René González, uno de los Cinco luchadores antiterroristas cubanos presos injustamente en cárceles norteamericanas y que hoy se encuentra en libertad, manda un mensaje de agradecimiento a todas aquellas personas que apoyan su causa y que continúan pidiendo que se liberen a sus tres compañeros, aún encarcelados.

Published on Jun 6, 2014

Fernando González, uno de los Cinco luchadores antiterroristas cubanos presos injustamente en cárceles norteamericanas y que hoy se encuentra en libertad, manda un mensaje de agradecimiento a todas aquellas personas que apoyan su causa y que continúan pidiendo que se liberen a sus tres compañeros, aún encarcelados.

Dear Mr. Gross,
By Álvaro Fernández •
Published on June 5, 2014

Let me begin by telling you that I was one who believed 2014 would be a very good year for you and three others still in prison. This letter is to inform you that that light of hope is beginning to flicker.

Of course I would love to see you back home. I wish the same for the three remaining members of the Cuban Five still in U.S. prisons. But your chances grow slimmer the more I listen to the president and all others who fall in line behind him.

I bet you were excited when you heard the news of the past week. President Obama had traded five, who have been described as very dangerous, Afghan Taliban guerrilla leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. That’s right, five for one…

Still… you wait in a Cuban prison – for your commander in chief to take action. But you’re not a soldier, making your case different, we’ve been told. You’re simply an American citizen. By the way, the differentiation is not my take, those are words uttered by a spokesperson for the State Department, Jen Psaki. I guess this State Dept. fact makes you less important…

Your wife has led a brave campaign that demonstrates you really were a U.S. soldier, but instead of guns you carried military-grade, sophisticated telecommunications equipment. On paper you worked – although indirectly – for the U.S. government. But they’ve ignored poor Judy.

By the way, I’m a Taurus too. Born in May, just like you. And I read where you said you would not be alive by your next birthday. Your exact words were: “On May 2, I turn 65 years old and it will be my last birthday here.”

Not that I want you to die. To the contrary. Like I mentioned earlier I’d like to see you home with your wife and daughter. But if you claim that last month’s birthday was your final one in Cuba, then you better start getting your affairs in order.

The way I’m looking at this right now, if it’s up to the President and the U.S. Congress, you will probably perish in a Cuban prison.

And let me insist that it won’t be Cuba’s fault. Although Cuba will ultimately be blamed. In fact, I am starting to believe that your death is what the U.S. government wants. The ‘Alan Gross dies in a Cuban prison’ headline would be a propaganda coup for a whole bunch of people who don’t think much of you.

Yep. You’ve become a pawn in a political game. Notice I called you a pawn. Not even a rook or a knight.

The fact is that the president of the United States, his secretary of state, members of the U.S. Congress and a host of other people who labor for the U.S. government don’t seem to care much about you. They’ve demonstrated it over the past five years.

Sorry to be so blunt Mr. Gross, but it’s time you faced the facts. And like I said, start getting your things in order. Because if you’re serious about what you said, then by my next birthday, less than two weeks after yours, I promise to remember you, maybe say a prayer, for the gentleman who died in a Cuban jail because his government, and its president, did not bother to save him.

They could at least pretend, don’t you think? For example, the Cuban government has bent over backwards and frontwards and even sideways in an attempt to talk to U.S. government officials about your case. They’ve been ignored.

Jeez… in the America I thought I believed in persons like you are not left to rot. Because I keep asking myself, “What can you lose because of a simple conversation?”

Then again, there are members of congress, let’s start with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, who insist and in fact threaten the president if he dares to negotiate with the Cuban government. Here’s another question for you: “If Obama doesn’t negotiate, how’s he gonna save you?”

In other words, they want you dead. In the case of the four I mentioned, it would be a feather in their caps, especially with some of their voters – it would give them more reason to hate the Castros. And that translates to votes in some districts in this country.

But let’s be perfectly honest here. And I’ll start by stating that I voted for Obama – twice. If he’d run a third time… I would probably refrain from voting for him. Which, by the way, does not mean I would vote for the likes of Marco Rubio or even a Mitt Romney. Just wouldn’t cast a vote. Something I take very seriously.

Because Barack has had a tough time with a racist congress, I understand. But areas he’s able to control, use the power of the presidency, he’s usually punted. I’m not sure if its political cowardice, or whether he really believes he’s doing the right thing waiting for the other side to come around… The fact is that I’m tired of waiting for him.

So let me finish by stating that I hope I am totally wrong on this. I hope the president proves me wrong. I promise to write him a letter of apology if he does.

But based on the experience of the past five and one-half years, and if I was you, like I advised, start getting your affairs in order.

Sorry to bring you bad news. But somebody has to.

Sincerely,

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Comment on the situation in Ukraine and the growing confrontation between NATO and Russia

Followed by

1. Historical note Ukrainian fascists in Normandy – 115,500 Osttroopen fought the allied landing
2. Why D-Day took place in 1944 – On the defeat of fascism in the Second World War

Dear Friends, Sisters and Brothers,

Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of D-Day. The leaders of all the major nations who fought in the European theatre of the Second World War will take part in ceremonies in Normandy, where the Western allies launched a “second front” against Hitler that ended eleven months later with the surrender of Nazi Germany.

The situation today is marred by a serious military rift among the allied nations who defeated fascism. The Harper government is sending war planes and troops to Eastern Europe as part of the NATO military alliance’s growing military confrontation with Russia. NATO is conducting exercises aimed against Russia.

The West is accused of engineering the coup against Ukraine’s elected government on February 22. The new regime promptly passed laws eliminating recognition of the Russian language spoken by 8 million of its citizens and launched a violent “anti-terrorist” campaign where they live. Many Russian speakers and their allies boycotted Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election, not just in the Eastern region, but across the country.

Russia is accused of annexing Crimea, where according to credible reports people voted overwhelmingly to escape Ukraine by joining Russia. Of course, Harper’s narrative about Crimea is totally different. But there are other important facts.

In Kiev, pro-fascist armed groups are tightening their grip on power through “lustration” (banning people from politics), taking steps to ban and physically eliminate the Communist Party of Ukraine (the main working class party), and a full-scale civil war against the Russian minority.

The parties that hold power in Kiev are so far-right they honour Ukrainian Nazi leaders in the Second World War as heroes.

The massive propaganda campaign about the situation in Ukraine needs to be countered by the truth and solidarity with Ukraine’s anti-fascist forces.

The Russian minority in Ukraine has a perfect right to vote for separation, and they have. That does not make them terrorists.

By comparison, the Harper government calls people “terrorists” if they support Aboriginal rights and environmental protection. The slur is just as dishonest and potentially dangerous as the one used by the Kiev government.

If Quebec voted to leave Canada, that does not make the people of Quebec terrorists. Yet Harper fully backs the Kiev regime which calls Russians “terrorists” because they voted to leave Ukraine. In April, Kiev made it a serious criminal offence to advocate separatism.

If the Kiev regime would recognize the right of national self-determination, there would be no civil war in Ukraine. It is a right won at the cost of defeating fascism, and is enshrined in the United Nations’ Charter.

Supporting Kiev with guns, training and dishonest propaganda, Western leaders are supporting the fascist ideology behind the regime’s genocidal war against Russians in Ukraine taking place right now.

It makes me wonder which veterans Ukraine’s president-elect Poroshenko will be honouring in Normandy tomorrow. The historical fact that many Ukrainians fought against the Western allies in Normandy is noted below.

In Solidarity,
Darrell Rankin
Manitoba office, Communist Party of Canada

1. Ukrainian fascists in Normandy
Ukraine’s new president Petro Poroshenko, elected in an unconstitutional poll boycotted by people across the country, and Russian president Vladimir Putin will attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of D-Day in Normandy. Most of these nations’ soldiers died fighting fascism together on the Eastern front, far from Normandy.

It may be a chance to remember the bond these nations once had in the common fight against fascism, but the glorification of Nazi Ukrainian war criminals in the Western regions of Ukraine makes that hope very remote.

Still, it is a chance for Putin and Poroshenko to exchange views on ending Ukraine’s campaign against the Russian separatists and mis-named terrorists in Eastern Ukraine. Many people there boycotted the elections and feel their elected government was stolen through the February 22 coup, and their protests against the coup should not make them “terrorists.”

Poroshenko may acknowledge that many Ukrainian fascists died fighting to stop the allied landings on D-Day. Some Russian fascists probably also fought in Normandy, but in far fewer numbers.

In 1943, Hitler transferred many Osttruppen (low-level military units comprised of Slavs) to Western Europe, especially France, for counter-insurgency operations.

According to Prof. Mark Elliott, “There were 115,500 dug in on D-Day, 6 June 1944… American intelligence had amassed voluminous data on the Osttruppen – not only head counts, but also precise knowledge of unit movements, current locations, even troop morale, but this information rarely filtered down to the front-line units , who were bewildered to encounter German POWs who could not speak German.” (1)

Elliott notes that a large portion of the Osttruppen were comprised of Ukrainians for a number of reasons, including that a comparatively large portion of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was occupied compared to the Russian SSR.

Elliott’s figure is a summary one, so to obtain more detailed numbers a researcher would have to access the CIA records cited in Elliott’s article.

(1) Mark R. Elliott, “Soviet Military Collaborators during World War II,” Ukraine during World War II, ed. Yury Boshyk (Canadian institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986: Edmonton), p. 97.

2. Why D-Day took place in June, 1944
I’m re-sending an article with historical facts why the Western allies failed to open a second front against Hitler Germany until three years after Germany invaded Russia (June 1941).

Simply put, the Western allies waited for the Soviet Union to do most of the fighting against Hitler Germany. The United States and Canada especially benefited from this arrangement. For example, in the 1940s Canada was the world’s third largest exporter of capital (Andrei Gromyko, The Overseas Expansion of Capital (Moscow: 1982). p. 33.)

Sixtieth Anniversary of the Victory over Fascism in Europe
by Darrell Rankin, People’s Voice, May 16, 2005
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/Pv16ma05.html#fascismEurope

“If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way we let them kill as many as possible.”
– Harry S. Truman, June 23, 1941

* * * *
By saying the United States might work with Nazi Germany to fight the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, U.S. Senator Truman of Missouri was expressing a popular view in the U.S. ruling class. Truman made his remark to the New York Times days after Hitler launched his brutal and terrible invasion of the USSR with over 3 million soldiers and 3,300 tanks.

Truman’s wish was tragically fulfilled. By the end of the Second World War in Europe on May 8, 1945 some twenty-five million Soviet citizens had perished, half of the war’s total dead. Germany’s losses were close to six million people, victims both of war and German imperialism’s murderous fascist ideology, laced with Aryan racial superiority and anti-communism.

Like Truman, U.S. imperialism had no great or principled concern to avert a world war. War would allow the U.S. to end up as the world’s only superpower. And in common cause with Hitler, war would deal a deadly blow against the world’s first socialist state, the USSR.

Many of the finest communists in the twentieth century laid down their lives in the battle against fascism. But Truman ended the war as the president of the United States. Months later he was helping to spark the Cold War and destroy the united front with the USSR that had defeated German fascism.

Revisionist history portrays the U.S. as the most important liberator of Europe and as a firm ally in the struggle against Nazi Germany, a view constantly nurtured by movies, right-wing politicians and the corporate media. Many young people believe that the USSR was allied with Nazi Germany, or that the U.S., Britain and Canada fought against the USSR in the Second World War.

The truth is that the U.S. and Britain were Germany’s main imperialist rivals. Their leaders used the war to weaken both Germany and the USSR, postponing a major “second front” against Hitler until June, 1944. A war that could have ended in 1943 dragged on. Millions more lost their lives on the “Eastern Front” – a struggle that in intensity and loss is incomparable in all of human history.

According to Victor Falin, a doctor of historical sciences, “If it had not been for (the) delays with the opening of the second front, there would have been 10-12 million fewer victims among the Soviet people and the allies, especially in occupied Europe. There would not even have been Auschwitz, for it began working actively only in 1944.”

It was the USSR that broke Nazi Germany’s military might. The USSR emerged from the Second World War with losses greater than any other country, but with the love and political support of people around the world who recognized truthfully the country’s leading role in the defeat of fascism.

The world’s peoples were saddened and inspired by the sacrifice made by the USSR, which lost the best sons and daughters of its working class. They supported the creation in 1945 of the United Nations, whose charter expresses determination “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The United Nations Charter enshrined respect for the obligations of international law, prevention of war and the self-determination of peoples; later resolutions added the obligation of disarmament. These mainly new fundamental principles of international law were especially appreciated in nations liberated from fascism by the Soviet army and in nations still languishing under the colonialism of the victorious imperialist powers.

This democratic and human legacy of the Second World War was never respected or truly supported by the imperialist countries. Today these same imperialist countries are locked in constant rivalry for markets and resources, they have weapons far more dangerous than in 1945, they are adopting new military doctrines that reject international law, and they have leaders who ought to be tried as war criminals for aggressions against Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and a number of other countries.

Like sixty years ago, alarming ideas of using war for narrow interests are very alive in ruling circles of all the imperialist countries. Militarism is gaining alongside imperialism’s record of crisis and failure. But resistance to the imperialist war danger is growing throughout the world, including in the working class of imperialist countries.

Unity, action and support for the great democratic legacies of the Second World War will take the world’s peoples away from the imperialist nightmare, a direction especially important for the international working class.

Respect for international law, general disarmament, the prevention of war, and respect for state sovereignty and self-determination of peoples – all these are needed more than ever as humanity is crushed by imperialism’s unsolvable crisis, and they show the way forward to a world of far greater justice, where peace and socialism prevail.

Boot-licking Journalism

– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Growing up at the high-water marks of Cold War hysteria in the US led me to a heightened skepticism of the independence and objectivity of the media. We were made to believe myths that Communist government ownership constituted a denial of freedom of the press while diverse private ownership of the sources of information in the West guaranteed access to the truth. Few of us reflected on the fact that the UK government media monopoly, the BBC, seemed to present a more nuanced, tolerant, even sane picture of current events than did our US lap-dog “free” press. At the same time, the sharp move towards theocracy in the US– “In God we Trust” on currency and “Under God” affixed to the Inquisition-like pledge of allegiance– was met by a docile, compliant media.

Any doubts that were voiced– and few were at the time– about the biases of the press and electronic media were radically amplified when the Cold War began to recede, a measure of sanity returned, and revelations exposed the corruption and opportunism of most of the media’s journalistic stars and watchdogs. Truly, it was one the most embarrassing chapters in the fable of US press freedom. Of course the myth remained intact thanks to the major media’s concerted effort to restrict the truth to the marginal footnotes of historical research and the fringe media.

Some liberal commentators concede the horrors of the past, but insist that press freedom rebounded, especially after the end of the Cold War. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today’s media is as servile to government and capital as at any time in US history. The concentration of media corporations coupled with the centrality of profitability and the narrow band of dissent offered by the two-party system result in a uniformity and conformity in the media that would be the envy of any banana republic.

To read the rest of the article, please go to: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

A Call for action all over the world during the upcoming actions in Washington. We make a special appeal to friends of Cuba and the Five from around the world so that they can unite their voices from their countries to accompany the activities in Washington, with parallel actions from June 4 to 10 including sit-ins, demonstrations, pronouncements, art exhibits, a general twitazo, articles in the media, activation of social networks, etc.

info@thecuban5.org
http://www.thecuban5.org

Santiago, May 5, 2014

MR. BARACK OBAMA

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. President:

Through this letter, I would like to join the clamor expressed by a large number of people throughout the world; artists, intellectuals, parliamentarians, jurists and people of good will, who expect from you a decision of elemental justice, especially taking into account your status as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

This concerns pardoning 3 Cuban citizens, unjustly held in prisons in your country, for trying to protect Cuba from terrorist acts planned from U.S. territory.

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo and Ramón Labañino Salazar have been convicted by U.S. authorities, falsely accused of conspiring against the United States, while in reality they actually infiltrated admittedly terrorist organizations, who have repeatedly attacked Cuba and Cuban citizens both inside and outside Cuban territory.

The world and especially Latin America expect you to pursue the normalization of relations with Cuba, inspired by the principle of peoples right of self-determination.

The release of these 3 Cuban patriots would be a great gesture in that direction.

I’m sure that you know about these cases and I believe that from your high office you will not endorse the continuity of the terrorist attacks suffered by Cuba, performed by sinister characters as Luis Posada Carriles, and that you understand that each country has the legitimate right to protect itself from such barbarous crimes.

Not only Cuba, but all people of good will in the world hope that Gerardo, Ramón and Antonio will be able to return to their homeland, as their comrades René and Fernando already have done. This is up to you.

Hoping sincerely that you will make the right decision, I say goodbye attentively.

CAMILA VALLEJO DOWLING

Member of the House of Representatives,

Republic of Chile