(GLOBALRESEARCH) Fidel Castro: Mandela Is Dead, So Why Hide The Truth About Apartheid?
By Fidel Castro Ruz
Global Research, December 29, 2013
Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling.
World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.
War, on the other hand, is the only venture that the human race throughout history has failed to avoid, leading Einstein to say that he did not know how World War III would be like but most certainly the fourth would be fought with sticks and stones.
Added up, the means available to the two most powerful powers –United States and Russia— amount to 20,000 (twenty thousand) nuclear warheads. Mankind should know that three days before John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of his country on January 20, 1961, a US B-52 bomber, in a routine flight, carrying two atomic bombs with a destructive capacity 260 times that of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, had an accident and the aircraft crashed. For such cases sophisticated automatic equipment are in place to prevent the bombs from exploding. The first bomb landed without risks. In the case of the second, three of the four mechanisms failed, and the fourth, in very critical conditions could barely function. The bomb did not explode by mere chance.
There is no present or past event I remember or have heard of that has impacted world public opinion so much as the death of Nelson Mandela, and not because of his wealth, but for his human quality and the loftiness of his ideas and feelings.
Throughout history and barely one and a half century ago — before robots and machines took over our modest tasks with a minimum energy cost– none of the phenomena that today shake mankind and inexorably rule each and every person –men and women, children and elders, young and adult, farmers and factory workers, manual workers or intellectuals– existed. The prevailing trend is to move to the cities, where the creation of jobs, transportation, and basic living conditions demand huge investments to the detriment of food production and other more rational ways of life.
Three powers have landed in our planet’s Moon. The same day Nelson Mandela, covered with his country’s flag, was buried in the backyard of the humble house where he was born 95 years ago, a sophisticated module from the Peoples Republic of China descended upon a bright spot in our Moon. The coincidence of both events was purely by chance.
Millions of scientists are studying earth and outer-space matters and radiations. Through them we now know that Titan, one of Saturn’s rings, accumulated 40 times more oil than the existing amount in our planet when oil extraction began 125 years ago and which will last barely one more century at current consumption rates.
The fraternal feelings of profound brotherhood between the Cuban people and Nelson Mandela’s homeland were born out of an event that has never been mentioned and about which we have never said a word during all these long years; Mandela, because he was an apostle of peace and did not want to hurt anyone; Cuba, because we have never done anything for the sake of glory and prestige.
Since the very triumph of the Revolution in Cuba we extended our solidarity to the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Liberation movements in that continent had colonialism and imperialism on the rack after World War II and the liberation of the Peoples Republic of China –the most highly populated country in the world— following the glorious triumph of the Russian Socialist Revolution.
Social revolutions were shaking the pillars of the old world order. In 1960 the inhabitants of the planet amounted to three million. Along with this, the power of big transnational companies –almost all Americans– was growing and the American currency, underpinned by US gold monopoly and its intact industry so far removed from the battle fields, took control of the world economy. Richard Nixon unilaterally abolished the backing of US currency in gold and his country’s companies took control over the main resources and raw materials in the planet which they bought with paper bills.
Nothing I have said till now is new.
But why do they try to hide the fact that the Apartheid regime –that brought so much suffering onto Africa and arouse so much indignation in most nations throughout the world– was the fruit of European colonial powers and was turned into a nuclear power by the United States and Israel, something Cuba, who supported Portuguese colonies in Africa fighting for their independence openly condemned?
Our people, handed over to the United States by Spain after 30 years of heroic struggle, never reconciled with the slavery regime imposed during almost 500 years.
In 1975, racist troops supported by light tanks equipped with 90-millimeter guns set off from Namibia –then occupied by South Africa— and penetrated more than one thousand kilometers into Angolan territory up to the vicinity of Luanda, where an airborne battalion of Cuban Special Troops and several Cuban crews for Soviet tanks with no crews, succeeded in delaying their advance. This happened in November 1975, 13 years before the Cuito Cuanavale Battle.
I’ve already said that we have done nothing for the sake of prestige or seeking benefit of any kind. It is a fact that Mandela was an upright man, a profound revolutionary and a radical socialist who endured with great stoicism 27 years of solitary confinement. I could not but admire his honesty, modesty and enormous merit.
Cuba was strictly fulfilling its internationalist duties by defending key positions and training thousands of Angolans in the use of weapons every year. The USSR was providing the weapons. At the time, however, we disagreed with the idea of the main advisor of the suppliers of military equipment. Thousands of young and healthy Angolans were constantly joining the units of their then incipient army. Their main adviser, however, was not a Zhúkov, Rokossovski, Malinowvsky or any of the many men that brought so much glory to Soviet military strategy. His obsessive idea was to send Angolan brigades carrying the best weapons to the territory where the tribal government of Savimbi – a mercenary serving the United States and South Africa– was supposedly located, which was tantamount to sending the troops fighting in Stalingrad to the border with the Falangist Spain that had sent over hundred thousand troops to fight against the USSR. That year a similar operation was going on.
The enemy was advancing behind several Angolan brigades severely hitting them near the place they had been sent to, approximately 1,500 kilometers away from Luanda. They were returning from there, pursued by South African troops en route to Cuito Cuanavale, a former NATO military base, located some 100 kilometers away from where a Cuban Tank Brigade was stationed.
At such a critical point, the President of Angola requested the support of Cuban troops. The commander of our troops in the South, General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, sent us the request as usual. Our firm reply was that we would provide such support provided that all Angolan troops and equipment would be under the Cuban command in South Angola. Everybody understood that our request was a requirement to turn the former base into the ideal battle field to hit the racist South African forces.
There was a positive response from Angola in less than 24 hours.
It was decided that a Cuban Tank Brigade would be immediately sent there. Several other were in the same line towards the West. The main obstacle was the mud and humidity due to the rainy season and the fact that every stretch of land had to be checked for anti-personnel mines. The military personnel to operate the tanks and guns without crew were also sent to Cuito.
To the East, the base was separated from the territory by the large and fast- flowing Cuito River over which there was a solid bridge under the frantic attack of the racist army. A radio-controlled airplane full of explosives was hit, brought down on the bridge and put out of action. The retreating Angolan tanks still moving were crossed more to the North. Those that were not in good conditions were buried with their weapons facing East; a thick strip of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines turned the line into a mortal trap on the other side of the river. When the racist troops renewed their advance and ran into that defensive wall, the artillery and tanks of the revolutionary brigades came down on them shooting from their positions in the Cuito area.
The Mig-23 fighters had a special role to play. Flying at a speed of almost 1,000 kilometers per hour and 100 (one hundred) meters altitude they were able to distinguish if the artillery personnel was black or white and began firing relentlessly against them.
When the battered and immobilized enemy began to withdraw, the revolutionary forces began to get ready for the final combats.
Numerous Angolan and Cuban brigades began moving quickly and keeping proper distance to the West towards the only wide routes from which South Africans always began their military actions against Angola. The airport, however, was approximately 300 (three hundred) kilometers from the border with Namibia, which was totally occupied by the Apartheid army.
While troops reorganized and rearmed the urgent decision to build a runway for the Mig-23 was made. Our pilots were using the aircraft equipment provided by the USSR to Angola, whose pilots had lacked the time for a proper training. Several aircrafts were inoperative sometimes due to the action of our own artillerymen or anti-aircraft weapon operators. South Africans still occupied part of the main road going from the border of the Angolan plateau to Namibia. They began shooting from the bridges over the wide Cunene River –located between Southern Angola and Northern Namibia– with their 140-millimeter guns giving their projectiles a range of about 40 kilometers. The main problem was that the racist South Africans had, according to our estimates, 10 to 12 nuclear weapons. They had even tested them in the frozen areas or seas to the South. President Ronald Reagan had authorized such tests and the device for blasting the nuclear charge was among the equipment delivered by Israel. Our response was to organize the troops in combat groups of no more than 1,000 men, who would have to advance equipped with anti-aircraft tanks throughout an extensive territory at night.
According to reliable sources, South African nuclear weapons could not be transported by Mirage planes; heavy Canberra type bombers were required instead. In any case, our forces’ air defense had many different types of missiles that could hit and destroy air targets located dozens of kilometers away from our troops. In addition, a dam with 80 million cubic meters of water located in Angolan territory had been occupied and mined by Cuban and Angolan fighters. The explosion of that dam would have been tantamount to the explosion of several nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, a hydroelectric plant using the strong current of the Cunene River, before reaching the Namibian border, was being used by a South African army detachment.
When the racists began shooting with their 140-millimeter guns in this new theater of operations, the detachment of white soldiers was strongly hit by the Mig-23 and the survivors fled the place leaving some posters criticizing their high command. That was the situation when Cuban and Angolan troops marched over the enemy lines.
I learned that Katiuska Blanco, the author of some historical accounts, together with other reporters and press photographers were there. It was a tense situation but everybody kept cool.
It was then that we got the news that the enemy was willing to negotiate. We had succeeded in stopping the imperialist and racist adventure in a continent where, in 30 years time, the population will exceed that of China and India together.
The role of the Cuban delegation on the occasion of the demise of our brother and friend Nelson Mandela will be unforgettable.
I congratulate comrade Raul for his brilliant performance and particularly for his strength of character and dignity when in a kind but firm gesture greeted the United States Head of Government and told him in English: “Mr. President, I’m Castro”.
When my health imposed limits to my physical capacity, I did not hesitate in expressing my criteria on who, in my view, could assume the responsibility. A life is a minute in the history of the peoples and I believe that whoever holds today that responsibility must have the experience and authority required to choose among an increasing -almost infinite— number of alternatives.
Imperialism will always have several cards up its sleeve to subdue our island even if it has to depopulate it, depriving it from young men and women to whom they offer the scraps of the goods and natural resources it ransacks from the world.
Let the spokesmen of the empire now talk about how and why Apartheid came to life.
Labels: FIDEL CASTRO, NELSON MANDELA, NUCLEAR ENERGY
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September 'shot for nuke secrets'
ILHAM RAWOOT - Jun 17 2011 09:44
South Africa's former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Aziz Pahad, has stated on camera for the first time that anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was assassinated 23 years ago because of her knowledge of nuclear military trade between South Africa and France.
According to Dutch journalist Evelyn Groenink, Pahad was speaking in a documentary made by Pascal Henry for French television channel Canal Plus. Groenink originally reported the nuclear motive
in a 1998 article published in the Mail & Guardian.
Both the South African and French governments maintain that September's assassination in Paris, while she was opening the local ANC offices on the Rue des Petites-Ecuries one morning, was conducted by an apartheid-era death squad and due solely to her anti-apartheid activities.
The issue of September's knowledge of nuclear trade during apartheid arose in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in 1998, but was not followed up.
"I was always surprised that you can write an article, it gets published by a prestigious newspaper and then nothing happens," said Groenink.
"The TRC continued as if nothing was written and kept on questioning Eugene de Kock [the former Vlakplaas hit squad commander]. Only people in journalism circles talked about it. The TRC has consistently refused to acknowledge what Pahad [originally] said." She said that from Pahad's claims, "everything points to French mercenaries".
"Everything that happened in the late Eighties and early Nineties was about contracts being in danger if blacks came to power. I believe the French were involved in giving the order to have September shot," Groenink said.
In 2009 the Jacana publisher and then-Ruth First fellow, Maggie Davie, gave a lecture on the difficulties she faced in trying to publish Groenink's book, Dulcie September: Murder in Paris. She mentioned the numerous threats she received and legal action she faced from people who had been sent questions for comment.
"Dulcie's files were notoriously hard to find," said Davie. "You can't get access to them through the department of justice. It says that's because there is an ongoing investigation. But if you speak to the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority], it says there is no such investigation. There has been lots of obfuscation. A few of the files have gone missing, but we don't know which ones are missing."
John Daniel, who worked as a member of the research department for the truth commission, said that no serious investigation had been conducted into Dulcie September's death.
"There were some TRC people who went to France. They supplied us with considerable documentation, but it was all in French. The only part that was translated was the summary report of the presiding judge. Other than that, no investigation was done. We were never given the files of French intelligence. The September case should have been prioritised, but it wasn't."
September was 52 years old when she was shot five times in the head. She was the ANC's chief representative for France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. On the day of her murder, 60 000 people took to the streets of France in various marches to protest against her killing.
Labels: NUCLEAR ENERGY
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Israel bombed Syria nuclear reactor: cable
December 24 2010 at 08:21pm
AFP
The homepage of Wikileaks.ch with a picture of its founder Julian Assange is seen on a computer screen. Israel destroyed a secret Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007, according to a US diplomatic cable cited Friday in the Israeli Yediot Ahronoth daily.
The cable, which the Israeli paper said it had obtained ahead of its publication by WikiLeaks, was written on April 25, 2008, by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and stated that “on September 6 2007, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor built by Syria secretly, apparently with North Korea's help.”
Yediot said the cable provided the first official confirmation of the attack.
Syria has always denied that the structure allegedly targeted by Israel was a nuclear reactor and Israel has never officially admitted that it carried out the raid.
“The Israeli mission was successful - the reactor was destroyed without an option of rehabilitation. Syria completed the site's evacuation, got rid of the evidence of what existed in the area and set up a new building on the site,” Rice wrote to US diplomats.
“We believe, based on solid evidence, that North Korea helped Syria build the reactor - and we have decided that it's time to share more information on this matter with you,” the cable went on to say.
According to Rice, intelligence information handed over by Israel, and also collected “through our sources and methods,” led to the conclusion that “the reactor was not built for peaceful purposes.” -
Sapa-dpa
Labels: CONDOLEEZZA RICE, ISRAEL, NUCLEAR ENERGY, WIKILEAKS
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what's left
Washington comes clean on Iran’s (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program
By Stephen Gowans
August 22, 2010
Remind me why sanctions have been imposed on Iran. Is it because the country is developing nuclear weapons? If so, US and Israeli officials don’t believe it.
According to the August 19th edition of The New York Times (“U.S. assures Israel that Iran threat is not imminent”), “American and Israeli officials believe breakout” – that is, a transition from enriching uranium for civilian use to developing a workable nuclear weapon – “is unlikely anytime soon.”
Iran, it seems, is having difficulty enriching uranium. That could be because “the United States, Israel and Europe have for years engaged in covert attempts to disrupt the enrichment process by sabotaging (Iran’s) centrifuges. “
Whatever the case, Iran has only “a limited supply of nuclear material, currently enough for two weapons.” And “it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a ‘dash’ for a nuclear weapon.”
Were Iran to make a dash for a nuclear weapon, would Washington know about it? Yes. “American officials said the United States believed international inspectors would detect an Iranian move toward breakout within weeks, leaving a considerable amount of time for the United States and Israel to consider military strikes.”
Either that or Iran would kick “out international … inspectors, eliminating any ambiguity about Iran’s nuclear plans.”
And “even if Iran were to choose this path, American officials said it would probably take Iran some time to reconfigure its nuclear facilities to produce weapons-grade uranium and ramp up work on designing a nuclear warhead.”
Okay, but let me get this straight.
If Iran ever decides to develop nuclear weapons — that is ever decides to — there will be no ambiguity; its course of action will be clear within weeks.
Moreover, it will take Iran at least a year to develop a workable weapon, allowing other countries plenty of time to intervene. And breakout “is unlikely anytime soon”, if it ever happens at all.
But most importantly, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapon.
So, why is Iran being sanctioned?
Labels: IRAN, NUCLEAR ENERGY, SANCTIONS, STEPHEN GOWANS
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what’s left
From one apartheid state to another: Israel’s secret military alliance with apartheid South Africa
By Stephen Gowans
May 24, 2010
Israel has been called an apartheid state. Now its links to the original apartheid state have been brought to light. In a new book, The Unspoken Alliance, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, the principal journal of the US foreign policy establishment, cites declassified South African documents that reveal that Israel forged a secret military alliance with South Africa in the 1970s, and offered to sell the apartheid state nuclear weapons. (1)
From its founding in 1948 until the mid 1970s, Israel was critical of South Africa’s apartheid, and sought allies among the newly independent black African states. But for many African countries, Israel was the replication in Palestine of the same European colonial settler model they had struggled to break free from. They weren’t going to become allies of a colonial power.
Then Israeli defense minister (and now president) Shimon Peres, accompanied South African prime minister John Vorster, a Hitler-admirer who had been jailed during the war for supporting the Nazis and belonging to the fascist Ossewabrandwag, on a 1975 visit to the Holocaust memorial. Peres signed an agreement with Vorster’s government to establish a secret military alliance, and offered to sell Pretoria nuclear warheads.
South Africa, a white racist state, proved to be more amenable to Israel’s offers of alliance, seeing in the Zionist state a kindred country of European settlers “situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark people.”
The cementing of the alliance was helped along by an existing relationship: South Africa was already shipping yellow cake to Israel. Now, safeguards against nuclear proliferation were lifted, allowing the Israelis to divert the yellow cake to their nuclear weapons program.
The strength of the new relationship was signalled by the 1976 visit to Jerusalem of South Africa’s prime minister, John Vorster. Accompanied by Yitzhak Rabin and then defense minister (now president) Shimon Peres, Vorster visited the Holocaust memorial, a grotesque spectacle considering the South African prime minister was a Hitler-admirer who had been jailed during the war for supporting the Nazis and belonging to the fascist Ossewabrandwag.
In 1975, South Africa’s defense minister, P.W. Botha met with Peres to buy Israeli nuclear warheads. While the deal fell through – the South Africans thought the asking price too high – the two men signed an agreement to establish a secret military alliance. Israel also arranged to send Pretoria 30 grams of tritium, which South Africa later used to build a number of atomic bombs.
Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, told the British newspaper The Guardian that South Africa used its mineral wealth (based on the exploitation of oppressed black miners) to fund joint military projects while the Israelis provided the technical know-how. South Africa would soon become Israel’s largest arms customer. According to Liel, “After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies. We were involved in Angola as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate.”
Israel regarded the relationship as based on more than just convenience, but on a common position as colonial oppressor, under pressure from national liberation movements. The two countries shared “unshakeable foundations of…common hatred of injustice and…refusal to submit to it,” wrote Peres to South Africa’s information minister, Eschel Rhoodie. The “injustice” each refused to submit to was ending apartheid (South Africa) and reversing the Nakbah (Israel), in both cases the subordination of indigenous people to the interests of settlers from Europe. Rafael Eitan, Israel’s then military chief of staff and Ariel Sharon, a future prime minister, sympathized with the “plight” of the South Africa’s apartheid regime, presumably seeing in it a reflection of the difficulties faced by Israel in enforcing its own racist regime.
By the late 1980s, the apartheid regime in Pretoria was bleeding support, and it was no longer tenable to back South Africa. Israel decided that it would “have to switch from white to black.” The security estblishment balked, pointing out that South Africa, as Israel’s chief arms customer, had “saved Israel,” a conclusion Liel says is “probably true.”
Chris McGreal, a reporter at The Guardian who has written a series of articles on the revelations in Polakow-Suranky’s book, points out that the fact that Israel was willing to act as a nuclear proliferator “undermines Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a ‘responsible’ power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.”
But how responsible was France? It probably played a role in Israel’s development of nuclear weapons, transferring technology to Israel in return for its role in the attempted 1956 British-French take-over of Egypt (the Suez Canal crisis.) (2) How responsible, for that matter, is the United States, which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, despite the reality that a Japanese surrender was imminent, and, even if it weren’t, could have been obtained easily without the use of atomic bombs? (3) What’s more, the United States continues to threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states (4) – hardly the acts of a responsible nuclear power, and nothing less than nuclear terrorism.
Polakow-Suransky’s book, and McGreal’s reporting, reveal that Israel entered into a military alliance with an overtly racist regime – and aided South Africa in its attempt to smash Angola’s national liberation movement — the foundations of the alliance all the stronger for being based on shared problems related to the maintenance of oppressive rule over dispossessed indigenous majorities.
1. The bulk of this article is based on Chris McGreal’s articles for The Guardian: “Israel and apartheid: a marriage of convenience and military might” May 23, 2010; “Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons”, May 24, 2010.
2. See Richard Becker, “A turning point in the Middle East balance of forces”, PSLWeb.org, November 1, 2006.
3. See Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Toronto, 2002, p 172-173
4. Stephen Gowans, “Nuclear Posture Review 2010“, what’s left, April 10, 2010.
Labels: APARTHEID, CHRIS MCGREAL, ISRAEL, NUCLEAR ENERGY, SOUTH AFRICA, STEPHEN GOWANS
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Zimbabwe, Senegal back Iran's nuclear right
By: iS-TZG
Posted: Monday, May 17, 2010 5:14 am
ZIMBABWE and Senegal's foreign ministers have expressed their support for Iran's right for peaceful nuclear energy, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Sunday.
Speaking on the sidelines of Tehran's Group 15 (G15) Ministerial Meeting on Saturday, Senegalese Foreign Minister Madicke Niang said, "Senegal has always believed that all the countries should have access to peaceful nuclear energy and Iran as a member of the international community has this right as well, " the report said.
"Iran has declared that it needs nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and no one has the right to deprive Iran of its right," he was quoted as saying.
Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi also said that "All the countries have the right to gain access to peaceful nuclear energy within the international regulations."
"Those who criticized Iran for having access to peaceful nuclear energy, not only have nuclear energy, but also nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction," said Mumbengegwi.
The United States is leading a push to press for new sanctions against Iran on the ground the Middle East country is developing "a clandestine nuclear programme", but Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is fora peaceful purpose.
The 14th summit of the Group 15 (G15) developing nations in Tehran is slated for today (Monday).
Labels: G15, IRAN, MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT, NUCLEAR ENERGY
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