are open secrets. What follows is a list of what we know about the United States' "military footprint" in the region (drawn largely from the work of the Center for International Policy). The term Forward Operating Location is used to describe U.S. arrangements with foreign nations for temporary access of military bases. But in some cases, "temporary" can mean decades, not months. Guantánamo Bay, Cuba United States military has about 850 U.S. forces from five branches stationed in Guantánamo. Its military base, now largely a detention facility for foreign prisoners in the "war on terrorism," is the oldest U.S. base outside of the continental United States and the only permanent overseas U.S. presence within a country the U.S. regards as hostile. Soto Cano, Honduras About 550 U.S. troops are stationed in Honduras as part of JTF-Bravo's mission "to enhance cooperative regional security through forward presence and peacetime engagement operations." Specific activities include military exercises, humanitarian and civic assistance projects, disaster relief, and support for counter-drug operations. JTF-Bravo also assists Central American armed forces in "restructuring their militaries to fit changing security requirements." Manta, Ecuador, Forward Operating Location From the Eloy Alfaro International Airport, U.S. Navy P-3 Maritime Patrol Aircraft conduct counter-drug detection and monitoring missions. Aruba, Forward Operating Location The U.S. has a small presence in Aruba, with two medium and three small aircraft, about fifteen permanently assigned staff and twenty to twenty-five temporarily deployed operations and maintenance personnel. Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles Forward Operating Location The Curaçao section of this Caribbean FOL hosts F-16s, Navy P-3 and E-2 Airborne Early Warning planes, E-3 AWACS and other military aircraft. As many as 200 to 230 U.S. military personnel are temporarily deployed on operations at this base. Comalapa, El Salvador, Forward Operating Location The Salvadoran facility hosts four P-3 (or similar sized) aircraft. The main focus of the flights using this site is detecting maritime drug trafficking, especially in the Pacific. Seventeen Counter-Drug Radar Sites In Colombia, Peru, and in mobile and secret locations, the United States military operates radar sites to detect possible drug-smuggling flights. In most cases, the radar sites are located within host-country military bases, but U.S. personnel are in charge of their own security. A typical detachment consists of 36 to 45 personnel. Known Radar Locations Colombia Leticia (southeastern Colombia) Marandúa (east, along border with Venezuela) Ríohacha (northeast, on the Caribbean coast) San Andrés (east of Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea) San José del Guaviare (southern central Colombia) Tres Esquinas (south west, near border of Ecuador) Peru Iquitos (on the Amazon River in near Colombian border) Andoas (Northern Peru, between Colombia and Ecuador) Pucallpa (on the Ucayali River near Brazil) The rest of the radar sites are either mobile or in secret locations. Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute.

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

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C/S

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