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 worst is that, to a large degree, their solutions will depend on the richest and most developed countries, which will reach a situation that they really are not in a position to confront, unless the world which they have been trying to mold… collapses around them.”

“I am not talking at this point about wars, the risks and consequences of which wise and brilliant people, including many from the United States, have conveyed.

“I am referring to the food crisis produced by economic acts and climate change which are apparently already irreversible as a consequence of the actions of human beings, but which in any case the human mind has the duty to address with haste.

“The problems have suddenly increased as a result of phenomena which are being repeated on all continents: heat waves, forest fires, loss of harvests in Russia, with many victims; climate change in China, heavy rainfall or drought; progressive reduction of water reserves in the Himalayas which is threatening India, China, Pakistan and other countries; torrential rain in Australia, which has flooded almost one million square kilometers; unseasonable and unprecedented cold in Europe […] drought in Canada and unusual cold in this country and the United States…”

I likewise mentioned unprecedented rainfall in Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.

In that Reflection I noted that “production of wheat, soy beans, corn, rice and many other grains and legumes, which constitute the nutritional base of the world – the population of which has today reached an estimated 6.9 billion, rapidly approaching the unprecedented figure of seven billion and where more than one billion are suffering hunger and malnutrition – is being seriously affected by climate change, creating an extremely grave problem worldwide.”

On Saturday, January 29, the Internet news bulletin which I receive daily reproduced an article by Lester R. Brown published on the Organic Way website and datelined January 10, whose content, I believe, should be widely circulated.

Its author is the most prestigious and recognized U.S. ecologist, who has been warning of the harmful effect of the growing and substantial volume of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. I will just take paragraphs from his well-argued article which coherently explains his point of view.

“As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high…

“…the world population has nearly doubled since 1970, we are still adding 80 million people each year. Tonight, there will be 219,000 additional mouths to feed at the dinner table, and many of them will be greeted with empty plates. Another 219,000 will join us tomorrow night. At some point, this relentless growth begins to tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth’s land and water resources.

“The rise in meat, milk, and egg consumption in fast-growing developing countries has no precedent.

“In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars. That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil. This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil plantations.

“…The combined effect of these three growing demands is stunning: a doubling in the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average of 21 million tons per year in 1990-2005 to 41 million tons per year in 2005-2010. Most of this huge jump is attributable to the orgy of investment in ethanol distilleries in the United States in 2006-2008.

“While the annual demand growth for grain was doubling, new constraints were emerging on the supply side, even as longstanding ones such as soil erosion intensified. An estimated one third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes – and thus is losing its inherent productivity. Two huge dust bowls are forming, one across northwest China, western Mongolia, and central Asia; the other in central Africa. Each of these dwarfs the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s.

“Satellite images show a steady flow of dust storms leaving these regions, each one typically carrying millions of tons of precious topsoil.

“Meanwhile aquifer depletion is fast shrinking the amount of irrigated area in many parts of the world; this relatively recent phenomenon is driven by the large-scale use of mechanical pumps to exploit underground water. Today, half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling as overpumping depletes aquifers. Once an aquifer is depleted, pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge unless it is a fossil (nonreplenishable) aquifer, in which case pumping ends altogether. But sooner or later, falling water tables translate into rising food prices.

“Irrigated area is shrinking in the Middle East, notably in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, which was totally dependent on a now-depleted fossil aquifer for its wheat self-sufficiency, production is in a freefall. From 2007 to 2010, Saudi wheat production fell by more than two thirds.

“The Arab Middle East is the first geographic region where spreading water shortages are shrinking the grain harvest. But the really big water deficits are in India, where the World Bank numbers indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain that is produced by overpumping. In China, overpumping provides food for some 130 million people. In the United States, the world’s other leading grain producer, irrigated area is shrinking in key agricultural states such as California and Texas.

“The rising temperature is also making it more difficult to expand the world grain harvest fast enough to keep up with the record pace of demand. Crop ecologists have their own rule of thumb: For each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields.

“Another emerging trend that threatens food security is the melting of mountain glaciers. This is of particular concern in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau, where the ice melt from glaciers helps sustain not only the major rivers of Asia during the dry season, such as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers, but also the irrigation systems dependent on these rivers. Without this ice melt, the grain harvest would drop precipitously and prices would rise accordingly.

“And finally, over the longer term, melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, threaten to raise the sea level by up to six feet during this century. Even a three-foot rise would inundate half of the riceland in Bangladesh. It would also put under water much of the Mekong Delta that produces half the rice in Vietnam, the world’s number two rice exporter. Altogether there are some 19 other rice-growing river deltas in Asia where harvests would be substantially reduced by a rising sea level.

“The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices — and the political turmoil this would lead to — that threatens our global future. Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend upward.”

The existing world order was imposed by the United States at the end of World War II and it reserved for itself all the privileges.

Obama does not have any way to manage the pandemonium which they have created. A few days ago the government collapsed in Tunisia, where the United States had imposed neoliberalism and was happy with its political prowess. The word democracy had vanished from the scene. It is incredible how now, when the exploited people are shedding their blood and assaulting stores, Washington is stating its satisfaction with the defeat. Everybody is aware that the United States converted Egypt into its principal ally within the Arab world. A large aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine, escorted by U.S. and Israeli warships, passed through the Suez Canal en route for the Persian Gulf some months ago, without the international press having access to what was occurring there. Egypt was the Arab country to receive the largest supplies of armaments. Millions of young Egyptians are suffering unemployment and the food shortages provoked within the world economy, and Washington affirms that it is supporting them. Its Machiavellian conduct includes supplying weapons to the Egyptian government, while at the same time USAID was supplying funds to the opposition. Can the United States halt the revolutionary wave which is shaking the Third World?

The famous Davos meeting that has just ended turned into a Tower of Babel, with the richest European states headed by Germany, Britain and France only agreeing on their disagreement with the United States.

But one doesn’t have to worry in the least; the Secretary of State has once again promised that the United States will help in the reconstruction of Haiti.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 30, 2011
6:23 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.

I share with our workers the results they are achieving in their work, in the midst of the blockade and other accumulated necessities.

Our country is one of those that is most prepared to confront obstacles, and not only has it demonstrated tremendous altruism but also solidarity with other peoples, such as the efforts that it undertook in Haiti prior to the earthquake and much greater efforts afterwards. Some days ago, I had honor of receiving the members of the heroic Moto Méndez Solidarity Mission, which complemented the work of the Cuban Medical Brigade in Bolivia, which has provided more than 40 million medical consultations and had performed, up until yesterday, 543,629 eye operations. They are overcoming the ravages of climate change, where tremendous heat alternates with the most intense cold.

We are very well aware of what Russia is suffering with the heat and the hundreds of forest and peat fires, the suffocating clouds of smoke, the belated rains and, to cap it all, snow in the summertime. We have seen the images of rivers overflowing in Pakistan and the vast ice floe that has become detached from Greenland. All of this is the result of alterations to natural conditions, caused by human beings themselves.

But I am optimistic on rational and solid grounds. The future worries me but I also increasingly believe that the solution is within our grasp, if we manage to carry the truth to a sufficient number of people among the billions that inhabit the planet.

Fidel Castro Ruz

August 20, 2010
1.17 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

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

When United States President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore stated “Now please earn it!” That witty comment pleased a lot of people for its acuity, although the Norwegian committee’s decision was perceived by many as no more than demagogy and an exaltation of the apparently inoffensive politicking of the new president of the United States, an African American, a good speaker and an intelligent politician at the head of a powerful empire enveloped in profound economic crisis.

The Copenhagen world meeting was about to take place and Obama raised hopes of a binding agreement in which the United States would join a world consensus in order to avoid the ecological disaster that is threatening the human species. What occurred there was disappointing; international world public opinion had been the victim of a painful deception.

In the recent World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place in Bolivia, responses full of wisdom were put forward by the ancient indigenous nationalities, invaded and virtually destroyed by European conquistadores who, in their search for gold and easy riches, imposed over the centuries their egotistic cultures, incompatible with humanity’s most sacred interests.

Two news items that arrived yesterday express the philosophy of the empire in its attempt to make us believe in its “democratic”, “pacific,” “altruistic” and “honest” nature. Suffice it to read the text of those agency cables from the capital of the United States.

WASHINGTON , April 23, 2010—”The Obama administration is considering deploying a new group of intercontinental ballistic weapons that could deliver large conventional warheads, non-nuclear but capable of reaching targets anywhere in the world in approximately one hour and with a extremely powerful explosive capacity.

“While the new super-bomb, mounted on Minuteman missiles, will not have nuclear warheads, its destructive capacity will be equivalent, as confirmed by the fact that its deployment is anticipated in the recently signed START 2 agreement with Russia.

“The Moscow authorities demanded and succeeded in having inserted in the agreement, a provision demanding the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every missile it deploys.

“According to reports in The New York Times and on CBS News, the new weapon, baptized PGS (Prompt Global Strike), could carry out tasks like killing terrorist Osama bin Laden in a cave, destroying a North Korean missile as it is being transported to the launch pad, or demolishing an Iranian nuclear site – all without using nuclear bombs.

“The advantage of having a non-nuclear weapon with the same localized impact effects of a nuclear bomb is considered interesting by the Obama government.

“The project was initially proposed by Obama’s predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, but was blocked by Moscow’s protests. Bearing in mind that the Minuteman also transport nuclear warheads, the Moscow authorities said, it would be impossible to establish that the deployment of a PGS was not the beginning of a nuclear attack.

“But Obama’s government considers that it can give Russia or China the necessary guarantees to avoid misunderstandings. The launch facilities of the new weapon will be mounted in sites at a distance from nuclear warhead deposits and will be open to periodic inspection by Moscow or Beijing experts.

“The Prompt Global Strike warhead would be launched on Minuteman missiles armed with 1,000-lb. conventional warheads, designed to strike targets with incredible accuracy.

“Responsibility for the PGS project – which is estimated to cost $250 million just in the first year of experimentation – has been handed to General Kevin Chilton, chief of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Chilton explained that the PGS will fill a gap in the Pentagon’s current range of options.

“‘Today, we can present some conventional options to the president to strike a target anywhere on the globe, but within a time span of at least four hours,’ said the general. ‘To act on a particular target faster than that, the only thing we have is a nuclear response.’”

“In the future, with the new missile, the United States could act rapidly and with conventional resources, both against a terrorist group or an enemy country, in a much shorter time period and without arousing international anger at the use of nuclear weapons.

“It is anticipated that the first tests will begin in 2014, and that by 2017 it would be available in the U.S. arsenal. Obama will no longer be in power, but the super-missile could be the non-nuclear legacy of this president, who has already won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“WASHINGTON, April 22, 2010—An unmanned Air Force space plane was launched this Thursday from Florida, in the midst of a veil of secrecy over its military mission.

“The rocket carrying the reusable X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle lifted off at 7:52 p.m. EDT (2352 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to a video distributed by the army.’

“‘The launch is imminent,’ Air Force Major Angie Blair told AFP.

“Resembling a small space shuttle, the aircraft is 8.9 meters in length and 4.5 in wingspan.

“The manufacture of the reusable space shuttle has taken years and the army has only offered vague explanations as to its objective or role in the military arsenal.

“The vehicle is designed to ‘provide the environment of a ‘laboratory in space’ to test new technologies and components before these technologies are assigned to satellite programs in operation,’ stated the Air Force in a recent communiqué.

“Officials have stated that the X-37B will land at the Air Force Vandenberg Base in California, but they did not say how long the inaugural mission will last. ‘

“‘To be honest, we don’t know when it’s going to come back,’ Gary Payton, second assistant secretary of Air Force space programs, told reporters this week.

“Payton stated that the shuttle could remain in space for up to nine months.

“The aircraft, manufactured by Boeing, began as a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project in 1999 and was then transferred to the Air Force, which plans to launch a second X-37B in 2011.”

Is anything more needed?

Today they have found themselves with a colossal obstacle: the now uncontainable climate change. The inevitable temperature increase of more than two degrees centigrade is being mentioned. Its consequences will be catastrophic. In just 40 years the world population will increase by two billion, thus reaching a total of nine billion people; in that brief period: docks, hotels, seaside resorts, communications, industries and installations in the vicinity of ports will be submerged in less time than is required for the enjoyment of half of the existence of the generation of one developed and rich country, which is currently refusing to make the most minimum sacrifice to preserve the survival of the human species. Agricultural land and potable water will be considerably reduced. The seas will become polluted; many marine species will become impossible to consume and others will disappear. This is not affirmed by logic but by scientific investigations.

Via natural genetics and the transfer of varieties of species from one continent to another, human beings succeeded in increasing production per hectare of food and other products useful to humans which, for some time, alleviated the scarcity of foodstuffs like corn, potato, wheat, fibers and other necessary produce. Later, genetic manipulation and the use of chemical fertilizers similarly contributed to the solution of vital needs, but they are now reaching the limit of their possibilities for producing healthy food appropriate for consumption. On the other hand, in barely two centuries, hydrocarbon resources that nature took 400 million years to form are being exhausted. In the same way, vital non-renewable mineral resources that the world economy requires are being exhausted. At the same time, science created the capacity of self-destroying the planet several times in a matter of hours. The greatest contradiction in our era is, precisely, the capacity of the species to destroy itself and its incapacity to govern itself.

Human beings have succeeded in raising their possibilities of life to limits that exceed their own survival capacity. In that battle raw materials in their reach are being consumed at an accelerated rate. Science made it possible to convert matter into energy, as occurred with nuclear reaction, at the cost of enormous investments, but the viability of converting energy into matter is not even on the horizon. The infinite cost of investment in pertinent investigations is demonstrating the impossibility of achieving in a few dozen years what the universe took tens of billions of years to create. Is it necessary for the child prodigy Barack Obama to explain that to us? Science has grown extraordinarily, but ignorance and poverty are also growing. Can anyone demonstrate the contrary?

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 25, 2010
6:30 p.m.

It is known that homo sapiens has existed for approximately 200,000 years, equivalent to a minuscule space in the time that has passed since the first forms of elemental life on our planet emerged around three billion years ago.

Responses to the unfathomable mysteries of life and nature have basically been of a religious nature. It would lack sense to pretend that that was otherwise, and I have the conviction that it will always be like this. The more profound the explanations of science in relation to the universe, space, time, matter and energy, infinite galaxies and theories on the origin of constellations and stars, atoms and fractions of the same which gave rise to life and the brevity of the same, and millions and millions of combinations per second that govern its existence, the more questions humans will make in search of explanations that will be constantly more complex and difficult.
The more that human beings immerse themselves in seeking for answers to such profound and complex tasks related to intelligence, the more worthwhile are efforts to lift them out of their colossal ignorance of the real possibilities that our intelligent species has created and is capable of creating. Living and ignoring that is a total negation of our human condition.

However, one thing is absolutely certain; very few imagine how close the disappearance of our species could be. Twenty years ago, in a World Summit on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro [the Earth Summit], I spoke of that danger before a select audience of heads of state and government, who listened with respect and interest, although with no concern about the risk that they perceived at a distance of centuries, perhaps millennia. For them, without any doubt, technology and science, plus an elemental sense of political responsibility, would be capable of confronting it. That significant Summit ended happily with a large photograph of important figures. There was no danger of any kind.

Climate change was barely mentioned. George Bush Senior and other luminaries of the Atlantic Alliance enjoyed the victory over the European socialist camp. The Soviet Union was disintegrated and ruined. A vast hoard of Russian money passed into Western banks, its economy fell apart, and its defense shield against NATO military bases had been dismantled.

The former superpower that contributed the lives of more than 25 million of its sons in World War I, was left only with the strategic response capacity of nuclear power, which it had been obliged to create after the United States secretly developed the atomic weapon launched on two Japanese cities, when the adversary, defeated by the uncontainable advance of the allied forces, was no longer in combat conditions.

Thus began the Cold War and the manufacture of thousands of thermonuclear weapons, constantly more destructive and precise, capable of annihilating the population of the planet several times over. Nevertheless, the nuclear confrontation continued, weapons became still more precise and destructive. Russia is not resigned to the unipolar world that Washington is trying to impose. Other nations like China, India and Brazil are emerging with uncommon economic force.

For the first time, the human species, in a globalized world replete with contradictions, has created the capacity to destroy itself. That is compounded by unprecedented weapons of cruelty, such as bacteriological and chemical weapons, napalm and live phosphorus, which are used against civilian populations and enjoy total impunity, electromagnetic weapons and other forms of extermination. Not one corner in the depths of the earth or sea would remain beyond the reach of the current military means.

It is known that, in these ways, tens of thousands of nuclear artifacts, including those of a portable nature, have been created.

The greatest danger is derived from the decision of leaders with such decision- making faculties, in that error and insanity, so frequent in human nature, could lead to incredible disasters.

Almost 65 years have gone by since the first nuclear artifacts were exploded, resulting from the decision of a mediocre subject who, after the death of Roosevelt, remained in command of the powerful and rich U.S. power. Now eight countries – in their majority with the support of the United States – have those weapons, and a number of others have the technology and resources to manufacture them in a minimum space of time. Terrorist groups, alienated by hatred, could be capable of turning to them, in the same way that terrorist and irresponsible governments would not hesitate to use them, given their genocidal and uncontrollable conduct.

The military industry is the most prosperous of all and the United States is the largest exporter of weapons.

If our species should be liberated from all the abovementioned risks, another and even greater, or at least inescapable, one exists: climate change.

Humanity today has seven billion inhabitants and soon, within a space of 40 years, it will reach nine billion, a total nine times greater than barely 200 years ago. In the times of Ancient Greece, I venture to suppose that we were approximately 40 times less throughout the planet.

The most astounding aspect of our era is the contradiction between imperialist bourgeois ideology and the survival of the species. It is no longer about justice existing among human beings, today more than possible and something that cannot be renounced, but of the right and possibility of our very survival.

While the horizon of knowledge is extending to limits never imagined, the closer the abyss into which humanity is being led is approaching. All suffering known to date is barely a shadow of what could lie ahead for humanity.

Three events have taken place within a space of just 71 days, which humanity cannot overlook.

On December 18, 2009, the international community suffered the greatest disaster in history in its attempt to find a solution to the gravest problem that is threatening the world at this moment: the need to bring to an end, with all urgency, the greenhouse gases that are provoking the gravest problem confronted to date by humanity. All hopes had been placed on the Copenhagen Summit after years of preparation subsequent to the Kyoto Protocol, which the government of the United States – the largest contaminator in the world – had afforded itself the luxury of ignoring. The rest of the international community, 192 countries, this time including the United States, had committed itself to promoting a new agreement. The U.S. attempt to impose its hegemonic interests, in violation of elemental democratic principles, by establishing unacceptable conditions for the rest of the world in an anti-democratic manner, in virtue of bilateral commitments with a group of the most influential countries of the United Nations, was utterly shameful.

The states comprising that international organization were invited to sign a document that is nothing more than a joke, and which merely mentions theoretical future contributions to halt climate change.

Not even three weeks had gone by when, at dusk on January 12, Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere and the first to put an end to the odious system of slavery, suffered the worst natural disaster in the known history of this part of the world: an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale, at just 10 kilometers of depth and at a very short distance from the shores of its coast, struck the capital of the country, in whose flimsy houses made of mud the vast majority of people who were killed or missing lived. A mountainous and eroded country of 27,000 square kilometers, where firewood constitutes virtually the only source of domestic fuel for nine million people.

If there is one place on the planet where a natural disaster has constituted an immense tragedy it is Haiti, a symbol of poverty and underdevelopment, inhabited by the descendants of those transported from Africa by the colonialists to work as slaves for white masters.

The event moved the world in all corners of the planet, shaken by film footage circulated that bordered on the incredible. The wounded, bleeding and gravely injured moved among the corpses pleading for help. Under the rubble were lying the lifeless bodies of their loved ones. The number of fatal victims, according to official sources, is in excess of 200,000 people.

The country was already under the control of the MINUSTAH forces that the United Nations sent in to restore the order undermined by Haitian mercenary forces which, at the instigation of the Bush government, attacked the government elected by the Haitian people. Some of the buildings in which soldiers and chiefs of the peace forces were resident also collapsed, causing distressing victims.

Official reports estimate that, apart from the dead, around 400,000 Haitians were injured and several million, almost half of the total population, were affected. It was a veritable test for the world community which, in the wake of the shameful Denmark Summit, had the duty to show that the developed and rich countries were capable of confronting the threats of climate change to life on our planet. Haiti must constitute an example of what  the rich countries should do for the Third World nations in the face of climate change.

One can believe it or not, defying the data, in my judgment irrefutable, of the most serious scientists of the planet and the vast majority of the most instructed and serious people in the world, who think that, at the current rate of global warming, greenhouse gases will raise the temperature not only by 1.5 degrees, but up to 5 degrees, and that the average temperature is now the highest in the last 600,000 years, far before human beings  existed as a species on the planet.

It is totally unthinkable that the nine billion human beings who will inhabit the earth in 2050 could survive such a disaster. The hope remains that science itself can find a solution to the energy problem which currently obliges the consumption in 100 years the rest of the gaseous, liquid and solid fuels that nature took 400 million years to create. Perhaps science can find a solution to the necessary energy. The question is to know how much time and at what cost human beings can confront the problem, which is not the only one, given that many other non-renewable minerals and grave problems require solutions. But we can be sure of one thing; on the basis of all the concepts known today: the closest star is at four light years from our Sun, at a velocity of 300,000 kilometers per second. A spaceship could possibly cover that distance in thousands of years. Human beings have no alternative but to live on this planet.

It would have seemed unnecessary to approach the issue if, just 54 days after the Haiti earthquake, another incredible quake of magnitude 8.8 on the Richter scale, whose epicenter was at 150 kilometers distance and 47.4 depth northeast of the city of Concepción, had not caused another human disaster in Chile. It was not the largest in the history of that sister country; it is said that another one had a magnitude of 9 degrees, but this time it was not just a seismic phenomenon; while in Haiti a seaquake that did not materialize was anticipated, in Chile the earthquake was followed by an enormous tsunami, which appeared on its coast from 30 minutes to one hour afterward, according to the distance and data that is not as yet known with precision, and whose waves extended to Japan. If it had not been for Chilean experience in the face of earthquakes, its more solid constructions and its greater resources, the natural phenomenon would have cost the lives of tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of people. At any rate, it caused around 1,000 fatalities, according to official data, thousands of injured and possible more than two million people suffered material damage. Almost the totality of its population of 17.94 million inhabitants suffered terribly and are still suffering from the consequences of the quake, which lasted for more than two minutes; its reiterated aftershocks; and the terrible scenes and suffering left by the tsunami along its thousands of kilometers of coast. Our homeland is in full solidarity and is morally supporting the material effort that the international community has the duty to offer Chile. If it was in our hands, from the human point of view, the people of Cuba would not hesitate to do so for the sister people of Chile.

I believe that the international community has a duty to inform with objectivity the tragedy suffered by both peoples. It would be cruel, unjust and irresponsible not to educate the peoples of the world on the dangers that are threatening us.

Let the truth prevail above the ignoble acts and lies with which imperialism deceives and confuses the peoples!

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 7, 2010
9:27 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in. A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth. What assistance should be sent—and how—to a Caribbean nation from China, India, Vietnam, and other countries that are tens of thousands of kilometers away? The magnitude of the earthquake and the poverty that exists in that country generated at first some ideas about probable needs, which gave rise to all types of pledges about possible resources, which people then tried to bring to Haiti through every possible way.

We Cubans understood that the most important thing at that moment was to save lives, and we are trained not only to cope with catastrophes like that, but also to cope with other natural catastrophes related to human health.

Hundreds of Cuban doctors were working there, along with quite a number of young Haitians of humble origin, who had become well-trained health professionals, an area in which, for many years now, we have been cooperating with that neighboring sister nation. Some of our compatriots were on vacations, while other Haitians were being trained or studying in Cuba.

The destruction caused by the earthquake exceeded all calculations: the humble clay and adobe houses—in a city with almost two million inhabitants—could not withstand. The solid government facilities collapsed; entire blocks of houses crumbled over their tenants who, at that time of the day — almost at dusk — were inside their homes; and they were all buried, dead or alive, under the rubble. The streets were filled with people clamoring for help. The MINUSTAH — the UN contingent — the government and the police were left without leaders or headquarters. Soon after the earthquake, the main task of those institutions made up of thousands of personnel was to know who were still alive and where they were.

The immediate decision adopted by the dedicated Cuban doctors who were working in Haiti, as well as by the young health professionals from Haiti who had graduated in Cuba, was to establish contact among them, know about each other’s fate, and figure out what were the resources available to assist the Haitian people in the midst of that tragedy.

The Cuban doctors who were on vacation in Cuba as well as the Haitian doctors who were taking specialized courses in our homeland immediately readied themselves to leave for Haiti. Other Cuban surgery experts, who had accomplished difficult missions, volunteered to accompany them. Suffice it to say that in less than 24 hours our doctors had already assisted hundreds of patients. Today, January 16, only three and a half days after the tragedy, there are thousands of injured people who have already been assisted by them.

Today, Saturday, at noontime, the head of our medical brigade reported to us, among other data, the following:

…[T]he work that is being done by our comrades is really commendable. The general opinion is that the Pakistani earthquake has been put in the shade — that was another huge earthquake, and some of these doctors worked there. In that country, many a time our doctors assisted patients with fractures, including poorly consolidated fractures, or patients who had been crushed. But here reality has exceeded the imaginable: amputations abound, surgeries are being performed virtually out in the public. This is the image they envisaged of a war.”

…The ‘Delmas 33 Hospital’ is already operational. It has three operating rooms, its own power generation plants, doctors’ consultation rooms, etcetera, but is absolutely full.

…Twelve Chilean doctors have joined in. One of them is an anesthesiologist. There are also eight Venezuelan doctors and nine Spanish nuns. It was expected that, at any moment, 18 Spaniards, to whom the UN and the Haitian Public Health authorities had handed over the control of the hospital, would come, but they lacked some emergency supplies that had not arrived, so they have decided to join us and start working immediately.

…Thirty-two Haitian resident doctors were sent in; six of them were going straight to Carrefour, a place that was totally devastated. Traveling with them were also the three Cuban surgical teams that arrived here yesterday.

…[W]e are operating the following medical facilities at Port-au-Prince:
The Renaissance Hospital.
The Social Insurance Hospital.
The Peace Hospital.

…Four Comprehensive Diagnostics Centers are already working.

This information gives only an idea of the work that is being carried out by the medical staff from Cuba and those from other countries working with them, who were among the first to arrive in that nation. Our medical personnel are ready to cooperate and join forces with all other health specialists who have been sent to save lives in that sister nation. Haiti could become an example of what humankind can do for itself. The possibility and the means exist; but willingness is missing.

The longer it takes to bury or incinerate the corpses and to distribute food and other vital supplies, the higher the risks of epidemics and social violence will be.

Haiti will put to test how much the spirit of cooperation can endure before egoism, chauvinism, petty interests, and contempt for other nations prevail.

The whole humankind is now threatened by climate change. The earthquake at Port-au-Prince, hardly three weeks after the Copenhagen conference, is reminding all of us how selfishly and arrogantly we behaved then.

Countries are taking a close look at all that is happening in Haiti. The world’s public opinion and peoples’ criticisms will be ever harsher and unforgiving.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 16, 2010
7:46 p.m.

Translation by El Habanero, edited for republication at MRzine.  En español.

The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.

Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.

The news took all of us by surprise. Many of us have frequently heard about hurricanes and severe flooding in Haiti, but were not aware of the fact that this neighboring country ran the risk of a massive earthquake. It has come to light on this occasion that 200 years ago, a massive earthquake similarly affected this city, which would have been the home of just a few thousand inhabitants at that time.

At midnight, there was still no mention of an approximate figure in terms of victims. High-ranking United Nations officials and several heads of government discussed the moving events and announced that they would send emergency brigades to help. Given that MINUSTAH (United Stabilization Mission in Haiti) troops are deployed there – UN forces from various countries – some defense ministers were talking about possible casualties among their personnel.

It was only yesterday, Wednesday morning, when the sad news began to arrive of enormous human losses among the population, and even institutions such as the United Nations mentioned that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed, a word that does not say anything in itself but could mean a lot.

For hours, increasingly more traumatic news continued to arrive about the situation in this sister nation. Figures related to the number of fatal victims were discussed, which fluctuated, according to various versions, between 30,000 and 100,000. The images are devastating; it is evident that the catastrophic event has been given widespread coverage around the world, and many governments, sincerely moved by the disaster, are making efforts to cooperate according to their resources.

The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well?

The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon’s most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources.

This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevails.

Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti.

Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen.

It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti.

But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation.

In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured.

Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba.

We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti.

The head of our medical brigade reported: “The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives.” He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements.

Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM’s Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care.

We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti!

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 14, 2009
8:25 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

During the meeting at the Oriente sugar mill on December 28, 1958, with the commander in chief of the enemy’s forces, whose elite units were surrounded without any way out whatsoever, he admitted defeat and appealed to our generosity to find a dignified way out for the rest of his forces. He knew of our humane treatment of prisoners and the injured without any exception. He accepted the agreement that I proposed, although I warned him that operations under way would continue. But he traveled to the capital, and, incited by the United States embassy, instigated a coup d’état.

We were preparing for combat on that January 1st when, in the early hours of the morning, the news came in of the dictator’s flight. The Rebel Army was ordered not to permit a ceasefire and to continue battling on all fronts. Radio Rebelde convened workers to a revolutionary general strike, immediately followed by the entire nation. The coup attempt was defeated, and that same afternoon, our victorious troops entered Santiago de Cuba.

Che and Camilo received instructions to advance rapidly by road in motor vehicles with their battle-hardened forces toward La Cabaña and the Columbia military camp. The enemy army, hit hard on all fronts, was unable to resist. The people in arms themselves took over the centers of repression and police stations. In the afternoon of January 2 at a stadium in Bayamo, and accompanied by a small escort, I met with more than 2,000 soldiers from the tank, artillery and motorized infantry units, against whom we had been fighting until the day before. They were still carrying their weapons. We had won the enemy’s respect with our audacious but humanitarian methods of irregular warfare. This was how, in just four days — after 25 months of war that we reinitiated with a few guns — some 100,000 air, sea and ground weapons and the entire power of the state remained in the hands of the Revolution. In just a few lines, I am recounting everything that happened during those days 51 years ago.

Then the main battle began: to preserve Cuba’s independence against the most powerful empire that has ever existed, a battle which our people waged with great dignity. I am happy today to observe those who, in the face of incredible obstacles, sacrifices, and risks, were able to defend our homeland, and who today, together with their children, parents and loved ones, are enjoying the happiness and glories of each new year.

Today, however, is nothing like yesterday. We experienced a new era unlike any other in history. Before, the people fought and are fighting still, with honor, for a better and more just world, but now they are also having to fight, without any alternative whatsoever, for the very survival of our species. If we ignore this, we know absolutely nothing. Cuba is, without question, one of the most politically instructed countries on the planet; it started out from the most shameful illiteracy, and what is worse, our yanki masters and the bourgeoisie associated with the foreign owners of land, sugar mills, production plants for consumer goods, warehouses, businesses, electricity, telephones, banks, mines, insurance, docks, bars, hotels, offices, houses, theaters, print shops, magazines, newspapers, radio, the emerging television, and everything of important value.

After the ardent flames of our battles for freedom had been quenched, the yankis had taken upon themselves the task of thinking for a people that struggled so hard to be the masters of their independence, resources and destiny. Absolutely nothing, not even the task of thinking politically, belonged to us. How many of us knew how to read and write? How many of us even made it to sixth grade? I recall that especially on a day like today, because that was the country that was supposed to belong to the Cuban people. I will not list anything more, because I would have to include much more, including the best schools, the best hospitals, the best houses, the best doctors, the best lawyers. How many of us had a right to that? Which of us possessed, with some exceptions, the natural and divine right to be administrators and leaders?

Every millionaire and rich individual, without exception, was a party leader, senator, representative or important official. That was the representative and pure democracy that prevailed in our country, except that the yankis imposed, at their whim, merciless and cruel petty dictators whenever it was more convenient for them to better defend their properties against landless campesinos and workers with or without jobs. Given that nobody even talks about that anymore, I am venturing to remember it. Our country is one of more than 150 that constitute the Third World, which would be the first but not the only nations destined to suffer incredible consequences if humanity does not become aware, clearly, certainly and a lot more quickly than we thought, of the reality and consequences of the climate change caused by human beings if it is not prevented in time.

Our mass media has dedicated spaces to describing the effects of climate change. Increasingly violent hurricanes, droughts and other natural disasters have likewise contributed to the education of our people on this subject. One singular event, the battle over the climate issue that took place at the Copenhagen Summit, has contributed to knowledge of the imminent danger. It is not a matter of a distant threat for the 22nd century, but for the 21st; nor is it just for the latter half of this century, but for the coming decades, in which we will begin to suffer its terrible consequences.

It is also not just a question of simple action against the empire and its henchmen, which in this issue, like in everything else, are trying to impose their own stupid and egotistic interests, but a battle of world opinion that that cannot be left to spontaneity or the whims of the majority of their mass media. It is a situation with which, fortunately, millions of honorable and brave people in the world are familiar, a battle to wage with the masses and within social organizations and scientific, cultural, humanitarian and other international institutions, most especially in the heart of the United Nations, where the United States government, its NATO allies and the richest countries tried to effect a fraudulent and antidemocratic coup in Denmark against the rest of the emerging and poor countries of the Third World.

In Copenhagen, the Cuban delegation, which attended together with others from the ALBA and the Third World, was forced into a fight to the finish in the face of the incredible events that began with the speech of the yanki president, Barack Obama, and of the group of the richest states on the planet, resolved to dismantle the binding commitments of Kyoto — where the thorny problem was discussed more than 12 years ago — and to load the burden of sacrifice onto the emerging and underdeveloped countries, which are the poorest and at the same time the principal suppliers of the planet’s raw materials and non-renewable resources to the most developed and opulent countries.

In Copenhagen, Obama appeared on the last day of the conference, which began on December 7. The worst aspect of his conduct was that, after he had decided to dispatch 30,000 soldiers to the slaughter of Afghanistan — a country with a strong tradition of independence, which not even the English in their better and cruellest times could dominate — he went to Oslo to receive no less than a Nobel Peace Prize. He arrived in the Norwegian capital on December 10 and gave an empty, demagogic and justifying speech. On the 18th, the date of the Summit’s last session, he appeared in Copenhagen, where he planned to remain for just 8 hours. His secretary of state and a sel
ect group of his best strategists had arrived the previous day.

The first thing that Obama did was to select a group of guests who were given the honor of accompanying him as he gave a speech at the Summit. The complacent and fawning Danish prime minister, who was presiding over the Summit, gave the podium over to a group that numbered just 15. The imperial chief deserved special honors. His speech was a was a combination of sweetened words seasoned with theatrical gestures, already boring for those of us, like me, assigned themselves the task of listening to him in order to try and be objective in an appreciation of his characteristics and political intentions. Obama imposed on his docile Danish host, so that only his guests could speak, although as soon as he had made his own comments, he “made himself scarce” through the back door, like an imp escaping from an audience which had done him the honor of listening with interest.

Once the authorized list of speakers was finished, an indigenous man, Aymara through and through, Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, who had just been reelected with 65% of the vote, demanded the right to speak, which was granted, to the resounding applause of those present. In just nine minutes, he expressed profound and dignified concepts in response to the words of the absent U.S. president. Immediately afterward, Hugo Chávez got up to ask to speak on behalf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; the person presiding over the session had no choice but to also give him the right to speak, and he used that to improvise one of the most brilliant speeches that I’ve ever heard. When he finished, a strike of the gavel ended the unusual session.

The extremely busy Obama and his entourage however, did not have a minute to lose. His group had put together a draft statement, full of vagueness, which was the negation of the Kyoto Protocol. After he dashed out of the plenary session, Obama met with other groups of guests numbering no more than 30, negotiated in private and in groups; insisted; mentioned figures to the tune of millions of green bills without gold backing and which are constantly being devaluated, and even threatened to leave the meeting if his demands were not met. Worst of all, it was a meeting of super-rich countries, to which several of the most important emerging nations were invited and two or three poor ones, to which he submitted the document as if proposing, “take it or leave it!”

The Danish prime minister tried to present that confusing, ambiguous and contradictory statement – in the discussion of which the UN did not participate in any way – as the Summit agreement. The Summit sessions had already concluded, almost all of the heads of state and government and foreign ministers had left for their respective countries and, at three in the morning, the distinguished Danish prime minister presented it to the plenary session, where hundreds of long-suffering officials who hadn’t slept for three days, received the thorny document, and were given only one hour to discuss and approve it.

That is when the meeting became fiery; the delegates hadn’t even had time to read it. A number of them asked to speak. The first was the delegate from Tuvalu, whose islands would be inundated if what was proposed there was approved; those of Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua followed him. The dialectical confrontation at 3 a.m. on that December 19 is worthy of going down in history, if history should continue after climate change.

As a large part of what happened is known in Cuba, or is on internet web pages, I will confine myself to partially expounding on the two responses of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, worthy of being recorded in order to know the last episodes of the Copenhagen soap opera, and aspects of the final chapter, which are still to be published in our country.
“Mr. President (Prime Minister of Denmark)… The document that you affirmed on various occasions did not exist, has now appeared. We have all seen versions circulating surreptitiously and being discussed in small and secret meetings outside the conference halls in which the international community, via its representatives, is negotiating in a transparent manner.”

“I add my voice to those of the representatives of Tuvalu, Venezuela and Bolivia. Cuba considers the text of this apocryphal draft as extremely insufficient and inadmissible…”

“The document which you are presenting, lamentably, does not contain any commitment whatsoever to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I am aware of prior versions which, in questionable and clandestine procedures, were also being negotiated behind closed doors and which talked of a reduction of at least 50% by the year 2050…”

“The document that you have presented now, precisely omits the already meager and insufficient key phrases that that version contained. This document does not guarantee, in any way, the adoption of minimal measures that would make it possible to avert an extremely grave disaster for the planet and the human species.”

“This shameful document that you have brought is likewise omissive and ambiguous in relation to the specific commitment to emission reductions on the part of the developed countries, those responsible for global warming given the historic and current level of their emissions, and on whom it falls to implement substantial reductions immediately. This paper does not contain one single word of commitment on the part of the developed countries.”

“…Your role, Mr. President, is the death certificate of the Kyoto Protocol, which my delegation does not accept.”

“The Cuban delegation wishes to emphasize the preeminence of the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ as the central concept of the future negotiation process. Your paper does not say one word about that.”

“The Cuban delegation reiterates its protest at the grave violations of procedure that have been produced in the anti-democratic management of the process of this conference, via the utilization of arbitrary, exclusive and discriminatory forms of debate and negotiation…”

“Mr. President, I am formally asking for this statement to be placed in the final report on the workings of this lamentable and shameful 15th Conference of the Parties.”

What nobody could have imagined is that, after another lengthy recess and when everybody thought that only the formalities remained before the conclusion of the Summit, the prime minister of the host country, at the instigation of the yankis, would make another attempt to pass off the document as a consensus of the Summit, when not even foreign ministers were left in the plenary. The delegates from Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, who remained vigilant and unsleeping until the last minute, frustrated the latter maneuver in Copenhagen.

However, the problem was not concluded. The powerful are not accustomed to brooking resistance. On December 30, the Danish Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in New York, courteously informed our mission in that city that it had taken note of the Copenhagen Agreement of December 18, 2009, and attached an advance copy of that decision. It affirmed textually: “…the government of Denmark, in its capacity of president of COP15, invites the Parties to the Convention to inform the secretariat of the UNFCCC in writing, and as soon as possible, of your willingness to commit to the Copenhagen Agreement.”

This surprise communication motivated a response from the Cuban Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in which it “… flatly rejects the intention to gain indirect approval of a text that was the object of repudiation by various delegations, not only on account of its insufficiency in the face of the grave effects of climate change, but also for exclusively responding to the interests of a reduced group of states.”

At the same time it prompted a letter from Dr. Fernando González Bermúdez, first deputy minister of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Envi
ronment of the Republic of Cuba to Mr. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, some of whose paragraphs are transcribed below:

“We have received with surprise and concern the note that the government of Denmark is circulating to the Permanent Missions of the member states of the United Nations in New York. Of which you are surely aware, via which the party states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to inform the executive secretary, in writing, of you wish to be associated with the so-called Copenhagen Agreement.”

“We have observed, with additional concern, that the government of Denmark communicates that the executive secretary of the Convention is to include in the report of the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, a list of the party states which have stated their will to commit to the quoted agreement.”

“In the judgment of the Republic of Cuba, this form of acting constitutes a crude and reprehensible violation of what was decided in Copenhagen, where the party states, faced with an evident lack of consensus, confined themselves to taking note of the existence of the said document.”

“Nothing that was agreed in COP15 authorizes the government of Denmark to adopt this action and, far less, the executive secretary to include a list of party states in the final report, for which he has no mandate.”

“I must inform you that the government of the Republic of Cuba most firmly rejects this new attempt to indirectly legitimate a spurious document and to reiterate to you that this way of acting compromises the result of future negotiations, sets a dangerous precedent for the Convention’s work and, in particular, is injurious to the spirit of goodwill in which delegations must continue the negotiation process next year,” concluded Cuba’s first deputy minister of science, technology and the environment.”

Many know, especially the social movements and better informed people in humanitarian, cultural and scientific movements, that the document promoted by the United States constitutes a regression of the positions achieved by those who are making efforts to avert a colossal disaster for our species. There is no point in repeating here facts and figures that are mathematically demonstrated. The data is confirmed on Internet web pages and are within the reach of a growing number of people who are interested in the issue.

The theory defending adherence to the document is feeble and implies a setback. The deceptive idea that the rich countries will contribute the miserable sum of $30 billion over three years to the poor countries in order to offset the costs implied by confronting climate change, a figure which could rise to 100 billion by 2020, which in the context of this exceedingly grave problem, is like waiting for the Greek calendars. Specialists know that those figures are ridiculous and unacceptable given the volume of investments required. The origin of such sums is vague and confused, in a way that they do not commit anybody.

What is the value of one dollar? What is the significance of $30 billion? We all know that, from Bretton Woods in 1944 to Nixon’s presidential order in 1971 – imparted in order to offload the cost of the genocidal war on Vietnam onto the world economy – that the value of one dollar, measured in gold, has gradually been reduced to the point of today, when it is approximately 32 times less than then; $30 billion thus signifies less than one billion, and one billion divided by 32 is equivalent to $3.125 million, which would not even stretch to building one middle-capacity oil refinery at the present time.

If, at some point, the industrialized countries were to meet their promise to contribute 0.7% of their GDP to the developing countries – something that, barring a few exceptions, they never have – the figure would be in excess of $250 billion every year.

The U.S. government spent $800 billion on saving the banks. How much would it be prepared to pay to save the nine billion people who will inhabit the planet in 2050, if large-scale drought and sea flooding provoked by the melting of glaciers and great masses of frozen water from Greenland and Antarctica?

Let us not deceive ourselves. What the United States has attempted with its maneuvers in Copenhagen is to divide the Third World, to separate more than 150 underdeveloped countries from China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others with which we must fight united to defend – in Bonn, Mexico or any other international conference, along with the social, scientific and humanitarian organizations – genuine agreements that will benefit all countries and preserve humanity from a disaster that could lead to the extinction of our species.

The world is in possession of constantly more information, but politicians have constantly less time for thinking.

The rich nations and their leaders, including the U.S. Congress, would seem to be arguing which will be the last to disappear.

When Obama has completed the 28 parties with which he proposed to celebrate this Christmas, if Epiphany is included among them, perhaps Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar will advise him on what he should do.

Please excuse this extended Reflection. I did not wish to divide it into two parts. I apologize to my patient readers.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 3, 2010
3:16 p.m.

Originally posted at CubaDebate.