Fidel Castro on danger of nuclear war

by non-voter S. B. U Tue Jul 13, 2010 18:56

It’s ominous how corporate media outlets in the countries who were calling for the toughest of sanctions against Iran earlier in the year – in US Israel , Britain etc - have begun to modify their stances now that the UN has passed the vote approving sanctions. People who were saying up to a few months ago that sanctions were the only way to stop “the mullah regime” from making a nuclear bomb , are today voicing their concerns about the ineffectiveness of sanctions.

Israel's Prime Minister , Benjamin Netanyahu ,for instance, says now that Iran’s nuclear program probably can’t be stopped by the newly imposed United Nations sanctions.Speaking on the right wing Fox News station last week , Netanyahu said that US willingness to take military action might now be the only means to deter Iran from obtaining a military nuclear capability within the coming months.

Netanyahu called Iran the “ultimate terrorist state “ in the Fox interview. Giving Israel’s approval to an earlier Obama statement that he was determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table , Netanyahu said ,” I think that's the right statement of policy."

Israel is understood to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons.

by 37 ARRESTED Tue Jul 13, 2010 20:14

The weekend was bookended by a lot of hugging— starting in front of
the registration table as old friends reunited, and ending outside the
jail as prisoners were released to await trial into the hot July
afternoon sun in Clinton, Tennessee. In between, it was a powerful
celebration of the power of resistance, culminating in the arrest of
thirty-six people in nonviolent protest against nuclear weapons
production at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge.

There was music, there was talking, there were puppets and
Fourth-of-July burgers and watermelon, and on Monday morning, July 5,
there was a Declaration of Independence at the gates of the Y12
Nuclear Weapons Complex, after which thirteen people crossed the
property line and twenty-three more stretched a long banner across the
road to block the entrance to the bomb plant. They were
arrested—thirteen on federal trespass charges and twenty-three on
state charges for obstructing a roadway. The penalty for the federal
offense can be as much as $100,000 and a year in prison; for the state
charges, $50 and 30 days in jail.

The charges vary, but the depth of commitment and the passion for the
future was uniform—hundreds of peace cranes were tied on the barbed
wire fence expressing the deep desire for a world free of nuclear
weapons.

The Declaration of Independence, drafted by Anabel Dwyer and Kary Love
and adapted by the affinity groups as they planned their action, said:

“Under principles of democracy we exercise the right of every citizen
of this republic and this planet to peacefully resist the nuclear
threat; attacking as it does every core concept of human rights. We
act to exercise our basic rights to life and freedom from violence and
we exercise our duty to protect children and future generations. We
act to ensure that our government fulfills its promise and
responsibilities to unequivocally pursue and achieve nuclear
disarmament in good faith. We call on this government to end the use
of our tax dollars to wage permanent war and demand clean up all
chemical and radioactive contamination.”

Those arrested on state charges were released without bail, with court
dates scheduled in early July. Three women who remained in jail will
be in court July 8.

The federal prisoners of conscience will have their initial appearance
before Judge Bruce Guyton in Knoville on Tuesday, July 6.

Crossing over the railroad gate and crawling through barbed wire, 13
resisters moved onto the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex: Carol Gilbert,
Ardeth Platte, Jackie Hudson, Bonnie Urfer, Bill Bichsel, Bradford
Lyttle, Michael Walli, David Corcoran, Jean Gump, Steve Baggarly,
Dennis DuVall, Mary Dennis Lentsch, Beth Rosdatter. In Federal court,
the government said the baker’s dozen are “exposed to a fine of not
more than $100,000 and a sentence of not more than 1 year in federal
prison and one year of supervised probation, plus a $100 special
assessment.”

Arrested and charged with obstructing a roadway were: Beth Brockman,
Barbara Corcoron, Nancy Gowen, Janice Sevré-Duszynska, Susan Crane,
Elizabeth McAlister, Billie Hickey, Clare Grady, Alice Baker, Martha
Hennessee, Pepperwolf, Judith Hallock, Joan Noyes, Steve Jacobs, Ed
Bloomer, Stephen Clemens, John Schuchardt, Marcus Atkinson, Paul
Fesefelt, Frank Cordaro, Joe Gump,Tom Palumbo Jon Blickenstaff. The
charge is a State Class C misdemeanor and carries a penalty of $50
fine, up to 30 days in jail, and court costs (around $240).

All of the arrestees were released on recognizance on July 5 except
Beth Brockman, Alice Baker, and Billie Hickey who, anticipating a
sentence of five days or more, elected to remain in Anderson County
Jail. Their trial, along with Marcus Atkinson, is scheduled for July
8; the others arrested on state charges will be heard on July 12.

A preliminary hearing has been scheduled in federal court for the
alleged trespassers for July 14; lawyers say it will not happen
because an indictment will be handed down before that time.

Jim Gaber also has posted photos on his flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimhaber/sets/721576244165...9622/

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Thu Jul 15, 2010 14:09

Just found a report published this morning from www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk titled as 'Israeli Military Strike Threat on Iran Grows -Risk of Protracted War'. Seems Fidel is not in a minority of one on the issue.

by non-voter Thu Jul 15, 2010 20:09

Writing in Global Research today , Fidel Castro says he still believes that the US and Israel are preparing to attack Iran .

In his June 27 Reflections the former Cuban leader had speculated that such an attack might come within days , but this did not take into account the fact that the June UN sanctions resolution on Iran stipulates a sixty day period to receive information on the implementation of the resolution, which will not expire until August 8. The resolution will allow the US navy to search Iranian merchant ships for nuclear material and it has been firmly rejected by Iran .

Modifying his mistaken timeframe while reiterating his fears for a nuclear clash in the near future , Castro writes in Global Research …“I do not hesitate to take the risk of compromising my modest moral authority.”… the United States and its NATO allies have said their last word….. Today, everything hangs by a thread.
See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20130

by Contrarian Thu Jul 15, 2010 23:19

So the old buzzard feels the need to warn us from his communist dictatorship about the threats posed by Israel (a democracy) supported by the US (also a democracy) to his pals in the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran (also a dictatorship.) Well, those freedom hating totalitarians gotta stick together I suppose.

Still, at least there is some improvement in Cuban human rights since Castro ceded power to the brother (ok, ok, if you really must - since the brother was unanimously approved as President by the unelected National Assembly.) Cuban citizens are now allowed own CD players and even computers! No free press yet and all TV and radio stations are still controlled by the Communist party. All ISPs and email providers too - essential that big brother(!) knows what its citizens are thinking.

And, in fairness, the number of political prisoners is at an alltime low. A further 52 are set to be released (and allowed leave the country!) after dialogue between the Catholic Church and the dictatorship regime. Pity it arrived too late for Amnesty International designated prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died on 23rd February this year after an 82 day hunger strike while serving a 36 year sentence for disobedience, disrespect and public disorder. In an act of unbelievable cruelty he was denied water for 18 days in an effort to persuade him to abandon his hunger strike. This induced kidney failure and he was then admitted to hospital and given intravenous fluids against his will. After his death the State run press (there is no other) described him as a "common criminal falsely elevated to martyr status."

So forgive me for taking comrade Castro's comments with a grain of salt. He would have more credibility if he cleaned up the Castrofascist regime's own act first.

PS I tried to look up www.indymedia.cu to get and independent view of the human rights situation in Cuba. Sadly it doesn't exist.

by Citizen Fri Jul 16, 2010 00:46

Freedom is a relative term. What about freedom to Have a roof over your head, freedom to eat and freedom to have health care when sick? Freedom is great but you can't eat it, put it over your head or inject it to cure illness. A lot of homeless "free" americans know this. In modern capitalist societies, It's also interesting to note that "freedom" extends to the government. They are free to monitor all your communications, search your home, arrest you without a proper trial and incarcerate you all perfectly legally. Freedom of thought hardly seems to exist anymore in the US. read the newspapers and watch fox news for a while for details. dumbing down the education system helps in this. As for prisoners, well, america has privatised it's prison system and now incarcerates more people than anyone. And for all it's whimpering about gileaud shalit, Israel never mentions the thousands of palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons.

Indymedia servers in the US have been raided on several occasions and many people involved in such democratic alternative means of protesting against the well financed "freedom" of the status quo more often than not are under surveillance and have their movements and communications monitored. Yeah. that's freedom all right. At least in the soviet union it was more obvious what was going on. People knew it was all blatant propaganda and just ignored it. Things are a lot more insidious and complex in what passes for democracy in the US et al these days. People still actually believe what their capitalist leaders and the media say about what is going on in the world around them in the US. That to me is far more worrying.

Castro was a charismatic leader with some vision who saw that there was another way for his people other than the destructive sociopathic excesses of capitalism. Less shiny things, but the basics are still there in spite of an undeclared war and 40 years of state economic (and other!) terrorism by the US. Fair play to him.

Bhutan is an interesting example of a country who has tried another path uther than capitalism and very successfully so far but wait until "freedom" and "democracy" and "capitalism" really get their hands on them. Let's see after the event whether your exalted "freedom" was a better option or not for them than benign dictatorship or whether the corrosive influence of capitalism and encouraging the worst impulses in mankind run amok destroys their paradise too!!

You see, the irony is, freedom without discipline, awareness intelligence, foresight and long term planning and a deep sense of community is rather like a loaded wallet in the hands of a child. It's just going to be stolen and squandered by robbers leaving the child with nothing, the end.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Fri Jul 16, 2010 13:04

Come on Contrarian, its a militarised nuclear theocracy built on ethno-religious mythology cooked up from book of folk tales called the bible(which just means 'the book').Israel has as much right to claim the territory it occupies as I have to claim Connaught on the basis of my descent from Queen Maeve.
But, speaking of political prisoners in Cuba, how many are still incarcerated in Guantinamo these days?

by Contrarian Fri Jul 16, 2010 23:45

Hello again, Opus! Of course Israel is a militarised nuclear state. But a theocracy? Its rulers are neither rabbis nor selected by rabbis. As distinct from, say, Iran, where the Government is entirely dominated, selected and run by the mullahs. Or the Vatican state which is clearly a theocracy. Israel, like other democracies, has open and fair elections, a universal franchise of all male and female Israeli citizens, a free press, an independent judiciary and a separation of powers. And it works too. Governments assume and leave office according to election results. The Supreme Court holds the Government to account and the Government regularly loses cases in the Supreme Court. Media can and do freely criticize the Government. Smells like a democracy to me. (obviously, this applies to Israel proper, not the occupied areas)

And yes (not unlike many other societies) it is more or less built on a founding myth of "ethno-religious mythology cooked up from book of folk tales called the bible(which just means 'the book')" So what? Still doesn't make it a theocracy. Granted there is a lunatic fringe in Israeli society thet claims a Greater Israel based on biblical promises. But more realistically, Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State is based on international law, in the form of UN Resolution 148 dividing Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Israel accepted this resolution; the Palestinian Arabs and all other Arab states did not. Five neighbouring Arab states invaded the fledgling Israeli state, were robustly defeated and the armistice line (the Green line) left the Arabs with the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians could have established their own state (the very State they now campaign for) on the West Bank/Gaza any time between 1948 and 1967 but chose not to (or were not permitted to by Jordan and Egypt) as to do so would implicitly define and hence recognise Israel.

And, speaking of political prisoners in Cuba vs Guantanamo, should we not compare like with like? Like how many Amnesty designated prisoners of conscience are held in either location? Plus I don't think many of the orange jump suit brigade are being held for "disrespect" or "disobedience!"

by V for vendetta Sat Jul 17, 2010 04:09

"And, speaking of political prisoners in Cuba vs Guantanamo, should we not compare like with like? Like how many Amnesty designated prisoners of conscience are held in either location? Plus I don't think many of the orange jump suit brigade are being held for "disrespect" or "disobedience!"

No many are being / have been held for nothing at all in most cases. Not even disrespect. Many of the orange jumpsuited ones have been just innocent people picked up off the street and held on trumped up charges without trial. Just Names handed over to the US forces for money by dodgy informers. The tales of their treatment there and in abu ghraib are well known at this stage.

Perhaps there are less "prisoners of conscience" in guantanamo than in cuba because
(a) thats just ONE prison (of many US prisons and prisons supported by US money and resources) versus the whole of Cuba and
(b) It's hard to be considered a prisoner of conscience when you were just some joe minding your own business when some military guys on a dodgy tip pick you up and bundle you into their vehicle and send you to guantanamo or abu ghraib.

Film cameras have been inside cuban prisons and things are a lot better there than the MSM would have you believe. Certainly far less violent than your average US privatised prison. And positively luxurious, friendly and civilised compared to the likes of abu ghraib or those CIA black prisons dotted all over the world compliments of the worlds greatest advocate of freedom and democracy. (Also the worlds greatest hypocrite!!)

Better question: How many Amnesty prisoners of conscience are held in the prisons and black sites of human rights violating governments and dictators worldwide supported financially and politically by the US because they have geopolitical interests in those countries? Quite a few I'd imagine!

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sun Jul 18, 2010 12:15

'...Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is based on...UN resolution 148.....Israel accepted this resolution;The Palestinian Arabs and all other Arab states did not...'
That was big of Israel to accept a decree from the imperial interests of Britain, France and the victorious US who were determined to maintain their grip on the resources of the region even though the actual residents of the region rejected it.The Mock Race, Eh?, of free competition, except that they own the casino, the rulette wheel, the security apparatus, and of course the locally installed 'progressive and moderatre' puppets who will manage the region in the interests of their colonial paymasters.But then israel has an unbeaten record in accepting and trumpeting those international resolutions that suit its dominance and flouting those that refer to the rights of others.
And if that 'right to exist as a Jewish state' is not, by definition, theocratic what does the word Jewish mean? The only other possible interpretation I can put on it is that it refers to secular Jews who therefore see themselves as a distinct (and apparently superior) race.

Now where have we come across those noble sentiments before...?
Do correct me if my interpretation is illogical or badly informed.Be as contrarian as you wish.But try to be a little less self-contradictory.

by non-voter Mon Jul 19, 2010 17:16 thackeraddy at gmail dot com

Fidel Castro deserves credit for bringing this very real threat of nuclear war to the world’s attention . After August the American navy will have the right to inspect any ship entering or leaving Iran’s ports that they suspect of carrying nuclear material. Iran will not allow that to happen so there will be a dangerous stand-off. Neither side will back down and America has repeatedly insisted that it will “take no option off the table” - which is of course a euphemism for war - in dealing with what they call “ Iran’s nuclear weapons program “.

How does the Irish Anti War Movement treat the threats of war against Iran - threats coming from a country responsible for the killings of over a million Iraqis in a war originally justified by lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program ?

The Irish Anti War Movement website doesn’t warn about the danger of a war against Iran .There is no mention of the UN sanctions on the site or of Israel’s threats to attack Iran. Its most recent article about Iran is a reprint of an Al Jazeera article from April of this year concerning an “arbitration court in the Hague ordering the British government to refund $650 million to Iran over an outstanding 1970s arms deal” . There is no attempt to explain this Al Jazeera article’s relevancy for Irish anti- war activists - probably because there isn't any .

The only thing else on the IAWM site this year about Iran -despite the regular nuclear threats coming from the US and its racist Zionist ally - is a piece by academic Dr Farhang Morady of Westminster University in the UK. Dr Morady’s article is in accord with the IAWM’s stated support for the losers in last year’s Iranian election: Iran’s "democratic movement" which is “under constant harassment by the Basij, religious police” ; Iran’s democratic opposition desiring nothing more than “independence, freedom and justice” ; democrats in Iran wanting regime change, but regime change from below …“without direct [sic] intervention by the U.S”. Etc etc.

In his latest article in Granma , Fidel Castro gives a blunt assessment of US attempts to influence last year’s elections in Iran : “The government of the United States drew up a plan to instigate a political movement that, supporting itself on capitalist consumerism, would divide Iranians and defeat the regime. “

That US plan for regime change in Iran failed – perhaps it was intended to - and has been replaced by today's massive build-up of military forces in the Persian Gulf aimed against Iran . The outcome, Fidel Castro argues , must inevitably be armed confrontation .

“Now it is about calculating when the naval forces of the United States and Israel will be deployed facing the Iranian coasts, and joining up there with aircraft carriers and other U.S. military boats which mount guard in this region.”

Castro goes on to warn in the article that an attack on Iran will immediately unleash a second Korean war .The North Korean regime he writes, “ will not hesitate for one second to act as soon as the attack is initiated on Iran.”

Fidel Castro's article can be read here:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_60490.shtml

by Jack Mon Jul 19, 2010 17:34

In the summer of 1964 when China exploded its first atomic bomb, the scientists first laid a placque at the spot, that still remains. It says approx. that China acquires the knowledge of nuclear technique for the soul and only purpose of dismantling nuclear weapons globally.

In fact, the PRC before, during and after the fact of acquiring the knowledge of nuclear weapons was making the call for a political meeting of all countries that possess nuclear weapons to come a meeting, with one item on the agenda, the complete thorough and total dismantling of all nuclear weapons on the planet. Such a meeting China would host of be hosted at, and that policy still remains the foreign policy of the Peoples Republic of China. China further says that the PRC will never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

This correct policy of the PRC was refused by the Soviet Social Imperialists, British, French, Canadian, and Israeli Imperialists, but nevertheless remains a path to liberation to this day. The peoples of the world should rally and unite around this correct policy, and implement its truthfull meaning of ending the threat of the nuclear terror that nuclear weapons represents globally.

Another great good reason to remember the 'Internationale Brigades', and renew the worlds 'United Front Against Fascism' again to make sure the Imperialist camp does not unleash the nuclear holocaust that the whole world has been living in terror of for too long. Chairman Mao says of this event, sooner rather than later.

by oscar Tue Jul 20, 2010 08:00

Jack!

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:49

Be a bit specific.No use with the gratuitous put-downs if you cant tackle the argument. Jack has several good points in there, not least the refusal of of the Euro-Yank imperial mindset to allow the sun set on its delusionary adventures.They have learned nothing from the Iraq and Afghan quagmires and seem determined, as the topic entails, to repeat the excerise(with Israel desiring to flex and flash its nuclear biceps) in Iran.Part of that logic is to keep China in its coal-cage and deny it access to oil.I am no fan of Mao, but, no less than Stalin, he was partly created by the predatory designs of the 'West' to carve up 'their' global pie.Without them Russia and China would be reduced to reservations and bantustans in the resource wars.Just as Cuba,sans Fidel, would be anotherr Haiti and playground for the mafias of the Americas.
And the corporate engine is incapable of learning. Its raison d'etre is blind expansion and its minions have bought into the necessary schitzophrenia of mutual service.That it is a parasitic relationship is discountable as long as they have their temporal comforts tended.The corporate entity, on the other hand, although its time horizon is the quarterly shareholder figures rolls on gluttonously subducting all in its way, until it is subducted in turn by the contradicion between infinite unrestrained growth and finite material resources. Meantime the meek inherit the earth (a la Glasnevin) and Globocorp Inc gets to squat on the residual cinder, unless we break the cycles.
Sequitur?