The secondary school students met: their 11th Congress was taking place. Listening to them, I felt a healthy pride and understandable envy. What a privilege at their fruitful age! Along with the massive nature of university study today, so is a more important activity: the battle of ideas before enrolling in university.
It would seem that Nature determined the evolution of human beings so that they are capable, from a very early age, of making consciousness prevail over instinct. My dear compañeros of the Federation of Students in Intermediate Education, that will be your battle.
Today, the decadent and unsustainable empire’s greatest effort is to deprive us of the right to learn and think. Reflect for a moment on the petty attempts by the ringleader of that empire to prevent our people from having access to the Internet, which Rosa Miriam, a young and profound journalist, exposes in a commentary, adding information that The New York Times —in an opinion article, in fact— does not mention:
“…the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control, of the U.S. Treasury Department) reports that 557 ‘accursed’ businesses from all over the world, and 3,719 .com domains have been blocked on the Web without their owners receiving any prior notification… The United States has blocked almost three times as many sites as the country has registered under the country’s generic domain.”
“This is new evidence that the United States is not only controlling its own citizens’ access in cyberspace, but that of all Internet users worldwide.”
She is referring to the policy followed by Bush during his mandate. Although her article was published in Juventud Rebelde, it was worth repeating the information she cites.
What a response in the statements made by the secondary school students. Is there anything like it in the consumerist society of the United States? It is from there, unfortunately, that distressing news arrives about adolescents and young students in contact with deadly firearms, which are sold freely in a society where money and the market chart the course. The U.S. government is based on the National Rifle Association and fear of culture, but it cannot block Cuba’s.
Onward, young Cuban students! Let us fight against egotism, vanity and the sterile ambition of glory, which are vipers that devour human souls; let us maintain our ideas and our consciousness, always upward, together with our glorious ancestors.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 9, 2008