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lundi 9 octobre 2017

Farewell letter from the martyr Ernesto 'Che' Guevara to Fidel Castro

Address of Commandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Prime Minister of the Communist Party of Cuba and Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba in Havana on October 3rd, 1965Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Che's assassination for the CIA, on October 9th, 1967

Source : http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1965/esp/f031065e.html


Translation: http://walterlippmann.com/fidel-castro-speech-october-3-1965, http://sayed7asan.blogspot.com
  
The farewell letter of Commandante Ernesto Che Guevara was read by Fidel Castro on October 3rd, 1965 in Havana, in front of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party and before the cameras. After his return from Africa in February 1965, the Che disappeared from the public scene without official explanation, causing questions in Cuba and especially abroad. The rumors evoked disputes between Fidel and the Che, and even a real purge. This letter, written by the hand of the Che, proves the unfounded character of these calumnies, which the reactionaries (and pseudo-revolutionaries) continue to propagate to this day in order to discredit Cuba.

Even before the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, Che, a convinced internationalist, had pledged himself alongside Fidel Castro on the condition of being free to pursue his revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle under other heavens after the Victory in Cuba. His experiences in Congo and Bolivia were known only after his death, with the publication of his War Diaries by the Cuban government.



Original videos deleted by Youtube. See Kafka 2.0: How Youtube’s Political Censorship is Exercised

Transcript:

[...] There is an absence in our central committee of one who possess all the merits and all the virtues in the highest degree to belong to it and who, however, is not along the members of the central committee. 

Around this the enemy had been able to weave a thousand conjectures. The enemy has tried to confuse and to sow discord and doubt. And patiently, because it was necessary to wait, we have waited. That is the difference between the revolutionary and the counterrevolutionary, between the revolutionary and the imperialist. We revolutionaries know how to wait. We know how to have patience. We never despair and the reactionaries, the counterrevolutionaries, the imperialists continue in perennial desperation.

They live in perennial anguish, in a perennial lying of the most ridiculous, of the most childish. When we read some of the things about those officials, come of those Yankee senators, one asks: “But how is it possible that this gentlemen is not in a stable instead of belonging to what is called a “Congress.” (applause) Some of them speak veritable barbarities. Any they have a tremendous habit of lying. They cannot live without lying. They live in anguish. If the revolutionary does something, which is what Cuba was always going, such as that to which I referred at the beginning, they see truculent things, terrible things, a plan behind all that. How ridiculous. In what fear, they live.

One asks oneself: “Do they believe that?: “Do they believe that?: “Could they believe all they say?” “Do they have a need to believe all they say or can they not live without believing all they say or do they say all that they do not believe?” It is difficult. It would be a question for doctors and psychologists. What do they have in this minds? What anguish is that? They see a maneuver in everything, a truculent, dark, terrible plan. And they do no know that there is not better tactic, nor a better strategy than to fight with clean weapons, than to fight with the truth, because those are the only weapons which inspire trust. They are the only weapons which inspire faith. They are the only weapons which inspire safety, moral dignity. And it has been with those weapons that we revolutionaries have been vanquishing and crushing our enemies.

You will never here a lie from the mouth of a revolutionary. There are weapons which do not benefit any revolutionary, and no serious revolutionary needs to resort to lies–ever. His weapon is reason, (word indistinct), the truth, the ability to have an idea, a purpose, a position; in short, the moral spectacle of our adversaries in truly lamentable. And thus, the diviners, the interpreters, the specialists in Cuban affairs, and the electronic brains have been working incessantly to solve this mystery, whether Ernesto Guevara has been purges, (applause) whether Ernesto Guevara was ill, whether Ernesto Guevara had had differences, and other questions of the same ilk.

Naturally, the people have confidence. The people have faith, but enemies will say these things, especially abroad, to slander him and the communist regime, dark, terrible things: men disappear, they do not leave a trace; they do not leave prints; there is no explanation; and we told the people at this time, when the people began to note this absence, that in due time we would talk. We would have some reasons to wait, we are developing surrounded by the forces of imperialism.

The world is not living in normal conditions. As long as the criminal bombs of Yankee imperialists are falling on the people of Vietnam, we cannot say that we are living under normal conditions. When more than 100,000 Yankee soldiers land there to try to smash the liberation movement, when the soldiers of imperialism land in a republic which has equality of rights, judicially, as do all the rest of the republic of the worlds, as in Santo Domingo, to trample its sovereignty, (applause) the world if not living under normal conditions. When around our country, the imperialists are training mercenaries and organizing vandalic attacks, in the most unpunished manner, as in the case of (few words indistinct), when the imperialists threaten to intervene in any country of Latin America or of the world, we are not living under normal conditions.

And when we were fighting in clandestine conditions against the Batista tyranny, we revolutionaries did not live in normal conditions. We had to adjust to the struggle. In the same way, although the revolutionary power exists in our country, in regard to the realities of the world, we do not live in normal conditions, and we shall have to adjust to this situation. And to explain this, we are going to read a letter here, in handwriting, here copied by typewriter, from Comrade Ernesto Guevara, (applause) which is self-explanatory.

I thought of telling the story of our friendship and our comradeship, how it began, under what conditions it began and how it developed, but it is not necessary. I am going to restrict myself to reading the letter. It says:

Havana–The date was not written down because this letter was to be read at the moment we felt it most convenient, but keeping to strict reality, it was delivered on 1 April of this year, exactly six months and two days ago, and it says the following:


Havana, Year of Agriculture [1965].


Fidel, 

At this moment I remember many things: the day I met you in the house of Maria Antonia, when you asked me to come with you [to participate in the Cuban Revolution] and all the tension of the preparations.

One day they came by to ask who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of this (death) struck us all. Thereafter, we knew it was true, and that in a revolution one triumphs or dies, if it is true. Many comrades fell on the road to victory.

Today, everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature; but the event repeats itself. I feel like I have accomplished the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I take my leave of you, of the comrades, of your people who is now also mine.

I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the Party, my position as Minister, my rank of Commander and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me no longer to Cuba, except the links of another kind that cannot be broken, unlike titles or ranks.

Reviewing my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient honesty and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only fault of some seriousness, is not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra and not having been able to discern quickly your qualities of leader and revolutionary.

I have lived magnificent days, and I felt at your side the pride of belonging to our people in the luminous yet sad days of the Caribbean [Missile] crisis. Rarely, a head of state was as bright as you were in these circumstances. I am also proud to have followed you without hesitation, to have fully adhered to your way of thinking, and to have been able to see and appreciate the dangers and principles the way you did.

Other nations of the world summon my modest efforts of assistance. I can do what is denied to you due to your responsibility at the head of Cuba, and the time has come to part.

Know that I do it with a mixture of joy and pain. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a constructor and the dearest of all the ones I love. And I leave a people who adopted me like a son. It tears a part of my soul. On the new battlefields, I will bring the faith that you inculcated me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of accomplishing the most sacred of duties: fighting against imperialism wherever it may be. It comforts and heals advantageously the deepest wounds.

I repeat once again that I free Cuba from all responsibility, except that which emanates from its example. If one day, in other lands, occurs to me the fateful hour (of martyrdom), my last thought will be for this people and especially for you.

Thank you for your teachings and your example to whom I will try to stay true to the last consequence of my actions. I was always in total agreement with the foreign policy of our Revolution, and I still am. Wherever I find myself, I will always feel upon me the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I will behave as such. I leave nothing material to my children and to my wife, and this does not grieve me. I am happy that it is so. I ask nothing for them, because I know that the State will give them what they need to live and get an instruction.

I have much to say to you and to our people, but I feel that it is useless, because words cannot express what I would like to say, and it's not worth blackening more paper.

Until victory, always.

Homeland or Death !

I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervor.

(Signed :) Che.”

Immortal words of the martyr Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

Excerpts from two speeches of the Commandante Ernesto Che Guevara, translated on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination by the CIA, on October 9, 1967

Full speeches (in Spanish): https://360letras.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/385/

Translation and subtitles: http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr

 

Original video deleted by Youtube. See Kafka 2.0: How Youtube’s Political Censorship is Exercised

Transcript:

Speech in Santiago de Cuba on November 30th, 1964, on the occasion of the 8th anniversary of the uprising of the city led by Frank País

[...] Our victorious struggle had two consequences: the awakening of the peoples of America, who saw that one could undertake a Revolution (and triumph), could experience how a revolution could be made, find that all channels (to the popular uprising) were not closed and see that it was not necessary to constantly receive the blows of the exploiters, and that this path towards emancipation was not as long and arduous as could imagine or think some party leaders who fight hard against the oligarchies and against imperialism in every country.

At the same time, we have opened the eyes of imperialism. Imperialism has also started preparing to drown in blood the new Cubas that may emerge. And before he died, Kennedy had already said they would not admit new Cubas in the continent. And this was repeated by his successors, who are wolves from the same litter, so we should not think that they could have a different philosophy. Not only did they reiterate [Kennedy's words], they also demonstrated their intention to carry out this action, to accomplish it not only in America, but in all countries of the world in which the struggle was created, where the revolutionary struggle developed.

They tried to kill Algeria, but Algeria won its freedom. Today, they try to liquidate the people of Vietnam, but the people of Vietnam is stronger than them, and Vietnamese people continue day after day to record new victories over imperialism, forcing him to pay with the blood of [US] soldiers, and paying himself a tribute [of martyrs] to the huge amount of casualties caused by imperialism against the people of South Vietnam. And the struggle continues and will continue until victory. This revolution began even before ours in North Vietnam, and was consolidated before we could arrive triumphantly in Havana. But you have to keep fighting. 

Laos is in the same condition. And in Africa, there are many people who have taken this (revolutionary) path. With varying degrees of success, but they took that route. And Portuguese Guinea triumph in its struggles.

But today, the memory more present, more poignant than any other is certainly that of the Congo and Lumumba. Today, in this Congo so far from us and yet so present, there is a story that we need to know and an experience that we should learn from. The other day, the Belgian paratroopers stormed the city of Stanleyville. They slaughtered a large number of citizens and, finally, after having regrouped and murdered them under the statue of Professor Lumumba, they stole the statue of the former President of Congo. 

This tells us two things: first, the bestiality of imperialism. A bestiality that has no fixed borders or does not belong to a particular country. Hitler's hordes were bestial, as are North Americans today, as are the Belgian paratroopers, as were the French imperialists in Algeria. For it is the very nature of imperialism to demean men to their wildest impulses, to turn them into blood-hungry beasts, willing to slaughter, to murder, to destroy until the last picture of a revolutionary, a supporter of a regime that fell under their boot, or who fights for his freedom. 

And this statue to the memory of Lumumba, today destroyed, but which will be rebuilt tomorrow, reminds us of the tragic history of this martyr of the revolution of the world, and the fact that you can never trust imperialism, not even for the least thing, absolutely nothing. Under the banner of the United Nations in the Congo, Lumumba was assassinated. And these are the United Nations whom the Americans claim should inspect our territory! These same United Nations! [...]

And we have the ever increasing satisfaction to see that the name of Cuba crosses through the fields of America, and also through the fields of other countries of the world who are fighting for their freedom, always meaning the same thing: the image of what can be achieved through the revolutionary struggle, the hope for a better world, the ideal for which it is worth risking one's life, sacrificing unto death on the battlefield in all continents of the world. [...]

Speech at the UN, December 11, 1964

[...] Now, yes, History will count with the poor of America, with the exploited and humiliated in Latin America, who decided to start writing themselves, forever, their history.

And this wave of indignant resentment, of trampled rights and justice reclaimed begins to rise from the lands of Latin America, and this wave will not stop. This wave will increase with each passing day. Because this wave is formed by the masses, who constitute the majority in all aspects: those who accumulate wealth through their work, create values, turn the wheels of history and now wake up from their long stultifying dream which was imposed on them.

Because this great humanity shouted "Enough!" and started walking. And its march of giants will not stop before conquering real independence, for which they have already sacrificed many martyrs, more than once, in vain. Now, in any case, those who die will die like those of Cuba, those of Playa Giron : they will die for their unique, genuine and inalienable independence. [...]

lundi 2 octobre 2017

Hassan Nasrallah to Jews: flee Israel before its Destruction, Zionism is our Common Enemy

Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on 1st October 2017 on the occasion of the commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein

Source: http://almanar.com.lb/2688343

Translation: http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr

Original video deleted by Youtube. See Kafka 2.0: How Youtube’s Political Censorship is Exercised


Transcript: 

[...] Second, (regarding) Israel. Israel does not cease to issue direct threats against Lebanon, (promising) to destroy it completely in a next war. There is always someone there who stands up and says, "In the next war, we will not let but ruins behind us, and we will return Lebanon 100 or 200 years back."

Before the [Israeli military manoeuvres] Northern Front [in September 2017, the largest in 20 years] and after, Israel continues its offensive in Syria, claiming to prevent further arms reaching the Resistance (Hezbollah), it continues its violations in Lebanese [airspace] in various ways, and works to push the region to war under any pretext.