Secondary Education students met: their XI Congress was the occasion.  Listening to them, I felt wholesome pride and justifiable envy.  What a privilege at that fertile age!  If today university education has become massive, so too a more important activity is massive:  the battle of ideas before starting university.

It would appear that nature has determined human evolution to make us capable, from a very early age, of having consciousness prevail over instinct.  My dear comrades of the Federation of Middle Education Students: that will be your battle.

Today, the greatest effort of the decadent and unsustainable empire is to deprive us of the right to knowledge and thinking.  Meditate a moment on the petty effort made by the ringleader of that empire to prevent our people access to the Internet; Rosa Miriam, a young and profound journalist, denounces this in an article, adding information that The New York Times, in its article criticizing the deed, does not even mention:

“…OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury) black list shows 557 “accursed” enterprises in the entire world and 3719 .com domains that have been blocked in the Network without any previous notification to its owners... the United States has blocked almost three times more sites than all those the country has registered under the generic of our country...."

“This is new evidence that the United States not only controls the access of its citizens to cyberspace, but that of all users of global Internet.”

She refers to the policy pursued by Bush during his term in office.  Even though her article was published in Juventud Rebelde, it is worthwhile to repeat the abovementioned information.

What a response there was in the statements of the Middle Education students!  Is there anything like it in United States consumer society? Unfortunately, distressing news comes to us from there about teenage and young adult students coming in contact with lethal fire arms which are freely on sale in a society where money and the marketplace are charting the way. The United States administration is supported by the National Rifle Association and the fear of culture, but it cannot impede Cuban culture.

Forward, young Cuban students!  Let us fight against egoism, vanity and the sterile ambition for glory which are serpents devouring human souls; let us be the bearers of ideas and conscience, ever onward and upward, together with our glorious forefathers.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 9, 2008

6:19 p.m.