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Note:The “Reflections of Fidel” pages have moved. Please update your bookmarks as appropriate Past ReflectionsSeptember 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 October 2006 September 2006 May 2006 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005
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The empire’s hypocritical politics — May 25, 2008 It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his speech, as I did McCain’s and Bush’s. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly. What were Obama’s statements? “Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy. (…) This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century – of elections that are anything but free or fair (…) I won't stand for this injustice, you won’t stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba,” he told annexationists, adding: “It’s time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime. (…) I will maintain the embargo.” The content of these declarations by this strong candidate to the U.S. presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason for this reflection. José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation directors whom Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the owner of the Caliber-50 automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and infrared sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other deadly weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an international meeting on Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta. Pepe Hernández’ group wanted to return to the pact with Clinton, betrayed by Mas Canosa’s clan, who secured Bush’s electoral victory in 2000 through fraud, because the latter had promised to assassinate Castro, something they all happily embraced. These are the kinds of political tricks inherent to the United States’ decadent and contradictory system. Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable hand-outs and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it. How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food crisis? The world’s grains must be distributed among human beings, pets and fish, the latter of which are getting smaller every year and more scarce in the seas that have been over-exploited by large trawlers which no international organization has been able to halt. Producing meat from gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates technology’s potential in the fight against climate change, though he is more conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than Bush. He could seek the advice of Gore, who is also a democrat and is no longer a candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at which global warming is advancing. His close political rival Bill Clinton, who is not running for the presidency, an expert on extra-territorial laws like the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, can advise him on an issue like the blockade, which he promised to lift and never did. What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is doubtless, from the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency? “For two hundred years,” he said, “the United States has made it clear that we won’t stand for foreign intervention in our hemisphere. But every day, all across the Americas, there is a different kind of struggle --not against foreign armies, but against the deadly threat of hunger and thirst, disease and despair. That is not a future that we have to accept --not for the child in Port au Prince or the family in the highlands of Peru. We can do better. We must do better. (…) We cannot ignore suffering to our south, nor stand for the globalization of the empty stomach.” A magnificent description of imperialist globalization: the globalization of empty stomachs! We ought to thank him for it. But, 200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin American unity and, more than 100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the struggle against the annexation of Cuba by the United States. What is the difference between what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims and resuscitates in his speech two centuries later? “I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House who will work with my full support. But we’ll also expand the Foreign Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the Americas. We'll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans to go abroad to deepen the trust and the ties among our people,” he said near the end, adding: “Together, we can choose the future over the past.” A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at least the fear, that history makes figures what they are and not all the way around. Today, the United States has nothing of the spirit behind the Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic empire undreamed of by the country’s founders at the time. Nothing, however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be auctioned at the marketplace —men, women and children—for nearly a century, despite the fact that “all men are born free and equal”, as the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world’s objective conditions favored the development of that system. In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban Revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations have used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don’t want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful values. An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism visited upon Cuba. The Revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its own workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an eight-hour work shift, which stemmed from the development of productive forces. The first thing the leaders of the Cuban Revolution learned from Martí was to believe in and act on behalf of an organization founded for the purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound by previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of this organization, we were elected by more than 90% of voters, as has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a time, as in the case of the United States, stay short of 50% of voters. No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbor has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people. I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise them for the record. Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be? Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings? Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet? Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment to only one country, Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it costs innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why is this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and other peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn’t the same Act applied to Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific? Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables, fruits, almonds and other delicacies for U.S. citizens? Who would sweep their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and lowest-paid jobs? Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect children born in the United States? Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable? You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights? Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark corners of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be? Is it honorable and sane to invest millions and millions of dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on earth several times over? Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have. The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other nations consist in the sending of military professionals to those countries. It cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to a country in need (though Cuba has known and relied on the cooperation of excellent U.S. doctors). They are not to blame for this, for society does not inculcate such values in them on a massive scale. We have never subordinated cooperation with other countries to ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when Hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our internationalist medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry Reeve, a young man, born in the United States, who fought and died for Cuba’s sovereignty in our first war of independence. Our Revolution can mobilize tens of thousands of doctors and health technicians. It can mobilize an equally vast number of teachers and citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to fulfill any noble purpose, not to usurp people’s rights or take possession of raw materials. The good will and determination of people constitute limitless resources that cannot be kept and would not fit in the vault of a bank. They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire. Fidel Castro Ruz Martí’s inmortal ideas — May 22, 2008 Just a few days ago, a friend of mine sent me the text of a report from Gallup, the well-known U.S. opinion pollster. I started to leaf through the material with the natural lack of confidence given the lying and hypocritical information usually used against our nation. It was a survey on education in which Cuba was included, although it is usually ignored. It analyzed the situation in four regions of the world: Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. A number of Caribbean nations were included in some aspects. First question: Are children in your country treated with dignity and respect? Positive answer: Asia 73%, Europe 67%, Africa 60% and Latin America 41%. If the Caribbean countries are included, Gallup states that in Haiti, only 13% of those surveyed responded affirmatively to that question. Second question: Do children in your country have the opportunity to learn and grow every day? In Asia 75% answered yes; in Europe, 74%; in Africa, 60%; in Latin America, 56%. Many of the countries of this region were under 50%. Third question: Is this country’s education accessible to anyone who wishes to study independently of his or her economic situation? The answers reveal a painful situation in many Latin American nations and better answers from the English-speaking Caribbean. I do not wish to offend any of the countries that I mention, but it would be meaningless to write these lines without noting the place occupied by Cuba – so many times slandered – in the survey. It was in first place among all the countries in the world. . Of those surveyed by Gallup, 93% answered yes to the first question; 96% to the second; and 98% to the third. As it is known, Cubans have the habit of answering any question with complete frankness. Another particularly salient fact is that in Venezuela, 70% and 80% answered positively to the first and second question, respectively. This is a country that is developing a large-scale education program, eradicating illiteracy and promoting study at all levels, a process that began only a few years ago. On account of that, Venezuela occupied second place in the region. The response to the third question was a yes from 82%, placing it third in Latin America and the Caribbean, exceeded by Trinidad and Tobago, in second place with 86%. In important Latin American countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Chile, 57%, 56%, 52% and 43%, respectively, answered yes to the question. Those that came out with the best results were the Dominican Republic, Panama, Uruguay, Belize and Bolivia, with 76%, 73%, 70%, 60% and 65%. Paraguay and Haiti are in the lowest places, with 17%. Cuba is cooperating free of charge with these two countries and many other sister nations in the hemisphere, both in education and health, and giving special emphasis to the training of medical personnel. Thus Cuba is modestly fulfilling its duty as expressed by Martí: “Homeland is humanity!” as our national hero affirmed. May 19th was the 113th anniversary of his death, which took place in Dos Ríos in 1895. As everybody knows, the U.S. military intervention frustrated the independence of our homeland. Innumerable patriots had died in the struggle that lasted nearly 30 years. The great power to the north was always hostile to our struggle, given that for a long time it had assigned it the manifest destiny of forming part of its territory, at that time in full expansion. The moment had arrived, the decadence of the Spanish empire, where the sun never set, gave the new imperial power the opportunity to snatch Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. It sought pretexts, it utilized deception and lies, recognizing that in fact and in law the Cuban people were free and independent, as a means of seeking the support of its valiant combatants to support the war of the interventionists. In that final struggle the Spaniards displayed the habitual bravery of their soldiers and the stupidity of their government. The Cevera squadron was annihilated ship by ship at the exit of Santiago de Cuba Bay by the U.S. battleships, as we have explained on other occasions, almost without being able to fire off a single cannon round. The great fraud came afterwards when, with the people already disarmed, the United States imposed the Platt Amendment and leonine economic agreements on Cuba; the country, laid waste and bleeding, moved inexorably toward becoming the property of the United States. That is the real history. What has been happening recently? It (the United States) is being driven crazy by the unyielding resistance of our people and their modest advance toward a more just world, despite the disappearance of the Socialist camp and the USSR. Radio Martí, TV Martí and other sophisticated forms of media aggression with which it is trying to humiliate the Cuban people and destroy their resistance, are insults to the name of the national independence hero. A deluge of speeches and lies are being lined up against Cuba. McCain, Bush’s candidate to the presidency of the empire, is speaking; Bush himself is speaking. Against whom? Against Martí. In the name of whom? Of Martí. They are referring to atrocious acts of torture, something that has never happened in our country, and even the least informed of Cubans knows that. And who are the ones talking of torture? McCain, the candidate, and George W. Bush, the President. What is the candidate saying? “I would like to thank my two dear friends in Congress, Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, who are great defenders of the people of Cuba. They are men of honor and integrity. I respect and admire them very much. They are the best members of Congress who I have worked with and whom I have known…” “My friends, today on Cuban Independence Day we have the opportunity to celebrate the cultural legacy and the deepest roots of the Cuban people…” “The independence fighters who won Cuba’s independence more than 100 years ago could not have imagined that their descendants would be in a struggle for freedom and democracy one century later…” “One day Cuba will be an important ally for securing democracy in our hemisphere…” “The dictatorship will not continue until the end of time and, as President, I will not passively await the day when the Cuban people enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy. I will not wait…” “My administration will force the Cuban regime to unconditionally free all the political prisoners and to plan elections under international supervision…” “The embargo must be maintained until those crucial elements of democracy and social democracy emerge.” “Venezuela and Bolivia have to be prevented from following Cuba’s example.” In his book The Faith of My Fathers, McCain confessed that he was one of the five bottom students in his cohort at West Point. He is demonstrating that. At the end of his time in prison he was weak, and he acknowledges that as well. He launched innumerable bombs on the Vietnamese people. How many lives and how much money did that adventure cost? At that time gold was worth $35 and they squandered $500 billion in that war. The consequences are still being paid. A Troy ounce is now worth $1,000 and once again hundreds of billions are being squandered in wars. New and complex problems are compounding that. Where are the solutions? What did President George W. Bush say? “One hundred and 13 years ago this week, Cuba lost its great poet and patriot, José Martí. And 106 years ago this week, Cuba achieved the independence for which Martí gave his life… Martí’s warning proved truer than anyone could have imagined…” “…the regime has not attempted even cosmetic changes. For example, political dissidents continue to be harassed, detained, and beaten…” “The world is watching the Cuban regime. If it follows its recent public gestures by opening up access to information…, respecting political freedom and human rights, then it can credibly say it has delivered the beginnings of change… America refuses to be deceived, and so do the Cuban people. While the regime embarrasses and isolates itself, the Cuban people will continue to act with dignity and honor and courage…” “This is the first Day of Solidarity with the Cuban People -- and the United States must keep observing such days until Cuba's freedom.” “We'll continue to support the Cubans who work to make their nation democratic and prosperous and just.” “…the United States has dramatically stepped up our efforts to promote freedom and democracy in Cuba. This includes our increased efforts to get uncensored information to the Cuban people, primarily through Radio and TV Martí.” “Today, I also repeat my offer to license U.S. NGOs and faith-based groups to provide computers and Internet to the Cuban people…” “Through these measures, the United States is reaching out to the Cuban people. Yet we know that life will not fundamentally change for Cubans until their form of government changes. For those who've suffered for decades, such change may seem impossible. But the truth is, it is inevitable…” “The day will come when all political prisoners are offered unconditional release. And these developments will bring another great day -- the day when Cubans choose their own leaders by voting in free and fair elections…” “Today, 113 years after José Martí left us, a new poet-patriot expresses the hopes of the Cuban people… Willy (Chirino) will perform a song that is on the Cuban people’s lips and in their hearts. And here are some of its lyrics: Nuestro día ya viene llegando.” As for the siege of hunger and blockade that has lasted for decades, not a word. Martí was a profound thinker and upright anti-imperialist. In his epoch, nobody like him understood with so much precision the terrible consequences of the monetary agreements that the United States was trying to impose on the Latin American countries, the blueprint of those of free trade, which they have resurrected today, in conditions that are more unequal than ever. “Whoever says economic union, says political union. The people that buys, commands. The people that sells, serves. Trade has to be balanced in order to ensure freedom… The people that wishes to be free, must be free in business.” Those are the principles proclaimed by Martí. In that period, payments were in silver or gold. Today they are made with paper. In an unfinished letter to his friend Manuel Mercado written the day before his death, he noted: “…I am in daily danger of giving my life for my country and duty, for I understand that duty and have the courage to carry it out – the duty of preventing the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. All I have done so far, and all I will do, is for this purpose. I have had to work quietly and somewhat indirectly, because to achieve certain objectives, they must be kept under cover; to proclaim them for what they are would raise such difficulties that the objectives could not be realized.” It does not matter how many times these intimate and revealing words, so marvelously expressed, are repeated. With those immortal phrases in his mind, a few hours later, he launched himself on his own account into the attack on the Spanish column. Nobody could have held him back. Riding in the front line, he received three fatal bullets in his impetuous advance. On July 26, 2004, when Bush had already spent nearly three years bombarding, torturing and killing in his absurd anti-terrorist war, with the invasion of Iraq already underway, I analyzed his strange personality based on a study of the interesting book Bush on the Couch, by Dr. Justin A. Frank, which contains one of the most revealing and fundamental studies of the personality of George W. Bush: “Conspiracy is a common phenomenon among consumers of alcohol, as is the perseverance evident in Bush’s tendency to repeat key words and phrases, as if the repetition helps him to stay calm and maintain his attention.” “…If, moreover, we assume that George W. Bush’s days of alcoholism have been left behind, the question remains as to the permanent damage that it could have caused before he stopped drinking, beyond the considerable impact on his personality that we can trace up to his abstinence without treatment. Any integral psychological or psychoanalytical study of President Bush will have to explore to what extent his brain and functions have changed in more than 20 years of alcoholism.” Neither of the two speakers on May 20 and 21st even mentioned the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes, whose information made it possible to uncover the plots of Luis Posada Carriles and to prevent the sabotage of airplanes in full flight with foreign visitors on board, including U.S. citizens, in order to damage tourism. They pressured and bribed the president of Panama and helped to secure Posada’s release. Santiago Alvarez transported him to Florida. I publicly denounced that almost immediately. Everything has been proven. After that an enormous weapons arsenal was seized from Santiago Alvarez himself. They want impunity for terrorists and mercenaries. How far they are from understanding Cuba and its people! The gross lies of McCain and Bush constitute the only way of obtaining absolutely nothing from the heroic people who have known how to resist the power of the empire for almost half a century. Our desire is to record for history: the immortal ideas of Martí that he watered with his blood will never be betrayed! Fidel Castro Ruz Two hungry wolves and a Little Red Riding Hood — May 18, 2008 One basic idea has been occupying my mind since my old days as a utopian socialist. It came from nowhere, with the simple notions of good and evil inculcated in everybody by the society in which they are born, full of instincts and lacking in values that parents, particularly mothers, begin to sow in any society or epoch. As I did not have a political mentor, hazard and chance were inseparable components of my life. I acquired an ideology on my own account from the moment when I had a real opportunity to observe and meditate upon the years I lived as a child, an adolescent and a young student. For me education became the instrument par excellence for change in the period in which it has befallen me to live and on which the very survival of our fragile species might depend. After many years of experience, what I think today on the delicate issue is totally coherent with this idea. I do not need to apologize – as certain people prefer to do – for stating the truth, although it might be hard. More than 2,000 years ago, Demosthenes, a famous Greek orator, ardently defended in public squares a society in which 85% of the people were slaves or citizens lacking in equality and rights, as a natural state of affairs. Philosophers shared that point of view. The word democracy emerged there. They could not have been asked for more in their time. Today, with a vast wealth of knowledge, the productive forces have multiplied innumerable times and messages via the mass media are drawn up for millions of people; the overwhelming majority, fed up with traditional politics, do not want to hear anything about that. Public figures lack confidence at a time when it is most needed by the peoples given the risks that threaten us. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Francis Fukuyama, a U.S. citizen of Japanese origin, born and educated in the United States and with a university degree in that same country, wrote his book The End of History and the Last Man, which many people must know as it was highly promoted by the leaders of the empire. He had become a hawk of neoconservatism and a promoter of the one way of thinking According to him, only one class would remain, the U.S. middle class; the rest of us, I think, would be condemned to live as beggars. Fukuyama was a definite supporter of the war on Iraq, like Vice president Cheney and his select group. For him, history ends in what Marx saw as “the end of prehistory.” In the opening ceremony of the Latin American and Caribbean-European Union Summit in Peru on May 15, English, German and other languages were spoken without essential parts of the speeches being translated by the television channels into Spanish or Portuguese, as if in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador or other nations, Indians, Blacks, mixed-race persons and whites – more than 550 million people, in their vast majority poor – spoke English, German or another foreign language. However, these days the grand Lima meeting and its final declaration is being spoken of with praise. There, among other things, it was understood that the weapons acquired by a country threatened with genocide by the empire, as Cuba has been for many years and Venezuela is today, are not to be ethically differentiated from those that deploy repressive forces to repress the people and defend the interests of the oligarchy, allied with that same empire. One cannot convert nations into just one more item of merchandise or compromise the present and future of the new generations. The Fourth Fleet was not mentioned, of course, in the televised speeches of that meeting, as an interventionist and threatening force. One of the Latin American countries represented there has just practiced combined maneuvers with U.S. Nimitz-type aircraft carriers, endowed with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction. A few years ago the repressive forces in that country disappeared, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people. The sons and daughters of the victims were expropriated by the defenders of the properties of the wealthy. Their principal military leaders cooperated with the empire in its dirty wars. They trusted in that alliance. Why fall into the same trap again? Although it is easy to infer which is the country referred to, I do not want to mention it in order not to hurt a sister nation. The Europe that raised its voice in song is the same that supported the war on Serbia, the U.S. conquest of Iraq’s oil, the religious conflicts in the Near and Middle East, the secret prisons and landings, and the conspiracies of horrendous torture and assassination hatched by Bush. That Europe shares with the United States extraterritorial legislation which, in violation of the sovereignty of their own territories, is increasing the blockade against Cuba by blocking the supply of technologies, components and even medicines to our country. Its publicity media is associated with the empire’s media power. What I said in the first Latin American meeting with Europe nine years ago in Rio de Janeiro has lost none of its validity. Nothing has changed since then except the objective conditions, which are making atrocious capitalist exploitation even more unsustainable. The meeting’s host was at the point of making the Europeans fly off the handle when, in the closing session, he mentioned certain points proposed by Cuba:
Judging by the faces and the looks, I observed that the European leaders were swallowing hard for some seconds. But, why get so uptight? In Spain it would be even easier to make vibrant speeches and marvelous final declarations. There had been a lot of hard work. The banquet was coming. There would not be any food crisis on the table. The proteins and liquors would be flowing free. The only person missing was Bush, who was working tirelessly for peace in the Middle East, as is his custom. He was excused. Long live the market! The dominant spirit among the rich representatives of Europe was one of ethnic and political superiority. All of them were the bearers of capitalist and consumerist bourgeois thinking and talked and applauded in its name. Many brought with them the businesspersons who are the pillar and support of “their democratic systems, guaranteeing freedom and human rights.” You would have to be an export in cloud physics to understand them. At the present time, the United States and Europe are competing between and against each other for oil, essential raw materials and markets, now with the addition of the pretext of combating terrorism and organized crime, which they themselves have created with voracious and insatiable consumer societies. Two hungry wolves disguised as good grandmothers, and a Little Red Riding Hood. Fidel Castro Ruz Yankee response in the hemisphere: the Fourth Fleet of intervention — May 5, 2008 It was created in 1943 to fight Nazi submarines and protect shipping during World War II. It was deactivated as unnecessary in 1950. The Southern Command was meeting the needs of United States hegemony in our region. However, it has been reborn in recent days, after 48 years, and its interventionist purposes do not need to be demonstrated. The military officials themselves, in their statements, are making that known naturally, spontaneously and even discreetly. The problems of food prices, energy, unequal trade, an economic recession in the market most important for their products, inflation, climate change and investments required for their consumerist dreams, are weighing down and consuming the time and energy of the leaders and the led. The real case is that the decision to reestablish the Fourth Fleet was announced in the first week of April, almost a month after Ecuador’s territory was attacked with bombs and U.S. technology and, by the latter’s pressure, killing and injuring citizens from different countries, which prompted a profound condemnation by Latin American leaders at the Rio Group meeting in the capital of the Dominican Republic. Even worse: this is coming at a time of almost unanimous opposition to the disintegration of Bolivia, advocated by the United States. The military officials themselves explain that they will have more than 30 countries under their responsibility, covering 15.6 million square miles in the waters adjoining Central and South America, the Caribbean Sea and its 12 islands, Mexico and the European territories on this side of the Atlantic. The United States has 10 Nimitz class aircraft carriers, with parameters that tend to be more or less the same: full load displacement of 101,000 tons; a deck 333 meters long, with a width of 76.8 meters; 2 nuclear reactors; speed of up to 56 kilometers per hour; 90 war planes. The latter of these bears the name of George H. W. Bush, father of the current president; it has already been christened in champagne by its namesake, and should be ready to join the other ships in the coming months. Not a single country in the world has ships similar to these, which are all equipped with sophisticated nuclear weapons and can approach any of our countries within a few miles. The next aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, will be a new class: Stealth technology, invisible to radar and electromagnetic weapons. The main builder of either type is Northrop Grumman, a company whose current president is also on the executive board of the U.S. oil company Chevron-Texaco. The cost of the last Nimitz was $6 billion, without including planes, missiles and operational costs, which could also rise into the billions. It’s like a science fiction story. With that money, they could have saved the lives of millions of children. What is the stated objective of the Fourth Fleet? “To combat terrorism and illegal activities such as drug trafficking,” and to send a message to Venezuela and the rest of the region. It has been announced that it will begin operating this coming July 1st. The head of the U.S. Southern Command, Admiral James Stavrides, said that his country needs to work harder in “the market of ideas, to win the hearts and minds” of the region’s people. The United States now has its 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th fleets deployed in the West Atlantic, East Pacific, Middle East, the Mediterranean and the East Atlantic, and West Pacific. The Fourth Fleet was the only one missing for guarding all of the planet’s oceans. The total: nine Nimitz aircraft carriers on active duty or very close to being in complete combat readiness, like the George H. W. Bush. They have a reserve sufficient for tripling or even quadrupling the power of any of their fleets in any given theater of operations. The aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs being used to threaten our countries serve to sow terror and death, but not to fight terrorism or illegal activities. They should also serve to bring shame to the empire’s accomplices and increase solidarity among the peoples. Fidel Castro Ruz
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Fidel Castro Ruz is the President of Cuba. |
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