(The author's full permission is given for this article to be reproduced and
re-distributed in full with authorship acknowledged.)



It's BandAid season again. Buffoons and celebrities and pop stars, Knighted or
un-Knighted, graciously giving their expensive time, will again be exposed to
lots more beneficial publicity. Pictures of poor and dying people and children
will again be shown on television. Millions of well-meaning and generous
middle-class, poor working people, children and pensioners will donate money.



Not a word about imperialism or their debts to our banks and financial
institutions or our benefits from their poverty will be mentioned.



I remember when I was unemployed in the 1980s and bought a tin of beans in a
supermarket marked "Country of origin: Ethiopia" during the first televised mass
famine in Ethiopia. I had not done a stroke of work to get those beans. I had
been given the money to buy them by my country's government. Then ironically,
outside the supermarket at the time was an Oxfam table with volunteers
collecting for Ethiopia. I put my tin of beans on their tablr and asked them
where they thought it had come from. Their wild guesses included every rich and
poor country except Ethiopia.



I decided to write the following article, which first appeared in Liberation
journal in January 1988, and added to since.



The material for this article is taken from three of my books: "1917 And All
That: The Untaught History Syllabus. In their Own Words - A Political History Of
The Cold War 1917-1983." which has also been serialised in British and foreign
journals; and "A Radical Book Of Enlightenment For The Common Man." which is a
compilation of over 1,700 radical political quotes in subject categories; and
"Understanding The Hidden Nature Of Capitalism. - Or Marx For Beginners."
including Marx's full exposure of the capitalist economic system.

Why place such a heavy emphasis on quotes?

Quotes have a veracity of their own, either somebody said something or they
didn't. And if enough people, with similar interests and motives and enough
power concentrated in their hands, say much the same thing, then it is more
likely that their interests will prevail.

I have found through tutoring, speaking engagements, publishing, debating and
general argument that it is more effective and revealing, especially to the
incredulous, that quotes, speaking for themselves without polemical intervention
from me - other than selection, editing and assembly - have an immediate impact
and influence on the credulity of the reader. And yes, it is extremely biased.
But when did idealistic academic or journalistic notions of being 'balanced' or
'unbiased' ever equate with veracity or reality?

I challenge those who preach a so-called 'balanced' view to come up with a
negation of what is being said.

I am happy for this article to be reproduced and distributed in full provided
that authorship is acknowledged, or as quotations provided that the full
authorship of each quote is stated; and that the work is used for the purpose
for which it is obviously intended - to inform and educate those interested in
the modern history of wars, peace, anti-racism, poverty, imperialism, global
trade and exploitation and the world debt crisis; in other words, humanity in
this incredibly rich and abundant world.



The Untaught Syllabus. 9.
Who Owes Whom? Who Aids Whom?
In Their Own Words: Peace Poverty Unequal Trade Finance Capital And The
Third World Debt


By Brian Mitchell



How come the poorest peoples of the world owe a debt to the richest? Isn't it
strange when you think about it?



The first thing to make clear about this 'debt' is that the Third World owes us
nothing. Rather we owe them. As albeit unwilling participants in an imperialist
economy, we in Britain and the rest of the capitalist world have benefited from
the continuous economic plunder (it's called "free trade") of these countries
for centuries, which is the direct cause of their lack of development, 'debt',
and continuing impoverishment today.



By the 1970s the "underdeveloped" countries' foreign debts already ran to some
$500,000 million. The cost of servicing these 'debts' was $45,000 million a
year, interest which 'grew' at the rate of 21% in the 1970s alone.



Without having borrowed a penny, each Latin American child born already owed
$1,000 as part of the region's debt to imperialist banks.



In the 1980s, Brazil had the biggest overall debt. But Panama, with a population
of two million and a foreign debt to the mega-rich transnationals - which are
getting richer every second - of $4.5 billion, had the largest per-capita debt
in the world. This meant that each child in Panama was born owing foreign
shareholders and small investors in transnational finance capital, banks,
building societies, insurance and pension funds some $2,250 - an amount the
average Panamanian child could never earn in its short lifetime, which is the 45
or 50 years average for such poor countries.



In 1984 Mexico was using 72% of its oil just to pay the interest on its debt.
The Philippines foreign debt in 1985 was 11 times it was in 1972: from $2.3
billion to $25 billion.



GIFTS FROM THE IMF, THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION AND THE WORLD BANK: DEBT
POVERTY.



Millions of children in this "free" - ie. capitalist - world wake up every day
of their short lives with no clean water, nothing to eat and no school to go to.
And when they get ill, through this lack of clean water, food and education,
there is no hospital for them and no doctor to make them well.



According to FAO figures, 40,000,000, people, half of them children, die every
year from hunger or related illnesses.



"...90 per cent of the workforce are now dependent on the sugar industry for
their survival. But with world sugar prices at an all-time low the industry has
become devastated... The problem began 100 years ago when the British arrived.
Self suffiency farming and a thriving fishing industry were replaced with
endless fields of sugar cane, exported as a cash crop... Under British rule,
food and goods the islanders had once produced for themselves were imported at
great expense from other countries. As a result the islanders became dependent
on the success of their single crop. .the sugar workers and their families still
depend on the planters for their every need. If the crop is poor they starve;
when there is no planting or picking there are no wages... But all that can be
spared is one handful of rice per child - about 150 calories. "They would be
better off throwing it in the sea," says a health expert. Children expend more
food energy than that just feeding themselves, he said. A healthy child needs
1,800 calories a day to grow... More than 60 per cent of the islanders have TB -
"the disease of poverty" - and 66 per cent of the children have malnutrition.
.there is no room at the hospital and they are turned away to die. Desperation
could boil over into revolution. "We are sitting on a social volcano which could
erupt at any time," warned the Bishop of Negros earlier this year."

(News on Sunday Sept 13 1987.)



"What sort of world will we hand over to our children? What sort of life lies
ahead for those five billion mouths that we will have to feed in our
underdeveloped world, those five billion bodies that have to be clothed, shod
and sheltered, those five billion minds that will strive for knowledge, those
five billion human beings that will struggle for a decent life, worthy of the
human condition. What will their quality of life be like?

The Executive Director of UNICEF has said that in 1981 the life of a child would
be worth less than $100. If such a sum were judiciously spent on every one of
the five hundred million poorest children of the world, it would cover basic
health assistance, elementary education, care during pregnancy and dietary
improvement, and would ensure hygienic conditions and a water supply. In
practice it has turned out too high a price for the world community. That is
why, in 1981, every two seconds a child paid that price with its life.

... there is no place for resignation or accommodation. The only solution in
keeping with man's stature is to struggle. And this is the message I bring in my
capacity as Chairman of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries. To struggle
tirelessly for peace, improved international relations, a halt to the arms race
and a drastic reduction in military spending and that a considerable part of
those funds be dedicated to developing the Third World."

(Fidel Castro, Speech at the 7th Non Aligned Summit.)



As Chairman of the Non Aligned Movement representing 101 Third World countries -
that is, eighty percent of humanity, Fidel Castro remarked that the Third World
debts, 600 billion dollars in 1982, incurring new debts to pay the original
debt, would anmount to 1,473 billion dollars by 1990 if the present rise in the
rate of interest even stayed where it was.



"This is a huge, colossal battle against imperialism. They want to take $3
trillion from this hungry - starving to death - world in 20 years. This is the
battle for all of the Third World countries, for more than 100 countries. This
is the battle for this hemisphere's independence... This is the battle for the
lives and future of 4 billion poor and hungry people."

(Fidel Castro, to Latin American Federation of Journalists, July 6 1985.)



At the Latin American and Caribbean foreign debt conference of 1985 in Havana,
Carlos Serrate remarked:



"Either we free ourselves of the foreign debt burden, acquired without benefit
to us or solution to our problems, or we doom three-quarters of humankind to a
future without hope... the survival of millions of human beings who, along with
a right to be born, have an obligation to pay... This means the debt is
devouring humankind, devouring peoples and nation states that no matter what
they do... find the debt grows and is, therefore, absolutely unpayable."

(Carlos Serrate, Latin American and Caribbean foreign debt conference, Havana
1985)



"That's why we say that payment of that debt is an economic impossibility, a
political impossibility. You practically have to kill the people to force them
to make the sacrifices required to pay that debt."

(Fidel Castro.)



Debts are incurred by a country by the native or foreign capitalists, many of
whom invest the money obtained abroad - in the cheap labour and raw materials of
other poor conutries. But it is not the capitalists, but the people of these
countries who suffer the expense of repayment.



"Nobody's asking the millionaires of that country - for example, a Mexican
millionaire who has his money abroad - to pay that debt. No, they're asking the
Mexican, the Argentine, the Uruguayan, the Venezuelan and the Brazilian people -
the people - to pay, taking away their medical services, their educational
services and their jobs."

(Fidel Castro, to Latin American Federation of Journalists, July 6 1985.)



It is transnational finance capital, in the guise of seemingly benign
institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World
Trade Organisation, the United Nations and the Trilateral Commission which has
the economic power which continues to devastate the poor countries comprising 85
percent of humanity.



"The planning of UN can be traced to the 'secret steering committee' established
by Secretary Hull in January 1943. All of the members of this secret committee.
were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. .It was, in effect, the
coordinating agency for all the State Department's postwar planning."

(US Professors Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, "Imperial Brain Trust: The
CFR and United States Foreign Policy." Monthly Review Press, 1977.)



"The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for
financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World
revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power. The One World Government leaders
and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and
credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal
Reserve Bank."

(US President Roosevelt's son-in-law Curtis Dall, in his book "My Exploited
Father-in-Law".)



"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational
consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the
political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents
a skilful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers
of power political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical. What the
Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic power superior
to the political governments of the nation states involved. As managers and
creators of the system, they will rule the future."

(U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964, in his book "With No Apologies.")



"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less
than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to
dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a
whole. by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret
agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The growth
of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control
and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect
injury of all other economic groups."

(US Professor Carroll Quigley, Georgetown University, 1966.)



THE SILENT WEAPONS OF IMPERIALISM - TRICKS OF TRADE AND DEBT



The debt problem cannot be looked at in isolation from international trade. By
unequal trading, trade barriers, dumping devalued dollars as loans, price fixing
and control, and other unequal trading methods, the the imperialist countries
are depriving the 'debtor' countries of the possibility or even earning money to
service the debt.



In the Philippines in 1972, 1 peso was worth 15 US cents. In 1985 it was 5
cents. In 1960 a ton of coffee could buy 37.3 tons of fertiliser. In 1982 it
could buy only 15.8 tons - less than half, with the same amount of coffee as in
1960. In 1959, 6 tons of jute could buy a truck. In 1982 it took 26 tons of jute
to buy the same truck.



Other tricks are using, to their variously differing advantage, such as the
dumping of under-valued dollars as loans, often tied to military contracts, and
so-called 'green' dollars associated with agricultural and food contracts.



"If Latin America were to abstain from borrowing any further money and would pay
these ten percent of export earnings for twenty years - at stable world market
prices - toward foreign interest charges of 6 percent, these interest payments
would amount to almost 430 billion dollars by the year 2005 while total debt
would increase to about 445 billion dollars."

(Philippine Currents, Aug 1987.)



"Natural resources and inanimate energy... are increasingly regarded as affected
with public interest... Certainly they were left by God or geology to mankind
and not to the Standard Oil Company of California. If this is not sound moral
doctrine, I do not know what is."

(US writer Stuart Chase.)



"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the
lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."

(Lawrence Summers, chief economist for the World Bank, December 1991, in an
internal memo that the Bank should encourage the migration of "dirty industries"
to less developed countries because pollution costs would be lower.)



UNDER THE BANNER OF "FREE TRADE" - ECONOMIC WARFARE IS WHAT IS CONDUCTED



The peoples of the Third World are not at war with the advanced nations. Their
crime is that they have 'traded' with the US, British, West European, Japanese
and other imperialist transnational monopolies. Yet after World War II not only
were West German and Japanese war reparations and debts waived but billions of
dollars of Marshall 'Aid' was pumped into these countries to "prevent them from
going communist."



About three hundred and fifty major monopolies now control most of the world's
production. At least ten US transnational monopolies each has more dollar assets
than, say, Britain or Japan; some of them, like Standard Oil or General Motors -
many times over. Now consider the fact that the present Third World debts to the
West - $900 billion at 1985 figures - amount to thousands of times the dollar
assets of these ten US monopolies and you will have some grasp of the nature of
imperialism. It means more or less that we in the advanced capitalist countries
own the Third World and its economic output indefinitely.



It is quite obvious that as long as this exploitation continues poor countries
are deliberately prevented from ever developing. Otherwise they might become
economically independent and rivals.



This is economic warfare, no less devastating than cluster bombs or cruise
missiles.



THE CHEAP FRUITS OF INTERVENTION



When we buy a banana or other fruit we buy it from one of two US owned
transnational fruit companies or their subsidiaries and their control of small
local marketers and distributers. Such companies are United Fruit or America and
General Fruit of America. These companies and their subsidiaries not only own
most of the fruit production, but also the railroads, ports, banking and
finance, infrastructure and much of the land of Central American and Caribbean
countries, and of Southeast Asia such as the Philippines.



"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive .it is the right of the
people to alter it."

(The US Declaration of Independence.)



"No nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that
everyone has a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to
live under."

(George Washington.)



"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise
up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them
better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and
believe is to liberate the world."

(Abraham Lincoln.)



"I am against any interference in the internal affairs of the Latin American
countries. But under certain conditions I consider exceptions possible."

(Henry Kissinger.)



These 'exceptions' seem to occur quite frequently:



In 1916 the US landed troops in the Dominican Republic and occupied till 1924.
And in 1965 the US overthrew a progressive government there. US troops occupied
Cuba in 1898-1902, 1906-1909, and 1917-1923. The 1901 Cuban constitution gave
the US the right of intervention. The US practised this "right" at Playa Giron
(the Bay of Pigs) in 1961. The US still has an illegal base on Cuban soil at
Guantanamo. In 1914 the US landed marines in Haiti and occupied till 1934. In
1954 the US overthrew the progressive government of Arbenz in Guatemala. (See
below.) US troops occupied Nicaragua in 1912-1925, and 1926-1933 when they set
up Somoza's National Guard which murdered Sandino. The US crushed a popular
uprising in Puerto Rico in 1950. The US overthrow of Chile's progressive
Allende government in 1973 is well enough known and documented. And the above
incomplete list was added to by the US invasion and continuing occupation of
Grenada in 1983.



"Intervention is justified as a policy of the United States whenever its
citizens and capital is at stake."

(US Secretary of State Elihu Root, 1908.)



"Intervention is justified wherever it becomes necessary to guarantee the United
States' capital and markets."

(US President Taft, 1912.)



"We do control the destinies of Central America... Until now Central America has
always understood that governments which we recognise and support stay in power,
while those we do not recognise and support fail."

(US Under Secretary of State Robert Olds, 1927.)



"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our
country's most agile military force - the Marine corps... I spent most of my
time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the
bankers. Thus I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped to make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
national city bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a
dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in
1916. I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. I helped
make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. ...Looking back on it,
I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to
operate his racket in three city districts. I operated on three continents."

(Testimony of General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps, to the McCormack
Dickstein Committee. 1935.)



"There are no rules to such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do
not apply. We must. learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies. It may
become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand
and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."

(US Government report on CIA activities, 1954.)



"The conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank with a great deal of clout
in Mr Reagan's White House, argues that Vietnam, Kampuchea, Libya, Laos, Angola,
Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Iran are ripe for covert American activity
aimed at destabilising their governments."

(The Guardian November 22 1984.)



CHEAP FRUIT FROM NICARAGUA



The Nicaraguan word for the revolutionary organisation, the Sandinistas, comes
from the name of the popular leader Augusto Caesar Sandino, who said:



"Mi causa es la causa de mi pueblo, la causa de America, la causa de todos los
pueblos oprimidos." (My cause is the cause of my people, the cause of America,
the cause of all oppressed people.)

(A.C. Sandino.)



With US compliance and connivance, Sandino was murdered in 1934 by the National
Guard of US preferred dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia - "Tacho" - a former
lavatory inspector for the US Rockefeller Foundation.



"That guy may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

(US President Roosevelt, on Nicaraguan dictator the first Somoza.)



In 1956, Luis Somoza became President. Anastasio II "Tachito" (Little Tacho)
became head of the National Guard and became President in 1967.



"Now that's the kind of anti-communist we like to see down there."

(US President Nixon, on Nicaraguan dictator the second Somoza, British
television documentary, November 15 1983.)



The country's national assets were some $3.5 million. Its foreign debt was
$1,600 millions, with an annual service charge of $600 millions.



The popular Sandinista revolution and support for the FSLN obtained power in
Managua in 1979 and was spreading to the rest of the country with socialist
policies such as literacy, education and health, and cooperative farming.



The inflence of Cuba and Nicaragua spreading to other Latin American countries
such as El Salvador frightened the US out of its wits.



"The United States could never permit another Nicaragua, even if preventing it
meant employing the most reprehensible means."

(Zbigniew Brzezinski, June 1980.)



"Mr President, have you approved of covert activity to destabilise the present
government of Nicaragua?" "Well, no, we're supporting them, the - oh, wait a
minute, I'm sorry, I was thinking of El Salvador. when you said Nicaragua. Here
again, this is something upon which the national security interests, I just - I
will not comment."

(US president Reagan, press conference, Washington, February 13 1983.)



"President Reagan may order a naval blockade of Marxist Nicaragua. His top aides
are urging him to allow US warships to intercept Communist merchant vessels
suspected of ferrying arms to the Central American country. ...Reagan has
approved military action - either by air or by a commando sabotage team - to
destroy the MiGs if the Kremlin does give them to Nicaragua. Russian arms...
being delivered... go far beyond the country's defence needs."

(Daily Mirror Nov 12 1984.)



"We are not doing anything to try and overthrow the Nicaraguan Government...
because that would be violating the law."

(Ronald Reagan, April 18 1985.)



The CIA organised the mining of the Nicraguan port of Corinto. And with the
power of its armaments and media support for opposition groups meant a take-over
by the Chamorra government of middle class business, property and land owners.



CHEAP FRUIT FROM GUATEMALA



One way or another, if the peoples of these countries dare to take over what is
rightfully theirs, the US will soon intervene to get it back for Western
shareholders and us compliant consumers.



Let's look at the example of Guatemala.



At one time Guatemala was virtually controlled by the United Fruit Company. Now
other US transnational companies have moved in.



President Jacobo Arbenz, elected from 1952 to 1954 with 72 percent of the votes,
instituted land reform which involved taking over land owned by United Fruit,
with compensation at a valuation United Fruit itself had made for tax purposes:
$600,000. United Fruit rejected this and the US Government on behalf of United
Fruit claimed $16,000,000. The US invaded Guatemala in 1954 and Arbenz was
overthrown and land was restored to the United Fruit company.



Dulles called it "a new and glorious chapter to the already great tradition of
the American States." Justification for the invasion, as usual, was
"international communism."



A year before the invasion Eisenhower had said:



"Any nation's right to a form of government and economic system of its own
choosing is inalienable... Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations
their form of government is indefensible."

(Eisenhower, April 16 1953.)



The day after the invasion the Guatemalan Government urged the UN Security
Council to be convened to deal with the events, but was turned down by the
President of the Security Council Henry Cabot Lodge.



Nobody is suggesting that it might have been an 'inside job'; but Henry Cabot
Lodge, US Ambassador to UN and President of UN Security Council was on the board
of directors of United Fruit. Secretary of State J.F.Dulles had been legal
advisor to United Fruit. His brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles was President of
the United Fruit Company. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs John Moors Cabot was a large shareholder of United Fruit. Walter Bedell
Smith, Director of the CIA before Dulles, became President of United Fruit after
Arbenz was overthrown.



Now we Western consumers still get cheap fruit, the United Fruit Company still
gets its massive profits, and Guatemalan children still go hungry.



CHEAP TIN AND TUNGSTEN FROM VIETNAM



Vietnam asks:



"...I saw the helicopters... Americans moving towards our village... huge,
towering men... we sat there huddled together... American appeared at the
entrance... fired point blank at grandmother Toan. She sank slowly to the
floor... grenade... I crawled out... bodies of my sister, little brother, uncle
Duc, cousin Thu and her baby... Americans... mutilated bodies with bayonets...
baby in convulsions... I hid... heard uncle Huong's voice... I asked him "is
anyone else alive?" "No little one, everyone's killed." Please, tell me why were
they all killed?"

(Twelve year old Vo Thi Lien, sole survivor of Son My (My Lai on US military
maps) March 16 1969.)



The West answers:



"Let us suppose we lose Indochina. The tin and tungsten that we so greatly value
from that area would cease coming. We are voting for the cheapest way that we
can to prevent the occurence of something that would be of a most terrible
significance to the United States of America, our security, our power and
ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indochinese
territory and from Southeast Asia."

(US President Eisenhower, justifying US aid to France's war against Vietnam, Aug
4 1953.)



"It is rich in many raw materials such as tin, oil, rubber and iron ore... This
area has great strategic value."

(US Secretary of State Dulles, March 29 1954.)



"One of the world's richest areas is open to the winner of Indo-China. That's
behind the growing US concern... tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials
are what the war is really about. The US sees it as a place to hold - at any
cost."

(US News and World Report, April 4 1954.)



"Geographically, Vietnam stands at the hub of a vast area of the world -
Southeast Asia. He who holds or has influence in Vietnam can affect the future
of the Philippines and Formosa [now Taiwan B.M.] to the East, Thailand and Burma
with their huge rice surpluses to the West, and Malaysia and Indonesia with
their rubber, ore and tin to the South... Vietnam thus does not exist in a
geographical vacuum - from it large store-houses of wealth and population can be
influenced and undermined."

(Former US Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge (him again!), Boston
Sunday Globe, Feb 28 1965.)



BUT NO MORE CHEAP ANYTHING FROM CUBA



Cuba can afford to host Third World Debt conferences because, as a socialist
country, Cuba is least affected by the problem:



"Our trade with the Western world is insignificant; 85% of our trade is with the
other socialist countries. This crisis affects only 15% of our trade; we're the
ones least affected. This is why we can be the standard-bearers of this cause
and speak with complete freedom. .we can feel secure because, fortunately, we
depend very little on the Western world, and we don't depend at all on economic
relations with the United States. I wonder how many other countries in the world
can say the same."

(Fidel Castro.)



Cuba before 1960 was a very poor and exploited country:



"It makes the water come to my mouth when I think of the State of Cuba as one in
our family."

(US financier, 1895.)



"More than half our most productive land is in the hands of foreigners. In
Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and the
West Indies Company link the northern and southern coasts. There are two hundred
thousand peasant families who do not have a single acre of land to till to
provide food for their starving children... Ninety percent of the children of
the countryside are consumed by parasites... Society is moved to compassion when
it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one child, but it is criminally
indifferent to the mass murder of so many thousands of children who die every
year through lack of facilities."

(Fidel Castro, in court in 1953; on trial for "subversion.")



Cuba has already eliminated poverty, hunger and illiteracy and now not only has
the best education and health services in the Third World, including 1,000
doctors per head of population - more than Britain and many other advanced
countries, and Polyclinics in every neighborhood and community; but also sends
thousands of teachers, medical, scientific, agricultural, engineering and other
specialists to at least thirty-five other countries. Cuba also leads the world
in some pharmaceuticals, including a cure for a particularly virulent strain of
child meningitis, but this medicine is unavailable to children suffering and
dying from it in Britain and most other countries, which under US economic and
financial pressures comply with the blockade. Cuba also trains many thousands of
such specialists from all over the world.

India can produce paracetamol and other medicines at a fraction of their price
in the western world, but the western world will not give them the licence to
produce them at such a low price.



"And so, what did the Director of UNICEF say? That if the countries of Latin
America had the health levels of Cuba, the lives of 800,000 children would be
saved every year. Eight hundred thousand! And if the Director of UNICEF, an
agency of United Nations, says that, I ask: Who is it that kills those 800,000
children under one year of age every year? Who is it that kills countless other
millions of children between one and fifteen years? Who is it that reduces life
expectancy to 40, 45, 50 years in so many places, throughout the centuries? This
has happened and goes on happening, to the shame of all of us. The answer is
exploitation, colonialism yesterday, imperialism now. And what about those
lives, don't they count? And as to the millions who are growing up mentally
retarded or physically disabled, who is causing all of that, who is the guilty
party, who is responsible for it?"

(Fidel Castro, at Meeting on the Foreign Debt of Latin America and the
Caribbean. Havana, Aug 3 1985.)



Despite several attempts by the US to crush Cuba, including the Bay of Pigs
invasion, chemical and biological warfare, and a complete trade and aid blockade
by the imperialist nations coerced by the US, Cuba has been able to solve its
basic poverty, agricultural, housing, education and health problems.



SENDING FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD - WHAT IS IMPERIALISM AFRAID OF?



"To see freedom sent around the world, this is our mission... It was God's
charge to us."

(US Senator Barry Goldwater.)



"Don't forget, there are two hundred million of us in a world of three billion.
They want what we've got - and we're not going to give it to them!"

(US President Johnson.)



One fear of the US is that it could end up as an isolated island of capitalism,
reduced to having only its own labour and raw materials to exploit. So it
exports its massive surplus capital to the poor countries where the largest
profits are made exploiting the cheapest raw materials because of the cheap
labour involved; where it can find markets for US owned goods, most of which are
produced outside the US - by cheap labour in other poor countries; where it can
control prices at which raw materials and commodities are bought and sold on the
world market; all of which it is only able to do as a global military power
requiring many billions of dollars of armaments.



"The foreign policy that monopolistic capital imposes is a ruinous one for the
people of the United States. The United States had some thirty billion dollars
in gold in its reserves at the end of the Second World War; in twenty years it
had used up more than half of these reserves. What has it been used for? With
what benefit to the people of the United States? Does the United States perhaps
have more friends now than before?

In the United States many people proclaim that they are defending liberty in
other countries. But what kind of liberty is it that they are defending, that
nobody is grateful to them, that nobody appreciates this alleged defence of
their liberties? What has happened in Korea, in Formosa [Taiwan B.M.], in
Vietnam? What country has prospered and has achieved peace and political
stability under that protection from the United States? What solutions has it
found for the great problems of the world? The United States has spent fabulous
resources pursuing that policy; it will be able to spend less and less, because
its gold reserves are being exhausted.

Perhaps the influence of the United States is greater now than it was twenty
years ago when the war ended? Nobody could say so. It is a certainty that for
twenty years, under the pretext of the struggle against Communism, the United
States has been carrying out a repressive and reactionary policy in the
international field, without having solved the problems of a single
underdeveloped country in the world...

The United States wants to "liberate" Cuba from Communism, but in reality Cuba
doesn't want to be "liberated" from Communism."

(Fidel Castro, quoted by US journalist Lee Lockwood, May 1965.)



The loss of Cuba meant enormous losses to the United Fruit and the General Fruit
companies of the US who between them more or less owned the whole island before
the Cuban revolution.



If Cuba can do it; so could Nicaragua and El Salvador; so can the rest of Latin
America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, S.E. Asia, the Meditteranean, the
Middle, Near and Far East, the Pacific, and the rest of the world.



"The real threat of Cuba is that they offer a model to be emulated by people who
are dissatisfied with their lot or who are struggling to change things for the
better."

(US President Carter, April 9 1980.)



How long can transnational finance capital and its investors, large and small,
tolerate these losses? If these countries keep insisting on taking a
non-capitalist road to their future; where will capital go to make profits for
its owners and shareholders?



No! Says capital. This must stop! The free world cannot tolerate these threats
to its liberty.



The demands of the overwhelming majority of the world's population for genuine
and meaningful freedom and equality are seen by the capitalist champions of
"freedom" as a subversive encroachment on their freedom to exploit.



"We should give priority to the prevention of subversive insurgency... Where do
you find symptoms of subversive insurgency? The answer is that they are found in
virtually every emerging country in the world."

(US General Maxwell Taylor.)



The US claims its "right" to defend what it calls "vital American interests",
which it defines as the interests of the "free" world. The US claims to defend
these "vital American interests" in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in the
Mediterranean and the Caribbean, in the Persian Gulf, the Middle, Near and Far
East, in South East Asia, in the Atlantic, the Baltic and the Antarctic -
wherever there is oil, uranium, copper, fruit, or tin and tungsten, cheap labour
or anything else the US needs.



"Our aim is not simply to appropriate oil in one way or another (say in easily
accessible Nigeria or Venezuela) but to crush OPEC. Therefore we have to use
direct force in order to get hold of large and concentrated oil deposits which
can be opened up rapidly so as to put an end to the artificial oil shortage and
thus to lower the price... Since this is the ultimate and there is only one
target possible: Saudi Arabia... Fortunately, these are not only rich oilfields
but they are also concentrated in a very small area, a fraction of the Saudi
Arabian territory... While Vietnam was full of trees and brave people and our
national interest was almost invisible, what we have here is no trees, very few
people and a clear objective."

(Advisor to the US Defence Department Professor Miles Ignotas, March 1975.)



"They know we own their country [Iraq]. We own their airspace. We dictate the
way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a
good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."

(US Brigadier General William Looney, Washington Post, August 30 1999.)



"In oil's name, the United States is immersed in a new kind of colonialism, for
the resources that lie under foreign feet. They could care less about the
people. Therein lies an even greater tragedy."

(U.S. Dept. of State, Congressional Budget Justifications: Foreign Operations,
Fiscal Year 2003.)



"The United States will in fact have no other choice but to establish a world
order it is able to live with, a world where there is relatively free access to
the world's resources."

(US Wall Street Journal, Nov 26 1979.)



"The economic health and well-being of the United States, Western Europe, Japan
depend upon continued access to the oil from the Persian area."

(President Carter, Department of State Bulletin, April 1978.)



"Western industrialised societies are largely dependent on the oil resources of
the Middle East region and a threat to access to that oil would constitute a
grave threat to the vital national interests. This must be dealt with; and that
does not exclude the use of force if necessary."

(US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, March 11 1981.)



"In the future, we are more likely to be involved in Iraq-type things,
Panama-type things, Grenada-type things. Our position should be the protection
of the oilfields. Now whether Kuwait gets put back, that's subsidiary stuff."

(Chairman of US Armed Services Committee Les Aspin, 1990.)



"By the use of economic aid we succeeded in getting access to Iranian oil and we
are now well established in the economy of that country. The strengthening of
our economic position in Iran has enabled us to acquire control over her foreign
policy and in particular to make her join the Bagdad Pact. At the present time
the Shah would not dare even to make any changes in his cabinet without
consulting our Ambassador... at a later stage, to step up both our political
price and our military demands. .economic relations with these countries would
ultimately allow us to take over key positions in the native economy."

(From a letter from US Council on Foreign Relations member millionaire Nelson
Rockefeller to President Eisenhower, January 1956.)



"Power must be there, with the known readiness to use it, whether in the
indirect form of paralysing economic sanctions, or in the direct explosion of
bombs. 'Independence' and 'freedom' are after all abstractions."

(US theorist James Burnham, Life magazine 1947.)



"...to set forth the political, military, territorial and economic requirements
of the United States in its potential leadership. including the United Kingdom
itself as well as the Western hemisphere and the Far East. The first and
foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to
hold unquestionable power in the rapid fulfilment of a programme of complete
re-armament... to secure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by
foreign nations that constitutes a threat to the minimum world area essential
for the security and economic prosperity of the United States."

(Economic and Financial Group of the US Council of Foreign Relations. 1940.)



"Many of the resources that we need for energy and many essential strategic
minerals are found thousands of miles from our shores... If we are to safeguard
our access, and the access of the free world, to these resources, we must
increase our military and naval strength."

(US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, April 28 1981.)



"The industrialised world can't do without the underdeveloped countries' trade;
they can't do without their raw materials; they Can't do without their minerals;
they can't do without their fuel; they can't do without their chocolate. Can you
imagine an industrialised society - Switzerland, England, France, Spain, Italy,
the FRG, the United States or Canada - without chocolate? Can you imagine those
countries without coffee, tea or cashew nuts to go with their drinks? Can you
imagine them without nutmeg, cloves, other spices, peanuts, sesame seeds,
pineapples, coconuts or coconut oil for their mild and fragrant soaps? Well,
life would be very sad and unpleasant in the industrialised countries if the
steel, copper, aluminium, chemical and power industries were also to stop. They
can't do without any of that."

(Fidel Castro.)



IMPERIALISM - WHO LED THE WAY?



The British have benefited from the economic plunder of the world's poor for
centuries and are historically the direct cause of their impoverishment,
starvation, disease, illiteracy and lack of development today by landing on the
shores of these poor countries, bible in one hand, musket in the other, saying
to the friendly and hospitable natives: "You likee plenty glass beads? Great
White King likee plenty phosphates - sign here!" The puzzled natives, thinking
we were mad to want piles of fermented bird shit, signed away their posphates,
coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, copper, oil, and the land on which it was found; and
thus we became owners of two thirds of the world.



"I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the
unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches which were just a cry for "bread,
bread, bread", and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more
than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism... My cherished idea is a
solution for the social problem. i.e: in order to save the 40,000,000
inhabitants of the UK from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must aquire
new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods
produced by them in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said,
is a bread and butter problem. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become
imperialists."

(Millionaire financier Cecil Rhodes, 1895.)



"Believe me, the loss of our domination would weigh first of all on the working
classes of this country. We should see chronic misery let loose. England would
no longer be able to feed her enormous population."

(Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, 1895.)



"Look how the whole capitalist world is stretching out long arms towards the
barbarous world and grabbing and clutching in eager competition at countries
whose inhabitants don't want them... It is for the opening of fresh markets to
take in all the fresh profit-producing wealth which is growing greater and
greater every day... and I say this is an irresistable instinct on the part of
the capitalists, an impulse like hunger, and I believe that it can only be met
by another hunger, the hunger for freedom and fair play for all... Anything less
than that the capitalist power will brush aside."

(William Morris, May Day, 1896.)



"The income which we derive each year from commissions and services rendered to
foreign countries is over £65 million. In addition, we have a steady revenue
from foreign investments of close on £300 million a year... That is the
explanation of the source from which we are able to defray social services at a
level incomparably higher than that of any European country or any country."

(Winston Churchill, Budget speech, April 15 1929.)



"Those who could not look beyond their personal interests should remember that
their employment and standard of living depended mainly on the existence of the
Empire."

(Daily Telegraph Oct 23 1943.)



"I am not prepared to sacrifice the British Empire because I know that if the
British Empire fell... it would mean that the standard of life of our
constituents would fall considerably."

(Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, House of Commons, Feb 21 1946.)



"His Majesty's Government must maintain a continuing interest in that area if
only because our economic and financial interests in Middle East were of vast
importance to us... If these interests were lost to us, the effect on the life
of this country would be a considerable reduction in the standard of living...
British interests in the Middle East contributed substantially not only to the
interests of the people there, but to the wage packets of the workpeople of this
country."

(Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, House of Parliament, May 16 1947.)



"My dear Americans, we may be short of dollars, but we are not short of will...
We won't let you down. Standards of life may go back. We may have to say to our
miners and to our steel workers: "We can't give you all we hoped for. We can't
give you the houses we want you to live in. We can't give you the amenities we
desire to give you." But we won't fail."

(British Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin to the American Legion, Savoy Hotel,
London, Sept 10 1947.)



"The development of primary production of all sorts in the colonial territories
and dependent areas in the Commonwealth and throughout the world is a life and
death matter for the economy of this country."

(Food Minister Mr. Strachey, House of Parliament, Jan 20 1948.)



"The Western Powers have got to be strong... They have got to be perfectly clear
as to the kind of world they want and stand for it until they get it."

(British Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, House of Parliament, Oct 17
1950.)



BUT WE GIVE THEM AID DON'T WE?



"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure
myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all
possible means - except by getting off his back."

(Tolstoy.)



Oh but we helped them. We've civilised them. We've "educated" them and helped
them to build railways leading straight from their productive areas to sea ports
full of waiting British steamers. Then, only after gaining full control of their
raw materials like sugar and rubber, agriculture, industry, transport and
infrastructure, we said "Now you can have independence and govern yourselves."
And you can buy nice things from us, like refined sugar and tractor tyres.



Most people seem to think that Western so-called 'aid' is charitable and free!



Every dollar of this 'aid' invested in the 1970s in 'underdeveloped' countries
returned 2.2 dollars to multinational corporations in the 'charitable'
capitalist world. During 1970-1979 US multinationals invested 11.446 million
dollars and realised 48,000 million dollars in profits in these countries -
$4.20 for every dollar 'invested'.



"Before people can do anything they have got to eat. And if you are looking for
a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their
cooperation with you, it seems to me that food dependance would be terrific."

(US Senator Hubert Humphrey, 1957.)



"Food aid is a fertiliser which grows a rich crop called hunger. It is a
contradiction in terms."

(African leader Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia.)



But of course; we British are so charitable aren't we?! We give a few pounds and
put some old clothes in a box on the high street for the Third World and
congratulate ourselves that we have done something for the poor.



But we have done absolutely nothing to alleviate poverty? We are not asking the
right questions.



"The question to be asked is not what we should give to the poor but when will
we stop taking from the poor."

(Jim Wallace, Sojourners, USA.)



Instead of asking: "What can I give to the poor", we shpuld be asking different
questions, like, why are they so poor?, or what is their economic relationship
with us who eat food from every poor country on earth?, how is it that when I
was unemployed and producing nothing I could get a tin of beans from Ethiopia
during a terrible Ethiopian famine, when people outside the supermarket were
collecting for Ethiopia?



SCREAMING PEACE AND FREEDOM FROM THE ROOFTOPS



What is this "freedom" they talk about in every speech; that they must arm
themselves to the teeth for? What are these "vital American interests" which
they say they must "defend" in every corner of the globe?



When the capitalists talk of peace they mean only the continuation of a peace
that will never be, and never has been; a "peace" which belongs in the museum of
man's social and economic history - the "peaceful" exploitation of man by man;
the "peaceful" economic plunder of nation by nation.



More tonnage of bombs was dropped during the secret 1969-72 bombing of tiny Laos
than the total tonnage of World War Two, including the kilotonnage of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.



Rich scientists spend their working days inventing the most vicious and inhuman
chemicals and weapons for use against the poorest peoples on earth and then go
home to big, comfortable houses, happy wives and well fed children; while their
teenage sons and daughters drug themselves to death, paint "love" on their
faces, hold flowers and books on Zen. The moral degeneration of Western science,
scientists, culture and society is such that drugs, drink, crime, TV and
idealism are easier to face than the material truths of their real world; a
world they could so easily change.



Why do the richest people on earth use their most advanced billion dollar
science and technology to destroy the poorest and most backward peoples of the
world who refuse to accept US plans for their happiness? Why are some of the
world's poorest and most friendly and gentle people also the world's most bombed
people?



The "free" world the US defends is the unhindered freedom of capital to exploit
labour. It includes fascism - to keep rebellious workers under control - the
world of Pinochet and Pol Pot; a "free" world of several million children who
will starve to death this year; of hundreds of millions with no medicine or
health care; hundreds of millions of illiterates; all this in a very rich and
abundant world; the millions of unemployed and homeless, sleeping in cardboard
boxes in Calcutta or Sao Paulo - millions of these you can see every night even
under the bridges over the Thames, the Seine or the Potomac and in all the other
'advanced' industrialised nations of the capitalist world.



"And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word
capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the "free enterprise system" and run
to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American way of life."

(US movie executive, diplomat, Eric Allen Johnston, New York Times Jan 26 1958.)



When capitalists can justify their murderous social-economic system to the poor
and hungry children; and their murderous wars against humanity in all the small
and weak nations of the world; then they can talk of peace. When they can
justify their denial of the most basic human rights to the majority of people of
the world; then they can talk of human rights.



How dare they talk of human rights and "freedom" when they have sucked the
wealth out of all the small nations for hundreds of years and then say that
these nations are in "debt" to the West - to Western shareholders, large and
small? How dare they scream so loudly about 'human rights' in the socialist
countries when they support and retain the most horrific regimes all over the
world? How dare capitalists and small investors talk of human rights and freedom
when they are 'owed' millions of dollars by every hungry child in the world?



What hypocritical human rights do they talk of - the big finance capitalists and
bankers and those unwitting unknowing "I'm not a capitalist" small investors
whose collective billions of pounds and dollars are invested in the cheap
labour, raw materials and markets of the Third World - in South East Asia, Latin
America; or in Africa where the majority of black people have no rights, no home
other than a tin shed, and a plank or an old door for a bed, no right to a job,
own no land, own no workplaces, can't stand for parliament or elect one, are not
allowed to form trade unions, have no access to medical treatment or suitable
education, and no access to press, radio or television to tell the world their
plight; where the vast majority are deprived and silenced?



Capitalist notions of "freedom" and "human rights" are totally useless to the
majority of the world's population who are living and dying under starvation,
poverty, unemployment, and lack of basic hygeine and medical care. What use is
"freedom of speech" to this majority of people who nobody hears? What use is it
to speak when nobody listens? What use is "freedom of travel" to the world's
hungry people who can't go anywhere and nobody wants them? What good are
capitalist freedoms to them when nobody will listen, transport, feed them, or
give them land or the means of production of wealth? What is the practical or
effective use of this fake notion of freedom to the children who sleep in
cardboard boxes on the streets of Calcutta or Sao Paulo?



"Can people at the bottom of the economic scale, people called no-account, lazy,
degraded, grasp an opportunity when a real one is offered, and rise out of their
misery? This is the acid test. If they can, democracy is proved... this... gives
the lie to those who hold that the mass of the people are imprisoned in their
shiftlessness. It makes it impossible for an intelligent, well-informed person
ever again seriously to contend that most people are incapable of
self-improvement... Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never
really been tried."

(US writer Stuart Chase.)



When capital ruled in what are now new and emerging socialist countries no one
said a word about human rights in those countries. Capitalists have never
throughout history been concerned with human rights. They never called for "free
and fair" elections in these countries while they were under the direct
domination of transnational capital and protected by fascist military
dictatorships backed up by the imperialist world. They did not call for the
release of Nelson Mandela and free elections in South Africa; they are not
calling for freedom and human rights in El Salvador; nor are they calling for
the freedom of Palestinians, Grenadans or Chileans. They are only calling for
the freedom of the reimposition of the rule of capital in socialist countries
which have already eliminated the poverty and hunger and illiteracy imposed by
their previous domination by capital.



We hypocritically scream about "human rights" in socialist countries but it is
our own imperialist way of life which murders thousands every day. Children's
flesh is turned into flame in order that we might have cheap tin. Hospitals,
schools, nursery schools, kindergartens, polyclinics, pioneer camps and miners'
clubs are all blown away in order that we might have cheap tungsten. Chile is
drenched in blood in order that ITT can have cheap copper for the US
military-industrial complex and the we can have cheap aluminium windows, coke
cans, cooking foil, electric carving knives. Central America is raped in order
that we can have cheap bananas, sugar, coffee and tobacco. Thai and Filipino
children starve so that we can have cheap rice, cocoa, rubber, sugar and palm
oil. Black people in Apartheid South Africa were oppressed and murdered in order
that we could have cheap uranium, diamonds, gold, copper, phosphates and other
minerals.



This is the cost of the economic Third World war, which we are waging against
the Third World every day. We demonstrate against one kind of Third World War
while we perpetrate another; we demonstrate against a military one while we wage
an economic one.



THE FUTURE CAN BE OURS



"The future is yours - but you must pay for it."

(Victor Jara, musician and poet of the Chilean working class, killed in Santiago
Stadium along with thousands of Chilean workers, trade unionists, communists,
working class writers and musicians after the ITT/CIA military coup in 1973.)



"And if we were all capable of unity to make our blows stronger and infallible
and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the
struggling people - how great and close would the future be."

(Che Guevara.)



"You have got to unite in the same labour union and in the same political party
and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours."

(US socialist Eugene Debs. 1855-1926.)



"If I don't burn If you don't burn If we don't burn How will darkness ever
turn Ever turn Into light?"

(Nazim Hikmet, Turkey.)



"We shall not pay external debts with the hunger and poverty of our people."

(Nuez. Mexico.)



"All over the world the ordinary people are challenging the entrenched positions
of the privileged, and are organising and fighting to win rights that have so
long been withheld from them."

(Black American singer Paul Robeson, on whose gravestone is written: "The artist
must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my
choice. I had no alternative.")



"Being young and beautiful doesn't interest me for I don't want to be just one
more for them to kill. They've been killing me since my mother's womb; in my
infancy with malnutrition; in my adolescence with subjection. And if I don't
fight, my destiny will be to serve those who always win. But now they are going
to lose."

(Evelyn, Latin America, who cannot be identified.)



"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions
made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle... If there is no
struggle, there is no progress... Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet
depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground...
rain without thunder and lightning. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It
never did, and it never will. "

(US reformer Frederick Douglas, 1849.)



"The first fundamental objective in our struggle consists in reducing and
finally eliminating the unequal exchange that prevails today and that makes
international trade a vehicle for the further plundering of our wealth. Today,
the product of one hour's work in the developed countries is exchanged for the
product of ten hour's work in the underdeveloped countries... a historic and
moral obligation of those who benefited from the plunder of our wealth and the
exploitation of our men and women for decades and for centuries...

Why should some people go barefoot so that others may ride in expensive cars?
Why should some live only 35 years so that others may live to 70? Why should
some be miserably poor so that others may be exaggeratedly rich? .

You cannot speak of peace on behalf of the tens of millions of human beings all
over the world who are starving to death or dying of curable deseases. You
cannot speak of peace on behalf of nine hundred million illiterates... Enough
of words! We need deeds. (Applause.) Enough of abstraction! We need concrete
action. Enough of speaking a speculative new international economic order which
nobody understands! (Laughter and applause). We must speak about a real,
objective order which everybody understands."

(Fidel Castro, in a speech to United Nations, Oct 12 1979.)



"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked
fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited
people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. That they design and want.
That they fight and work for. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of
the violent type because the 'haves' refuse to share with the 'have-nots' by any
peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American
style, which they don't want."

(General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, 1966.)



"We know that a peaceful world cannot long exist one-third rich and two-thirds
hungry."

(US President Jimmy Carter, 1977.)



"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military
solution."

(John F.Kennedy.)



"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable."

(John F.Kennedy.)



"A world in which a few nations constitute islands of wealth in a sea of despair
is fundamentally insecure... Those who consider themselves dispossessed will
become a seedbed of upheaval."

(Henry Kissinger.)



"We tell them: sit down and stop trying to impose your political system on the
whole world by force. Stop dreaming that you are going to change the world; stop
dreaming that you are going to halt the course of history; ...solve your
problems through negotiation. If they want to maintain capitalism in their own
countries, let them maintain it for as long as they want. That is their own
business. We are not going to go to the United States to make a revolution there
or to impose socialism on them. In an academic discussion we can prove to them
that socialism is better, more humane, more rational and fairer than capitalism.
Roast yourselves on that fire for as long as you want. It will not be forever,
but that is not our business. Nobody will ever want to change the capitalist
system by force, to impose socialism in Europe, in Japan, in the United States,
in Canada, in Australia; nobody will ever want to do that... Sit down and
discuss, and save a third of what you are spending on the madness of war and
give us back what you are stealing from us."

(Fidel Castro, speaking on the Third World Debt, Havana 1985.)



It is an education problem. British society consistantly screams 'democracy',
'education', 'free press', and 'human rights' from the rooftops. Yet when you
ask the average British person what they think is going on in the world, they
have very little idea.



The result of this contradictory and disgraceful state of affairs is that most
British people are unfortunately more kind to animals than to people in a far
off land. A society that gives more to a pet dog or cat than to a hungry child
has absolutely no right to talk of civilisation or human rights , freedom or
democracy anywhere in the world.



We who are also unwilling and unwitting victims, who nevertheless share in the
benefits of such a system; will solve no problems by feeling guilty and giving
charity. The hungry people do not require that of us. What they require of us is
political pressure on our rich country's government and on those rich
shareholders who perpetrate this economic crime, this system which exploits and
makes mere appendages of capital of us all.



If we are to solve the problem of poverty in the world and not maintain it and
maintain the need for charity; if we want to do anything useful to help solve
the problem, we have to understand that it is a political problem; not one of
charity or giving. If you just expect charity from people and they do not learn,
then charity will always be required; and those who really cause the problem
will laugh up their sleeves as their profits from shares increase and the rest
of us pick up the tab for the poverty caused.



It is time to know the connection between our way of life and poverty, debt and
wars.



Everything we do under our economic system based on production for profit rather
than production for human needs is somehow connected with a hungry child or a
war somewhere in the world.



Economic warfare is what you and I conduct every day, when we buy a banana or a
tin of fruit; when we pay a penny to the poor peasant who produced it, and the
rest to the shareholders of the transnational company and its marketing,
distributing and retailing subsidiaries of the product. This is called trade -
free trade. It is unequal trade.



Democracy must involve thinking, learning, and political responsibility and
honesty. Merely voting for a government is not democracy; it is just accepting
the benefits of an imperialist foreign policy while abrogating our
responsibility for its consequences. We cannot absolve ourselves from
responsibility or rationalise any guilt by saying "It's not my fault, I'm not a
capitalist, what can I do about it?" We must learn and understand our world -
its socio-economic relationships.



"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality .for one very rich
man, there must be at least five hundred poor."

(The Tories' favourite economic theorist, Adam Smith (1723-1790).



"How far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the
sole inhabitants of the earth? Why do you drive out the fellow sharers of
nature, and claim it all for yourselves. The earth was made for all, rich and
poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your exclusive right?

(St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 340-397.)



"Capital... just as Nature was formally said to abhor a vacuum... A certain ten
percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20% will produce eagerness; 50%,
positive audacity; 100% will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300%
and there is not a crime it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even the
chance of its owner being hanged."

(British economist T.J.Dunning.)



We all kill the hungry child, not with guns and napalm, but with our pounds and
dollars in the supermarket, the bank and the building society. When we open a
tin of beans we open the stomach of an already hungry child and remove the
contents.



"Famine and hunger are not inevitable, but are caused by identifiable forces
within the province of rational human control. I have tried to identify some of
the forces. You are part of humanity; you can be part of that control."

(Susan George "How the Other Half Die." Penguin Pelican.London.1977.)



We cannot sit there enjoying the fruits of imperialism saying "It's not my
fault." We cannot say "I am not political." 'No politics' is always effectually
capitalist politics.



We all say we want peace and fairness in the world yet continue to live under
and support an economic system that makes wars and poverty a necessity if that
system is to survive; since capital must continually expand its exploitation of
cheap labour and raw materials if it is not to stagnate and deteriorate.



We are all responsible for what goes on in the world and what our governments do
on our behalf. We cannot absolve ourselves from the foreign policy of the
government we elect. If we do not bother to even vote we are even more
irresponsible and indifferent to those suffering for our economic advantage and
our benefit.



No change has ever come about through charity or good will, Band Aid or Red Nose
Weeks. For every Pound of public or government aid to poor countries, some four
Pounds comes back to the "donor" countries in profits from their exports of food
or raw materials.



In Red Nose Week 1999, for every pound so generously given, much of it by
children and pensioners, people who truly understand poverty because they
themselves are also poor, some £4.2 came back to this country from those poor
countries in profits and debts - and beans I presume!



Perhaps next time Lenny Henry plays football with poor African kids or Bob
Geldoff bangs the table with his fist shouting at us to give "NOW", they could
ask how it happens that they are poor. If enough real questions are stimulated
in enough minds, some truths will come.



We must examine and change our country's foreign policy to recognise and trade
equally and fairly with the developing countries and those which have liberated
themselves from imperialist domination and taken their own independent road to
progress such as Vietnam and Cuba.



Change will never come about through appealing to Imminent Persons, Transglobal
Ratbags and Miserable Wretches who suck to death the green shoots of humanity in
the underdeveloped world, where 80 percent of humanity, the overwhelming
population of the world, where 40,000 children below the age of five will die
tonight, and every night, for want of simple resources like land, food, clean
water, medicines, shelter, clothing - all the basic resources which the rich and
powerful control and we people of the rich countries benefit from.



We were certainly never given the right to remain silent.



Susan George's "How the Other Half Die" is a good book on debt and food politics
and the economic nature of imperialism. Pamphlets of the Third World debt
conferences and Fidel Castro's speeches are obtainable at the Cuban embassy,
probably free; and contain a wealth of facts and figures and excellent analysis
of the poverty, unequal trade and debt situation.



British school and college history, economics, social and business studies
syllabus teaching and books do not contain any of this information.



All the material and information I have presented here is readily available to
historians, writers, journalists, teachers, educators and syllabus publishers.
Although I have spent many hundreds of hours gathering it all together, I did
not have to look very far to find any of it.



When as a trainee history lecturer, it was suggested I take the class on a trip
to the Tower of London and then set them an essay on what life was like for a
soldier in King Charles' Army centuries ago. Very useful knowledge that! A
sociology of the past perhaps? But certainly not history in its most important
sense; unless history is to mean anything old or 'interesting' that you can do
in evening classes, like antiques, flower arranging or basket weaving. When
instead I taught real history, learning from the past in order to change the
future, the collective life-experience of humanity, I was got rid of. The head
of the history department complained that the students had remarked that I made
them think; which the head of history had probably never done in a lifetime of
teaching. I ended up washing and cleaning and emptying human surgical waste in a
hospital.



Unless teachers learn to be brave and intellectually honest (difficult when they
have a mortgage and bills to pay), future historical, social and economic
education and popular 'knowledge' will also not refer to the US or British
history and continuing complicity in global plunder, exploitation, domination
and control, wars of aggrandisement and acquisition, causing the deaths and
devastation of the homes and lands of millions of people - the thousands of
children under the age of two who will die tonight through simple lack of food,
clean water, medicine and education - the untold millions of unnecessary deaths
among the overwhelming majority of humanity on this incredibly rich and abundant
and ultimately sustainable earth.



From Brian Mitchell. Evolution.



Responses and criticisms welcomed. Reply to my personal e-mail if you prefer. My
replies to criticisms will be posted.





"How long will they steal our profits while we stand around and look?" (Bob
Marley, Redemption song.)

"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."
(Einstein.)

"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him
vile names." (US writer Elbert Hubbard.)

"The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world. The thing is,
however, to change it." (Karl Marx.)

"And if we were all capable of unity to make our blows stronger and infallible
and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the
struggling people - how great and close would the future be." (Che Guevara.)



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