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Economic model that privileges a few represent terrorism – Ortega

Economic model that privileges a few represent terrorism – Ortega
By Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Mon 28 Dec. 2009, 04:00 CAT

NICARAGUAN President Daniel Ortega has said the prevailing economic model that privileges the global few represents terrorism.

In his intervention to close the 8th ALBA heads of state summit at Havana’s Palace of Conventions, President Ortega said the only thing that the alliance’s nine member states could be accused of was solidarity.

In a three-hour ceremony involving speeches by the nine leaders and interludes of music by Latin Grammy awards winners Cuba’s pianoist Chucho Valdez and Buena Vista Social Club singer Omara Portuondo including the first meeting between Fidel and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in 1994, President Ortega said the head of terrorism was in the United States of America.

“ALBA has marked an alternative not only for peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean but all peoples of the world,” he said.

President Ortega said there was no single country among ALBA members that developed politics of death or war. He said none of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas members stood for maintaining the status quo of impoverishing people.

“None of them commit aggression to another country,” said President Ortega. “Indeed they could accuse us of solidarity and there lies the contradiction between individualism and solidarity. What is being applied in ALBA explains the reaction from those who want to keep the tyranny of global capitalism headed by the United States empire.

They cannot accuse us of terrorism and destabilisation. Terrorism is what is expressed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the blockade against Cuba, the coup in Honduras, imprisonment of Five Cubans while Posada Carriles walks free in Miami...Terrorism has its head in Washington. The imposition of wars and an economic and commercial model to the world that impoverishes the majority of the global population, poisoning the planet and putting in danger the survival of human species is what constitutes terrorism.”

Cuban President Raul Castro said the 8th ALBA summit was a very productive interchange that analysed the undeniable advances and challenges that faced the alliance.

“Being part of the ALBA implies the purpose of building rational and efficient societies that live in harmony with nature and look for social justice for our peoples,” said President Raul. “That is the cooperation and integration that we promote. And such effort needs a revolutionary spirit. As Jose Marti said: We look for solidarity not as a goal but as a way to make our America fulfill its universal mission.”

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves used the session to inform his peers of the British cruelty against his nationals before the island attained independence.

Prime Minister Gonsalves said citizens of St Vincent were forced into exile in Nicaragua, Belize and other Central American countries.
He said others would seek reparations for such cruelty.

Prime Minister Gonsalves called for support to the proposal before the United Nations for reparations for African slavery.
He said the ALBA-TCP was fundamentally a historic and cultural reclamation.

Prime Minister Gonsalves said imperialism even with the election of President Barack Obama to the White House never ceased to undermine the progress in Latin America and the Caribbean.

He said imperialism was at work to isolate and defeat governments that constituted the ALBA.
“We see Colombia now being used as a battleground against Venezuela,” Prime Minister Gonsalves said.

He said hostility had continued against Cuba by sustaining and tightening the embargo.
Prime Minister Gonsalves said there was distabilising work against Nicaragua, Dominica, and St Vincent and Grenadines including the June 28 military coup against the Honduran administration of Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

He said students on scholarship in Cuba should not think they were there because they are bright but should realise that they were studying in Cuba because of an opportunity created by the revolution.

“We have to give solidarity to this light… the work of Fidel and President Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez has been exemplary in putting the ALBA on course,” said Prime Minister Gonsalves. “This grouping, in the world of today, is resolute and steadfast to interests of all people.”

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said through ALBA countries had an opportunity to rise again from ashes caused by capitalism and neo-colonialism.
He said the ALBA had allowed member countries to face the effects of the world economic crisis from a solid ground.

Prime Minister Spencer said in the days when the world was suffering a huge recession the ALBA states under the principles of solidarity, equity and economic complementation were implementing programmes and projects of social benefit seeking to increase the quality of life of their peoples and reduce poverty.

He cited scholarships to hundreds of students from his island nation and food subsidies to the disabled as well as investments to improve the facilities at the country’s airport.

“Over its first five years the ALBA and its Trade Treaty for the Peoples (TPC) has achieved substantial progress but at the same time it has the challenge to look for solutions to climate change, especially because the Caribbean islands are vulnerable to its effects,” said Prime Minister Spencer.

Dominica envoy to Venezuela and ALBA Philbert Aaron said when his country became the first English-speaking nation to join the alliance it received massive criticism but Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit never waivered.
Ambassador Aaron said the ALBA was an alliance of struggle for social justice.

“We live in troubling and interesting times,” he said.
Ambassador Aaron said Prime Minister Skerrit could not attend the 5th anniversary of the ALBA because of electoral campaigns.

He said Prime Minister Skerrit put the ALBA as a key agenda of his foreign policy during the current elections.
Ambassador Aaron called for lifting of US-sanctions against Cuba because they were immoral, unjust and against global public opinion.

He said the Cuban revolution was a common link for all members of the ALBA.
Ambassador Aaron said the ALBA had drawn attention as it spearheaded progressive projects aimed at improving life.

“The ALBA has a human approach to economic development,” he said.
Ambassador Aaron said the ALBA recovered the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean way of life that was brutalised under neo-liberalism.

“Going into the new, the first decade, we seeing the deepening of the process of integration,” said Ambassador Aaron. “After all, what we seek, what we are seeking, most of all is true independence.”

Labels: DANIEL ORTEGA, NEOLIBERALISM, RAUL CASTRO

posted by MrK @ 3:52 AM