by Roberto Massari (President of the foundation "Ernesto Che Guevara")

To the economic embargo the USA have been imposing on Cuba for more than forty years, we have to add in this very last days the one decided by the left. How could we otherwise call the decision taken by a great number of regional administrators, mayors and other representatives of local authorities to suspend all their economic agreements and cooperation plans with Cuba? The reason they claim is the same as the one claimed by the United States: as these administrators do not agree with the last decisions taken by the Cuban government (they are critical of its politics) they suspend all the on going initiatives of economic collaboration and are ready to approve similar actions by the EU. All this, of course, without having previously consulted their electors. It is a grave decision. It is a political blackmailing act which will have worsening consequences on the living conditions of the Cuban people, making its resistance fight against imperialist aggression even more difficult.
The pretext has been the Cuban decision to
1) put to death three hijackers with dangerous criminal records (who, arms in hands and threatening the life of innocent civilians, among them 4 foreigner tourists, tried to hijack a vessel) and - by the execution of these sentences - stop CIA planned support to 29 more hijackings;
2) destroy by means of law the net of "mercenary dissidents" which the Chief of Mission of the US Interests Section in Havana – James Cason – following the instruction of Bush and Bush´s brother, a well known exponent of the Miami anti-Castro mafia, was financing.
On the death penalty and on the right to armed self-defense, each of us is free to have his/her own opinions (according to our personal ethical values, political views and the information at our disposal). And this freedom is granted also to those left-wing exponents who dared to consider as equivalent the Cuban government basic measures of self-defense and the decennial aggression of the USA (to which we have to add 5 airplane and vessel hijackings in the last few weeks; impunity granted to the hijackers; life or very heavy sentences passed to the five Cubans illegally put under trial in Miami and many times kept into isolation "holes"; declarations on an impending invasion of Cuba and so on). But it should be clear that the application of economic sanctions to whom is pursuing a concrete defense of his country – right or wrong as it may be – is a violation of that very principle of freedom of thought. It is, indeed, a form of embargo. To those who are scandalized by the way the Cuban government decides, case by case and autonomously, which is the best way to defend the independence of Cuba and confront the dirty war the US have been practicing for decades; to those who consider too heavy or unjust the measures adopted (even if they are aimed at preventing – words by Fidel Castro – that other such acts might occur provoking victims among the population), we want to remind them that in this same isle of Cuba, in Guantanamo (illegally occupied by the USA) all the laws accumulated by western civilization in defense of the individual are being systematically violated: from the habeas corpus to the Geneva Convention. To those war prisoners no law is applied (thanks to the mechanism of extraterritoriality): they are subjected to every sort of psychological torture, they are denied the right to practice their religious rites and even minors are kept in jail.
Question: those left-wing administrators who will apply economic sanctions against Cuba, because they blame its desperate measures of self-defense, will they do the same against the US government responsible of horrible crimes against humanity in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, in the black ghettos of the United States, etc? Will they do the same to prevent the genocide of the Palestinians by the Israeli government? Have they done it against D´Alema government (formed by leftist and centrist parties) which authorized the bombing of Yugoslavian bridges, schools and factories, and of the civilians of Beograd?
For our fortune, and in the interest of the exploited and the wretched of the world, the Cuban people has already proved with decades of sacrifice of not being dependent on charity, of being able to resist US blackmailing: do we really fancy they will not be able to face the blackmail of economic embargo made by the "left!?"
But if it is true that the freedom of the Cuban people is not on sale, it is also true that after the massacres in Iraq the US threat has become more concrete. This is the central question.
We have to organize actions of solidarity with Cuba, preparing ourselves politically to the possibility of a new escalation of US aggressiveness.

Roberto Massari (President of the foundation "Ernesto Che Guevara")

Endorsers:

Moreno Pasquinelli (Campo antimperialista), Walter Lorenzi (Agorà  di Pisa), Gabriella Paolucci (Università  di Firenze), Fabio Faina (Assessore al bilancio, Comune di Perugia), Tiberio Tanzini (Presidente consiglio comunale di Empoli), Và­ctor Aguilera Noriega (Diadema-Habanos di Genova), Jorge Alonso, Maria Grazia Ardizzone, Assoc. Cult. P.P. Pasolini (Casale Garibaldi di Roma), Massimo Bandinelli, Carlo Batà , Stefano Belli, Paolo Bernardini, Ennio Bilancini, Fiorella Bomà©, Federico Bonaccorsi, Marco Bonetti, Franca Bonichi, Giampiero Bonichi (Amm. Prov. di Firenze), Matteo Buda, Simone Caligiana, Pilade Cantini, Guido Castiglione, Mauro Ciotti, Giancarlo Coccheri, La Coronacià³n Travel Agency (L`Avana), Maria Grazia, Marco e Liliano Da Costa, Ilicia Di Ienno, Massimo Donato, Marco, Barbara ed Ernesto Erick, Joe Fallisi, Emanuele Fanesi, Maria Teresa Fedeli, Agnese Focardi, Giovanni Fortunato, Eros Francescangeli (Università  di Perugia), Elena Franchi, Rosario Gallipoli, Aldo Galvagno (Ass. Cult. Siporcuba), Daniele Gariglio, Massimo Genini, Laura Gerevini (Prc di Cremona), Marco Gigli, Gianfranco Ginestri e Katia Sassoni (Archivio Cuba Si di Bologna), Willi Langthaler (Campo antimp. di Vienna), Maruska Lepore, Paolo Luzzi, Luca Maddalena, Alberto Magliano, Lucilla Mancini, Antonella Marazzi, Mariella Marzuoli, Leonardo Mazzei, Alessia Monterverdi (Red. di Praxis), Matteo e Daniele Mori, Giorgia Mura, Vittoria Oliva e Huambo, Fabio Paganini, Stella Pagliai, Carlos Pagnozzi, Mauro Pasquinelli, Mireno Passone, Miriam Pellegrini Ferri (Presid. G.A.Ma.Di.), Pellerossa e Assemblea contro la guerra di Cesena, Leandro Pesci, Mario Polisandri, Roberto Porfiri, Roberto Rescigno, Franco Ricci, Elisabetta Rota (critica d`arte), Carmen Russo, Sandro Scardigli (Italia-Cuba di Empoli), Mariangela Sirca, Enrico Sodacci, Bedetta Sondra, Marcello Teti, Marco Tonci, Agnese Torricelli, Umberta Torti, Umbria Rossa, Catia Valentini, Pier Paola Vivani, Gianni Volontà© (Venceremos), Riccardo Volterrani, Antonello Zecca, Giacomo Zuccarini