REMARKS BY Dr. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, AT THE ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION OF THE MOST RECENT LIES SPREAD BY THE UNITED STATES AGAINST CUBA, HELD IN THE TELEVISIÓN CUBANA STUDIOS ON JUNE 19, 2001
Since I knew you were going to be addressing this subject, I thought about a few of the aspects of this issue that will not come up in the wire stories, and information that would not be available to you –we did not have a chance to discuss this before– related to our policy on arms purchases.
I had gathered together some of the materials used to build up this new little campaign – that is what we have to call it, because we cannot take these people too seriously. We have to watch them carefully, be on the alert, not let them slip anything past us, and respond to their accusations, in order to more effectively expose them for our people to know –although that is not really necessary, because they already know– and the rest of the world what kind of shameless liars these gentlemen who run that country really are, and the diabolical mechanisms they have invented to fool and confuse the people. Although, in fact, they fool fewer and fewer people all the time, and this is especially true when we provide the national and international public with all of the evidence that will help them to more carefully consider these matters of international policy.
I arrived about two minutes after you had begun, but I heard Barbara when she was reading the June 12 article from The Washington Times, and so there is no need for me to repeat it.
I do, however, what to point out something that they said. Recio and Dimas were commenting on some of the other wire stories, and I think they have explained the matter very well. I do not think they missed any of the reports that have been published. But I wanted to point out this mechanism through which they come out with any news story of this kind, and these stories are immediately picked up by other international publications and wire agencies, and repeated over and over, so that they appear to be absolutely true and beyond any doubt.
For example, that very same day, the Notimex news agency picked up the story and reported on it. I am not blaming Notimex for this but any news story printed in this paper, which is a reactionary paper, as you or Dimas explained very well –you already talked about the leaders of this sect, it really is a sect, which owns the newspaper and has close ties with the power circles and above all with the government of the United States– a news story like this is released, and it is only logical that the news agencies will report it.
And so, for example, this agency repeated or reaffirmed something that already seemed to be an accomplished fact: “China would be secretly supplying weapons and ammunition to Cuba, a practice that would reveal ‘growing military cooperation between Havana and Beijing,’ noted The Washington Times.” There is another little thing I wanted to point out. “In an eight-column story” – not a note tucked into a corner of the newspaper – “printed on the front page, the paper reported that the shipments of weapons and ammunition were taken to Cuba on (Chinese) state company freighters. “It specified that the last of the three arms shipments was delivered last December, coinciding with a visit to Havana by Chinese General Fu Quanyou, who is a member of the Asian country’s high command.”
And so these things are accepted as the truth; they are printed on the front page, as if something extraordinary has been uncovered, something terrible, a great crime, something that will set the whole world trembling. I do not know if anyone trembled, but we will always be the last ones to start trembling, because we know our enemies very well. And then another agency echoes the story, for the same reasons as Notimex, I would think, and states: “China is supplying weapons and explosives to Cuba, in a sign of growing military cooperation between Beijing and Havana, The Washington Times stated, quoting U.S. intelligence sources.” You should remember that these publications not only may have ties with the president, and have breakfast or lunch with those people up there, but they also have rather close ties with the intelligence services, or in other words, the CIA.
Quite often a news story does not reach them through the channels of the president’s office, but rather through other channels. But all these institutions work in harmony, they tend to act by common accord; sometimes one of them will investigate something, but most of the time they rather ask whether they should be published or not. These publications do not act freely, although their mission is that of creating scandals, by seeking out spectacular, sensational stories. This is a point that should be emphasized, that is, their connection with the intelligence services, and the fact that they are often used to spread certain news.
These publications do not tend to act against the system or the mechanisms of the system, but rather, in favor of the system, in harmony with the system; these are traditional methods. “According to the newspaper, which has close ties with the intelligence services in Washington” – you see, this agency says it right here – “at least three Chinese arms shipments headed for the Cuban port of Mariel have been detected in recent months.” Another little point comes up in this report: “According to intelligence sources, China and Cuba have reinforced military cooperation in recent months.”
I will now move on to another report, to highlight a few points that are interesting and that appeared in this same ANSA wire story, which says: “If the shipments are confirmed, says The Washington Times, the U.S. government could decide to apply economic sanctions against China and the COSCO company, which plays an important role in trade relations between Washington and Beijing. “U.S. laws provide for the imposing of economic sanctions on countries or companies that provide military assistance to nations included on the State Department’s list of ‘sponsors of terrorism’, among which Cuba has been included for years.”
The United States, the supreme judge of the world, determines which countries are well-behaved and which are not, which countries are traffickers or are not cooperating enough in the fight against drugs, which countries violate human rights, which countries are responsible or irresponsible, and which countries are terrorists or support terrorism. And this is determined by none other than the supreme judge, the United States, or rather, the government of the United States, the world champion of terrorism.
We have sometimes asked, for example: Who organized the dirty war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? And even supplied the Contras there with surface-to-air Stinger missiles, which are extremely dangerous, because they can shoot down any planes taking off or landing from many kilometers away, since they have a range of five or six kilometers, they are very efficient. And they not only supplied them to the Contras in Nicaragua, they also supplied them to Savimbi and UNITA, who have even been using them to shoot down UN planes carrying personnel, food and aid. They sprung them loose all over the place. They distributed tons of them in Afghanistan.
They have given these dangerous missiles to every single group they sponsor, and then they are sold and resold and circulate around the world, posing a threat to every airline, and they have been used on more than one occasion. They delivered all those weapons without ever trying to recover them. They, for example, sponsored the horrible crimes committed in El Salvador against entire villages. There was a village called El Mozote, where men, women and children were massacred by troops trained and advised by the United States, accompanied by U.S. officers, to make sure that not a single witness was left. I think one woman escaped, who knows how, and someone else, and they were able to tell the story of the horrors committed there, unbelievable horrors, and that was not so long ago.
It is a known fact that they trained everyone there. I believe that around 70,000 officers were trained at the infamous School of the Americas, where they even handed out manuals on torture until not very long ago. They carried out research on torture, on how to make people talk. They trained all those criminals who murdered so many in El Salvador, in Guatemala, in Argentina, in Uruguay, and vanished so many others in Chile.
Yet perhaps the most horrific story of all, the most massive massacre, is not the story of Argentina, which was, of course, terrible, tragic, and rather well known throughout the world. Rather, the most horrific story is that of all the crimes committed since the government of Guatemala was overthrown, through a Bay of Pigs-style mercenary invasion, for having carried out land reform. The numbers vary, some say there were 200,000 killed and 150,000 vanished, others say 150,000 were killed and 100,000 were vanished. What is known for a fact, however, is that there was no longer the category of prisoner in that country’s jails, because everyone was either killed or vanished. It was horrifying.
As for Chile, what they did there... In Chile they were behind the coup d’ état, it was them, and all of this is documented, it has been made public through declassified documents. Our comrades who were in Angola, and those of us who have had close ties with Angola, know that Savimbi’s bands murdered entire villages. I would estimate that hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out by them. And they continued to help them, in one way or another.
Every day we see images of the horrors being committed, for example, in Palestine. We see tanks firing on houses, helicopters, F-16 fighter planes, snipers killing children, killing civilians; we see houses being demolished and turned to wasteland, with the full support of the United States. It even refused to adopt a resolution proposed by Russia and China; Great Britain and France abstained, a total of nine members of the Security Council voted for it, and the United States simply vetoed the resolution. This is cruel, merciless behavior.
I do not understand how on earth they have the nerve to even dare to talk about terrorism, or about human rights. They talk about money laundering and threaten other governments, while everyone knows that the banks that have laundered the most money in the world are the U.S. banks. These are all facts, and these are the supreme judges who pass rulings on everyone else, and make threats.
And now, as you can see, they have taken it upon themselves to decide –as you indicated– who can sell weapons, and who can buy them, when they are the ones who sell the most weapons in the whole world. They have the biggest arms trade, and their closest friends and allies end up being the ones involved in trafficking weapons, drugs, everything. Look at what happened in Peru with the ones who were supposedly fighting drugs, and the big business they had going. Look at what happened in Argentina: arms trafficking by the governments that were supposed to be mediating between sides, and were selling weapons to them all.
The most grotesque and repulsive things, from a moral, ethical and human point of view, have been fostered and committed by the United States, and yet they accuse others of these things. Right now they are responsible for a quarter of the atmospheric pollution in the world; everyone knows, because it is a scientific fact, that this pollution is leading to climate change, global warming, and natural disasters of all kinds, and yet they deny it.
There was an ABM Treaty that everyone respected, which served as a curb and a brake, and now they not only want to extend NATO to the Kremlin, but they also want to establish an anti-missile shield. And why? Because of dangerous countries, like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, which everyone knows are light years away from the possibility of developing nuclear weaponry and strategic missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory. Nevertheless, to justify all of this, they say: No, these countries constitute a threat.
It is a miracle that they have not claimed that Cuba poses a nuclear threat to the United States, and that they therefore need to build a nuclear shield in Alaska. They are compromising Europe in all of this, because in order to establish a missile shield, a total shield, they need Europe’s cooperation. They are getting Europe mixed up in this misadventure, and Europe is nor interested in getting mixed up in it, although the United States does have one or two strong allies over there, whose names have come up in recent days. I will not name them, although there are some, but everyone knows that the vast majority of European governments do not want anything to do with this nuclear shield. They are furious about the U.S. refusal to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the declaration that the ABM Treaty is obsolete.
Everyone is aware of this but these gentlemen go around the world saying, doing and prohibiting whatever they wish. We will see who obeys them, because they can be certain, and they should have been certain for a long time now, 100% certain, that there is one country that is never going to obey any of their orders, or let itself be intimidated by any of their threats. I do not need to say what country that is.
Here it is stated that “U.S. laws provide for the imposing of economic sanctions on countries or companies” – these are extraterritorial laws, as well – “that provide military assistance to nations included on the State Department’s list of ‘sponsors of terrorism’...” “According to intelligence sources, China and Cuba have reinforced military cooperation in recent months.” Where does this come from? What is the basis for such a claim? And they provide as an example “the visit made to Havana in April by President Jiang Zemin, who agreed to loans of some 400 million dollars for the Caribbean island.” Yes, as a matter of fact, there are loans; wonderful, excellent, and we can say how every last cent of these loans is going to be invested in. “Other activities by China in Cuba, the newspaper says, would include the use of electronic equipment” –here comes more trash– “to spy on U.S. communications.”
It is a miracle they did not drag up the subject of the Russian Electronic Exploration Center –it was Soviet, but then it changed nationality, and became Russian– that was set up here many years ago. Everyone knows about this center, nobody denies it is here, it is an exploration center. We truly have not expelled any Soviets from there. At the time of the Missile Crisis, we did not say, Get out of here and take your missiles with you. On the contrary, as everyone knows, we were strongly opposed. There was even a symbolic unit left behind. We did not demand that it be removed. When everything changed, and the United States and its allies supplied all of those recipes, which have resulted in the flight of between 300 and 600 billion USD –almost all of it laundered in U.S. banks– back in those days they decided to take away the brigade that had stayed behind as a symbol; we did not expel them. The Electronic Exploration Center was left, in compliance with agreements signed by Russia and Cuba.
So there is nothing to hide, far from it. But I am surprised that they did not drag it up as well, because of the way they are going around these days politicking and trying... I am not sure which animal it is that bites and blows, I have been told that mice bit and blow.
That is the imperialist tactic. They bite the Russians and blow and blow. Nobody knows what was said in the talks between Mr. Bush – who had never been to Europe before, and certainly must have been shocked by the level of culture and civilization undoubtedly found on that continent, if he had time to look around at all...
Nobody knows what was said. But what everyone does know is that the Russians are not and cannot be in the least bit happy about the fact that NATO continues to expand further every day. Now they want to include the Baltic countries –this is an even greater escalation– and are talking about these countries admission to NATO, while insisting at the same time on their nuclear shield. The Russians and the Chinese are no dummies, especially when it comes to matters of security, because they have experienced a long history of aggression, wars, destruction. They had a reason to meet with other countries in Shanghai a few days before Bush’s trip. There were the presidents of Russia and China, talking and they issued a statement that very clearly expresses their concern over the adventures of this gentleman, who came to power through fraud, as everyone knows.
Additionally, they are also the judges of democracy and the virginal purity of electoral systems, the kind that can give rise to the sort of things that we saw there. We saw how the election was shamefully stolen from the other side with help from the Miami terrorist mob, to whom he feels so committed. And one of those courts, which voted the way those courts always vote, according to their own interests, with one person making the difference, decided in favor of this gentleman and ruled against a recount. Although what was called for was not a recount, but rather a new vote, because there was proof of all the fraud committed, of the tens of thousands of people who could not vote, the thousands and thousands of African-Americans kept away from the polling stations.
On the other hand, they changed the names order on the ballots, and a lot of people got mixed up, and the third candidate, who they say did not have a single vote there, ended up with about 3000. Others realized they had made a mistake and tried to rectify it. I would estimate that at least 40,000 votes were stolen notwithstanding all the dirty politics, all the lies and demagoguery and billions of dollars spent on advertising.
Because they live off of this, off of lies, hypocrisy, deceit. All of this is proof, and a lesson to people who can read and write, and have a certain educational level, whom they treat as if they were dealing with a world of illiterates. At least our country cannot be fooled by their tricks. Here it reads: “Other activities by China in Cuba, the newspaper says, would include the use of electronic equipment to eavesdrop on U.S. communications.” And it mentions Republican leader Senator Trent Lott, who says that if these reports are confirmed, it would be a bad sign for China” . They imagine the Chinese running around in circles. And yes, the Chinese are running around, with the rice harvest, and crops, and construction. People who go to Shanghai say that anyone who saw it two years ago would not recognize it today.
So the Chinese are not running around but working hard. I think they showed they could keep their heads cool at the time of the airplane incident. Jiang Zemin had a trip planned, and despite all the muckraking and talk, he took his plane, traveled to Latin America, visited Cuba, then visited Venezuela, and then calmly and smoothly he returned to his country. “‘I think this is very bad’” –you already referred to this– “added the senator, ‘and I will commit myself to a process to discover exactly what is going on and what is the magnitude’ of the alleged shipment of Chinese weapons to Cuba.” The man should sleep quietly, since he has no way of investigating and knows nothing. Anyway, I will tell him about the alleged weapons brought by these ships.
It was also mentioned here that the Miami terrorist mob libel-mongers immediately echoed these claims. Two headlines: “China sends weapons to Cuba.” Another headline: “United States concerned over shipment of Chinese weapons to Cuba.” They live off of these lies, presenting them as if they were self-evident truths. It is claimed that these three shipments of dreadful, terrifying weapons arrived on three ships. We know very well which three ships they mean, and we know a few more things, but I have promised not to talk about them.
The first of these ships, supposedly carrying weapons, was the motor vessel An Xin Jiang. It called on the port of Havana on May 10, 2000, at 0830 hours, having set out from Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. It left Havana on May 11, at 0857 hours, headed for the port of Río Haina, in the Dominican Republic. It was, in fact, carrying a shipment for the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR). And this has been happening recently, because sometimes a shipment arrives –sometimes it is for the Ministry of Education. Everyone knows that for a number of years, we were able to provide our schoolchildren with uniforms thanks to Chinese donations of the fabric used for manufacturing them. These donations were not large in financial terms, they were relatively modest, seven or eight million dollars, I cannot say exactly, but somewhere around that figure, because they sent the fabric for the children’s uniforms, but also certain school supplies.
We did not publicize it because the Chinese prefer it that way; when they make a donation they are not seeking publicity. These things were not even published, so that they would not be compromised by the assistance they were giving us, in the midst of the special period, when it would have been very sad if our children were left without uniforms. In those days of 12-hour blackouts, at an extremely difficult time –I am not saying that we no longer face difficult times but those were the worst– they made a few donations like these, very modestly, with no publicity.
Other institutions have also received certain cooperation. And so here is the famous shipment of weapons that this boat is supposed to have dropped off the Havana port: Olive green cotton and polyester drill: 969,000 meters. It was for MINFAR, and it really was a donation, the third or fourth donation they have made, I am not sure of the exact details right now. Green cotton cloth: 50,000 meters. PVC cloth for raincoats: 50,000 meters. White nylon cloth for mosquito nets: 100,000 meters – I guess those are square meters. Rubber boots: 5000 pairs – these must be for the armed forces’ agricultural enterprises. 15-millimeter buttons: 2,481,570. 40-3 polyester thread: 81,810,000 meters – I guess that would be the length. 50-3 polyester thread: 36,360,000 meters. 22-centimeter metallic zippers: 182,000. What do they use those zippers for? (He is told they are used for trouser flies.) Oh, for flies, darn! (Laughter) Darn, if they had sent all the ones needed, it would be several million. (He is told it would be five million, at least.) Needles – for sewing, I guess – 97,500. Thread for mosquito nets: five million – I think that must be meters. 19-millimeter buttons – those would be for anti-aircraft artillery, right? – 763,000. Medical equipment: 82 pieces of equipment for general surgery, six for orthopedics, 44 for neurosurgery, 60 for dentistry, and three pieces of clinic furniture.
This was the first ship allegedly carrying weapons to make a delivery and continue on to the Dominican Republic. Mr. Lott can see he does not have much investigating to do; and we will not even charge him for the information, which he could not get from anyone else in such detail. The other motor vessel, the Feng An Shan, was hired on July 29, 2000 – look how long ago – and arrived in the port of Mariel on September 5, 2000 -- who knows why they are dragging all this up now, when it arrived in 2000 – having set out from Shanghai, and began to unload on September 6 at 1055 hours. It carried: 311 tons of ammonite and additional material for the MATCO commercial enterprise, run by the Ministry of Construction. Ammonite is an industrial material with an 82% content of ammonium nitrate, which is mixed with certain explosives for work on tunnels, quarries, and so on. I know about this, it is common knowledge. The Ministry of Construction imports it. The MATCO commercial enterprise began to make purchases in China in 1996, based on the greater financial advantages and competitive prices offered there. It originally made purchases through MAPRINTER, an import company run by the Ministry of Foreign Trade, but was given authorization to make direct imports that same year.
MATCO initially belonged to the Ministry of Construction Materials, but was transferred to the Ministry of Construction in mid-1999 when the former was dissolved. These products are imported for use in the mining sector: rock, sand, marble. This is all the noise you hear in quarries or even in construction, when there are rocks and it is used precisely when it is necessary to excavate. For a while there we could here it every day where that hotel was built, at the old Monte Barreto. All that annoying stuff, that is what it is used for.
I hope these gentlemen do not intend to prevent us from producing stones, sand and construction materials, or from using it to open up holes and build. I hope they do not plan to try this, and if they do, that is their problem. They would have to be crazy, right? But these crazy people just might be trying to sabotage our construction projects. Well, they had better get ready for some noise, because we plan to keep building. Just yesterday I was looking at some photographs of the rock excavations to build the first Social Workers School in Santiago de Cuba, where 2000 students will be enrolled. These are the kinds of things these gentlemen should be afraid of. This is why the EXPLOMAT marketing enterprise was established, for the national distribution of the imports made by MATCO. After dropping off these materials, purchased in July of 2000, what did the ship do next? From the port of Mariel, the Feng An Shan headed to the port of Havana on September 7, at 0005 hours, where it unloaded 5003 metric tonnes of beans – quite the ammunition!
It then traveled to the port of Santiago de Cuba, where it concluded its operations, unloading 5584 metric tonnes of beans, and left this last port on September 28, 2000 at 2330 hours, bound for Panama. Darn, I should have brought that list –I need it now– it tells exactly how many tons were distributed in each one of the country’s provinces. Yes, these are weapons that kill, they kill hunger, especially for Cubans who love to eat bean stew, and beans and rice, particularly with a bit of pork. Good, Carlitos has handed me the list of distribution by province: City of Havana, 3560 tons of beans. I will not go on, because it is a long list, it is all here, including the rice that was distributed, which came on the third boat. The third boat, the motor vessel Song Shan. It was chartered on December 15, 2000 –about six months later– and called on the port of Mariel on February 2 at 2300 hours, having set out from Shanghai. That same day it began unloading 20 containers earmarked for MATCO, containing 334 tons of the same material brought by the Feng An Shan. It left the port of Mariel on February 3, 2001 at 0145 hours, bound for the port of Havana, to deliver a shipment of rice. It called on the port of Havana on February 3 at 0400 hours and began unloading 13,151.25 metric tonnes of rice. Port operations were concluded on February, 2001, and it left that same day at 2345 hours, headed for other ports abroad.
This is proof of how quickly food shipments are unloaded in our ports today. Regarding the talks held during the visit by the Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army of China: In December of 2000, during the visit to Cuba by the Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army of China, General Fu Quanyou, no agreements were signed involving the shipment of weapons from China to Cuba. Take careful note: For more than 30 years, Cuba has not imported a single weapon from China; and since the beginning of the special period, almost 10 years ago, Cuba has not spent a penny on weaponry. All of the nation’s income has been completely devoted to civilian needs.
Cuba’s policy on weaponry is not related to the scarcity of resources – I will explain this later. But you saw those criminals, the hysteric she-wolf and the others, talking about China and how China must be punished and hell knows what. If they punish China, then their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews will have no decent toys, because that is where the best toys come from, and a lot of other quality goods produced in China. No, they must punish China, eat it up, devour it, draw and quarter each and every one of the 1.162 billion Chinese; that does not include Taiwan, Hong Kong and others.
This is the style of the criminals, the wild beasts, demanding, accusing, threatening and making up all of these things that are simply ridiculous. There is another subject being batted around over there these days, the famous issue of asymmetrical war, which you were discussing. The real asymmetry is the one between the amount of garbage they spew and the tiny bit of truth they have spoken in their entire lives, because it is always the same and they discuss everything this way: cyber war (Randy tells him that even today there was a commentary in USA Today about the issue of war).
But they do not mention us specifically, they talk about the new kind of war, which is no longer fought with tanks. Now, look at this, an cyber war between Cuba and the United States. To tell the truth, for communications among ourselves, to talk to Baracoa, to Santiago de Cuba, our lines, our infrastructure, is not completely developed. In fact, the existing lines are saturated, despite the fact that over 200,000 new telephones have been installed by ETECSA through the microwave system. With the microwave system, each antenna is related one to the other, one to the other, they have to be on the peaks of hills and all of that. In other words, despite a 400 million USD investment by ETECSA, a Cuban-Italian joint venture in which we have majority ownership, and although communications have improved and a certain number of telephones have been installed, what we have is already saturated. Now the phone company is expanding the microwave system, and installing the new antennas – there have been expenditures on infrastructure, all of this is very expensive – and they expect that by the end of this year, in December, this expansion will be complete, allowing for communications from Pinar del Río all the way to Guantánamo. This is a costly investment that will increase the number of communications channels in the provincial capitals. It will help solve our problems, but it is not ready yet. They are in the process of installing a fiber optic cable that will allow for much better communications in greater numbers and at higher speed.
This truly is an excellent line of communication, but at the beginning it will only benefit the provincial capitals and some 30 municipalities of the 154 in the country, aside from Havana, and so over 120 municipalities will still not have these benefits. In other words, for our own internal communications and Internet systems, like Infomed to reach all services and this we discussed at a meeting with universities, where the idea was put forward of bringing information to all the polyclinics throughout the country, so that all the family doctors, not just the doctors and specialists in the hospitals, but all the hospitals and polyclinics throughout the country would be hooked up to Infomed. It is a network that provides information and an extremely important service to the health care network.
Later the same would be done in education, and many other domestic Internet systems would be created, or Intranet as they call it, if it is a local network, and Extranet if various networks are connected. It will take us years to have all the municipalities connected and make this service available to all the networks that allow us to make optimal use of this technology for the benefit of the country’s services. I think this will be a great step forward but it will take us years, because communication has to be extended to all the municipalities, whether by microwave or fiber optics, in one way or another, to provide clear high standard communications.
The Internet does not work with a cable, like the battery cable that connected a sugar mill to Birán. I remember that it was the first telephone I had ever seen, with big batteries; you had to hit it three times, two times, five times, and shout at the top of your lungs, like using a megaphone, in order to converse with someone four kilometers away. These new communications systems have excellent sound quality, and they will help us to improve communications, and for the Internet, which provides us with information.
We will continue moving forward with the few resources we have, with the minimal reserves we have, making a concerted effort and innovating to advance these programs, which are of vital importance. We do not have the infrastructure for our own needs, but money has been invested and will continue to be invested. Now, it is wonderful that by December of this year the expansion of the microwave system will be completed, and that by next July the fiber optic cable will be connected from Havana to Santiago; later it will have to be connected to Guantánamo and Pinar del Río.
We will work hard at it and, of course, we have a connection to the international Internet, which allows these internal networks to receive all kinds of information, and allows us to benefit from the international Internet network. Now then, what do we have as a channel for communication abroad? A small route, we could say, whose capacity –for those who understand these things– is 13.5 megabytes a second. This is nothing, it is a negligible figure. The microwave network has already raised the speed of communications to 155 megabytes a second, and fiber optics raises it to 2.5 gigabytes, or 2500 megabytes. This does later permit practically all of the communications desired, in one direction and the other, because there is equipment for multiplying and multiplying again. And on these same antennas, two, three or four radio channels can be placed on each. This is a bit more complicated, because you need to look at it province by province on a long and narrow island. But we are moving forward rapidly in the country’s communications system, with the resources generated by ETECSA itself and the credits available to it as a company.
Installing a computer up on a mountain, in a little school, does not mean it is hooked up to the Internet. When will that day come! When all our schools have telephones, and the possibility of communicating with the Extranet educational network and all its benefits. As of now, they can all receive news and information through television. Remember, I mentioned the narrow channel we use to communicate abroad via satellite, with that puny capacity for a speed of 13.5 megabytes per second. Now then, who could come up with the bizarre and ridiculous idea that someone could wage an cyber war with that kind of equipment, especially when there are hundreds of companies, around 400 Internet servers in the United States –400 Internet servers!– that have more capacity than Cuba has for communicating abroad? How could they come up with the crazy, stupid theory that we are going to engage in an cyber war?
Besides, we have our principles and our country does not use its scientists for any kind of warfare; this is something we discussed in Pinar del Río. In fact, our scientists and our resources are used to protect our people from aggression. We build tunnels to protect us from bombing, and our troops have gas masks, and so on. We are not interested in nuclear warfare, or chemical warfare, or biological warfare, or cyber warfare. That is simply stupid. That is why we have told the distinguished Senator that he has been fooled, and that he may come here if he likes, because it is perfectly possible.
This does not leave out the possibility of them introducing a virus here; someone could even do it on their own, or it could be done by one of those mercenaries they have working for them, or a tourist. It could be sent through that little channel. We have regulations and standards, and we will continue to adopt all the necessary measures to ensure that none of these things happens. I think our people are well informed about all this. I had mentioned –although I have very little time left– our policy concerning weapons.
Since before the demise of the USSR, from the beginning of the 1980s, and as nuclear weapons became further and further developed, we became fully convinced that if there were a war, an attack by the United States against Cuba, we would have to fight back alone. We not only reached this conclusion, but it has been confirmed for us that this was true. But because we have never really been afraid of anything, we adopted a decision, and worked on it. We had ideas, and conceptions, and there was a radical change in our conception of defense, which had been born of our own guerrilla experience, in which a handful of men won a war against an army of 80,000, in less than two years, from the time we gathered together the first seven guns. Of course, we continued with the same conceptions, but then came the academy and all of that. It was true that we had to use other kinds of weapons. The Bay of Pigs required tanks, guns, a whole series of the proper weapons. We used very few planes, and used them very well, disabling almost that entire expedition.
These ideas remained latent, but mixed with a whole academic conception of modern warfare. But very early on, almost 20 years ago, we began to prepare the country and to prepare ourselves for the war of all the people, a new conception: it was not a question of the number of weapons we had. And for the application of this conception, we have more than enough weapons, more than enough of everything. We have spent many years working on this conception of warfare, and so we can now guarantee, first of all, that anyone who invades this nation will do so at a cost impossible to pay.
There is no kind of warfare that can force us to surrender. We have studied all of the wars that have taken place in recent times, including the war in Kosovo. We have studied it all in detail, everything that happened, what they do with one kind of weapon and another. And if they had held out for another 15 days, NATO would have been dissolved in three weeks, because they had planned for a seven-day war, and it was stretching to 80. The time had come to fight on land, and they did not want to fight on land, because the predominant philosophy today is that of a surgical war.
We are in a position to guarantee that anyone who tries to invade our country will be faced with a cost impossible to pay, thanks to the intelligence, the bravery, the courage, the patriotism, and the technical and moral preparation of our people. They would never succeed in making this country surrender, not in 70 days, or a 100 days, because there are millions of people convinced of their duty and determined to fight, and they would prefer dying a thousand times rather than going back to the hell this country lived through.
Extremely high values have been cultivated here, and these values are the most powerful weapons of all. In terms of arms, weapons, guns, muzzles, and all of that, we have more than enough. I have a list here, I do not know if there is any way you can see it, of all the tanks, armored personnel carriers, field artillery guns and other kinds, fighter planes, helicopters, naval units and even ammunition, we have deactivated –well, I am not going to tell them how many, let them find out for themselves. This is a plan that has been carried out step by step, following a logic, and with great care, taking into account the maintenance they require, their functions, how each of these units should be operated, every man and woman, every piece of equipment, every weapon in a war. We have enormous amounts of ammunition, and explosives, genuine, powerful explosives, in addition to the ammunition, enough for who knows how many anti-tank mines and anti-infantry mines. Yes, sir, that is why we have not signed and will not sign the so-called treaty against anti-personnel mines.
What do they want, to be able to invade us calmly, and calmly spread through the whole country? No! We will not take mines to other countries, but we will have them on our own land, in a safe place, where we have under control. We also know about the techniques they have for anti-mine defense and all of that. But we have more than enough firearms, more than enough equipment to guarantee them a price impossible to pay, if they are stupid enough to try such a thing. What is more, it will not be so easy, Cuba is not going to give them an excuse to invade.
They will have to make up their own pretexts, like the 14 pretexts they invented in 1962, which they themselves have now declassified, without the least bit of self-criticism. They criticize the whole world, but they are never self-critical. It is as if they were the gods on the Earth, the owners and masters of the world. They should realize that they are neither gods nor the masters of the world, because the masses are more rebellious, the billions of exploited and deceived people, and a number of events have served to demonstrate this.
That is why we should remain calm, without ever letting our guard down, keeping a watchful eye out, observing, denouncing, because trenches of ideas, as Martí said, are worth more than trenches of stone, and we have both kinds of trenches. And our trench of ideas is becoming increasingly powerful and extending throughout the world, and there are ever greater numbers of people who understand and admire this small but heroic country that was capable of achieving the greatest feat ever seen in history, because it has endured 42 years of blockade and 10 years of special period, confronting the most formidable power to ever exist. This is something they cannot hide, and that is why the reactionaries get hysterical, and do everything they can to separate us by trying to fool the American people, to counteract the awareness that has been growing there over recent years about the injustice of the blockade, and the atrocities committed by the terrorist mob in that country.
This is what we have to denounce, by making our message reach the peoples through one way or another. And it is reaching them, because we have a lot of ways to get it through. That is what I wanted to say. Unfortunately, I have taken around three minutes away from the evening news, but I wanted to say that everything is fine, everything is going very well, and we are going to denounce all of their treacheries.
Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, we will begin an extremely important denunciation of another major treachery they have committed, which is worth examining in detail. It is an interesting matter that will be addressed first here at this round table. We have provided all the relevant information, and I do not think it can be covered in one, or two, or three round table discussions, I think it will require many more. They cannot be held one right after the other, but I think at least two or three a week will be needed to address this long and extremely interesting story; at least two days would have to be left aside for other issues that come up.
And so I recommend that you tune in tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. to watch this program, which will be more like the beginning of a series, I will tell you that right now.
I want to ask all the television viewers and radio listeners to forgive me for the time I have taken. (Applause)
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