Of course I am not speaking about those who throughout the various millennia turned public affairs into instruments of power and wealth for the privileged classes, an activity where the real records of cruelty have been imposed during the last eight or ten thousand years about those we have certain traces of the social behaviour of our species, whose existence as thinking beings, according to scientists, barely covers 180,000 years.

It is not my purpose to get involved in such topics that would surely bore almost one hundred percent of the people continuously being bombarded with news across the media, going from the written word to three-dimensional images that are starting to be shown in  expensive cinemas. The day is not far away when they shall also predominate in the already fabulous television images per se. It is no accident that the so-called leisure industry has its headquarters in the heart of the empire that tyrannizes everybody.

What I would like to do is to rest on the current starting point of our species to speak of the march towards the abyss. I might even speak of an “inexorable” march and I would certainly be closer to reality. The idea of a Last Judgement is implicit in the most practiced religious doctrines among the inhabitants of this planet, without anyone classifying them for that as being pessimistic. On the contrary, I think it is a basic duty of all serious and sane persons, who number in the millions, to fight to postpone and perhaps to prevent that dramatic and imminent event in today’s world.

Numerous dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear war and climate change, are decisive and both are ever farther away from coming close to a solution.

Verbose demagoguery, the statements and speeches of the tyranny imposed upon the world by the United States and its powerful and unconditional allies, on both topics, do not admit the slightest doubt in that respect.

January 1st of 2012, the western and Christian New Year, coincides with the anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution in Cuba and the year celebrating the 50th anniversary of the October Crisis of 1962 that put the world on the brink of a nuclear world war and this forces me to write these lines.

My words would be lacking in meaning if they had the objective of blaming the American people, or on any other country which is an ally of the United States in the unusual adventure; they, like all the other peoples of the world, would be the inevitable victims of the tragedy.  Recent events happening in Europe and elsewhere show massive indignation by those who are led to protest by the unemployment, shortages, reductions in their incomes, debts, discrimination, lies and politicking and lead to brutal repressions by the guardians of established law and order.

With growing frequency one speaks of military technologies that affect the entire planet, the only satellite known to be inhabitable hundreds of light years away from any other that may perhaps be suitable if we were to move at the speed of light, three hundred thousand kilometres per second.

We should not ignore that if our marvellous thinking species should disappear, many millions of years would go by before another one capable of thinking would arise, by virtue of the natural principles that rule as a consequence of the evolution of the species, discovered by Darwin in 1859 and which today is acknowledged by all serious scientists, whether they are religious or not.

No other era in the history of mankind has known the dangers that today humanity faces. Persons like me, at 85 years old, had reached our 18th birthdays with high school graduation degrees before the first atomic bomb had been put together.

Today artefacts of this type, ready to be used – incomparably more powerful than those that produced the heat of the sun over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki─ add up to thousands.

Weapons of this kind that are kept in storage, added to those already deployed by virtue of agreements, reach figures that surpass twenty thousand nuclear missiles.

The use of just one hundred or so of those weapons would be enough to create nuclear winter that would cause a horrible death in a short time for all the human beings living on the planet, as the American scientist and Rutgers University professor Alan Robock has brilliantly explained along with computerized data.

Those used to reading news and serious international analyses know how the risks of the outbreak of war with the use of nuclear weapons increase as the tension grows in the Middle East, where in the hands of the Israeli government hundreds of combat-ready nuclear weapons are accumulated, and whose nature as a strong nuclear power is neither admitted or denied.  Likewise, tension grows around Russia, a country with unquestionable capacity for response, threatened by a presumed European nuclear shield.

The Yankee statement that the European nuclear shield is there to also protect Russia from Iran and North Korea is laughable. The Yankee position is so feeble in this delicate matter that its ally Israel does not even bother to guarantee prior consultations on measures that might unleash war.

Humanity, in contrast, does not enjoy any guarantee.  Cosmic space, in the vicinity of our planet, is overcrowed by US satellites destined to spy on what is going on even on the roofs of houses in any nation of the world. The lives and customs of any person or family became objects of espionage; listenning to hundreds of millions of cell phones and subjects of conversations by any user anywhere in the world stops being a private matter and becomes information material for the US secret services.

That is the right that is being left to the citizens of our world by virtue of the acts of a government whose constitution, approved by the Philadelphia Congress in 1776, established that men were born free and equal and the Creator has given them all those rights, which they now no longer have, not the Americans themselves or any citizen of the world, not even to communicate by phone with relatives and friends about their most private feelings.

Of course war is a tragedy that can happen and it is very probable that it will happen; however, if humanity were capable of delaying it for an indefinite length of time, another equally dramatic event is happening at an increasing pace: climate change. I shall restrict myself to point out what eminent scientists and world-class exhibiters have explained through documents and films that are questioned by nobody.

It is well-known that the US government was opposed to the Kyoto agreements on the environment, a line of conduct that didn’t even agree with its closest allies whose territories would suffer tremendously and some of which, such as Holland, would practically disappear.

The planet goes on today without a policy to solve this serious problem, while the levels of oceans rise, the enormous ice caps covering Antarctica and Greenland, where more than 90% of the world’s fresh water is accumulated, are melting at a growing pace, and now humanity, on November 30, 2011, officially reached the figure of 7 billion inhabitants which, in the poorest areas of the world grows in a sustained and inevitable manner. Could it be that those who have dedicated themselves to bombing countries and killing millions of persons in the last 50 years could be concerned about the fate of all the other peoples?

The United States today is not just the promoter of those wars, but it is also the greatest manufacturer and exporter of weapons in the world.

As it is well-known, that powerful country has signed a covenant to supply 60 billion dollars in the next few years to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where the transnationals of the US and its allies extract on a daily basis 10 million barrels of light oil, in other words, a billion dollars in fuel.  What will happen to that country and the region when those energy reserves should run dry? It is not possible that our globalized world will accept without a murmur the colossal wasting of energy resources that nature took hundreds of millions of years to create, and whose dilapidation increases essential costs. It would in no way be worthy of the intelligent nature attributed to our species.

In the last 12 months, that situation has worsened considerably because of new technological advances which, far from alleviating the tragedy coming from the squandering of fossil fuels, considerably make things worse.

World class scientists and researchers have been pointing out the dramatic consequences of climate change.

In an excellent documentary film by French director Yann Arthus-Bertrand, entitled Home, and filmed in collaboration with prestigious and well-informed international celebrities, published in mid-2009, he warns the world with irrefutable data about what is happening.  Using solid arguments, he shows the deadly consequences of consuming, in less than two centuries, the energy resources created by nature in hundreds of millions of years; but the worst of it is not the colossal squandering, but the suicidal consequences for the human species. Referring to the very existence of life, he admonishes the human species: “…You benefit from a fabulous legacy of 4,000 million years supplied by the Earth. You are only 200,000 years old but you have changed the face of the world.”

He didn’t blame nor could he blame anyone up to that time, he was simply pointing out an objective reality. However, today we have to blame ourselves for what we know and we are doing nothing to try to fix it.

In their images and concepts, the authors of that work include memories, data and ideas that we have the duty to know and take into account.

In recent months, another fabulous film was Oceans, made by two French film-makers, considered to be the best film of the year in Cuba; perhaps, in my opinion, the best film of this era.

This is amazing material because of the precision and beauty of the images never before filmed by any camera: 8 years and 50 million Euros were invested in the making of it.  Humanity must thank that proof for the way in which the principles of nature adulterated by man express themselves. The actors are not human beings: they are the inhabitants of the world’s oceans.  An Oscar for them!

What inspired me with the duty to write these lines did not arise from the events referred to up till now, which in one way or another I have commented on previously, but others that, managed by the interests of the transnationals, have been coming to light sparingly in the last few months and in my opinion serve as definitive proof of the confusion and political chaos rife in the world.

Just a few months ago I read for the first time some news about the existence of shale gas. It was stated that the US had reserves to supply their needs for this fuel for 100 years. Since I now have time to do research on political, economic and scientific topics that could be really useful for our peoples, I discretely got in touch with several people living in Cuba or abroad. Oddly, none of them had heard a word about the matter.  Of course, this wasn’t the first time that happened. One is amazed about important facts that are hidden in a veritable sea of information, mixed in with hundreds or thousands of news items that circulate the planet.

Nevertheless, I persisted in my interest on the subject.  Only a few months have gone by and shale gas is no longer news. Just before the new year enough information was known to clearly see the world’s inexorable march towards the abyss, threatened by risks of such great seriousness as nuclear war and climate change. I have already spoken of the first of these; about the second one, in the interest of brevity, I shall restrict myself to reveal known data and some to be known, that no political cadre or sensible person should ignore.

I don’t hesitate saying that I am observing both facts with the serenity imparted by the years I have lived, in this spectacular phase of human history, that have contributed to the education of our brave and heroic people.

The gas is measured in TCF, which can be referred to in cubic feet or cubic metres – it is not always explained whether they are dealing with one or the other – it depends on the system of measurement that is used in certain countries. On the other hand, when they speak of billions they tend to refer to the Spanish billion that means a million millions; that figure in English is called a trillion, and we must keep that in mind when analyzing the references to the gas which tend to be copious. I shall try to point that out when necessary.

The American analyst Daniel Yergin, author of a voluminous classic on the history of oil stated, according to the IPS news agency, that now a third of all the gas produced in the US is shale gas.

“…exploitation of a platform with six wells can consume 170,000 cubic metres of water and even create harmful effects such as influencing seismic movements, polluting surface and groundwaters and affecting the landscape.”

The British BP group informs us that “proven reserves of conventional or traditional gas on the planet add up to 6,608 billion ―million millions― of cubic feet, some 187 billion cubic metres, […] and the largest deposits are in Russia (1,580 TCF), Iran (1,045), Qatar (894), and Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan with 283 TCF each”. We are dealing with gas that is being produced and marketed.

“An EIA study ―a US  government energy agency ― published in April of 2011 found practically the same volume (6,620 TCF or 187.4 billion cubic metres) of recoverable shale gas in just 32 countries, and the giants are: China (1,275 TCF), United States (862), Argentina (774), Mexico (681), South Africa (485) and Australia (396 TCF)”. Shale gas is gas de esquisto. Take note that according to what is known, Argentina and Mexico have almost as much as the United States. China, with larger deposits, has reserves that equal almost the double of those and 40% more than the United States.

“…countries secularly dependent on foreign suppliers shall count on an enormous base of resources in relation to their consumption, such as France and Poland which import 98 and 64 percent respectively of the gas they consume, and in shale or lutite rocks they would have reserves greater than 180 TCF each”.

“To extract it from the lutite ― IPS points out― they resort to a method called ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing), with the injection of great amounts of water plus sand and  chemical additives. Carbon traces (proportion of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere) are much greater than those generated in the production of conventional gas.

“Since we are dealing with bombarding layers of earth crust with water and other substances, the risk of damaging the subsoil, soil, surface and groundwater tables, the landscape and communication channels  is greater if the facilities for extracting and transporting the new wealth presents handling defects or errors.”

Suffice it to point out that among the numerous chemical substances that are injected with the water to extract this gas we have benzene and toluene, substances that are terribly carcinogenic.

Lourdes Melgar, expert from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores of Monterrey, has the opinion that:

“‘It is a technology generating much debate and they are resources located in zones where there is no water…”.

“Gas-bearing lutites ― IPS states― are unconventional hydrocarbon quarries, encrusted in rock that protects them, therefore fracking is used to release them on a grand scale.”

“Generation of shale gas involves high volumes of water and the excavation and fracking generates great amounts of liquid waste that may contain dissolved chemicals and other pollutants that require treatment before they are disposed.”

“Production of shale leaped from 11,037 million cubic metres in 2000 to 135,840 million in 2010. In the event of expansion following this pace, in 2035 it will cover 45 percent of the demand of general gas, according to EIA.

“Recent scientific research has warned on the negative environmental profile of lutite gas.

“Professors Robert Howarth, Renee Santoro and Anthony Ingraffea from Cornell University in the US have concluded that this hydrocarbon is a greater pollutant than oil and gas, according to the study ‘Methane and the traces of greenhouse effect gases from natural gas coming from shale formations’ published in April last year in the Climatic Change review.

“‘Carbon trace is greater than that from conventional gas or oil, seen on any time horizon, but particularly within the lapse of 20 years. Compared to carbon, it is at least 20 percent greater and perhaps more than double in 20 years’, the report underlined.”

“Methane is one of the most polluting greenhouse effect gases, responsible for the rise in the planet’s temperature.”

“‘In active extraction areas (one or more Wells in one kilometre) average and maximum concentrations of methane in wells of drinking water increased with proximity to the closest gas well and were a danger for potential explosion’, states the text written by Stephen Osborn, Avner Vengosh, Nathaniel Warner and Robert Jackson, from Duke State University.

“These indicators put into question the industry argument that shale could replace carbon in generating electricity and, therefore be a resource for mitigating climate change.

“‘It is an adventure that is far too premature and risky’.”

“In April of 2010, the US State Department started up the Shale Gas Global Initiative to help countries seeking to use that resource in order to identify and develop it, with the eventual economic benefit for US transnationals.”

I have been inevitably extensive, I had no other option. I write these lines for the Cubadebate website and for Telesur, one of the most serious and honest channels in our long-suffering world.

In order to deal with the subject, I let the holidays of the old and the New Year slip by.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 4, 2012.
9:15 p.m.

The world knows what is taking place in the Middle East. The news is circulating at incredible speed. Politicians barely have time to read the cables coming in by the hour. Everyone is aware of the importance of what is occurring there.

After 18 days of harsh battling, the Egyptian people attained an important objective: to defeat the United States’ principal ally in the heart of the Arab countries. Mubarak was oppressing and plundering his own people, he was an enemy of the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the military NATO group.

The Egyptian Armed Forces, under the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, had overthrown a submissive king and created the Republic which, with support from the USSR, defended the homeland from the Franco-British and Israeli invasion in 1956 and retained possession of the Suez Canal and the independence of this millennial nation.

Thus Egypt enjoyed a high level of prestige in the Third World. Nasser was known as one of the most outstanding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which he participated in creating, together with other eminent leaders of Asia, Africa and Oceania who were fighting for national liberation and political and economic independence from the former colonies.

Egypt always enjoyed the support and respect of the above-mentioned international organization which brings together more than 100 countries. That sister nation currently presides over the Movement for the three-year period established; and the support of many of its members for the struggle which its people are now waging will not be slow in coming.

What did the Camp David Accords signify, and why are the heroic Palestinian people so passionately defending their most vital rights?

At Camp David – with the mediation of the then U.S. President Jimmy Carter – the Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the famous accords between Egypt and Israel.

It is said that they held secret talks during 12 days and, on September 17, 1979, signed two important accords: one referring to peace between Egypt and Israel, and another related to the creation of an autonomous territory in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which Al-Sadat thought – and Israel knew and shared the idea – would be the headquarters of the Palestinian state, whose existence, as well as that of the state of Israel, the United Nations Organization agreed on November 29, 1947, during the British Mandate of Palestine.

After difficult and complex talks, Israel agreed to withdraw its troops from the Egyptian territory of Sinai, although it categorically rejected the participation of Palestinian representatives in the peace negotiations.

As a result of the first agreement, Israel returned to Egypt the Sinai territory occupied in one of the Arab-Israeli wars.

In virtue of the second, both parties committed themselves to negotiate the creation of the autonomous regime in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The former comprised a territory of 5,640 square kilometers and 2.1 million inhabitants; and the latter, 360 square kilometers and 1.5 million inhabitants.

The Arab countries were angry with that agreement in which, in their judgment, Egypt did not energetically and firmly defend a Palestinian state whose right to exist had been at the center of the struggles waged for decades by the Arab states.

Their reaction reached such extreme indignation that many of them broke off relations with Egypt. In that way, the UN Resolution of November 1947 was erased from the map. The autonomous entity was never created and thus the Palestinians were deprived of the right to exist as an independent state, leading to the interminable tragedy endured there and which should have been resolved more than three decades ago.

The Arab population of Palestine is the victim of acts of genocide; their lands are being snatched from them and are deprived of water in those semi-desert areas, and their housing is destroyed with sledge hammers. In the Gaza Strip, one and a half million people are systematically attacked with explosive missiles, live phosphorus and the well-known stun grenades. The territory of the Strip is blockaded by land and sea. Why is there so much talk about the Camp David Accords and no mention of Palestine?

The United States supplies Israel with the most modern and sophisticated armament, worth billions of dollars every year. Egypt, an Arab country, was converted into the second recipient of U.S. weapons. To fight against whom? Against another Arab country? Against the Egyptian people themselves?

When the population was demanding respect for their most elemental rights and the resignation of a president whose policies consisted of exploiting and plundering his people, the repressive forces trained by the United States did not hesitate to fire on them, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

When the Egyptian people were awaiting explanations from the government of their own country, the replies came from senior officers from U.S. intelligence agencies or the U.S. government, without any respect whatsoever for Egyptian officials.

Do the leaders of the United States and their intelligence services, by any chance, know nothing of the Mubarak government’s colossal theft?

Faced with the people’s mass protests in Tahrir Square, neither government officials nor intelligence agents said one single word about privileges and the bold-faced robbery of billions of dollars.

It would be an error to imagine that the revolutionary popular movement in Egypt simply constitutes a reaction against the violation of their most fundamental rights. Peoples do not risk repression or death, nor do they stand fast the whole night protesting energetically about purely formal issues. They do so when their legal and material rights are pitilessly sacrificed to the insatiable demands of corrupt politicians and to the national and international forces sacking the country.

The rate of poverty already affected the vast majority of a combative, young and patriotic people, whose dignity, culture and beliefs have all been attacked.

How could they reconcile themselves to the continuing increase in the price of food with the tens of billions of dollars attributed to President Mubarak and the privileged sectors of his government and society?

At this point, it is not enough to know how high that figure is; it must be demanded that the funds be returned to the nation.

Obama is affected by the events in Egypt; he acts or appears to act as if he were the owner of the planet. What is happening in Egypt seems to be his own issue. He has not stopped talking over the telephone with leaders of other countries.

The EFE agency, for example, reports, “… He spoke with British Prime Minister

David Cameron; Jordan’s King Abdala II and with the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a moderate Islamist.

“The U.S. President recognized the ‘historic change’ that Egyptians have made and reaffirmed his admiration for their efforts…”

The principal U.S. news agency AP released some arguments worthy of attention:

“Wanted: Moderate, Western-leaning Mideast leaders willing to be friends with Israel and cooperate in the fight against Islamic extremism while protecting human rights…

“That’s the impossible wish list from the Obama administration after popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia ousted two long-serving and close but deeply flawed U.S. allies in stunning rebellions that many believe will spread.

“This dream resume doesn’t exist and isn’t likely to appear soon. Part of the reason is that American administrations for the past four decades sacrificed the lofty human rights ideals they espoused for the sake of stability, continuity and oil in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

“‘Egypt will never be the same,’ Obama said as he welcomed the departure of Hosni Mubarak on Friday.

“‘Through their peaceful protests,’ Obama said, ‘Egyptians changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.’

“Even though governments around the Arab world are nervous, there is no sign that entrenched elites in Egypt and Tunisia are willing to cede the power and vast economic leverage they have enjoyed…

“The Obama administration has insisted ever since President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia last month – a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Arab leaders in a speech in Qatar that without reform the foundations of their countries were ‘sinking into the sand…’”

The people in Tahrir Square do not appear to be very docile.

Europe Press relates:

“Thousands of demonstrators have arrived in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the mobilizations which provoked the resignation of the country’s President, Hosni Mubarak, to reinforce those who have remained in the area despite attempts by the military police to dislodge them, according to reports by the BBC.

“The BBC correspondent posted in the central Cairo plaza has reiterated that the army is looking indecisive faced with the arrival of more demonstrators…

“The hardcore are situated on one of the square’s corners… and have decided to stay in Tahrir to make sure that their demands are met.”

Regardless of what may happen in Egypt, one of the most serious problems faced by imperialism at this time is the shortage of grain, which I analyzed in my January 19 Reflection.

The United States uses an important part of the corn it raises, and a large portion of soybeans, to produce biofuels. Europe, for its part, employs millions of hectares of land for this purpose.

On the other hand, as a consequence of climate change produced fundamentally by the rich, developed countries, a shortage of water and food is emerging which is incompatible with the growth of the world’s population, at a rate which will result in 9 billion inhabitants within 30 years, without the United Nations or the most influential governments on the planet warning or informing the world of the situation in the wake of the fraudulent Copenhagen and Cancun meetings.

We support the valiant Egyptian people and their struggle for political rights and social justice.

We are not opposed to the people of Israel; we are opposed to the genocide of the Palestinian people and in favor of their right to an independent state.

We are not in favor of war, but rather in favor of peace among all peoples.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 13, 2011
9:14 p.m.

When the Spanish “discovered” us five hundred years ago, the estimated population on the Island was no more than 200,000 inhabitants who were living in harmony with nature. Their main sources of food came from the rivers, lakes and seas rich in protein; they were also carrying out a rudimentary form of agriculture that supplied them with calories, vitamins, mineral salts and fibre.

In some regions of Cuba they still have the custom of making “casabe”, a kind of bread made from casaba. Certain fruits and small wild animals rounded off their diets. They used to concoct a beverage with fermented products and they brought to world culture the rather unhealthy habit of smoking.

The current population of Cuba is possibly 60 times greater than the one existing then. Although the Spanish mixed with the native population, they practically exterminated them by making them work in the fields as semi-slaves and by the search for gold in the river sands.

The native population was replaced by the importing of Africans captured by force and enslaved, a cruel practice that was applied during centuries.

Of great importance for our existence were the eating habits that were created. We were turned into consumers of pork, beef, lamb, milk, cheese and other by-products; wheat, oats, barley, chickpeas, kidney beans, peas and other legumes coming from different climates.

Originally we had corn and sugar cane was introduced among the calorie-rich plants.

Coffee was brought in by the conquistadors from Africa; cacao was possibly brought from Mexico. Both of these, along with sugar, tobacco and other tropical products became enormous sources of resources for the metropolis after the slave rebellion in Haiti that occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The slave-based production system lasted in fact until the transfer of Cuban sovereignty by Spanish colonialism to the United States, in a bloody and extraordinary war where Spain had been defeated by the Cubans.

When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, our island was a true Yankee colony. The United States had duped and disarmed our Liberation Army. One couldn’t speak of developed agriculture, but of immense plantations exploited on the base of manual and animal labor that in general used neither fertilizers nor machinery. The great sugar mills belonged to the Americans. Several of them had more than one hundred thousand hectares; others were tens of thousands of hectares in size. All together there were more than 150 sugar mills, including those belonging to Cubans; they were working less than four months a year.

The US received Cuban sugar during two great world wars, and had conceded a sales quota on its markets to our country, tied in with commercial commitments and limitations on our agricultural production, despite the fact that sugar was in part produced by them. Other decisive branches of the economy such as the ports and the oil refineries were American property. Their companies possessed huge ships, industrial centers, mines, docks, maritime and rail lines along with public services as vital as the electric and telephone systems.

For those who want to understand, that’s all you need.

In spite of the fact that the necessities of rice, corn, fats, grains and other food production were important, the United States was imposing determinate limits on everything that was in competition with its own domestic production, including the subsidized sugar beet.

Of course, in terms of food production it is a real fact that within the geographical limits of a small, rainy and hurricane-beset tropical country bereft of machinery, dams, irrigation systems and adequate equipment, Cuba could not have the resources, nor did it have the conditions to compete with the American mechanized productions of soy, sunflower, corn, legumes and rice. Some of these, such as wheat and barley could not be grown in our country.

It is a fact that the Cuban Revolution has not enjoyed a moment of peace. The Agrarian Reform had barely been passed, before the five-month mark of the revolutionary triumph had been reached and the programs of sabotage, fires, obstruction and the use of harmful chemical measures were begun against our country. These even came to include pests to attack vital productions and even human health.

By underestimating our people and their decision to fight for their rights and their independence, they committed an error.

Of course, none of us at that time possessed the experience collected during many years; we were taking off from fair ideas and a revolutionary conception. Perhaps the main error of idealism that was committed, was to think that in the world there was a determinate amount of justice and respect for the rights of peoples when, certainly, it didn’t exist at all. Nevertheless, the decision to fight wouldn’t depend on this.

The first task taking up our efforts was to prepare for the struggle that was coming up.

Experience acquired in the heroic battle against Batista’s tyranny showed that the enemy, no matter what his strength, could not defeat the Cuban people.

The country’s preparation for the struggle turned into the people’s main effort, and it took us to episodes that were as decisive as the battle against the mercenary invasion promoted by the United States in April of 1961, the landing at the Bay of Pigs escorted by the US Marines and Yankee planes.

Unable to resign themselves to the independence and exercise of the sovereign rights of Cuba, the government of that country adopted the decision to invade our territory. The USSR had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The Revolution did not assume a socialist nature because of support from the USSR; it was the other way around: support from the USSR was produced by the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. To such a degree, that when the USSR disappears, Cuba keeps on being socialist.

By some means, the USSR learned that Kennedy would try to use Cuba with the same method that they had applied in Hungary. That led to the errors committed by Khrushchev in regards to the October Crisis that I saw the need to criticize. But it was not only Khrushchev who made a mistake, so did Kennedy. Cuba had nothing to do with the history of Hungary, and the USSR had nothing to do with the Revolution in Cuba. This was the sole and exclusive fruit of the struggle of our people. Khrushchev merely made the brotherly gesture of sending weapons to Cuba when it was being threatened by the invasion that was organized, trained, armed and transported by the United States. Without the weapons sent to Cuba, our people would have defeated the mercenary forces as it had defeated Batista’s army and occupied all the military equipment it possessed: 100,000 weapons. If the direct invasion of the United States against Cuba had occurred, our people would have been fighting right up to the present time against its soldiers, who would surely have had to fight against millions of Latin Americans. The US had committed the greatest mistake in all its history and perhaps the USSR would still be in existence today.

Hours prior to the invasion, after the cunning attack on our air force bases by US planes painted with Cuban insignia, the socialist nature of our Revolution was declared. The Cuban people fought for socialism in that battle that passed into history as the first victory against imperialism in the Americas.

Ten US presidents have come and gone, the eleventh is now passing through and the Socialist Revolution is standing firm. Also coming and going were all the governments that were accomplices to the crimes of the United States against Cuba, and our Revolution is standing firm. The USSR has disappeared and the Revolution moved forward. It didn’t take place with the permission of the United States; instead it is being submitted to a cruel and merciless blockade; with terrorist acts that took the lives or injured thousands of people, whose authors today enjoy total impunity; anti-terrorist Cuban fighters are condemned to life sentences; a so-called Cuban Adjustment Act concedes entry, residence and employment in the United States. Cuba is the only country in the world whose citizens have that privilege, one that is denied to Haitians after the earthquake that killed more than 300,000 persons and the rest of the citizens in the hemisphere, those being persecuted and expelled by the empire. Nevertheless, the Cuban Revolution stands firm.

Cuba is the only country on the planet that cannot be visited by US citizens; but Cuba exists and stands firm, only 90 miles away from the United States, fighting its heroic fight.

We, the Cuban revolutionaries, have committed errors, and we shall go on making mistakes, but never shall we make the mistake of being traitors.

Never have we chosen illegality, lies, demagoguery, duping the people, pretence, hypocrisy, opportunism, bribery, the total lack of ethics, abuses of power, including crime and repugnant tortures which, with obvious albeit doubtlessly worthy exceptions, have characterized the conduct of the presidents of the United States.

At this moment, humankind is facing serious problems without precedent. The worst is that to a large degree the solutions shall depend upon the richest and most developed countries, the countries that shall reach a situation which they are really in no condition to face unless the world they have been trying to mould for their egoistic interests crumbles around them and which inevitably leads to disaster.

I am not speaking about wars, whose risks and consequences have been transmitted by wise and brilliant people, including many Americans.

I am referring to the food crisis originating in the economic facts and the climatic changes that are apparently now irreversible as a consequence of the actions of man, but which, at any rate, human minds are under the obligation to face in a hurry. For years, which was really time lost, the matter was being talked about. But the country which emits the greatest amount of polluting gases in the world, the United States, was regularly ignoring world opinion. Leaving protocol and the other customary stupidities of the men of state in consumer societies to one side, things that the influence of the media usually bewildered them with once they came into power, the reality is that they didn’t pay any attention to the matter. An alcoholic, whose problems were widely known, and I don’t need to name him, imposed his line of thinking upon the international community.

The problems have suddenly taken shape now, through the phenomena that are being repeated on every continent: heat waves, forest fires, losses of harvests in Russia, with many victims; climate changes in China, excessive rainfalls or droughts, progressive losses of water reserves in the Himalayas threatening India, China, Pakistan and other countries; excessive rainfall in Australia that have flooded almost a million square kilometers; unusually harsh and unseasonable cold waves in Europe that have considerable impact on agriculture; droughts in Canada; unusual cold waves there and in the US; unprecedented rain in Colombia affecting millions of farming land; never-before seen rainfall in Venezuela; catastrophes caused by excessive rain in the great cities of Brazil and droughts in the South. There is practically no region in the world where such events have not taken place.

Productions of wheat, soy bean, corn, rice and other numerous grains and legumes that make up the food base of the world – whose population today according to calculations totals almost 6.9 billion inhabitants, now coming close to the new figure of 7billion, and where more than one billion are suffering from hunger and malnutrition – are being seriously affected by climate changes, creating a very serious problem in the world. When reserves have not been totally recovered or just partially in some items, a serious threat is now creating problems and destabilization in many States.

More than 80 countries, all of them in the Third World, already having difficult problems of their own, are being threatened with real famines.

I shall limit myself to quote these statements and reports, in a summary fashion, which have been published in the last few days:

“The UN is warning about the risk of a new food crisis.

“January 11, 2011 (AFP)”

“‘We are facing a very tense situation’…” FAO corroborates.

“Some 80 countries are facing a shortage of food…”

“The global rate of prices for basic agricultural products (grains, meat, sugar, oleaginous and dairy products) is currently at its highest level since FAO began to use that index rate 20 years ago.”

“UNITED NATIONS, January (IPS),”

“The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), with headquarters in Rome, last week alerted that world prices for rice, wheat, sugar, barley and meat […] would undergo significant increases in 2011…”

“PARIS, January 10 (Reuters) – President Nicolas Sarkozy of France shall be taking his campaign to confront the high global food prices to Washington this week …”

“Basel (Switzerland), January 10 (EFE).- The president of the Central European Bank (BCE), Jean Claude Trichet, spokesperson for the governors of the central banks of the Group of 10 (G-10), today cautioned about the strong rise in food prices and the inflationist threat in emerging economies.”

“The World Bank fears a crisis in the price of foods, January 15 (BBC)

“The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, told the BBC that the crisis would be deeper than that of 2008.”

“MEXICO DF, January 7 (Reuters)”

“The annual rhythm of inflation for foods has increased threefold in Mexico in November as compared to two months ago…”

“Washington, January 18 (EFE)

“The climate change will aggravate the lack of foods, according to a study.”

“‘Since more than 20 years ago, scientists have been alerting about the impact of climate change, but nothing is changing other than the increase in emissions that cause global warning’, Liliana Hisas, executive director of the US affiliate of this organization told EFE.

“Osvaldo Canziani, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and scientific advisor for the report, indicated that ‘in the entire world meteorological episodes and extreme climatic conditions are being recorded, and increases in average surface temperatures are exacerbating the intensity of these episodes’.”

“(Reuters) January 18, Algeria is buying wheat to avoid shortages and unrest.

“The State grain agency of Algeria has bought around 1 million tons of wheat in the last two weeks to avoid shortages in the case of unrest, a Ministry of Agriculture source informed Reuters.

“(Reuters) January 18, Wheat shows a strong gain in Chicago after Algerian purchases.”

“The Economist, January 18, 2011

“World alert due to food prices”

“Among the main causes are the floods and droughts caused by climatic changes, the use of foods to manufacture bio-fuels and speculation in commodities prices.”

The problems are dramatically serious. However, all is not lost.

Current calculated wheat production reached almost 650 million tons.

That of corn surpasses that amount and nears 770 million tons.

Soy could come close to 260 million tons; of this the US calculates 92 million and Brazil 77 million. They are the two greatest producers. The general data on grains and legumes available in 2011 are well-known.

The first matter to be resolved by the world community would be to choose between foods and bio-fuels. Brazil, a developing country, shall of course have to be compensated.

If the millions of tons of soy and corn being invested into bio-fuels are routed towards the production of foods, the unusual rise in prices would cease and the world`s scientists would be able to propose formulae that might in some way or other halt and even reverse the situation.

We have lost too much time. The time has come to do something now.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 19, 2011
9:55 p.m.

It was the deed of an unbalanced person, drunk on the preaching of hatred that reigns in American society, where the fascist Tea Party has imposed its extremism on the Republican Party which, under the aegis of George W. Bush, led the world to where it is now, on the brink of the abyss.

Added to the disaster of wars was the greatest economic crisis in the history of the United States and a government debt that today is equal to 100 percent of the GDP, together with a monthly deficit totaling more than 80 billion USD and again more homes being lost as a result of unpaid mortgages. The prices of oil, metals, and food are progressively going up. Lack of confidence in paper currency causes gold purchases to increase and there are quite a few people who see the price of gold ascending to $ 2,000 a Troy ounce. There are some who even think it will reach $2,500.

Climatic phenomena have worsened, with considerable losses to harvests in the Russian Federation, Europe, China, Australia, North and South America and in other areas, putting in danger the food supplies for more than 80 Third World countries, creating political instability in a growing number of them.

The world is facing so many political, military, energy, food and environmental problems that there is no country wanting the United States to return to extremist positions that would increase the risks of nuclear war.

International condemnation of the crime in Arizona was almost unanimous, a crime that demonstrates an expression of that extremism. No one expected the President of the United States to make an impassioned or confrontational speech, something that wouldn’t correspond to his style or with the domestic circumstances and the climate of irrational hatred that is prevailing in the United States. The victims of the shooting were definitely brave, each with their merit, and in general they were humble citizens; if it hadn’t been so, they wouldn’t have been there, defending the right of all Americans to medical care and opposing the anti-immigrant laws.

The mother of a 9-year-old girl born on September 11th had courageously stated that the hatred unleashed in the world had to cease. I do not harbor any doubt in the least that the victims were worthy of recognition by the President of the United States, along with the citizens of Tucson, the students at the University and the doctors who, whenever events of this type occur, always unreservedly express the solidarity which human beings carry inside themselves. The severely wounded congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, deserves the national and international accolade being given her. Today, the medical team was continuing to give positive information on the state of her condition.

Of course, Obama’s speech was lacking the moral condemnation of the policies which inspired such an act.

I was trying to imagine how men such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have acted in similar circumstances, not to mention Lincoln who didn’t shrink from giving his famous Gettysburg Address. What other moment is the President of the United States waiting for to express the opinion that I am sure is being shared by the great majority of US people?

It is not a matter of the government of the United States lacking an exceptional personality to lead it. What transforms a president into a historical personage, who has been able to reach that position because of his merits, does not lie in the person, but in the need for him at a determinate moment in the history of his nation.

Yesterday when he began his speech, he looked tense, and very much dependent on the written pages. He soon recovered his calm, his usual command of the stage, and the precise words to express his ideas. What he didn’t say was because he didn’t want to say it.

For delivery of well-written and just praise for those deserving it, he could be awarded a prize.

For a political speech, he left a lot to be desired.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 13, 2011
7:38 p.m.

Many readers, saturated with acronyms, may wonder: What is the G-20? This is one of the many miscreations concocted by the most powerful empire and its allies, who also created the G-7: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada.  Later on they decided to admit Russia in a club that was then called the G-8.

Afterwards they condescended to admit 5 important emerging countries: China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Then the group membership increased after the inclusion of the member countries of the OECD –another acronym-, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, the Republic of Korea and Turkey. The group was also joined by Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Indonesia, and they all summed up 19.  The twentieth member of the G-20 was no other than the European Union.  As from this year, 2010, one country, Spain, holds the peculiar category of “permanent guest.”

Another important international high level meeting is taking place almost simultaneously in Japan:  the APEC meeting.

If patient readers bother to add to the former group the following countries: Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Chinese province of Taiwan, Papua-New Guinea, Chile, Peru and Vietnam -all of them with a significant trade volume, with coasts washed by the Pacific Ocean waters- the result would be what is called the APEC: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, and with that the entire jigsaw puzzle is completed. They would only need a map, but a laptop could perfectly provide that.

At such international events crucial international economic and financial issues are discussed.  The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with decision-making powers when it comes to financial matters, have their own master:  the United States.

It is important to remember that after the Second World War, the US industry and agriculture remained intact; those in Western Europe were totally destroyed, with the exceptions of Switzerland and Sweden.  The USSR had been materially devastated and scored huge material losses that surpassed the figure of 25 million persons.  Japan was defeated, in ruins and occupied.  Around 80 per cent of the world’s gold reserves were sent to the United States.

In a remote, though spacious and comfortable hotel at Bretton Woods, a small community of the US north eastern state of New Hampshire, the Monetary and Financial Conference of the recently created United Nations Organization was held from July 1st to 22 of 1944.

The United States was granted the exceptional privilege of turning its paper money into an international hard currency pegged to a gold standard mechanism fixed at 35 US dollars per one Troy ounce of gold.

Since the overwhelming majority of countries keep their foreign exchange reserves in the US banks -which is the same as granting a significant loan to the richest country in the world-, the gold pattern mechanism established at least a ceiling for the unrestricted issuance of paper money.  This was at least some sort of guarantee on the value of the reserves that countries kept in US banks.

Based on that enormous privilege -and for as long as the issuance of paper money was limited by the gold standard mechanism- that powerful country continued to increase its control over the planet’s wealth.

The military adventures of the United States in alliance with the former colonial powers, particularly the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and the recently created West Germany, led that country into other military adventures and wars that plunged the monetary system established at Bretton Woods into a crisis.

At the time of the genocidal war in Vietnam, a country against which the US was at the verge of using nuclear weapons, the US President took the shameless and unilateral decision of suspending the dollar’s gold pattern.  Ever since then, there have been no limits to the issuance of paper money. That privilege was so much overused that the value of the Troy ounce of gold went from 35 dollars to figures way above 1 400 dollars, that is, no less than 40 times the value it kept for 27 years until 1971, when Richard Nixon took such nefarious decision.

The worst thing about the present economic crisis that affects the American society today is that former anti-crisis measures applied at different moments in the history of the US imperialist capitalist system have not helped it now to resume its usual pace.  The US is wracked by a national debt close to 14 billion dollars -that is, as much as the US GDP- and the fiscal deficit remains unchanged.  The sky-rocketing banks bailout loans and interest rates almost equal to zero have hardly decreased unemployment to figures below 10 per cent. The number of households whose houses are being closed out have barely decreased either. Its gigantic defense budgets which are much higher than those of the rest of the world – and what is worse, those devoted to the war- have continued to grow.

The US President, who was elected hardly two years ago by one of the traditional parties, has been dealt the biggest defeat ever remembered in the last three fourths of a century.  Such a reaction is a combination of frustration and racism.

The US economist and writer William K. Black wrote a memorable phrase: “The best way to rob a bank is to own one”.  The most reactionary sectors in the United States are sharpening their teeth and have appropriated an idea that would be the antithesis of the one expressed by the Bolsheviks in October of 1917:  “All power to the US extreme right.”

Seemingly, the US government, with its traditional anti-crisis measures, resorted to another desperate decision: the Federal Reserve announced it would buy 600 billion US dollars before the G-20 meeting.

On Wednesday November 10, one of the most important US news agencies reported that “President Obama had arrived in South Korea to attend meetings of the world’s top 20 economic powers.”

“Tensions over currencies and trade gaps have simmered ahead of the summit following a decision by the U.S. to flood its sluggish economy with $600 billion in cash that has alarmed leaders around the globe.

“Obama has defended the move by the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

On November 11, the same agency reported to the world’s public opinion the following:

“A strong sense of pessimism shrouded the start of an economic summit of rich and emerging economies Thursday […] with world leaders arriving in Seoul sharply divided over currency and trade policies.

“Established in 1999 and raised to summit level two years ago, the G-20 has— encompassing rich nations such as Germany and the U.S. as well as emerging giants such as China and Brazil — has become the centerpiece of international efforts to revive the global economy and prevent future financial meltdowns…”

“Failure in Seoul could have severe consequences. The risk is that countries would try to keep their currencies artificially low to give their exporters a competitive edge in global markets. That could lead to a destructive trade war.

“Countries might throw up barriers to imports — a repeat of policies that worsened the Great Depression.

There are countries, such as the United States, whose  top priority would be “to get China to allow its currency rise” against other currencies that would allow for a reduction of the huge trading surplus of the Asian giant with Washington, since it will make Chinese exports to be more expensive and  US imports cheaper.

“There are those which irate over U.S. Federal Reserve plans to pump $600 billion of new money into the sluggish American economy”.  They see this measure as a selfish move to fill markets with dollars, thus devaluing that currency and giving US exporters and unfair price edge.

“The G-20 countries […] are finding little common ground on the most vexing problem: What to do about a global economy that depends on huge U.S. trade deficits with China, Germany and Japan?”

“Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, warned that the world would go “bankrupt” if rich countries cut back on consumption and tried to export their way to prosperity.”

“‘If the rich countries are not consuming and want to grow its economy on exports, the world goes bankrupt because there would be no one to buy. Everybody would like to sell…’”

The summit started amid a rather pessimistic ambiance for Obama and the South Korean President Li Myung-bak, “whose negotiators failed to agree on a long-stalled free trade agreement that it was hoped could be reached this week.”

“G-20 leaders gathered Thursday evening at Seoul’s grand National Museum of Korea for the dinner that marked the official start of the two-day event.”

“Outside, a few thousand protesters rallied against the G-20 and the South Korean government.”

Today, Friday 12, the summit concluded with a declaration that contained 20 items and 32 paragraphs.

Presumably, the world is not made up only by the 32 countries that belong to the G-20 or only by those which belong to the APEC.  The 187 nations that voted in favor of lifting the blockade against Cuba, as opposed to the two that voted against and the two that abstained, make a total of 192. For 160 of them there is no forum whatsoever where they could express a single word about the imperial plundering of their resources or about their urgent economic needs.  In Seoul, the United Nations does not even exist. Won’t that honorable institution say a single word about it?

In these days European news agencies have been publishing really tragic news about Haiti – where, in only minutes, an earthquake killed around 250 000 persons in January this year.

According to reports, the Haitian authorities have warned about the speed with which the cholera epidemic is spreading throughout the city of Gonaives, in the northern part of the island.  The Major of that coastal village, Pierreleus Saint-Justin, asserts he has personally buried 31 corpses on Tuesday, and expected to bury another 15.

“Others could be dying as we speak”, he added.  The report states that as from November 5, 70 corpses have been buried only in the urban area of Gonaives, but there are more people who have died in rural areas nearby the city.

According to the report, the situation is becoming catastrophic in Gonaives.  The floods caused by hurricane ‘Tomas’ could make the situation to be even worse.”

Last Wednesday, the health authorities in Haiti fixed at 643 the number of victims who had died until November 8 in the entire country as a result of the epidemic. The number of persons infected with the cholera virus during the same period amounts to 9 971.  Radio stations report that the figures to be released on Friday could include more than 700 deadly casualties.

The government asserts now that the disease is taking a serious toll on the population of Port-au-Prince and is threatening the capital outskirts, where more than one million people have been living in tents since the earthquake on January 12.

News are reporting today a figure of 796 deaths and a total of 12 303 persons infected.

More than 3 million inhabitants are now threatened; many of them live in tents and among the rubble left by the earthquake, without potable water.

The main US agency reported yesterday that the first part of the US Fund for the Reconstruction of Haiti was already on the way now, more than seven months after being committed to help rebuilding the country devastated by the earthquake in January.

Reportedly, in the next few days, the agency will transfer approximately 120 million dollars – around one tenth of the amount promised- to the Fund for the Reconstruction of Haiti, managed by the World Bank, as was stated by P.J.Crowley, the State Department’s speaker.

An assistant of the State Department stated that the money allocated to the Fund would be used to remove the rubble, build houses, grant credits, support and educational reform program to be implemented by the Inter-American Development Bank and support the Haitian government budget.

Not a single word has been said about the cholera epidemics, a disease that for years affected many countries in South America and could spread throughout the Caribbean and other parts of our hemisphere.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 12, 2010
8:49 p.m.

Obama came down from the residence and saw Biden.  Biden advised him:  “What you’re about to do is a presidential order; it is no longer an issue of continuing a discussion. This is not what you think. This is an order. Without them, we’re locked into in Vietnam”.

Obama answered: “I’m not signing on to a failure. If what I propose is not working, I’m not going to be like these other presidents and stick to it based on my ego or my politics, my political security. This is what I’m going to announce”, and he distributed copies of his six-page terms sheet.

“There’s going to be a 30,000-troop surge. In December of 2010, there would be an assessment to see what’s working and was not.  In July 2011 we’re going to begin to thin out.”

“In 2010 we will not be having a conversation of how to do more. There would be no repeat of what had happened that year… This is neither counterinsurgency nor nation building. The costs are prohibitive”, Obama stated.

The military had gotten almost everything they were asking for.

Petraeus and Mullen ratified their support for the president. Emmanuel was concerned about the cost of the operation–more than 30 billion dollars.

Biden acknowledged that that wasn’t a negotiation; it was an order by the commander in chief.  It was a mission change, and if that wasn’t how it was perceived, the months of work spent on this job couldn’t be justified.

The president informed Eikenberry and McChrystal of his decision via a video-conference.  Both agreed.

Biden was convinced that the president had hammered a stake into the heart of the expanded counterinsurgent offensive.

Petraeus said in private: “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq. Iraq is a bit of a metaphor for this situation. Yes, there has been an enormous progress in Iraq.  But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq and you have to stay vigilant. This is the kind of fight we are in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives”.

Obama gave his speech at the Eisenhower Auditorium at West Point Military Academy.

The next day, Clinton and Gates appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to speak about the new plan.

Many Republicans were troubled by the deadline of July 2011 when supposedly the troops would begin to transfer out of Afghanistan.

Petraeus later said that strategy progress could take many forms, that all he needed was to show that there had been advances and that would be sufficient to add time to the clock and get what they needed.

Lute advised him that that was a dramatic misreading of the president, that Obama was opposed to the idea of long-term commitment.

CHAPTERS 30 and 31

On April 3rd, Petraeus met with Derek Harvey, his confidential intelligence adviser. Harvey drew one of the most pessimistic pictures of the war. He advised that the political and diplomatic strategy was not connected to the military strategy. “It’s not going to work”, he said. “We aren’t going to achieve the objectives we’ve set out for ourselves”. Harvey foresaw a complete return to the situation before September 11. Petraeus asked what were the options and Harvey thought that supporting the Karzai government was counterproductive.

He said that election results had strengthened Karzai and that he was now getting everything he wanted.

McChrystal’s troops hadn’t succeeded in clearing out the key areas. “The enemy is just beginning to adapt”, added Harvey.

On April 16th the president meets with the National Security Council to analyze the up-dated information on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The president began by asking about the situation in specific areas; in all of them, the troops were seen to be resisting and in none of them had responsibility been transferred to the local forces.

The pattern being established was clear. To resist, resist for years without advancing or transfers.

Nobody at the meeting dared to ask when the transfer would begin.

Donilon and Lute had prepared some questions so that the president could concentrate on the situation in Khandahar.

The president recommended that McChrystal think about how we were going to know if we were being successful and when we would know that.

The result of the meeting was the first strike for the general.

Brigadier General Lawrence Nicholson visited Jones and Lute at the White House.  Nicholson was reminded of the 12-month term he had to show progress attained and to begin the transfer.  When would the Marines be ready to do something more, for example, enter Khandahar, or return home and be part of those who would be returning in 2011?

Nicholson said he needed at least another 12 months, and that was for the districts that were in better shape. Lute reminded him that that hadn’t been the commitment, that they still hadn’t entered the suburbs of Khandahar, the place where the Taliban were to establish themselves. What was important was Khandahar.

Nicholson said that maybe they could get there in 24 months if they eliminated the problem of the poppy fields since that was what was feeding the insurgency.

Lute wondered how they were going to achieve that.  Despite the fact that a plague had wiped out 33 percent of the crops, the outlook for a reduced funding for the insurgents was remote.  In spite of the Afghan conspiracy theories, the CIA had not yet developed an insect that would attack the poppy.

McChrystal was reporting some advances, but when Lute got into the figures, the reality was quite different.

CHAPTERS 32 and 33

Sixteen very rough months had gone by for Dennis Blair.  He had failed in his efforts to name the chief intelligence officer in each of the capitals.  The CIA had won and the feud had become public. In his opinion, the CIA was using the President’s Daily Brief so that Obama could learn about their triumphs.

Blair was feeling so frustrated that on one occasion he said: “I think the CIA is fundamentally an organization that’s like a really finely train not very smart, dangerous animal that needs to be controlled very closely by adults”.

In May of 2010, Obama had asked Jones and others if it wasn’t already time to get rid of Blair. There had been many discussions with the CIA and Blair had put on a lot of pressure for the signing of a no-spying agreement with the French, something that was opposed by Obama and the rest of the cabinet.

Obama phoned him and let him know of his decision to fire him. That he should present some personal excuse.

Blair was deeply offended.  He wasn’t ill, his family was fine, and he had been telling people that he would stay as DNI for four years, because part of the problem with the office was the constant turnover at the top.

On June 21, Gates informs Jones about the article printed about McChrystal  in Rolling Stone magazine. McChrystal was saying that Jones was a “clown” who had been stuck in the year 1985; that Obama’s strategy wanted to sell an unsellable position.

McChrystal called Biden and acknowledged that he had jeopardized the mission.   He apologized to Holbrooke and presented his resignation to Gates.

Gates proposed to Obama that he criticize McChrystal in the first two paragraphs of his statement saying “I think that the general committed a significant mistake and exercised poor judgement”.

Obama accepted McChrystal’s resignation and proposed Petraeus for that position.

Obama met with Petraeus for 40 minutes.

On Wednesday June 23rd, the president announced the changes.  He acknowledged McChrystal’s long service record and said that he was saddened to lose a soldier whom he had gotten to respect and admire.  He added that Petraeus “is setting an extraordinary example of service and patriotism by assuming this difficult post”. And he concluded saying: “I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division”

At the interview Obama had with the author of the book, the president spoke of his ideas regarding the nature of the war and his efforts to limit and eventually end the American´s combat role in Afghanistan.

He was asked about which scene he would start a book or a movie on how he had handled the Afghanistan problem and he replied that perhaps he would begin with the year 2002 when the troop increase for Iraq was being discussed.  Maybe that had been the first speech on foreign policy that got lot of attention.

Obama agreed that the nature of the war was the cost, the time and the undetermined consequences, and he quoted a famous American who had said on one occasion:  “War is hell”.  He was referring to the phrase uttered by the Union Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman, when he said: “…And once the dogs of war are unleashed, you don’t know where it’s going to lead”.

“When I entered into office, we had two wars taking place”, said Obama. I tried to clear up the chaos.

“It is very easy to imagine a situation in which in the absence of a clear strategy, we ended up staying in Afghanistan for another five years, another eight years,   another ten years, and that we would do it not with clear intentions but rather just out of an inertia”.

At the end of the interview, the president realized that almost the entire article was hinging on relations between civilian and military leaders, and he thought he ought to express his own opinions.

“I am probably the first president who is young enough that the Vietnam War wasn’t at the core of my development”.   He was 13 in 1975 when the   United States finally withdrew from Vietnam.

“So I grew up with none of the baggage that arouse out of the dispute of the Vietnam War.  I was also had a lot of confidence, I guess, coming in that the way our system of government works civilians have to make political decisions. And the military carries them out…I also don’t see it as a   hawk/dove kind of thing…So a lot of the political frames through which these debates are being viewed don’t really connect with me generationally.  I’m neither intimidated by our military, nor am I thinking that they’re somehow trying to undermine my role as commander in chief”.

In this final paragraph of Obama’s conversation with Woodward, the president of the United States utters enigmatic words that are revealing.

There are moments when the pressure of the military is strong, persistent and repetitive.  We can perceive the image of a president who is being resisted and challenged, as it happened in ancient Rome when the empire depended practically solely on the power of the legions.

But in ancient Roman times, the planet was totally unknown in its dimensions, physical characteristics and spatial location.  At that time they lacked firearms; there was no trade or global investment, military bases, naval and air forces on a planetary level, hundreds of satellites, instantaneous communications, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons along with radioelectric, electromagnetic and cybernetic weapons; mighty rivalries between powers with nuclear weapons, whose deployment, by those who have less, would be sufficient to put an end to human life; and almost seven billion people who need planet Earth’s natural resources.

It is quite a dramatic picture. On the one hand, Barack Obama, a successful lawyer, highly educated and a consummate speaker, and on the other hand, highly professionalized soldiers, trained all their lives in the use of force and the arts of war, endowed with weapons that can put an end to the human beings living on this planet in just a matter of hours.

What hope for humankind can we derive from this picture?

I remember Bush’s speech at West Point where, as the instrument of that country’s ultra-rightwing, he stated that military officers had to be ready to attack immediately, with no advance warning, the sixty or more dark corners of the world.

In two of those dark corners, Afghanistan and Iraq, the soldiers of the United States are bogged down, after causing millions of deaths.

At the meetings of the National Security Council with Obama, the fear of difficulties that are even more serious, coming from a third country, Pakistan were being expressed.

Relations between the CIA and Bin Laden, the leader of the “Arab group”, were going on right up to the very day of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.

What did the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, inform the American CBS radio and TV broadcasting network?  That on September 10, Osama Bin Laden was undergoing kidney dialysis treatment in the Rawalpindi Military Hospital in Pakistan, a place with close ties with the Pentagon…No attempt to detain the most well-known fugitive in the US was made, and so then it could be that Bin Laden would serve another better purpose.

That information was revealed in Dan Rather’s superb program on January 28, 2002, four and a half months after the terrorist attack that allowed Bush to justify his antiterrorist warfare.

Knowing this facilitates our comprehension of the reason why, in the dialogues with Obama in the White House, it is stated that the most difficult problem could come from Pakistan.

The person who conversed with Obama most respectfully was General Colin Powell who belongs to the Republican Party that opposed his election as the president of the United States.  It is well-known that Powell might have been the first black US president. He preferred not to run for the office. Later on, Bush appointed him Secretary of State. I know that there were people who allegedly were firmly opposed to his running.  But I don’t have enough facts at my disposal to make an opinion about Colin Powell’s motives.

I hope that the summary of the book “Obama’s Wars” has been useful to the readers of my Reflections.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 14, 2010
9:51 pm

President Obama had authorized the drilling of that well, trusting in the capacity of modern technology to produce oil, which he wished to make abundantly available, thus freeing the United States from its dependence on foreign supplies of that product vital to current civilization. Its excessive consumption of oil had already given rise to energetic protests from environmentalists.

Not even George W. Bush had dared to take that step given the bitter experiences suffered in Alaska with a tanker that was transporting extracted oil there.

The accident was caused in the search for that product so desperately needed by the consumer society, which the newer generations inherited from preceding ones, the difference being the unimagined speed at which everything moves these days.

Scientists and environmentalists have presented theories related to disasters that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago with the so-called methane mega-bubbles responsible for colossal tsunamis that swept across a large part of the planet, with winds that reached twice the speed of sound and waves that rose to 1,500 meters in height, wiping out 96% of living species.

They have expressed the fear that, in the Gulf of Mexico – which for some cosmic reason is the region of the planet where carsic rock separates us from the vast layer of methane – that layer could be perforated in the desperate search for oil with the cutting-edge technical equipment available today.

With respect to the BP oil spill, news agencies are reporting:

“…The EPA (Environment Protection Agency) has officially stated is on record that Rig No.1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.”

Events of enormous significance are occurring with unusual frequency.

The first and most immediate is the risk of a nuclear war in the wake of the sinking of the sophisticated flagship Cheonan which, according to the government of South Korea, was the result of a torpedo fired from a submarine of Soviet make – both manufactured more than 50 years ago – while other sources inform the only possible and non-detectable cause: a mine placed by the intelligence services of the United States on the Cheonan’s hull. The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was immediately blamed.

Added to this strange event, some days later came Resolution 1929 of the United Nations Security Council, ordering the inspection of Iranian merchant ships within a time limit of no more than 90 days.

The second, which in part is already producing its devastating effects, is the progressive advance of climate change, the effects of which are even worse, giving rise to the condemnation contained in the documentary “Home,” directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand with the participation of the world’s most eminent ecologists; and now the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a few miles from our homeland, which is generating all kinds of concerns.

On July 20, a cable from the EFE news agency referred to a statement by the now well-known Admiral Thad Allen, coordinator of and responsible for the battle against the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, who “stated that he had authorized BP, owner of the well and responsible for the spill, to continue for another 24 hours with the tests that it is conducting to determine the solidity of the ‘Macondo’ structure after the installation 10 days ago of a new containment dome.”

“According to official data, there are close to 27,000 abandoned wells on the Gulf seabed…”

“Ninety-two days after the accident on the BP platform, the U.S. government’s principal concern is that the underground structure of the well is damaged and that crude is leaking via the rock and will end up flowing out at multiple points of the seabed.”

It is the first time that an official statement has mentioned the fear of oil beginning to flow from wells that are no longer productive.

Readers interested in the issue are setting about sifting the sensationalist aspects from the scientific data. For me, there are events that do not have a satisfactory explanation. Why did Admiral Allen state that “the government’s principal concern is that the underground structure of the well is damaged and that crude is leaking through the rock and will end up flowing out at multiple points of the seabed?” Why did BP state that it cannot be blamed for the crude that appeared 15 kilometers from the damaged well?

We would have to wait for another 15 days that it would take to perforate the auxiliary well, which has an almost parallel trajectory to the one that originated the spill, at a distance of less than five meters from the other one, according to the Cuban group that is analyzing the problem. Meanwhile we must wait like well-behaved children.

If they are so confident about the parallel well, why didn’t they implement that measure earlier?

What will we do afterward if that measure fails like all the rest have?

In a recent interchange that I had with a person who is extremely well informed about the details of the accident, due to his country’s interests, I learned that, given the characteristics and the situation around the well, in that case there is no risk there of a methane emission.

July 23: no news whatsoever appeared on the problem.

The 24th: the DPA agency affirmed that, “a prominent U.S. scientist has accused the British BP oil corporation of bribing experts investigating the black tide in the Gulf of Mexico to delay the publication of data, according to the BBC television network,” but did not relate that immorality to any damage to the structure of the seabed and emissions of oil and unusual methane levels.

July 26: the principal London press media – the BBC, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and others – reported that “a BP board meeting would make a final decision today on whether its CEO, Tony Hayward, is to go, for his mismanagement of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”

For their part, Notimex and El Universal, of Mexico, published that BP “had not made any decision on changes among its directors, and adds that a directors’ meeting is planned for this afternoon.”

The 27th: news agencies informed that the executive president of BP had been dismissed.

July 28: Twelve cables and 14 countries, including the United States and a number of its most important allies, drew up embarrassing statements given the divulgation, by the Wikileaks organization, of secret documents on the war in Afghanistan. Although “Barack Obama admitted that he was ‘concerned’ about the leak… he noted that the information is old and does not contain anything new.”

That was a cynical statement.

“The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said that the documents are evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. forces.”

They so accurately evidenced them that they have shaken U.S. secretiveness to the foundations. They talk of “civilian deaths that were never made public.” It has created conflicts among the parties involved in those atrocities.

On the risks of methane gas emanating from wells that are not in production, total silence.

July 29: an AFP cable informs on the unimaginable: Osama Bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. intelligence services: “… Osama Bin Laden appears in secret reports published by Wikileaks as an active agent, present and adulated by his men in the Afghan-Pakistani area.”

It was known that, during the Afghanis’ fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Osama cooperated with the United States, but the world supposed that, in his fight against foreign invasion, he accepted the support of the United States and NATO as a necessity and that, once the country was liberated, he rejected foreign interference by creating the Al Qaeda organization to combat the United States. Many countries, Cuba among them, condemn his terrorist methods that do not exclude the death of countless innocent victims.

What a surprise for world public opinion now to discover that Al Qaeda was a creation of the government of that country.

That was the justification for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and one of the motives, among others, for the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq by the military forces of the United States. Two countries in which thousands of young Americans have died and a large number of them have been mutilated. Between the two, more than 150,000 U.S. soldiers are committed for an indefinite period and together with them, members of units of the militaristic NATO organization, and other allies like Australia and South Korea.

On July 29, a photo was published of a 22-year-old U.S. citizen, Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst, who leaked 240,000 classified documents to the Wikileaks website. There has been no statement as to his guilt or innocence. However, nobody can touch one hair of his head. The members of Wikileaks have sworn to make the truth known to the world.

The Brazilian theologian Frei Betto published an article datelined July 30, titled “Cry of the earth, clamor of the peoples.”

Two paragraphs express the essence of its content. “The ancient Greeks had already noted: Gaya Earth, is a living organism. And we are the fruit of her, engendered in 13.7 billion years of evolution. However, in the last 200 years we have not known how to take care of her, but have transformed her into merchandise, from which it is hoped to obtain the maximum profit.”

“Today all forms of life on the planet are threatened, including the human race (two-thirds of the world population is surviving below the poverty line) and Earth herself. Avoiding the anticipation of the Apocalypse demands questioning the myths of modernity – as market, development, uninational state – all of them based on instrumental reason.”

For its part, that same day AFP published: “The People’s Republic of China ‘does not approve of the unilateral sanctions’ adopted by the European Union against Iran, Jiang Yu, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, stated today.”

Likewise Russia delivered an energetic protest condemning the sanction of that region, closely allied to the United States.

July 30: an AFP cable notes that the Israeli defense minister stated: “The sanctions imposed on Iran by the UN… will not make it suspend its uranium enrichment activities in search of the atomic bomb.”

August 1: an AFP cable notes “High-ranking military chief of the Guardians of the Revolution warned the U.S. today against a possible attack on Iran.”

“Israel did not discount military action against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program.”

“The international community, headed by Washington, recently intensified its pressure on Iran, accused of seeking to equip itself with nuclear weapons via a covert civil nuclear program.”

“Javani’s affirmations preceded a statement from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, who assured this Sunday that a U.S. plan of attack on Iran is in place to stop Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

August 2: an AFP news report similar in content to those of other news agencies informed:

“’I have to travel to New York in September to take part in the UN General Assembly. I am prepared to sit down with Obama, face to face, man to man, before the media in order to find the best solution,’ Ahmadinejad affirmed during a speech broadcast by state television.”

“But President Ahmadinejad warned that the dialogue will have to be based on mutual respect.

“’If they believe that they can wave a wand and tell us that we have to accept everything that they say, that will not happen,’ he added. The Western powers ‘do not understand that things have changed in the world,’ he added.”

“’You are backing a country that has hundreds of nuclear weapons but you are saying that you want to stop Iran, which could possibly have them some day…’”

The Iranians have stated that they will fire 100 rockets against every one of the U.S. and Israeli ships that are blockading Iran, as soon as they inspect any Iranian merchant ship.

In that way, when Obama gives the order to comply with the Security Council resolution, he will be decreeing the sinking of all the U.S. warships in that area.

Never before has such a dramatic decision fallen upon a president of the United States. He should have foreseen that.

On this occasion, for the first time in my life, I am addressing United States President Barack Obama:

You must know that it is in your hands to offer humanity the only real possibility of peace. Only on one occasion can you make use of your prerogatives by giving the order to fire.

It is possible that later, on the basis of this traumatic experience, solutions might be found that will not lead us once again to this apocalyptical situation. Everybody in your country, including your worst adversaries of the left or the right, will doubtless be grateful to you, and also the people of the United States, who are not in any way guilty of the situation created.

I ask you to deign to hear this appeal that I am conveying to you in the name of the Cuban people.

I understand that a rapid response cannot be expected, nor would you ever give one. Think it through well, consult your specialists, ask your most powerful allies and international adversaries for their opinion on the matter.

I am not interested in honors or glories. Do it!

The world really can be liberated from nuclear weapons and also conventional ones.

The worst of all the variants will be nuclear war, which is already virtually inevitable. PREVENT IT!

Fidel Castro Ruz

August 3, 2010
6:00 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

The most advanced research centers assure that very little time is left for avoiding an irreversible catastrophe. James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute, says that a level of 350 parts carbon dioxide per million is still tolerable; today, however, the figure is in excess of 390 and it is increasing at a rate of 2 parts per million every year, exceeding the levels of 600,000 years ago. Each one of the last two decades has been the hottest ever recorded. The above-mentioned gas increased 80 parts per million in the last 150 years.

The ice of the Artic Sea, the vast, two-kilometer-thick layer that covers Greenland, the glaciers of South America which feed its principle sources of freshwater, the colossal volume that covers Antarctica, the layer that covers Kilimanjaro, the ice that covers the Himalayas and the enormous frozen mass of Siberia are visibly melting. Notable scientists fear qualitative jumps in these natural phenomena that give rise to changes.

Humanity placed great hope in the Copenhagen Summit, after the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997, which entered into effect in 2005. The summit’s resounding failure gave way to shameful episodes that require due clarification.

The United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, issues 25% of its carbon dioxide. The new president of the United States had promised to cooperate with international efforts to confront a problem that is affecting that country as much as the rest of the world. During meetings prior to the summit, it became evident that the leaders of that nation and of the richest nations maneuvered to make the weight of the sacrifice fall onto emerging and poor countries.

A large number of leaders and thousands of representatives of social movements and scientific institutions, determined to fight to preserve humanity from the greatest threat in its history went to Copenhagen, invited by the summit’s organizers. In order to focus on the political aspects of the summit, I will not go into details concerning the brutality of the Danish public forces, which attacked thousands of demonstrators and guests of the social movements and scientists who went to Denmark’s capital.

In Copenhagen, real chaos prevailed, and unbelievable things happened. Social movements and scientific institutions were not allowed to attend the debates. There were heads of state and government who were not even able to issue their opinions on vital problems. Obama and the leaders of the richest countries took over the conference with the complicity of the Danish government. The agencies of the United Nations were relegated.

Barack Obama, who arrived on the last day of the summit to remain there for only 12 hours, met with two groups of guests “hand-picked” by him and his collaborators. Together with one of them, he met with the rest of the highest delegations in the plenary hall. He spoke and immediately left via the back door. In that plenary session, except for the small group selected by him, the representatives of other countries were not allowed to speak. During that meeting, the presidents of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela were allowed to speak, because the president of the summit had no alternative than to concede that in the face of the strenuous demands of those present.

In an adjoining room, Obama met with the leaders of the richest countries, several of the most important emerging states, and two very poor ones. He presented a document, negotiated with two or three of the most important countries, ignored the United Nations General Assembly, gave press conferences, and marched away like Julius Caesar during one of his victorious campaigns in Asia Minor, which prompted him to exclaim, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Even Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom, had affirmed on October 19, “If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late.”

Brown concluded his speech with dramatic words: “We cannot afford to fail. If we act now; if we act together; if we act with vision and resolve, success at Copenhagen is still within our reach. But if we falter, the earth itself will be at risk… For the planet there is no plan B.”

Now he arrogantly stated that the United Nations cannot be taken hostage by a small group of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Tuvalu, while accusing China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging states of giving in to the seduction of the United States and signing a document that dumps the Kyoto Protocol into the garbage bin and contains no binding commitment whatsoever on the part of the United States and its rich allies.

I feel obliged to remember that the United Nations was born just six decades ago, after the last World War. There were no more than 50 independent countries at the time. Today, it is made up of more than 190 independent states, after the odious colonial system ceased to exist because of the determined struggles of the peoples. Even the People’s Republic of China was denied UN membership for many years, and a puppet government held its representation in that institution and on its privileged Security Council.

The tenacious support of a growing number of Third World countries was indispensable to the international recognition of China, and an extremely important factor for the United States and its allies in NATO recognizing its (China’s) rights in the United Nations.

In the historic struggle against fascism, the Soviet Union made the largest contribution. More than 25 million of its sons and daughters died, and enormous destruction ravaged the country. Out of that struggle, it emerged as a superpower, capable of countering, in part, the absolute dominion of the imperial system of the United States and the former colonial powers in their unlimited plunder of the peoples of the Third World. When the USSR disintegrated, the United States extended its political and military power toward the East, toward the heart of Russia, and its influence over the rest of Europe grew. There is nothing strange about what happened in Copenhagen.

I would like to emphasize the unjust and offensive nature of the statements of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and the yanki attempt to impose, as a summit agreement, a document that was never discussed at any time with the participating countries.

At a December 21 press conference, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez stated a truth that is impossible to deny; I will use some of his exact paragraphs: “I would like to emphasized that in Copenhagen, there was no agreement whatsoever of the Conference of the Parties; no decision whatsoever was made with respect to binding or non-binding commitments or international law; there was simply no agreement in Copenhagen.

“The summit was a failure and a deception of world public opinion…. The lack of political will was laid bare….

“It was a step backward in the actions of the international community to prevent or mitigate the effects of climate change….

“The average world temperature could rise by 5 degrees….”

Immediately, our foreign minister added other interesting facts about possible consequences according to the latest scientific investigations.

“From the Kyoto Protocol to date, the emissions of the developed countries have risen by 12.8%… and 55% of that volume comes from the United States.

“One person in the United States consumes, on average, 25 barrels of oil annually; one European, 11; one Chinese citizen, less than two, and one Latin American or Caribbean, less than one.

“Thirty countries, including those of the European Union, consume 80% of the fuel produced.”

The very re
al fact is that the developed countries which signed the Kyoto Protocol drastically increased their emissions. They now wish to replace the base of emissions adopted starting 1990 with that of 2005, with which the United States, the maximum issuer, would reduce its emissions of 25 years earlier by only 3%. It is a shameless mockery of world opinion.

The Cuban foreign minister, speaking on behalf of a group of ALBA countries, defended China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other important states with emerging economies, affirming the concept reached in Kyoto of “common, but differentiated responsibilities; meaning that the historic accumulators and the developed countries, those responsible for this catastrophe, have different responsibilities from those of the small island states, or those of the countries of the South, above all the least-developed countries….

“Responsibilities means financing; responsibilities means the transfer of technology under acceptable conditions, and then Obama makes a play on words, and instead of talking about common but differentiated responsibilities, talks about ‘common, but differentiated responses.’

“He leaves the plenary without deigning to listen to anybody, nor had he listened to anybody before his speech.”

At a subsequent press conference, before leaving the Danish capital, Obama affirmed, “We’ve made meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough in Copenhagen. For the first time in history the major economies have come together to accept their responsibility…”

In his clear and irrefutable statement, our foreign minister affirmed, “What is meant by ‘the major economies have come together to accept their responsibility?’ It means that they are shrugging off an important part of the burden signified by the financing for the mitigation and adaptation of countries — above all the entire South — to climate change, onto China, Brazil, India and South Africa; because it must be said that in Copenhagen, there was an assault on, a mugging of China, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and of all of the countries euphemistically referred to as developing.”

These were the resounding and irrefutable words with which our foreign minister recounted what happened in Copenhagen.

I should add that, at 10 a.m. on December 19th, after our Vice President Esteban Lazo and the Cuban foreign minister had left, there was a belated attempt to resuscitate the corpse of Copenhagen as a summit agreement. At that point, virtually no heads of state or even ministers were left. Once again, the exposé of the remaining members of the Cuban, Venezuela, Bolivian, Nicaraguan and other countries’ delegations defeated the maneuver. That was how the inglorious summit ended.

Another fact that cannot be forgotten was that, during the most critical moments of that day, in the early morning, the Cuban foreign minister, together with the delegations that were waging their dignified battle, offered UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon their cooperation in the increasingly difficult battle that is being waged, and in the efforts that must be undertaken in the future to preserve the life of our species.

The environmental group WWF warned that climate change will become uncontrollable in the next 5 to 10 years if emissions are not drastically cut.

But it is not necessary to demonstrate the essence of what is being said here about what Obama did.

The U.S. president stated on Wednesday, December 23 that people were right to be disappointed by the outcome of the Summit on Climate Change. In an interview with the CBS television network, the president noted, “Rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where we were…”

Obama, according to the news dispatch, was the one most criticized by those countries which, virtually unanimously, believe that the outcome of the summit was disastrous.

The UN is now in a predicament. Asking other countries to adhere to the arrogant and antidemocratic agreement would be humiliating for many states.

Continuing the battle and demanding at all meetings, particularly those of Bonn and Mexico, the right of humanity to exist, with the moral authority and strength the truth affords us, is, in our opinion, the only way forward.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 26, 2009
8:15 p.m.

It is important now that Cuba and the world come to know as much as possible of what happened in Copenhagen. The truth can be stronger than the influenced and often misinformed minds of those holding in their hands the destiny of the world.

If anything significant was achieved in the Danish capital, it was that the media coverage allowed the world public to watch the political chaos created there and the humiliating treatment accorded to Heads of States or Governments, ministers and thousands of representatives of social movements and institutions that in hope and expectation traveled to the Summit’s venue in Copenhagen. The brutal repression of peaceful protesters by the police was a reminder of the behavior of the Nazi assault troops that occupied neighboring Denmark on April 1940.

But no one could have thought that on December 18, 2009, the last day of the Summit, this would be suspended by the Danish government –a NATO ally associated with the carnage in Afghanistan– to offer the conference’s plenary hall to President Obama for a meeting where only he and a selected group of guests, 16 in all, would have the exclusive right to speak.

Obama’s deceitful, demagogic and ambiguous remarks failed to involve a binding commitment and ignored the Kyoto Framework Convention. He then left the room shortly after listening to a few other speakers. Among those invited to take the floor were the highest industrialized nations, several emerging economies and some of the poorest countries in the world. The leaders and representatives of over 170 countries were only allowed to listen.

At the end of the speeches of the 16 chosen, Evo Morales, with the authority of his indigenous Aymara origin and his recent reelection with 65% of the vote as well as the support of two-thirds of the Bolivian House and Senate, requested the floor. The Danish president had no choice but to yield to the insistence of the other delegations. When Evo had concluded his wise and deep observations, the Danish had to give the floor to Hugo Chavez. Both speeches will be registered by history as examples of short and timely remarks. Then, with their mission duly accomplished they both left for their respective countries. But when Obama disappeared, he had yet to fulfill his task in the host country.

From the evening of the 17th and the early morning hours of the 18th, the Prime Minister of Denmark and senior representatives of the United States had been meeting with the Chairman of the European Commission and the leaders of 27 nations to introduce to them –on behalf of Obama– a draft agreement in whose elaboration none of the other leaders of the rest of the world had taken part. It was an antidemocratic and practically clandestine initiative that disregarded the thousands of representatives of social movements, scientific and religious institutions and other participants in the Summit.

Through the night of the 18th and until 3:00 a.m. of the 19th, when many Heads of States had already departed, the representatives of the countries waited for the resumption of the sessions and the conclusion of the event. Throughout the 18th, Obama held meetings and press conferences, and the same did the European leaders. Then, they left.

Something unexpected happened then: at three in the morning of the 19th, the Prime Minister of Denmark convened a meeting to conclude the Summit. By then, the countries were represented by ministers, officials, ambassadors and technical staff.

However, an amazing battle was waged that morning by a group of representatives of Third World countries challenging the attempt by Obama and the wealthiest on the planet to introduce a document imposed by the United States as one agreed by consensus in the Summit.

The representative of Venezuela, Claudia Salerno, showed with impressive energy her right hand bleeding from strongly slamming on the table to claim her right to take the floor. Her tone of voice and the dignity of her arguments will never be forgotten.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba made a vigorous speech of approximately one thousand words from which I have chosen a few paragraphs to include in this Reflection:

“The document that you, Mister Chairman, repeatedly claimed that did not exist shows up now. […] we have seen drafts circulating surreptitiously and being discussed in secret meetings…”

“…I deeply resent the way you have led this conference.”

“…Cuba considers the text of this apocryphal draft extremely inadequate and inadmissible. The goal of 2 degrees centigrade is unacceptable and it would have incalculable catastrophic consequences…”

“The document that you are unfortunately introducing is not binding in any way with respect to the reduction of the greenhouse-gas emissions.”

“I am aware of the previous drafts, which also through questionable and clandestine procedures, were negotiated by small groups of people…”

The document you are introducing now fails to include the already meager and lacking key phrases contained in that draft…”

“…as far as Cuba is concerned, it is incompatible with the universally recognized scientific view sustaining that it is urgent and inescapable to ensure the reduction of at least 45% of the emissions by the year 2020, and of no less than 80% or 90% by 2050.”

“Any argument on the continuation of the negotiations to reach agreement in the future to cut down emissions must inevitably include the concept of the validity of the Kyoto Protocol […] Your paper, Mister Chairman, is a death certificate of the Kyoto Protocol and my delegation cannot accept it.”

“The Cuban delegation would like to emphasize the preeminence of the principle of ‘common by differentiated responsibilities,’ as the core of the future process of negotiations. Your paper does not include a word on that.”

“This draft declaration fails to mention concrete financial commitments and the transfers of technologies to developing countries, which are part of the obligations contracted by the developed countries under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change […] Mister Chairman, by imposing their interests through your document, the developed nations are avoiding any concrete commitment.”

“…What you, Mister Chairman, define as ‘a group of representative leaders’ is to me a gross violation of the principle of sovereign equality consecrated in the United Nations Charter…”

“Mr. Chairman, I formally request that this statement be included in the final report of the works of this regrettable and shameful 15th session of the Conference of the Parties.”

The representatives of the countries had been given only one hour to present their views. This led to complicated, shameful and embarrassing situations.

Then, a lengthy debate ensued where the delegations from the developed countries put a heavy pressure on the rest to make the conference adopt the above-mentioned document as the final result of their deliberations.

A small number of countries firmly insisted on the grave omissions and ambiguities of the document promoted by the United States, particularly the absence of a commitment by the developed countries on the reduction of carbon emissions and on the financing that would allow the South countries to adopt alleviating and adjustment measures.

After a long and extremely tense discussion, the position of the ALBA countries and Su
dan, as President of the G-77, prevailed that the document was unacceptable to the conference thus it could not be adopted.

In view of the absence of consensus, the Conference could only “take note” of the existence of that document representing the position of a group of about 25 countries.

After that decision was made, –at 10:30 in the morning Denmark’s time– Bruno, together with other ALBA representatives, had a friendly discussion with the UN Secretary to whom they expressed their willingness to continue struggling alongside the United Nations to prevent the terrible consequences of climate change. Their mission completed, our Foreign Minister and Cuban Vice-President Esteban Lazo departed to come back home and attend the National Assembly session. A few members of the delegation and the ambassador stayed in Copenhagen to take part in the final procedures.

This afternoon they reported the following:

“…both, those who were involved in the elaboration of the document, and those like the President of the United States who anticipated its adoption by the conference…as they could not disregard the decision to simply ‘take note’ of the alleged ‘Copenhagen Agreement,’ they tried to introduce a procedure allowing the other COP countries that had not been a part of the shady deal to adhere to it, and make it public, the intention being to pretend such an agreement was legal, something that could precondition the results of the negotiations that should carry on.”

“Such belated attempt was again firmly opposed by Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. These countries warned that a document which had not been adopted by the Convention could not be considered legal and that there was not a COP document; therefore, no regulations could be established for its alleged adoption…”

“This is how the meeting in Copenhagen is coming to an end, without the adoption of the document surreptitiously worked out in the past few days under the clear ideological guidance of the US Administration…”

Tomorrow our attention will be focused on the National Assembly.

Lazo, Bruno and the other members of the delegation will be arriving at midnight today. On Monday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will be able to explain in details and with the necessary accuracy the truth of what happened at the Summit.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 19, 2009
8:17p.m.

According to press agencies he said that he had received a mandate from the Bolivian people to oppose any agreement that does not meet the expectations. He explained that climate change is not the cause but the effect, and that we all have an obligation to defend the rights of Mother Earth vis-à-vis a capitalist development model; to defend the culture of life vis-à-vis the culture of death. He also addressed the climate debt that the rich countries should pay to the poor countries and the return of the atmospheric space taken from the latter.

He considered ridiculous the annual figure of 10 billion USD offered until the year 2012 while the yearly needs amount to hundreds of billions. At the same time, he accused the United States of spending trillions to export terrorism to Iraq and Afghanistan and to set up military bases in Latin America.

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela addressed the Summit on the 16th, at 8:40 a.m. Cuban time. He made a brilliant speech that was much applauded. His phrases were remarkable.

He challenged a document proposed to the Summit by the Danish minister chairing the conference. He said:

“…this text has come out of the blue; we shall not accept any text that has not been produced by the working groups, I mean, the legitimate texts that have been the subject of negotiations for the past two years.”

“There is a group of nations that feel above us in the South, in the Third World…”

“…it’s not a surprise, there is no democracy, we are facing a dictatorship.”

“…I was reading some slogans painted in the streets by the youths… one read: ‘don’t change the climate, change the system,’ and another: “if the climate had been a bank it would have been bailed out.’”

“Obama […] received the Nobel Peace Prize the same day he sent 30 thousand troops to kill innocent people in Afghanistan.”

“I support the view of the representatives of Brazil, Bolivia and China, I only wanted to express my support […] but I was not given the floor…”

“The rich are destroying the planet, could it be they are planning to move to another when this one is destroyed?”

“…there is no doubt that climate change is the most devastating environmental issue of this century.”

“…the United States’ population is barely 300 million; China’s is almost five times that. The United States’ oil consumption exceeds 20 million barrels a day; China’s is hardly 5 or 6 million barrels a day. Thus, the same cannot be asked from the United States and from China.”

“…the reduction of unfriendly gas emissions and the acceptance of a long-term agreement on cooperation […] seem to have failed, for now. Why? […] the irresponsible attitude and the lack of political will of the most powerful nations on Earth.”

“…the gap between the rich and the poor countries has continued to widen despite all of the summits and the unfulfilled promises, and the world continues its destructive march.”

“…the total income of the wealthiest 500 persons in the world is higher than the income of the 416 million poorest persons.”

“Infant mortality amounts to 47 per 1000 live births, but in the rich countries it is only 5/1000.”

“…how much longer can we let millions of children die from curable diseases?”

“Actually, 2.6 billion have no access to health services.”

“The Brazilian author Leornardo Boff has written: ‘The strongest survive on the ashes of the weakest.’”

“Jean Jacob Rousseau said that ‘Between the strong and the weak freedom oppresses.’ That’s why the empire talks of freedom; freedom to oppress, to invade, to kill, to annihilate and to exploit: that’s their freedom. And then Rousseau added the saving phrase: ‘Only the Law can make us free.’”

“How much longer are we going to tolerate armed conflicts that massacre millions of innocent people so that the powerful can grab the resources of others?

“Nearly two centuries back a universal liberator, Simon Bolivar, said: ‘If nature opposes, we shall fight it and force it to obey.’”

“This planet lived for billions of years without us, without human beings; it doesn’t need us to exist, but we can’t live without Earth…”

Evo addressed the conference in the morning of today, Thursday. His speech will also be treasured.

He very candidly opened his remarks by saying:

“I wish to say how upset we are over the lack of organization and the delays in this international gathering…”

His basic ideas were the following:

“When we ask what is it with the hosts, […] we are told it’s the United Nations; when we ask what is it with the United Nations, they say it’s Denmark, so we don’t know who is the disorganizer of this international meeting…”

“…I’m amazed because only the effects and not the causes of climate change are being discussed.”

“If we fail to identify where the destruction of the environment comes from […] we will never be able to solve this problem…”

“…two cultures are antagonizing: the culture of life and the culture of death; the culture of death is capitalism, which the indigenous peoples identify with those who want to live better at the expense of others.”

“…exploiting others, plundering their natural resources, assaulting Mother Earth, privatizing basic services…”

“…living well is living in solidarity, in equality, in complementation, in reciprocity…”

“When it comes to climate change, these two ways of life, these two cultures of life are antagonizing, and if we don’t decide which is the best way of life, we will not be able to solve it, because we have problems with life: luxury and consumerism hurt society, and sometimes in this kind of international meeting we avoid telling the truth.”

“…in our way of life being truthful is sacred, and that is not being observed here.”

“…in our Constitution it reads ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella, which means don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t be weak.”

“…Mother Earth or Nature exist and will exist without the human being, but human beings can’t live without planet Earth, therefore, we have the obligation to defend the right of Mother Earth.”

“…I applaud the United Nations because finally this year it has established the International Day of Mother Earth.”

“…our mother is sacred, our mother is our life; a mother cannot be rented, cannot be sold or assaulted, a mother must be respected.”

“We have profound differences with the Western model, and that is under discussion at this moment.”

“We are in Europe now, and you know that many Bolivian families, many Latin American families come to Europe, why do they come here? They come to improve their living conditions. In Bolivia, they could be earning 100 or 200 dollars a month, but that family or that person comes here to care for a European grandmother or grandfather, and he earns 1,000 Euros a month.”

“Such are the asymmetries we have from one continent to another, and it is our obligation to discuss the ways to achieve a certain balance, […] cutting down the deep asymmetries between families, between countries and, especially, between continents.”

“When […] our brothers and sisters come here to survive or improve their living conditions they are expelled, with those papers known as expatriation documents […] but when a long time ago the European g
randfathers arrived in Latin America, they were not expelled. My families, my brothers and sisters are not coming here to own mines, nor are they landowners with thousands of hectares of land. In the past, no passports or visas were needed to get to Abya Yala, that is, to the Americas.”

“…if the rights of Mother Earth are not recognized, it will be useless to speak of 10 billions or 100 billions, which is an offense to humanity.”

“…the wealthy nations should welcome all the immigrants affected by climate change instead of forcing them to return to their countries as they are doing now…”

“…our obligation is to save all of humanity and not half of humanity.”

“…the FTAA, Free Trade Area of the Americas, […] is not a Free Trade Area of the Americas, but a free colonization area of the Americas…”

Evo suggested the following questions, among others, for a worldwide referendum on climate change:

“..Do you agree to restore a harmonious relationship with Nature recognizing the rights of Mother Earth…?”

“…Do you agree to change this excessively consumerist and wasting model, that is, the capitalist system…?”

“…Do you agree that the developed countries should reduce and reabsorb their greenhouse effect gas emissions…?”

“…Do you agree on transferring everything that is currently being spent in wars to create a budget higher than the defense budget to tackle the problem of climate change..?.”

As it is widely known, the UN Agreement on Climate Change was signed in Kyoto in 1997. This instrument bound 38 industrial nations to cut down their greenhouse effect gas emissions to a certain percentage in comparison with those of 1990. The European Union countries committed to an 8% as of 2005, the year when most of the signatories had already ratified it. George W. Bush, then President of the United States, —the largest greenhouse effect gas producer country which is responsible for one-fourth of such emissions—had rejected the agreement since the midst of 2001.

The other UN members continued their efforts. The research centers proceeded with their work. It is evident by now that a major catastrophe is threatening our species. Perhaps the worst could be that the blind selfishness of a privileged wealthy minority tries to bring the burden of the necessary sacrifices to weigh heavily on the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the planet.

That contradiction can be perceived in Copenhagen where thousands of people are standing firm by their views.

The Danish police are resorting to brutal methods to crush resistance; many protesters are being preventively arrested. I spoke over the phone with our Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who was at a solidarity rally in Copenhagen with Chavez, Evo, Lazo and other representatives of ALBA. I asked him who those people were that the Danish police suppressed with such hate, twisting their arms and beating their backs repeatedly. He said they were Danish citizens and people from other European nations as well as members of the social movements who were demanding from the Summit a real solution now to deal with climate change. He also told me that debates in the Summit would continue at midnight. It was already night in Copenhagen as I spoke with him. The time difference is six hours.

Our comrades have reported from the Danish capital that a worse situation is expected tomorrow, Thursday. At 10 in the morning, the UN Summit will be adjourned for two hours as the Danish Head of Government meets with 20 Heads of Government he has invited to talk “global problems” with Obama. That’s what they have called the meeting whose objective it is to impose an agreement on climate change.

Even though all of the official delegations will take part, only “the invitees” will be allowed to offer their views. Of course, neither Chavez nor Evo are counted among those entitled to express their opinions. The idea is to give an opportunity to the Nobel Laureate to read a previously elaborated speech, after the decision has been made in that meeting to postpone the agreement until the end of next year in Mexico City. The social movements will not be allowed to attend. After that show, the “Summit” will resume its works in the plenary hall until its inglorious closing.

Since television has carried the images, the world has seen the fascist methods used against the people in Copenhagen. The protesters, most of them young people, have won the solidarity of the peoples.

Despite the maneuvers and deception of the leaders of the empire, their moment of truth is drawing closer. Their own allies are losing confidence in them. In Mexico, the same as in Copenhagen or elsewhere in the world, they will be met by the growing resistance of the peoples that have not renounced the hope to survive.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 17, 2009
6:46 p.m.