------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 10, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL: HANDS OF... The huge transnational corporations and banks that craft U.S. foreign policy have caused this country to intervene in so many places around the world that the anti-war movement is saying, "U.S. out of Iraq, Haiti, Palestine--and Everywhere." So it almost seems like favoritism to mention one group of countries, when so many are struggling to fend off the giant octopus. But so be it. There are important things that need to be said about Cuba and Venezuela. The Cuban revolutionaries came to power 45 years ago after building a guerrilla army that fought and bled in the mountains and won the trust of the ordinary Cuban people because they really meant it when they said they would change Cuba forever. They got rid of Batista and his torturing police, took the land back from U.S. sugar and tobacco companies, and aligned themselves with the people around the world fighting colonial rule, poverty and the brazen theft of their resources. Cuba now is worried. The Bush administration is packed with people from the expatriate Cuban community--the former "occupation authority" that ruled the island while furthering U.S. corporate interests. They have many schemes to make life difficult for this courageous nation that has stood up to a blockade, an invasion, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and hundreds of attempted assas sinations of its leader, Fidel Castro. At the same time, a new revolutionary process is unfolding in Venezuela. Nature has given it oil, which is both a blessing and a curse. The Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company began exploiting Venezuela a century ago. And they made sure that the wealth it provided to the Yankee colossus would be shared by only a thin upper crust of Venezuelan society. The masses were shut out of Venezuela's development. Until now. The Bolivarian Revolution is beginning to reach into the depths of the Venezuelan soul and awaken hope and energy among the dispossessed, the downtrodden, the millions who have been shut out-- until now. And Venezuela is tightening its bonds with Cuba, supplying it with oil and receiving doctors and teachers--the product of Cuba's exemplary socialist development. How this enrages the counter-revolutionaries in Washington! For it exposes them, shows that capitalism, with its billionaires and its millions in poverty, is a sick and doomed society. That the future belongs to socialism and the masses of people, not a puffed-up elite. So let us be on guard. Cuba and Venezuela will need our solidarity, and we must be there for them. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
