Throughout the world, people speak in awe and admiretion of the extraordinary spirit of the Cuban people. In the course of history, there have been many cruel and predatory imperialisms, but few have been as powerful as United States! imperialism. In Cuba, a small nation has defied successfully this great.colossus, I need not tell you of the impact your revolution has made on the consciousness of all those suffering from exploitation and domination. There is no other country in Latin America where the wealth and resources of the population are not manipulated and stolen by foreign capitalist& whose base of operation is the United States, The problem, therefore, that presents itself to the people of the world is how to remove the rulers of the United States, who have created a war machine of great brutality to protect their economic empire. In Vietnam and the Dominican Republic the rulers of US capitalism have sought directly to suppress popular and patriotic struggle. But the problem is not only one of military ageressiong US rulers also control world markets, and through this they siphon the wealth of people and make them ever more dependent on the United States, When we consider the suffering this causes, we are again reminded of the debt we owe to the Cuban people for showing us the way to overcome misery and degradation. let us examine the nature of this war machine, 3,000 military bases and vast mobile fleets, tearing nissiles and fleets of nuclear bombers, are spread over our planet to protect the ownership and control by U.S. capitalism of 60% of the world's resources. 60% of the world's resources are owned by the rulers of 6% of the world's population. The aggressiveness of this empire imposes on mankind an expenditure of 140,000 million dollars annually or 16 million dollars each hour, The current arms expenditure exceeds the entire national income of all developing countries, It exceeds the world's annual exports of all commodities, It exceeds the national income of Africa, Asia and Latin America, The U.S. military budget is nearly 60,000 million dollars per yeare One Atlas missile costs 30 million dollars or the equivalent of the total investment for nitrogen fertisiler plant with capacity of 70,000 tons per annum, Consider this in terms of the United Kingdom only, to take the example of a prosperous country: one obsolete missile equals four universities, one TSR 2 equals five modern hospitals, one ground to air missile equals 100,000 tractors. During the past fourteen years the U.S. spent 4,000 wit iidon dollars to purchase farm surplusesg butter and cheese have been stored and poisoned to keep prices up in the world markets. Blue dye is poured into great mountains of butter and cheese to render them unusable. By 1960, 125 million tons of bread grain had been stored in the United States to rot - enough food for every citizen of India for one year, ‘Unimaginably vast quantities of foodstuffs are calculatdly destroyed by the rulers of U.S. capitalism for no other purpose than the continuation of their profits and the retention of their power, Like vultures the handful of the rich batten on the poor, the exploited, the oppressed, A drop of 5% in the world price of staple exports of any country would, according to Dag Hammarskjold, wipe out all investments of the world bank, of the United Nations and all bilateral and other investments. These were the fears of Hammarskjold. What are the facts: in recent years prices have been operated against poor countries not merely at 5% but at 40%. The industrial production/Western capitalism is consciously employed not only to perpetuate the hunger which exists in the world, but to increase it vastly for profit. In South Africa,
The example of Cuba continued/
children die annually from gastro-enteritis. The smallpox which sews many countries could be eliminated at a cost. of 500,000 dollarse Hundreds of millions who suffer from yaws could be cured by a ee shot of pencillin. Five hundred million people have trachomae 60% of repre children of Africa suffer from protein deficiency diseases such as kwashioker, beriebkeri or pellagra. When U.S. capitalists hoard food and poison oe not/ rive the starving, but force the developing countries to buy _— a high costs. The riches of the earth are:destroyed, wasted, stolen by the few and used to murder the millions.
the people of Cuba have stirred the conscience of the Anerican people, oo. weivarei school and, indeed, every major city in the United States witnesses the popular resistance of the American people to the militaryindustrial complex which rules them. This new resistance of the people.of the United States is a tribute to the people of Cuba, because the demands of the American resistance are precisely those which have been achieved, in practice, in Cuba. As the people of the United States become more militant and strong in their opposition, and as the peoples of the world follow the Cuban example, the predatory system which so jeopardises world peace will succumb to the people of the United States and the world. I seni you ny warmest greetings in our common struggle, * Having received the message from Bertrand Russell to the three~continentel
anti-imperialist conference - Havana, the Cuban authorities were so «i \pleased! with the expression/ olidarity that they asked for a recorded
message to play over Havana Radio, This article is the text. Message from Vietnam continued/ 1. The United States must cease its aggression against Vietnam, respect and correctly apply the Accords of Geneva of 1954, retire its troops and its arms, as well as all those of its satellites, and dismantle all its military bases in South Vietnam. 2. It must respect the national rights of the people of South Vietnam, that is to says independence, democracy, peace and neutrality, The internal affairs of the people of Vietnam will be settled by the people of Vietnam themselves, without foreign meddling and interference, The unification of Vietnam will be decided by all the Vietnamese people in their entirety, 3e The N.L.F. of South Vietnam is the sole legitimate representative of the people of South Vietnam end must have a role and decisive voice in all political decisions of South Vietnam, 5 This position and the four points of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam constitute - one hes no doubt whatever - the unique and sole basis of a political settlement of the Vietnamese problem. For their part, the people of South Vietnam under the direction of the NLF, are determined to struggie to the very end for the realisation of these objectives, They mean to contribute in this way to the safeguarding of peace in Indo-China, in South East Asia and the world, In a recent declaration for the forthcoming Tri-continental Conference, you had the kindness to recall that our people have given every ounce of their strength and’ life in a resistance lasting these 25 years, against 3 powerful industrial states...You have added that this struggle has demonstrated the incredible spirit of which men are capablé when they are dedicated to a noble ideal, Our infinite thanks for your generous appreciation of our people and of our struggle." The mesSage ends by thanking "all our friends, known and unknown, ‘in Great Britain" who are working for our cause. N.B. The full text is available from BRPF, 3 & 4, Shavers Place, London S.W. 1