Sankarda, this is Castro's response to Obama's election. We must be cautious in welcoming US Presidents. Bush Sr. may have started the Iraq war and his son Bush Jr. continued the war on developing countries with greater intensity. However we should not forget that it was a Democrat Kennedy who initiated thew missile crisis in Cuba and later started the war on Vietnam. The statement below shows that Castro still has his spark. His views on human rights were always remarkable and he touched the right nerve--at least for those who view the world objectively.
Sharit
My questions for Obama- by Fidel Castro
It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing Barack Obama's speech delivered at the Cuban American National Foundation last Friday. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries a favour. I have therefore no reservations about criticising him and expressing myself frankly.
What were Obama's statements? "Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy ... I won't stand for this injustice ... I will maintain the embargo."
This man who is doubtless, from the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate for the US presidency, portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the same argument US administrations have used again and again to justify crimes against our country. The blockade is an act of genocide. I don't want to see US children inculcated with those shameful values.
No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbour has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.
I am not questioning Obama's great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise them for the record.
Is it right for the president of the US to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext? Is it ethical for the president of the US to order the torture of other human beings? Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the US as an instrument to bring peace to the planet?
Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment to only one country, Cuba, in order to destabilise it, good and honourable when it costs innocent children and mothers their lives? Are the brain drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?
Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks? Is it honourable and sane to invest millions and millions of dollars in the military-industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on earth several times over? Is that the way in which the US expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights?
Before judging our country, Obama should know that Cuba - with its education, health, sports, culture and science programmes, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of his powerful country - is proof that much can be done with very little. Cuba has never subordinated cooperation with other countries to ideological requirements. We offered the US our help when hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our revolution can mobilise tens of thousands of doctors and health technicians. It can mobilise an equally vast number of teachers and citizens who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to fulfil any noble purpose, not to usurp rights or take possession of raw materials.
The goodwill and determination of people constitute limitless resources that would not fit in the vault of a bank. They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.
- Fidel Castro is former president of Cuba. This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Granma, the Cuban Communist party newspaper granma.co.cu
FOR YOUR READING AT LEISURE
The Rise of India's Saffro-Nazis
Written by Sankar Ray 11 Nov 08 (http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1537&Itemid=174)
Hindus and Muslims demand an eye for an eye in an escalating cycle of violence
A year before his death in 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked that "The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism." Today a wave of Hindu terrorism is raising fears that the country's first prime minister could be right.Recently, for instance, a young 'sadhvi,' or Hindu woman monk, Pragya Singh Thakur, who rechristened herself as Sadhvi Purnachetnagiri, was arrested by Maharashtra anti-terrorism police in connection with the killing of six and injuring of six at a mosque on September 29 at Malegaon, 280 miles from Mumbai. She was alleged to be a frontline leader of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and, according to the anti-terrorism chief, owned the motorcycle used in the blasts, which took place at Bhikku Chowk in central Malegaon, just outside the sealed office of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India.
There are also disturbing signs that the Hindu militants have connections to India's military. Anti-terrorism interrogators rounded up half a dozen army officers including Lt. Col. Shrikant Prasat Purohit, who is believed to have confessed that he was aware of logistics and explosives to be used for the attack at Malegaon. Purohit was apparently posted at the Army Education Corps Training College and Center of Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, an adjacent central Indian state, although he was actually assigned to military intelligence along India's borders.
Purohit is said to have been one of the founders of the radical Hindu group Abhinav Bharat at Malegaon and his cellphone memory allegedly contained several conversations with Ramesh Upadhyay, a retired Army major also suspected of being involved in the blast. In one of the conversation, Purohit asked Upadhyay to change his mobile number, presumably to confuse interrogators. Anti-terrorist interrogators have sought permission to question an Army major general and two colonels, and three more commissioned officers below Purohit have been identified with linkages to militants in Kashmir in connection with procurement of RDX explosives.
According to police, the sadhvi was a member of Jai Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti, another openly anti-Muslim and anti-Christian Hindu terrorist group based in Surat in the adjacent state of Gujarat, which has yet to recover from one of the bloodiest communal riots ever, in 2002. She allegedly also had links with the radical Hindu Jagran Manch in Madhya Pradesh. Both states are under BJP rule and have been accused of torturing non-Hindus.
Although the two organizations issued denials that she was working with them, security forces intercepted 400 minutes of phone calls between them. Two others were arrested and accused of helping to plant the bomb. Two more who were detained are believed to have divulged the names of collaborators.
What is being dubbed "reverse terrorism" by Hindus seeking to get even with earlier blasts perpetrated by Islamists is a worrisome escalation in the cycle of revenge that began with the Gujarat riots, a spasm of communal violence in which as many as 2000 people died and 150,000 were displaced from their homes. But the increasing use of more sophisticated mechanical and electronics devices in detonations against Muslims and Christians is a recent phenomenon.
"Federal security personnel have been struggling to find out where and who taught the activists bomb-making amid unconfirmed reports that training camps have been created along patterns set by the Taliban or al Qaeda,'' said a senior officer of Maharashtra Police.
Bal Keshav Thackeray, the chief of Shiv Sena, an openly anti-Muslim political party and an ally of the BJP, issued a statement defending Sadhvi and the other suspects, ridiculing the BJP and other organizations for disowning the woman.
In a high-pitched editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Samna, Thackeray condemned terrorism that "weakens the country and we regret the loss of life in the Malegaon incident." But he went on to write that "Every day Islamic terrorists are planting bombs to kill Hindus in India. The latest blasts in Assam too were engineered by Bangladeshi migrants." The Malegaon suspects, he said,"cannot be blamed, adding that "The arrests of cultured and educated individuals in connection with the Malegaon blasts is an effort to crush Hindus to please Muslim fanatics in the country."
Ominously, Malegaon may well be the dress rehearsal for 'reverse terrorism'. But it is not the only spot for such experiments. Another activist affiliate, the Bajrang Dal, whose members had been identified as being directly involved in the Gujarat riots, is believed to have been involved in bombings at Nanded in Maharastra, terrorizing inhabitants near mosques.
The distinctive feature of militant Hindu phenomenon is gang rape, which was widespread during the Gujarat riot. After the nationwide communal frenzy following the destruction of Babri Masjid in December of 1992 in Uttar Pradesh, Muslim women were gang-raped openly under floodlights in the suburbs of Mumbai, according to a fact-finding report by a citizens' initiative.
The late Professor I K Shukla, a tireless worker against communalism from all sides, coined the term "saffro-Nazis" to describe the saffron-clad Hindu rightists as a growing threat.
'"I am glad that sociologists like Sharit Bhowmik (head of labor studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences) saw through the game plan of the saffro- Nazis functioning under various names," he wrote in an email to Asia Sentinel prior to his death. "Maharashtra is, in effect, still run by the Shiv Sena both in mufti and khaki uniform. The terrorism sponsored by the Hindu Taliban is 'cultural nationalism,' while others' retaliatory bid for justice and dignity is 'Islamofascism.'"
Team India gets set to thwart Australia's quest for the final frontier. Catch the action on MSN Try it now!
--
Dr. Sharit K. Bhowmik
Professor and Dean
School of Management and Labour Studies
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Deonar,
Mumbai 400 088, India
Mobile:91- 9869210206
Phone (res): 91-22-2652 6346
Phone (Off): 91-22-2552-5800
Email: sharitb@gmail.com, sharitb@tiss.edu
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
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