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Vol. 79/No. 29      August 17, 2015

 
(feature article)
Castro: Cuba doesn’t need nuclear arms
 
On August 6 and 9, 2015, events around the world will mark the 70th anniversary of Washington’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the first and only use of nuclear bombs against human beings.

Below is an excerpt from a speech Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro gave at the University of Havana on Nov. 17, 2005, at a time when Washington and its allies were intensifying their campaign of economic sanctions and military threats against the government of Iran over its nuclear program.

Castro, then president of Cuba, takes a position reflecting the historic interests of the international working class, unconditionally siding with Iran in face of imperialist hostility and championing the right of nations oppressed by imperialism to develop nuclear power. At the same time he explains the Cuban government’s longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons. The rejection of military tactics that could lead to the slaughter of innocent people is a matter of proletarian morality, which has, without exception, distinguished the Cuban Revolution from its inception.

Castro’s speech has as much resonance today as it did 10 years ago. Translation is by the Militant.

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BY FIDEL CASTRO  
Right now the empire is threatening to attack Iran if it produces nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is not nuclear weapons; it’s not nuclear bombs. To prevent a country from producing the fuel of the future is like forbidding someone to explore for oil, the fuel of the present, which is due to run out in a very short time. What country in the world is prevented from seeking fuel, coal, gas, oil?

We know that country very well. It is a country with 70 million inhabitants bent on industrial development and believing, quite correctly, that it is a great crime to use its gas or oil reserves to feed the potential of thousands of millions of kilowatt hours urgently needed by this Third World country for its industrial development. And the empire is there wanting to ban this and threatening to bomb them. …

Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as has Cuba. We have never considered producing nuclear weapons because we don’t need them. Even if they were accessible, how much would they cost and what sense would it make producing a nuclear weapon in the face of an enemy who has thousands of nuclear weapons? It would mean joining the game of nuclear confrontation.

We have a different type of nuclear weapon: it’s our ideas. We possess a weapon as powerful as nuclear ones and it is the magnitude of the justice we are fighting for. Our nuclear weapon is the invincible power of moral weapons. That is why we have never considered producing them, nor has it crossed our mind to seek biological weapons, what for? Weapons to combat death, to combat AIDS, to combat diseases, to fight against cancer, that’s what we dedicate our resources to. That jerk — I can’t recall the name of that guy they appointed … [former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton] — the man who is nothing less than the representative of the United States at the United Nations, a super-liar, shameless, who fabricated the idea that Cuba was doing research in biological warfare in the Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Center.

They have also accused us of collaborating with Iran, transferring technology for that purpose, when what we are doing is building a factory in partnership with Iran for anti-cancer products; that’s what we are doing. And if they want to put a stop to that as well, they can all go to hell or wherever they want to go!  
 
 
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