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Forbes: libel at the service of the empire
The infamies and lies concerning
the Cuban president spread by Forbes magazine
in an act of libel at the service of the empire were
blown apart by the irrefutable truths laid out on
the evening of May 15 by a group of prominent
individuals who accompanied Fidel during a special
presentation broadcast on television and radio from
Havana.
It was clearly revealed that the
publication and its editor-in-chief had conspired
with the anti-Cuban obsession of President George W.
Bush and the U.S. intelligence agencies, and how the
media is servile to Washington’s dictates.
With solid arguments and
reasoning, each one of the participants in the
“Roundtable” program demonstrated that the empire is
angered by the advances of a Revolution that is
immaculate, honest, just and transparent, like the
one that is taking place in Cuba.
Beginning his special
presentation, Fidel admitted that he felt repugnance
at the malicious lies about him in that libelous
publication, which placed him on a list of rulers
who have amassed personal fortunes, including
monarchs and dictators.
A little more than a year ago, on
March 17, 2005, he alluded to that despicable
publication, but at the time he preferred to focus
his speech on explaining an extremely important
event for our people: the revaluation of the peso.
He recalled that on another
occasion, when he was responding to the false
statement made by the U.S. president to his buddies
in the Cuban-Miami mafia regarding the idea that
trade with Cuba “would do nothing more than fill the
pockets of Castro and his henchmen, he said, among
other things, “I was not born totally poor. My
father possessed thousands of hectares of land. When
the Revolution triumphed, that land was handed over
to workers and farmers. I have the honor of being
able to say that I do not possess or have a single
dollar to my name. My entire fortune, Mr. Bush,
could fit in the pocket of your shirt. If some day I
should need it to put it in a place that is quite
safe from preventative or surprise attacks, I would
kindly ask you to lend it to me, and if it is a lot
I will donate it to you beforehand as a hire
charge.”
He also recalled how this past
year, Bush and the U.S. authorities have been caught
in the serious offense of giving protection to
terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and it was with great
difficulty – not Bush, but other officials – that
they were forced to admit that the revelations made
by Cuba about the shelter given to that criminal in
the United States were true and irrefutable.
The invective hurled by the
magazine Forbes was recently reiterated and
the powerful media dependent on the empire echoed
it. Fidel had warned that they would get a soaking,
and used baseball terms to describe the task of
deflating their lie with a powerful hit against a
limp pitch that would send the ball over
centerfield.
Fidel explained that in order to
unmask the libel, he thought: “Am I going to stand
up in front of the people in order to defend myself
from this garbage?” He considered, nevertheless,
that it would be appropriate to have several
prominent individuals speak to illustrate various
aspects related to the issue: Francisco Soberón,
minister president of the Central Bank of Cuba
(BCC), whom he described as one of the most honest
men he knew; Abel Prieto, minister of culture, who
has been in permanent contact with social movements
and intellectuals who are resisting the empire;
scientists Concepción Campa, the main creator of the
vaccine against meningitis Type B and Agustín Lage,
who as head of the Center for Molecular Immunology
was developing promising anti-cancer
pharmaceuticals; and historian Eusebio Leal,
promoter of the enormous task of the rescue of Old
Havana and an international authority on the subject
of the restoration of historic cities.
CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE
ULTRA-RIGHT AND THE CIA
Soberón offered a very precise
sketch of the magazine’s owner, Steve Forbes: a man
of the ultra-right associated with former presidents
Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. in the
destabilization of the former European socialist
bloc. A rich U.S. businessman, extremely interested
in sniffing around the origins of other people’s
fortunes, but reluctant to publicly state the
origins of his own, estimated at $1.839 billion.
In demonstrating the crude and
totally inconsistent methods of those who claim to
be calculating the non-existent fortune of the
leader of the Cuban Revolution, the president
minister of the BCC suggested among other examples
that Forbes could attribute to George W. Bush about
10% of the $500 billion in money from drug
trafficking and organized crime that U.S. banks
annually launder with impunity launder, or an
identical percentage in bribes of the
$280,456,000,000 that U.S. taxpayers have shelled
out for the aggression against Iraq.
Instead of devoting itself to
spreading a colossal lie which it hopes to use to
stain the untainted file of the Revolution’s leader,
the libelous magazine should investigate and publish
facts on Bush’s shady maneuvers to increase his
fortune, like the proven case of the buying and
selling of the Texas Rangers baseball team and its
stadium; his responsibility for the financial
irregularities of the Harken Energy oil company; and
his ties to the Enron Corporation, the perpetrator
of the most enormous fraud in recent U.S. history.
As resounding evidence of the
confidence in the Cuban Revolution that many people
in the world share, the BCC minister president
announced that recently the institution was able to
place an issuance of bonds totaling 400 million
euros on the London Stock Exchange, payable in one
year at 7% interest, which were purchased in their
entirety by foreign and Cuban banks on the same date
they were issued.
Over the last nine years, Soberón
noted, Cuba has paid for imports worth $44 billion,
including those received in hard currency by CIMEX
via the sale of vaccines, plus funds raised by the
International Conference Center and other income
that has gone into our accounts for the nation’s
expenses, including education, health, social
welfare, domestic defense and reserves for dealing
with climactic contingencies or epidemics that are
natural or introduced by the enemy.
“With absolute moral authority
and looking our people and public opinion in the
face, we affirm that their top leader is an example
of dignity and impeccability,” the bank minister
said as concluded his presentation.
LIES AS WEAPONS OF THE MEDIA
“They made a million-dollar
mistake,” was Abel Prieto’s ironic comment on the
attempt by Forbes magazine to include Fidel
on its list of ruling magnates. The culture minister
referred to the extensive list of calumnies and lies
that imperialism has consistently used to discredit
those who do not bow down to its hegemonic plans.
Among the many and illustrative
examples of using lies as a weapon of the media’s
power, Abel compared the fuss in 1986 resulting from
the invention of the case of the “supposed poet and
supposed invalid,” the common terrorist Armando
Valladares, whom Reagan awarded with the post of
U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Commission in
Geneva, with the silence that prevented the exposé
of what Salvadoran activist Herbert Anaya uncovered
on crimes and torture committed in the La Esperanza
prison: none of the big-business media wanted to
publish the report or broadcast the video with
testimony by the victims.
That practice of misinformation
has taken on uncommon proportions during the current
U.S. administration, as can be seen by the lies used
to justify the aggression against Iraq, and the
murder in Baghdad of photographer José Couso and
other photographers.
Prieto noted that in spite of the
lies, the road to truth and emancipated thought
keeps opening up more and more. In that sense, he
said he thought it would be very useful to read the
book Cien horas con Fidel (One Hundred Hours
with Fidel), containing conversations with Ignacio
Ramonet, who was among the guests in the studio
where the “Roundtable” presentation was being
broadcast. The Cuban edition of the book has been
launched in Havana.
WE DON’T NEED TO DEFEND
OURSELVES, WE ARE HERE TO BRING CHARGES
“We came to charge those who
steal and those who lie,” was how outstanding
scientist Agustín Lage summed up the purpose of the
special televised presentation. “We don’t need to
defend ourselves; Fidel is defended by his work, his
ethics, the consistency of his whole life,” he
emphasized.
In the opinion of the likewise
deputy of the National Assembly of People’s Power,
the most recent calumny reflects the line of conduct
followed for decades by the Revolution’s ideological
enemies, and constitutes a real insult to the Cuban
people, given that one would have to assume that we
had become a country of fools or cowards to imagine
that the Cuban people have no historic memory and
that we would allow someone to lead the country who
is capable of stealing and enriching himself. This
people fought with weapons to defeat the corrupt
politicians of capitalism, and Fidel was one of the
first to rise up in arms to put an end to those
outrages.
Lage, who heads one of the
investigative centers of western Havana’s scientific
complex, emphasized that the article published by
Forbes first of all shows a total lack of
knowledge of Cuba’s reality, because to start with,
the MEDICUBA enterprise, mentioned as one of the
supposed sources of the president’s wealth, does not
include the sale of any medicine overseas among its
activities, nor the sale of any other biotechnology
product.
What can be read between the
lines in the article of the abovementioned libelous
publication, he said, is that they are acknowledging
that the biotechnology industry created and
developed by Cuba has a significant income, when
many companies in the world are unable to make
profits. That is the case in the United States,
where 70% of the sector’s businesses survive and
obtain profits through financial speculation and
other businesses.
Not one single cent of the income
from that sector goes to fattening anyone’s personal
fortune. Just between 1980 and 1990, more than $1
billion was invested in biotechnology
infrastructure. Moreover, production plants using
Cuban technology have already been assembled in
India and China, Agustín Lage noted.
The scientist explained that hard
currency obtained through the sector has also made
it possible to fund public health programs. If that
were not the case, he noted, it could not be said
that all Cuban children are protected against 13
diseases by vaccines administered free of charge, or
that all AIDS patients have access to the triple
therapy medications.
The income that comes from sales
abroad also supports the development of scientific
research, which requires very expensive equipment,
made more expensive by the extraterritorial laws
dictated by the U.S. government and the constant
persecution on the part of its authorities of any
company disposed to do business with Cuba.
At this time, there is
investigation underway on more than 150 projects,
and there are already more than 900 patents as a
consequence of scientific work in this field, Lage
explained. In addition, the biotechnology industry
continues to increase its contributions to the state
budget.
“The enemy is perverse, but not
stupid,” Lage commented. “He knows that because Cuba
is an example, she should be isolated and her
successes should be prevented at all costs. The
attack on Fidel is an attack on the Revolution, on
the foundations of our political system, on the
Cuban concepts of economic development.”
THE WEALTH OF VIRTUE
Eusebio Leal, City of Havana
historian, contributed unprecedented testimony
regarding the generosity and lack of interest in
material wealth that characterize Fidel. For years,
he has not said a word about those personal
experiences, and only now was he going to disclose
them: between 1991 and 1995, he carried out the
personal assignment given him by Fidel of
distributing 11,687 gifts from 133 nations received
by the president of the Councils of State and
Ministers. They included paintings, jewelry,
precious stones, marble objects, valuable
tapestries, antique weapons, clothing, furniture,
cameras, personal items...
In spite of insistence on the
part of Leal, who as a historian would have
preferred to showcase those items as a collection
related to Fidel, the president – Leal recounted –
gave the express order that they should be turned
over to cultural centers and persons in need,
without a single public reference to the donation.
Only the registries of museums and other centers
that received them included the elemental
consignment on their origins.
If it were not for the latest
imperialist calumny, Leal surely would not have
related either that the Numismatic Museum recently
inaugurated in Old Havana contains samples equal to
1,000 ounces of gold donated by Fidel, including 920
coins from different historical periods.
Eusebio noted that this sense of
austerity and personal example have been distinctive
traits of Fidel throughout his life; that was true
for the insurrectional period, when he decided to
pawn personal items to help pay for combat before
asking for money from others or using his parents’
resources. The Castro Ruz family maintained a
similar attitude when the Revolution triumphed, when
during the first months of 1959, it ceded its lands
in the Birán region.
Fidel’s example of austerity,
selflessness, personal generosity, and ethics
encouraged other young people who decided to join
him at that time, and who are disposed to do so now
and in the future, Leal affirmed. His value as a
human being is also demonstrated by the fact that he
has never abandoned anybody who was his
comrade-in-struggle, his high demands on himself and
his special efforts to safeguard the country’s
patrimony, which is outstandingly evident in the
work being carried out to materially, socially and
spiritually restore Old Havana.
According to Doctor Concepción
Campa, member of the Political Bureau and director
of the Finlay Institute, the lies published by
Forbes demonstrate that “our enemies are
incapable of understanding those who have never held
and never will hold money as a god.” Fidel has
taught that the richest person is not the one who
has the most, but the one who needs the least, she
said. But that would be hard to understand for the
masterminds of wars of aggression who leave
long-lasting scars like those suffered in Vietnam,
where babies are still being born with congenital
deformations due to the use of Agent Orange more
than 30 years ago.
The outstanding researcher
reflected on Cuba’s selfless aid to many nations
through supplying vaccines, without any importance
given to the political positions of the governments
of the moment in those countries. One example of
that, she said, was the donation made to the
Uruguayan people in 2002 to counteract an epidemic
of meningitis Meningococcia, when the authorities of
that South American country had lent themselves to
the empire’s game of trying to have Cuban condemned
in the UN Human Rights Commission. |
