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Vol. 79/No. 36 October 12, 2015
(front page)
Castro at UN: Cuba speaks for
the toilers of the world
BY SETH GALINSKY
NEW YORK — In three speeches during his visit at the United Nations,
Cuban President Raúl Castro drew attention to the deteriorating
conditions faced by billions of workers and farmers around the world. He
called for measures to close the gap between imperialist and
semicolonial countries. And he appealed for support in the continued
fight to end Washington’s economic war against Cuba.
In his Sept. 28 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the revolutionary
leader said that since 1945 when the organization was founded “there
have constantly been wars of aggression, and interference in the
internal affairs of states; the ousting of sovereign governments by force.”
Today “795 million go hungry, 781 million adults are illiterate, and
17,000 children perish every day from curable diseases, while annual
military expenses worldwide amount to more than $1.7 trillion. Barely a
fraction of that figure could resolve the most pressing problems
afflicting humanity,” he said.
“Even in industrial nations the ‘welfare society,’ usually presented as
the model to imitate, has practically disappeared,” Castro added,
describing the effects of the growing capitalist crisis of production
and trade.
Castro condemned the continuing attempts by imperialist powers,
principally the United States, to undermine any government that doesn’t
follow imperialist dictates, including those of Nicolás Maduro in
Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. He reaffirmed Cuba’s support of
independence for Puerto Rico “after more than a century of colonial
domination.”
U.S. economic war against Cuba
Despite the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and
the United States, Castro noted that the U.S. economic war against Cuba
continues.
Normalization of relations between the two governments “will only be
achieved,” he said, “with the end of the economic, commercial and
financial blockade against Cuba; the return to our country of the
territory illegally occupied by Guantánamo Naval Base; the cessation of
radio and TV broadcasts, and of subversion and destabilization programs
against the island; and when our people are compensated for the human
and economic damages they still endure.”
“No less than 2.7 billion people in the world live in poverty,” Castro
said at the Sept. 26 U.N. Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015
Development Agenda. “Wealthy individuals and transnational companies
grow richer while the number of poor, unemployed and homeless people
increase dramatically as a result of the harsh so-called austerity
policies, and waves of desperate immigrants arrive in Europe escaping
misery and conflict that others have unleashed,” he said.
The next day the revolutionary leader addressed a U.N. “leaders meeting”
on women’s empowerment and gender equality, pointing to advances on
women’s conditions and rights in Cuba, with one of the lowest rates of
deaths in childbirth in the world and the large number of women in the
workforce there.
“We shall never renounce honor, human solidarity and social justice, for
these convictions are deeply rooted in our socialist society,” Castro
told the Sept. 26 summit.
Related articles:
DC meeting takes up fight to end US embargo of Cuba
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