Cuba's contribution to the self-liberation of Africa is fantastic

GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. November 19, 2003

NOAM CHOMSKY
Cuba's contribution to the self-liberation of
Africa is fantastic

BY BERNIE DWYER
-Extracts from an interview recorded for
Radio Havana Cuba-

THE slogan from the World Social Forum, which you attended
at Porto Alegre in Brazil earlier this year, was that a
better world is possible. Is that part of what motivates
you? Do you honestly think that a better world is possible?

Possible, certainly. Attainable, that's another question.
And that goes back to the first question: if people are
willing to undertake their responsibilities seriously, then
a better world is very possible. Unfortunately, there is
probably an almost inverse correlation between opportunity
and dedication and commitment.

So rather typically, it's the people that live under
repression and deprivation and face serious penalties and
lack privilege who are working hard to build a better
world. Those who have the opportunity and every opportunity
in front of them, every kind of privilege, quite typically
throughout history tend to be subordinate to power.

Actually, it's not a particular observation of mine. The
founder and leading figure in modern international
relations theory, Hans Morgenthau - a much-respected
scholar - once harshly condemned what he called our
conformist subservience to those in power. He was referring
to the intellectual classes in the United States and the
West generally.

In fact one of the reasons that we believe that a better
world is possible is because we have a better world. The
world is a lot better than it was not very long ago. Maybe
not in every respect - there has been some regression - but
in many respects. We know how it got better. It didn't get
better by some gift from the gods or the powerful or some
benevolent dictator, it got better because people struggled
to make it better and typically, those who were suffering
most.

Do you see these popular movements taking the place of the
organized Left political parties in the major task of
building a new society as was mentioned several times
during the conference, which commented that the Left is in
disarray?

Well, I have never really thought that the Left was much in
"array" as far as political purposes were concerned. These
are usually various power systems, maybe good things, maybe
bad things. I don't think that these new popular movements
are taking the place of anything, they're really new. There
never was anything like the World Social Forum before.

The goal of the Left from its modern origins has been to
create a real International. The Left has never been
anti-globalization, that's why every union is called an
International. You want to have international solidarity
and support and so on. It never succeeded. Now the
Internationals were very limited in their outreach and they
fell apart, actually under internal authoritarian reasons
in each case.

Now this is different. This is really international and it
has participation from a vast range of components from
society: peasant, working people, environmentalists,
intellectuals, poets, all sorts of people. How far this
will go, who knows. There are a lot of disruptive forces
inside and a lot of pressures outside, a lot of
difficulties, maybe this one will fail, but even if it
fails, it succeeds. It lays the basis for something that
can come next. You don't expect anything important to
happen in a day - whether it's the elimination of slavery
or women's rights or whatever it may be. These are things
that take time.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich
countries, is that people tend to think - even the
activists - that instant gratification is required. You
constantly hear: "Look I went to a demonstration and we
didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?"
But people who live real lives know that that is not the
way things work. If you want to achieve something, you
build the basis for it.

If you want to achieve something like, say, an electoral
victory that means something, you have to spend decades
organizing the basis of the groups so all local communities
can take part and so on and so forth. It's a lot easier in
countries where there are more opportunities and wealth and
less repression. It's still not going to happen in a few
minutes, so the World Social Forum is not really replacing
left parties. Its place is maybe establishing more
authentic ones and I'm not even sure whether political
parties are what we are looking for. Maybe what we are
looking for are cooperatives and communities that interact
and federate and just build a new society.

During these times of US domination of the world, what role
do you see Cuba playing?

Well, Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to
attack. Since1959 Cuba has been under attack from the
hemispheric superpower. It has been invaded, subjected to
more terror than maybe the rest of the world combined -
certainly any other country that I can think of - and it's
under an economic stranglehold that has been ruled
completely illegal by every relevant international body, It
has been at the receiving end of terrorism, repression and
denunciation, but it survives.

If you look back at the declassified record and the
problems that Cuba was posing and therefore had to be
overthrown, one intelligence analyst said that "the very
existence of the Castro regime is successful defiance of US
policies that go back a hundred and fifty years". He's not
talking about the Russians. He is talking about the Monroe
Doctrine, which says we are the masters of the hemisphere.
It goes on to say that this really dangerous as it offers a
model that others might want to follow. That's what is
called "communist aggression". You have a model that
somebody wants to follow. So you have to destroy the virus.

Kissinger, for example, during the other 9/11 - the one
that happened in 1973 - was concerned that Allende, with
his democratic victory and social programs would spread
contagion not only in Latin America, but even in Italy
where the United States at the very same time was carrying
out large scale subversive operations to try to undermine
Italian democracy and even supported fascist parties in
Italy.

Yes, Cuba is the symbol of successful defiance that
accounts for the venomous hostility. The very existence of
the regime, independent of what it does, by not
subordinating itself to power is just an unacceptable
defiance for the rest of the world. It's a symbol of what
can be done without using harsh conditions. It's once again
a case of those under the most severe conditions are doing
things that others can't do.

So, for example, let's take Cuba's role in the liberation
of Africa. It's an astonishing achievement that has almost
been totally suppressed. Now you can read about it in
scholarship, but the contribution that Cuba made to the
self-liberation of Africa is fantastic. And that was
against the entire concentrated power of the world. All the
imperialist powers were trying to block it. It finally
worked and Cuba's contribution was unique. That's another
reason why Cuba is hated. Just the plain fact that black
soldiers from Cuba were able to beat back a South African
invasion of Angola sent shock waves throughout the
continent. The black movements were inspired by it. The
white South Africans were psychologically crushed by the
fact that South African forces could be defeated by a black
army. The United States was infuriated. If you look at the
next couple of years, the terrorist attacks on Cuba got
much worse.

But yes, it's a symbol of successful defiance. One can have
arguments about what society is like and what it does, but
that's for Cubans to decide. But for the world its symbolic
significance is not slight.

You are aware of the plight of the five Cuban political
prisoners in the United States. You are also very aware of
flagrant abuses, not only judicial but also of human and
prisoner rights regarding the visits of two of the
prisoners' wives and the five-year-old child, Ivette. Why
do you think that the EU, the UN, and the other
international bodies that are supposed to be keeping an eye
on democracy are allowing this very repressive attitude to
continue?

The reason is embarrassingly simple. You don't challenge
the chief Mafia Don. It's dangerous. Everyone knows that.
There's no higher authority, there's just the Mafia. If the
Don is doing something you don't like, you can only object
quietly. That's the main reason.

The secondary reason is that the European elite shares the
interests of American power. They may not like the US
throwing its weight around that much - especially when it
interferes with them - but fundamentally they don't
disagree. They want to support the same programs of
economic integration, so-called neoliberal programs. They
are not unhappy to see the US power in reserve to crush
people who stand up and get in the way.

The thing with the Cuban Five is such a scandal, it's hard
to talk about it. Cuba was providing the FBI with
information about the terrorist actions taking place in the
United States, based in the United States - completely
criminal. So instead of arresting the terrorists, they
arrested the people that provided the information, which is
so ridiculous I find it difficult to talk about it. They
put them under very hard conditions and it's not recorded.
You can't read about it. So one of the reasons it goes on
is because nobody knows about it. There were a few brief
mentions, but all it said was that these people were
informing Cuba that an unarmed plane was going .to fly over
Havana. That's about the only story that was reported. The
actual facts of the matter are not secret but no one knows.

Take the embargo, which has been challenged by everyone.
The European Union did bring a challenge to it at the World
Trade Organization and the US just told them to get lost.
In fact, what the Clinton administration said was that
Europe was challenging a policy, at that time, of thirty
years. These were US policies aimed at overthrowing the
government in Cuba without announcing that yes, "we are
international criminals and you are interfering with us and
therefore you have no right to say anything" and then the
US just pulled out of the negotiations and what's anybody
going to do about that?

I mean, the US is a huge debtor. It owes an enormous debt
to the world. What happens if it decides at some point that
we are not going to repay the debt? It's not like
Argentina. The International Monetary Fund is not going to
say anything. In fact, it's a branch of the US Treasury
Department and even if it did say anything, it would tell
them to get lost too.

Look at the record and the serious issues in which the US
is involved. Let's take the Vietnam War. The world was
overwhelmingly opposed to it. It almost never came up at
the United Nations because one of the high officials that I
have talked to understood that if they brought up the
Vietnam War at the United Nations, the UN would simply be
destroyed. During the bombing of Serbia, there was a brief
moment - about five seconds - when it looked as though the
International Tribunal might take a look at NATO crimes.
During that moment, an American congressman was interviewed
by the right-wing Canadian press, The National Post, and
they asked him what would happen if the tribunal took this
up and he said that we would take the United Nations
buildings in New York apart brick by brick, throw them in
the Atlantic Ocean - metaphorically speaking, of course.

If you take the record of vetoes: the US ran the United
Nations in the early days, because of the distribution of
power. By the 1960s it was beginning to reflect some sort
of world opinion. Decolonization had taken place and there
were a lot of participants. However, since the mid 1960s,
the US is far in the lead on vetoing resolutions and
Britain is second.

No one else is even close and this can't be discussed. They
haven't discussed the fact that the UN is paralyzed by the
US refusal to obey international positions. There was all
this fuss in the last year about Iraq only partially
fulfilling UN resolutions. Right, maybe they should fulfill
them all. If Iraq had the veto they wouldn't have had to
fail to fulfill UN resolutions. I mean the veto is the
strongest and most extreme method of violating UN
resolutions. So if you want to be serious about even
wanting to discuss the topic, you bring up the veto. I
don't know one article in the entire US press in terms of
opinion that brought up the point.

These are not trivial resolutions. The US has vetoed
resolutions calling on all states to observe international
law. It vetoed the Security Council resolution affirming
the World Court judgment, which condemned the US for
pronounced international terrorism. No one mentions this,
nobody knows it, it's not part of anyone's consciousness.
You go into the faculty club or the editorial offices and
people will never have heard about it. That's what it means
to have extreme power and a very subservient intellectual
class. Exactly as Morgenthau pointed out - it's out of
history, it didn't happen.



http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2003/noviembre03/mier19/46chomsk.html



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