From The Unknown Island
In its issue of Feb. 7, The Wall Street Journal expressed its hope that a social explosion might occur in Cuba like the one sparked by the Egyptian people to remove the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The editor said frankly that he did not understand something: Why did it happen in Egypt and does not happen in Cuba?
Twenty years ago, executives of that newspaper asked a similar question: Why did the Soviet Union collapse and socialism ended in Eastern Europe and the same did not happen in Cuba?
The paper's image of sobriety and power cannot hide its bigotry and hate.
There is a key question that clashes with the beliefs of the owners of the newspaper. How can a ruler who is a subordinate of the United States, a man supported by the might of the empire, be eliminated by popular will? How is it possible that the masses challenge the interests of the United States?
The counter-revolution funded and directed by the U.S. government reacts in the same way, but with so much anger that they say that the Cuban people are cowardly and stupid.
That's the picture.
There is no choice but to ask some questions beyond the limited and schematic logic of the empire:
Why don't Cubans rise against free health care? Why don't they take to the streets to demand that they be charged for the vaccines given to all children?
Why don't they protest against free education? Why don't they offer to pay US$15,000 per year for five years to obtain a degree in philology?
Why don't they demand the closure of the many special schools available free to handicapped children?
Why do they continue to concede that thousands of young people from Latin America and Africa are studying medicine in Cuba and that thousands of Cuban doctors contribute to health care in dozens of countries?
Why don't the Cubans ask for the restoration of U.S. dominance? Why don't they again include in their Constitution the right of the U.S. government to militarily occupy the nation's territory, sprinkle it with military bases like Guantánamo and take over the 3,056-square-kilometer Isle of Pines, an integral part of the nation's territory?
Why don't the Cubans demand that their country surrender its resources and economy to U.S. monopolies?
Why don't they rise to reintroduce the exploitation of man by man and discrimination against women and “non-whites”?
Why do they insist on maintaining social justice and equality between human beings and reject the inequities arising from the money amassed by the rich and not by the workers?
Why don't the Cubans help amend the principles of international law and eliminate the respect to countries' sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples?
Why don't the Cubans respect those characters who were born in Cuba and are paid by a foreign power, say, the U.S. government, in its plans to overthrow the Revolution?
These things are not well understood in the modern world – fancy expecting the Cubans to rise up to establish in their country situations like the ones that led to the uprising of the Egyptians!
The people of a small country can be neither cowardly nor foolish if they have successfully resisted, for more than 50 years, military aggression and state terrorism, plus an economic blockade and constant massive media attacks from the most powerful empire that has ever existed and its allies.
The newspaper of the “empire of high finance,” as American economist Victor Perlo called the Wall Street financial monopolies in his book in the early 1960s, cannot understand the hatred aroused by the United States' domination and interference in the affairs of other nations, or the exploitation by U.S. transnational corporations of the workers and wealth of other countries.
Those who have all the money in the world and think they can buy everything, including the conscience and stupidity of many, and impose their domination, selfishness and individualism, do not understand these things.
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