Reflections of Fidel

On occasions direct news coming from the United States prompts indignation and sometimes repugnance.

Of course, a large volume of recent reports have referred to problems associated with the grave international economic crisis and its consequences in the heart of the empire. Naturally, they are not the only ones in reference to that powerful country. Any page of the bulky volume of news proceeding from any continent, region or country of the world is generally related to the policy of the United States. There is no point on the planet where the domineering presence of the empire is not experienced.

Logically, for close to 10 years, news of its brutal wars has occupied significant press space and even more so when a presidential election was in the equation.
However, nobody could have imagined the appearance, in the midst of the drama of the wars of conquest, of news on secret prisons and torture centers, a shameful and well-guarded secret of the government of the United States.
The author of the grotesque policy which led to that point had usurped the presidency in the elections of November 2000, by means of electoral fraud in the southern state of Florida where the battle was decided.

After usurping power, W. Bush not only dragged the country into a politics of war, but failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, thus denying the world, during 10 years of struggle for the environment, the support of the nation that consumes 25% of fossil fuels, which could inflict irreparable damage on the human species. Climate change is already present in the increase of global warming that the pilots of executive aircraft can observe via tornadoes of growing strength forming in the early hours of the afternoon along their tropical routes and which could be a potential danger for their modern jets. The causes of the accident of Air France passenger plane, which disintegrated in full flight, are still unknown.

Nothing would be comparable with the consequences of the melting of the enormous accumulated volume of water over the Antarctic continent, combined with that melting over Greenland. I maintained my point of view on the responsibility that falls on Bush in a recent meeting with the U.S. film director Oliver Stone, commenting on his movie “W,” referring to the penultimate president of the United States.

I will confine myself to noting that after the political errors and horrors of George W. Bush, former Vice President Cheney, who was his advisor, is brandishing the idea that the acts of torture ordered by the CIA to obtain information were justified in terms of saving U.S. lives, thanks to information obtained in that way.
Of course that did not save the lives of the thousands of Americans who died in Iraq, nor those of close to one million Iraqis, nor those dying in Afghanistan in increasing numbers. Nor do we know what will be the consequences of the hatred accumulated by the genocides that are being committed or could be committed in those ways.

Let us be clear, it is an elemental problem of political ethics: “the end does not justify the means.” Torture does not justify torture; crime does not justify crime.
That principle was debated and maintained for centuries. In virtue of it humanity has condemned all wars of conquest and all the crimes committed. It is extremely grave that the most powerful empire and the most colossal superpower ever to have existed should proclaim such a politics. Of even more concern is the fact that not only the vice president and the principal inspirer of such a perfidious politics, is overtly proclaiming it, but that an elevated number of citizens of that country, possibly more than half, support it. In that case, it would be evidence of the moral abyss to which developed capitalism, consumerism and imperialism can lead. If that is the case, it should be openly proclaimed and the rest of the world should be asked its opinion.

However, I think that the most aware citizens of the United States will be capable of waging and winning that moral battle as they comprehend the painful truth. No honest person in the world would wish for them, or for any other country, the death of innocent people, victims of any form of terror, wherever it may come from.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 2, 2009
7:34 p.m.

This Reflection is not addressed to the governments but to the fraternal peoples of Latin America.

Tomorrow, August 28, the UNASUR Summit will convene in Argentina and its significance cannot be overlooked. There, an analysis should be made of the concession to the American superpower of seven military bases in the Colombian territory. A rigorous secret had been kept on the previous talks of the two governments. The accord should have been presented to the world as a fait accompli.

In the early morning hours of March 1, 2008, the Colombian Armed Forces -trained and equipped by the United States- had used precision bombs to attack a guerrilla group which had entered a remote area of the Ecuadorian territory. At dawn, airborne elite Colombian troops occupied the small camp, killed the wounded and carried with them the dead body of guerrilla leader Raul Reyes. Apparently, in those days he had been meeting with young visitors from other countries who were interested in the experience of the guerrillas involved in an armed struggle since the death of liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, over 50 years ago. Among the victims there
were college students from Mexico and Ecuador; they were not carrying weapons. It was a brutal action in the Yankee style. The government of Ecuador had not received any previous notice of the attack.

This event was a humiliating action against the small and heroic South American nation absorbed in a democratic political process. There was a strong suspicion that the US Air Base of Manta had provided the information and cooperated with the aggressors. President Rafael Correa made the brave decision of demanding the return of the territory occupied
by the Manta military base, in strict compliance with the letter of the military agreement with the United States, and recalled his ambassador from Bogota.

The concession of territory for the establishment of seven US military bases in Colombia poses a direct threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the other peoples of South and Central America with which our national heroes dreamed to create the great Latin American homeland.

The Yankee imperialism is a hundred times more powerful than the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, and a complete stranger to the origin, customs and culture of our peoples.

It is not a matter of narrow chauvinism. “Homeland is Humanity,” as Marti claimed, but never under the domination of an empire which has imposed a bloody tyranny to the world. In our own hemisphere, the hundreds of thousands of Latin American compatriots who were murdered, tortured or banished in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and other countries of Our America all through the past five decades by coup d’etat and actions promoted or supported by the United States provide irrefutable evidence of this
assertion.

As I analyze the arguments of the United States to try to justify the concession of military bases in Colombian territory I cannot help but qualify such pretexts as cynical. The US claims the necessity of these bases to cooperate in the struggle on drug-trafficking, terrorism, arms-trafficking, illegal migration, the possession of weapons of mass destruction, nationalist outbursts and natural disasters.

That powerful country is the largest drug purchaser and consumer on the planet. An analysis of the paper money circulating in the US capital, Washington, has shown that 95 percent of the bills have been in the hands of drug consumers. The US is also the largest market and the main supplier of weapons to organized crime in Latin America, the same weapons that have killed tens of thousands of people every year south of its own borders; it
is the largest terrorist state that has ever existed. Not only did it drop bombs on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and caused the death of millions of people with such imperialist wars as those carried out against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries located thousands of miles away but it is also the largest producer and holder of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical and biological.

The Colombian paramilitary, many of them former members of the Armed Forces, are part of their reserves and the drug-traffickers’ best allies and protective force.

The so-called civilian personnel that would accompany the troops in the Colombian bases are, as a rule, perfectly trained former American military hired by such private companies as Blackwater, widely known for its crimes in Iraq and elsewhere in the world.

A country that respects itself needs no US mercenaries, troops or military bases to fight drug-trafficking, to protect the people in case of natural disasters or to provide humanitarian cooperation to other peoples.

Cuba is a country that does not have a drug problem or high rates of violent deaths that decrease every year.

The only purpose of the United States with these bases is to place Latin America within reach of its troops in a matter of hours. The top echelon of the military in Brazil was very upset with the unexpected news of the agreement on the establishment of US military bases in Colombia. The Palanquero base is very close to the Brazilian border. These bases and those in the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands), Paraguay, Peru, Honduras, Aruba, Curacao and others would not leave a single place in Brazil and the rest of South America beyond reach of the South Command, which, using its most advanced carrier aircraft, could get there within hours with troops and sophisticated combat equipment. The best experts on the subject have offered the necessary data to prove the military scope of the Yankee/Colombian accord. Such a program including the reinstatement of the 4th Fleet was designed by Bush and inherited by the current US administration from which some South American leaders are asking due clarification of its Latin America military policy. Nuclear aircraft-carriers are not required to combat drugs.

The most immediate objective of that plan is to finish off the Bolivarian revolutionary process and to ensure control over Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources. On the other hand, the empire does not accept the competition of the new emerging economies in its backyard or the existence of truly independent countries in Latin America. And, it counts on the reactionary oligarchy, the fascist right and its control over the most important media, both internally and externally. Nothing resembling true equity and social justice will ever have its support.

The Latin American migration to the United States is the consequence of underdevelopment, which is the result of the plundering of our countries by that nation and the unequal exchange with the industrialized countries.

Mexico was forcibly removed from Latin America through the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. Most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the former country are Mexicans; the same as most of
the hundreds who perish every year along the fence separating these nations.

Amid the current international economic crisis, the rate of critical poverty in Mexico -a country with a population of 107 million- has reached 18 percent while more than half of the population lives in poverty.

The major source of concern during the life of Marti, the apostle of our independence, was the annexation to the United States. Since 1889, he had become aware that this was the greatest danger for Latin America. He always dreamed of the Grand Homeland, from the Bravo River to the Patagonia; and he died for it and for Cuba.

On January 10, 1891 he wrote in La Revista Ilustrada of New York an essay under the title “Our America” where he used such unforgettable phrases as: “the trees must form ranks to keep the giant with seven-league boots from passing! It is the time of mobilization, of marching together in close ranks like the veins of silver at the roots of the Andes.”

Four years later, after his landing at Playitas in the eastern province of Cuba, and already in the territory held by the insurrectionists, he met on May 2, 1895 with the Herald journalist George E. Bryson who told him that in an interview with the celebrated General Arsenio Martinez Campos the Spanish officer had said that he would rather surrender Cuba to the United States than accept its independence.

Marti was so impressed by the news that on May 18 he wrote his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado the renowned posthumous letter where he wrote of “the road that is to be closed, and is being closed with our blood, of
annexing our American nations to the brutal and turbulent North which despises them”

The following day, heedless of the advice of General Maximo Gomez who indicated that he should stay with the rearguard, he asked from his assistant a revolver and charged on a well-positioned Spanish force, and then he died in combat.

“I have lived in the monster and I know its entrails,” he wrote in his last letter.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 27, 2009
12:40 p.m.

I was amazed to read the wire services issued during the weekend about the US domestic policy, evidencing a systematic decline in President Barack Obama’s influence. His surprising electoral victory had not been possible in the absence of the deep political and economic crisis affecting that country. The American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, the scandal about tortures and secret prisons, and the loss of jobs and housing had shaken the American society. The economic crisis was spreading throughout the planet, thus increasing poverty and hunger in the Third World countries.

Such circumstances made it possible for Obama to run for office and be elected in a traditionally racist society. No less than 90 per cent of the poor and discriminated against black people, most of the voters of Latin descent and a broad working and middle class white minority, especially the youth, voted for him.

It was only logical for those Americans who supported him to entertain lots of hopes. After eight years of adventurism, demagogy and lies, which led to the death of thousands of American soldiers and almost one million Iraqis in a conquest war over the oil of that Muslim country -which had nothing to do whatsoever with the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers-, the American people felt tired and ashamed?

Not only a few people in Africa and elsewhere got excited about the idea that the US foreign policy would change.

However, an elemental knowledge about reality would have been enough in order not to raise hopes about a possible political change in the United States after the election of a new president.

Obama had certainly opposed the war launched by Bush against Iraq long before many others in the US Congress. Since he was a teenager he knew about the humiliations of racial discrimination, and just as many other Americans, he admired Martin Luther King, the outstanding civil rights fighter.

Obama was born, educated, went into politics and managed to be successful within the United States’ imperial capitalist system. He neither wished nor could change the system. Curiously enough, despite that, the extreme right hates him for being an Afro-American and opposes anything the President does to improve that country’s deteriorated image.

He has come to understand that the United States, with hardly 14 per cent of the world’s population, consumes about 25 per cent of the fossil energy, and is the biggest source of emissions of pollutant gases in the world.

Bush, in his ravings, did not even sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Obama, for his part, intends to implement stricter rules against tax evasion. For example, reportedly, the Swiss banks would supply data about approximately 4,500 financial accounts of a total of 52,000 owned by US citizens under suspicion of tax evasion.

A few weeks ago in Europe, Obama committed himself before the G-8 countries, especially France and Germany, to put an end to the use of fiscal heavens by his country in order to inject huge amounts of American dollars into the world’s economy.

He offered health care to almost 50 million citizens who had no medical insurance.

He promised to the US people that he would grease the wheels of the production apparatus machinery, stop increasing unemployment and resume growth

He promised the 12 million Hispanic illegal immigrants he would put an end to the cruel raids and the inhumane treatment they receive.

He made other promises that I will not list, but none of them questions the system of imperial capitalist domination.

The powerful extreme right will not tolerate any single measure that could in the least mean a reduction of its prerogatives.

I will just limit myself to refer to some reports published in recent days by US news and press agencies.

August 21:

-According to a poll published that day by The Washington Post, the confidence of American citizens on Presidents Barack Obama’s leadership has substantially decreased.

-In the midst of an increasing opposition against he health system’s reform, the telephone poll made by that newspaper and the ABC TV network among 1 001 adults from August 13 to 17 revealed that 49 per cent of respondents believe that Obama would be able to significantly improve the US health care system. This results accounts for 20 percentage points less as compared to the period before Obama started his presidential mandate.

-Fifty five per cent of the respondents believe that the US general situation is not going well, as compared to 48 per cent in April.

-The fierce debate over the health reform in the US evidences an extremism that has become a source of concern for experts; they are alarmed about the presence of armed men in popular gatherings, the drawing of swastikas and the images of Hitler.

-The experts in hatred crimes have recommended watching these extremists closely. While many Democrats have felt overwhelmed by the protests, others have decided to directly confront their fellow countrymen.

-The young woman who carried a manipulated picture of Obama, wearing a Hitler’s style mustache, nurtured the theory that the President would create ‘death panels’ that would support euthanasia among senior citizens with no hope of recovery.

-According to reports, there are those who pretend to be deaf and resort to convey messages of hatred and extremism, which Brad Garrett, the former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), deems as alarming.

-Last week Garret said to the ABC network that we were certainly living through scary times, and added that the secret services are afraid that something may happen to Obama.

-According to reports, just on Monday last about twelve people were proud to show their weapons outside the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona, where the President was delivering a speech before the war veterans in which, among other things, he defended his medical reform.

-It was said that another man was carrying a gun bearing the following inscription: the time has come to refresh the tree of liberty, which evoked the phrase pronounced by President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) when he said that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed by the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

-Some messages have been even more explicit; they have wished for the death of Obama, Michelle and their two daughters.

-Those incidents show that hatred has penetrated America’s politics more strongly than ever before.

-Larry Berman, from the University of California, who has written 12 books about the US presidency, said to EFE that right now we are talking about people who shout, who carry Obama’s pictures in which he appears characterized as a Nazi, and refer to the term ’socialist’ with contempt. He believes that part of what is going on is due to the racism legacy that still lives on.

-Reportedly, after The New York Times published the day before that the CIA had hired Blackwater back in 2004 to perform the tasks of planning, training and surveillance, this day’s newspaper revealed further details about the activities entrusted to that controversial private security company whose current name is ‘Xe’.

-The newspaper revealed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency recruited several Blackwater agents to install bombs on board of drones in order to kill Al Qaeda leaders.

-According to the information revealed by government officials to The New York Times, those operations were carried out in bases located in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the private company equipped the planes with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.

-It was reported that the current director of the Agency, Leon Panetta, decided at some point in time to cancel the program and reveal before Congress in June the type of collaboration that existed between Blackwater and the CIA.

-According to the news, Blackwater’s collaboration ended a few years before Panetta was appointed as CIA chief, because the agency officials themselves questioned the convenience of having external agents participating in programs of selective assassinations.

-Blackwater is said to be the main private security company in charge of protecting the US staff in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration.

-Reportedly, its aggressive tactics were criticized on different occasions. The most serious case occurred on September, 2007, when some agents from the company killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

-After considering the record figures of suicides and the wave of depression spreading among its soldiers, the US army is said to be, little by little, creating some special groups whose task will be to enhance its troops’ resistance against the war-related emotional stress.

August 22:

-This day the US President Barack Obama is said to have harshly criticized those who oppose his plan to reform the health system in his country, and accused them of disseminating false and distorted information.

-According to reports, as he himself has pointed out in his speeches, the objective of the reform of the health care system is to put a halt to its rapidly increasing cost and ensure health coverage for almost 50 million Americans who have no health insurance.

-According to the news, this should have been an honest debate, not dominated by the deliberately false and distorted reports that have been disseminated by those who would benefit the most if things continue to be the way they are.

-According to what was published by The New York Times this day, the US State Department has continued funding Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries who were involved in the assassination of Al Qaeda leaders which is now called Xe Services.

-It was reported that the Governor of the State of New York, David Paterson, expressed on Friday last that the media had resorted to the use of racial stereotypes in its coverage of black officials like him, President Obama and the Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick.

-It is said that the White House has estimated that the budget deficit during the next decade will amount to 2 trillion dollars more than the figure recently estimated, which would be a storming blow for President Barack Obama and his plans to create a public health system largely financed by the State.

-Forecasts within 10 years time are said to be very volatile and could vary with time. However, the new red figures in public funding will reportedly pose serious problems for Obama in Congress, and will cause a huge anxiety among the foreigners who are financing America’s public debt, especially China. Almost all economists consider them to be unsustainable even if there were a mass devaluation of the American dollar.

August 23:

-The top ranking military who commands the American army is said to have expressed on Sunday last his concern about the loss of popular support in his country to the war in Afghanistan, while indicating that the country continued to be vulnerable to the attacks of the extremists.

-Mike Muller, the chief of the military joint command said that the situation in Afghanistan was serious and deteriorating, and added that in the last two years, the Taliban insurrection has improved and become more specialized.

-In an interview aired by the NBC TV network, Mullen did not specify whether or not it would be necessary to send more troops.

-According to reports, a little bit more than 50 per cent of the respondents in the poll made by The Washington Post and the ABC TV network, whose results were recently published, expressed that the war in Afghanistan was not worth it.

-Reportedly, by the end of 2009 the United States will have three times more soldiers than the 20,000 who were deployed in Afghanistan three years ago.

Confusion is rampant within the American society.

September 11 will mark the eighth year since the fateful 9/11. On that same day, at Havana’s Sports Coliseum, we advised that the war was not the way to put an end to terrorism.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghan war to fight the Taliban is wrong. The Soviet Union was trapped in a quagmire there. The US European allies will be ever more reluctant to see the blood of their soldiers shed in that country.

Mullen’s concern over the popularity of that war is not far-fetched. Those who perpetrated the attack on September 11, 2001, against the Twin Towers were trained by the United States.

The Taliban is an Afghan nationalist movement that had nothing to do with that event. Al Qaeda, an organization that has been financed by the CIA since 1979 and was used against the USSR during the years of the Cold War, was the one that masterminded that attack 22 years later.

There are still some dark events that require further clarification before the international public opinion.

Obama has inherited those problems from Bush.

I do not have the slightest doubt that the racist right will do its best to try to wear him out by hindering his program and leaving him out of play, one way or the other, at the lowest possible political cost.

I wish I were wrong!

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 24, 2009
5:15 p.m.

[Edited to add: See recommended movie link at bottom of post.]

A short while ago I dealt with the United States’ plans to impose the absolute superiority of its air force as an instrument of domination on the rest of the world. I mentioned the project that by 2020 they would have more than a thousand latest generation bombers and F-22 and F-35 fighter planes in their fleet of 2500 military aircrafts. In twenty more years, every single one of their war planes will be robot-operated.

Military budgets always count on the support of the immense majority of American legislators. There is hardly any state in the Union where employment does not depend in part on the defense industries.

On a global level and with constant value, military expenses have doubled in the last 10 years as if there were no danger at all of any crisis. At this moment, it is the most prosperous industry on the planet.

By 2008, approximately 1.5 trillion dollars were invested in defense budgets. The US spends 42 percent of world expenses in this area –607 billion– not including war expenses, while the number of people who go hungry in the world has reached the figure of 1 billion.

Two days ago a western news dispatch informed that in mid-August the US army exhibited a tele-guided helicopter along with robots capable of working as sappers, 2500 of which have been sent into combat zones.

A company marketing robots maintained that the new technologies would revolutionize the manner of directing the war. It has been published that in 2003 the US barely had enough robots in its arsenal and, according to AFP, “today it has 10,000 land vehicles as well as 7000 air devices, from the small Raven that can be hand-launched right up to the gigantic Global Hawk, a spy plane 13 meters long and with a 35 meter wingspan capable of flying at great altitudes for 35 hours.” This dispatch lists other weapons as well.

While the United States is spending such huge figures in killing technology, the president of that country is sweating buckets trying to bring health services to 50 million Americans who don’t have them. There is such confusion that the new president said that he felt he was closer than ever to achieving reform of the health care system but that the battle is becoming fierce.

He added that the story is clear, that every time health care reforms seem closer on the horizon, special interests fight with everything they’ve got applying their leverage, launching publicity campaigns and using their political allies to scare the American people.

The fact is that in Los Angeles 8000 people – most of them unemployed, according to the press – turned up in a stadium to receive medical care from a traveling free clinic that provides services to the Third World. The crowds had spent the night there. Some of them had traveled from hundreds of miles away.

“‘What do I care whether it’s socialist or not? We’re the only country in the world where the most vulnerable people have nothing,’ said a college-educated woman from a black neighborhood.”

According to the report “a blood test can cost 500 dollars and a routine dental treatment more than 1000 dollars.”

What kind of hope can that society offer the world?

The lobbyists in Congress make their profits working against a simple law intended to provide medical care to tens of millions of poor people, mostly blacks and Latinos who lack it. Even a blockaded country like Cuba has been able to do it and is even cooperating with dozens of countries in the Third World.

If robots in the hands of the transnationals can replace imperial soldiers in the wars of conquest, who will stop the transnationals in their quest for a market for their artifacts? Just as they have flooded the world with automobiles that today compete with mankind for the consumption of non-renewable energy and even foods converted into fuel, so too they can flood the world with robots that would displace millions of workers from their workplaces.

Better yet, scientists could also design robots capable of governing; that way they could spare the US government and Congress that terrible, contradictory and confusing work.

No doubt they would do it better and cheaper.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 19, 2009
3:15 p.m.

Monthly Review Suggests You See:

Movie Trailer Link: Sleep Dealer
(Playback may be slow or intermittent until file finishes downloading)

During recent weeks, the current president of the United States has insisted in demonstrating that the crisis is abating as a result of his efforts to confront the serious problem that the United States and the world inherited from his predecessor.

Almost every economist refers to the economic crisis that began in October of 1929. The one before had happened at the end of the nineteenth century. One tendency that has become widespread among US politicians is that of believing that just as soon as the banks have enough money to grease the wheels of the production apparatus machinery, everything will march onwards to an idyllic and never dreamed of world.

The differences between the so-called economic crisis of the 1930s and the one today are many, but I will focus only on one of the most important ones.

From the close of World War I, the dollar, based on the gold standard, substituted the British pound sterling due to the huge quantities of gold that Great Britain had spent on the war. The great economic crisis emerged in the United States hardly 12 years after that war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, succeeded largely because he was aided by the crisis, just as Obama is by today’s crisis. Following the Keynesian theory, Roosevelt pumped money into circulation, launched public works programmes such as the building of highways, dams and other projects of undeniable benefits, which increased spending, demand for products, jobs and GNP rates for years. But he didn’t get the funds by printing more paper money; he got them through taxes and by using part of the money deposited in the banks. He sold US bonds with guaranteed interests, which made them very attractive for buyers.

In 1929 the price of a troy ounce was 20 dollars and Roosevelt increased it to 35 dollars as a domestic guarantee for the US dollar bills.

In July, 1944, based on this physical gold guarantee, the Bretton Woods Agreement was reached, authorizing the powerful country the privilege of printing hard currency while the rest of the world was in bankruptcy. The US owned more than 80% of the world’s gold.

I don’t have to remind you of what came next, from the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – we have just commemorated 64 years of that genocide – up to the coup d’etat in Honduras and the seven military bases that the US government intends to set up in Colombia. The fact is that in 1971, under the Nixon administration, the gold standard was suppressed and the unlimited printing of dollars became the greatest swindle of humanity. By virtue of the privilege granted by the Bretton Woods Agreement, the US unilaterally has suppressed convertibility and pays with paper for the goods and services it acquires in the world. While it is true that, in exchange for dollars, it also offers goods and services, it is also a fact that since the gold standard was suppressed, the dollar bills of that country which were quoted at a rate of 35 dollars for a troy ounce, have lost almost 30 times their value and 48 times the value they had in 1929. The rest of the world has had to bear the losses; their natural resources and their money have paid for rearmament and have largely defrayed the cost of the wars launched by the empire. Suffice it to point out that the quantity of bonds supplied to other countries, according to conservative estimates, exceeds the figure of 3 trillion dollars, and the public debt, which continues to grow, exceeds the figure of 11 trillions.

The empire and its capitalist allies, while competing among themselves, have made us believe that the anti-crisis measures are the right formulas leading to salvation. But Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, China and India do not increase their funds by selling Treasury bonds or printing paper money; instead they apply other formulas to protect their currencies and their markets, often times with great austerity for their peoples. The overwhelming majority of developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are the ones that pays the consequences, by supplying non-renewable natural resources and the sweat and lives of their peoples.

NAFTA is the clearest example of what could happen to a developing country that falls into the jaws of the wolf: at the last Summit, Mexico could neither find a solution for its immigrants in the US nor get a visa waiver from Canada.

However, in the midst of the present crisis, the greatest FTA in the world acquires full validity: the World Trade Organization, which was founded to the tune of neo-liberalism, at a time when the world finances and idyllic dreams were in full swing.

On the other hand, yesterday, August 11, BBC World reported that a thousand UN officials meeting in Bonn, Germany, declared that they were searching for a path to reach an agreement on climate change by December this year, but that time was running out.

Ivo de Boer, the top-ranking UN climate change official, said that there were only 119 days until the Summit and that they had an enormous number of diverging interests, little time for discussion, a complex document on the table (two hundred pages long) and funding problems. He further added that developing nations insisted that most of the greenhouse gases came from the industrialized world.

The developing world has stated the necessity for financial aid in order to cope with climate change.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expressed that if urgent measures are not taken to combat climate change, this could lead to mass violence and upheavals throughout the planet.

He said that climate change will intensify droughts, flooding and other natural disasters; that the water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people and malnutrition will devastate a great number of developing countries.

In an article published by The New York Times on August 9 last, it was explained that: “Analysts see climate change as a threat to national security.”

“Such climate-induced crises -the article goes on-could topple governments, feed terrorist movements and destabilize entire regions, say the analysts and experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.”

“‘It gets real complicated real quickly,’ said Amanda J. Dory, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.”

From The New York Times article we can deduce that in the Senate not everyone is convinced that this is a real problem, totally ignored until now by the US government ever since it was approved in Kyoto ten years ago.

There are some who say that the economic crisis marks the end of imperialism; maybe we should wonder whether or not this is something worse for our species.

In my opinion, the best thing will always be to have a just cause to defend and the hope to continue moving forward.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 12, 2009
9:12 p.m.

The concept of nation emerged from the combination of common elements such as history, language, culture, costumes, laws, institutions and others related to the material and spiritual life of human communities.

Bolivar, who worked the great heroic deeds that turned him into ‘The Liberator of peoples’ during his struggle for the freedom of the peoples of the Americas, urged them to create what he called “the greatest nation in the world: less for its extension and riches than for its liberty and glory.”

In Ayacucho, Antonio Jose de Sucre waged the last battle against the empire that for more than 300 years had transformed much of this continent into a royal property of the Spanish Crown.

That was the same America that tens of years later, after being divided in part by the rising Yankee imperialism, was called by Marti ‘Our America.’

We should remember once again that on May 19, 1895, a few hours before dying in combat for the independence of Cuba, the last bastion of Spanish colonialism in the Americas, Jose Marti prophetically wrote that everything he had done and would was to “timely prevent, with the independence of Cuba, that the United States could expand over the Antilles and fall with that additional force over our American lands.”

In the United States, where the recently liberated thirteen colonies did not take long disorderly to expand to the West in their quest for land and gold, while exterminating indigenous populations, until they reached the Pacific coast, the agricultural and slave States of the South competed with the industrial States of the North that exploited wage labor in an attempt to create other States to protect their economic interests.

In 1848 Mexico was robbed of more than 50 per cent of its territory during a war of conquest launched against that country that was then militarily weak. The conquerors occupied the capital and imposed humiliating peace conditions. Mexico’s big reserves of oil and gas, which remained in the territory that was robbed, would later on be supplied to the United States for more than a century and in part they continue to be so now.

The Yankee filibuster William Walker, encouraged by “the manifest destiny” declared by his country, landed in Nicaragua in 1855 and proclaimed himself as President, until he was expelled by the Nicaraguans and other Central American patriots in 1856.

Our National Hero realized how the destiny of Latin American countries was being shattered by the rising United States Empire.

After Marti’s death in combat there was a military intervention in Cuba at a time when the Spanish army had already been defeated.

The Platt Amendment, which granted that powerful country the right to intervene in the Island, was imposed on Cuba.

The occupation of Puerto Rico – which has lasted for 111 years now- a country so called “Free Associated State” that is neither free nor a State, was another consequence of that intervention.

The worst was still to come for Latin America, as was confirmed by the ingenious premonitions of Marti. The growing empire had decided that the canal that would link the two oceans would go through Panama and not through Nicaragua. The Panama isthmus, the Corinth dreamed of by Bolivar as the capital of the biggest Republic of the world envisaged by him would be a property of the Yankees.

Despite that, the worst consequences were still to come in the course of the 20th century. With the support of the national political oligarchies, the United States became the owner of the resources and the economies of Latin American countries. Military interventions multiplied; military and police forces fell under the US aegis. The Yankee transnationals took control over the fundamental productions and services, banks, insurance companies, foreign trade, railways, ships, warehouses, electricity services and telephone services. Others, to a greater or lesser degree, were finally controlled by them.

It is true that the sharp social inequities led to the emergence of the Mexican Revolution in the second decade of the 20th century, which became a source of inspiration for other countries. The Revolution made it possible for Mexico to make progress in different areas. But the same empire that in the past devoured much of the Mexican territory is devouring today important natural resources it still keeps, cheap labor, and is even forcing the Mexican people to shed its own blood.

The NAFTA is the most brutal economic agreement imposed on a developing country. For the sake of brevity, it will suffice it to point out that the US Government has just stated that at a moment when Mexico has been hit by a double blow, not only because of its economic slowdown, but also because of the effects of the AH1N1 virus, the US would probably want to see a more stable economy before engaging in a long discussion about new commercial negotiations. And of course, not a single word is said about the fact that, as a consequence of the war unleashed by drug trafficking – for which Mexico has deployed 36 000 troops-, almost 4 000 Mexicans have died in 2009. The same phenomenon repeats itself to a greater or lesser degree in the rest of Latin America. Drugs not only cause serious health problems; they are also a source of violence which is causing lot of pain in Mexico and Latin America as a consequence of the insatiable US market, which is an infinite source of the hard currency that is used to foment the production of cocaine and heroine. It is the country that supplies the weapons used in that ferocious and unadvertised war.

Those who die in the territory between Rio Grande and the farthest corners of South America are all Latin Americans. Thus, the general violence is breaking new records of deaths. The victims, mostly because of drugs and poverty, surpass the figure of 100 000 a year in Latin America.

The empire does not wage the struggle on drugs within its borders; it is doing so in the Latin American countries.

In our country we do not grow coca or poppy. We efficiently combat those who attempt to introduce drugs in our country or use Cuba as a transit point. The number of persons who die as a result of violence is decreasing every year. And for that we do not need Yankee soldiers. The struggle against drugs is a pretext to establish military bases in the whole hemisphere.

Since when are the vessels of the 4th Fleet and modern combat planes used to combat drugs?

The true objective is to control the economic resources, the markets, and to struggle against social changes. Was there any need to re-establish that fleet which was demobilized after the Second World War, more than 60 years later, when the cold war is over and the USSR no longer exist? The arguments used for the installation of seven air and naval bases in Colombia are an insult to intelligence.

History will not forgive those who have been so disloyal to their own peoples or those who resort to the exercise of sovereignty as a pretext to harmonize this with the presence of Yankee troops. What sovereignty do they refer to? The one conquered by Bolivar, Sucre, San Martin, O’Higgins, Morelos, Juarez, Tiradentes and Marti? None of them would have accepted such a repugnant argument to justify the granting of military bases to the Armed Forces of the United States, an empire far more dominant, powerful and universal than the Crowns of the Iberian Peninsula.

If as a consequence of such agreements promoted illegally and unconstitutionally by the United States, any government in that country uses those bases, as was done by Reagan during the dirty war, and Bush at the time of the Iraq war, to provoke an armed conflict between two sister nations, this would be a big tragedy. Venezuela and Colombia were born together in the history of the Americas, after the battles of Boyaca and Carabobo, under the leadership of Simon Bolivar. The Yankee forces could promote a dirty war as they did in Nicaragua, and even recruit soldiers of foreign nationalities trained by them and attack any country, but the combatant, brave and patriotic people of Colombia would hardly let itself be dragged into a war against a brother people like the Venezuelan.

The imperialists would be making a mistake if they equally underestimate the other Latin American peoples. None of them would agree with the presence of Yankee military bases; none of them will stop expressing its solidarity with any Latin American people that is been attacked by the imperialism.

Marti admired Bolivar very much, and he was not wrong when he said: “And that is how Bolivar is in the sky of America: vigilant and frowning and still wearing his campaign boots; because what he did not do, remains to be done still today: because Bolivar still has things to do in the Americas.”

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 9, 2009
6:32 p.m.

I read and reread data and articles written by smart personalities, some better known than others, who publish in various media outlets drawing the information from sources nobody questions.

Everywhere in the world, the people living on this planet are taking economic, environmental and war risks due to the United States policies but no other region of the world as threatened by such grave problems as that country’s neighbors, that is, the peoples of this continent south of that hegemonic power.

The presence of such a powerful empire –with military bases, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers; modern warships and sophisticated fighter planes that can carry any type of weapons, deployed in every continent and ocean; with hundreds of thousands of troops and a government that claims absolute impunity for them– is the most important headache for any government, be it a leftist, rightist or center government, an ally of the United States or not.

The problem for those of us who are its neighbors is not that it is a different country with a different language. There are Americans of every color and background. They are people just like us with all kinds of feelings, in one sense or another. What is dramatic is the system that has been developed there and imposed on everyone else. That system is not new to the use of force and to the domination methods that have prevailed throughout history; what is new is the time we are living. Approaching the issue from a traditional perspective would be a mistake and no one would benefit. Reading and getting acquainted with the ideas of the advocates of the system can be very educational for it helps to become aware of the nature of a system which builds on a continuous appeal to selfishness and to the peoples’ most basic instincts.

Without convictions about the value of conscience and its capacity to prevail over instincts, it would not be possible to even speak of a hope for change in any period of the very short history of man. Neither would it be possible to understand the formidable obstacles lying in the way of the different political leaders of the Latin American or Ibero-American nations in the hemisphere. In any case, the peoples living in this part of the world in the last tens of thousands of years until the famous discovery of the Americas had no traits of the Latin, Iberian or European peoples and their features resembled more those of the Asian peoples where their ancestors had come from. Today, we can find them on the faces of the indigenous people in Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile, a country where the Araucanians wrote enduring pages. In certain areas of Canada and Alaska they still preserve their indigenous roots as purely as they can, but in the continental United States a large part of the ancient peoples was exterminated by the white conquerors.

As everybody knows, millions of Africans were uprooted from their land and brought to work as slaves in this hemisphere. In some countries like Haiti and a large part of the Caribbean Islands their descendants make up the majority of the population, and in some other countries they add up to large segments. In the United States, there are tens of millions of people of African descent who, as a rule, are the poorest and most discriminated against.

For centuries that country claimed privileged rights over our continent. At the time of Jose Marti, it tried to impose a single currency based on gold, a metal whose value has been the steadiest through history. In general, international trade was based on gold; but that is not the case today. From the days of Nixon’s administration, world trade developed on the basis of the paper money printed by the United States, the dollar, a currency worth today about 27 times less than in the early 70s; one of the many ways to dominate and defraud the rest of the world. At the present moment, however, other currencies are taking the place of the dollar in international trade and in the hard currency reserves.

Then, while the value of the empire’s currency is decreasing, its military forces’ reserves are increasing and the state-of-the-art technology and science monopolized by the superpower are largely directed to weapons development. Presently, it is not only the thousands of nuclear missiles or the modern destructive power of conventional weapons, but the guided planes piloted by robots. This is not just a fantasy. Some of these aircraft are being used in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Recent reports indicate that in a relatively near future, by the year 2020, –long before the Antarctic icecap melts– the empire plans to have among its 2500 war planes, 1100 fifth-generation F-35 and F-22 fighter-bombers. Just to give an idea of that potential, suffice it to say that the aircraft used at the Soto Cano base in Honduras to train that country’s pilots are F-5, and the ones supplied to the Venezuelan air force –prior to Chavez– and to Chile and other countries, were small F-16 squadrons. Even more significant is the empire’s plan for the next 30 years anticipating that every U.S. combat aircraft, from fighter planes to heavy bombers and tanker planes are piloted by robots.

Such a military might is not a necessity of the world; it is a necessity of the economic system that the empire imposes to the world.

Anyone understands that if the robots can replace the combat pilots, they can also replace the workers in many factories. The free-trade agreements that the empire is trying to impose on the countries of this hemisphere mean that these workers will have to compete with the advanced technology and the robots of the Yankee industry.

Robots do not go on strike; they are obedient and disciplined. We have seen on TV machinery that can pick up apples and other fruits. The question could also be asked to the American workers. Where will the jobs be? What is the future that capitalism without borders, in its advanced development stage, assigns to the people?

In light of this and other realities, the leaders of UNASUR, MERCOSUR, the Rio Group and others cannot but analyze the very good question raised by Venezuela: What’s the meaning of the military and naval bases that the United States wants to set up around Venezuela and in the heart of South America? I remember that a few years back, when relations between Colombia and Venezuela, two sister nations bound by geography and history, grew dangerously tense Cuba quietly promoted significant steps leading to peace between them. Cuba will never encourage war between sister nations. Historic experience, the manifest destiny claimed and applied by the United States and the weak accusations against Venezuela about weapon supplies to the FARC, combined with the negotiations aimed at granting to the U.S. Armed Forces seven places in that territory to be used by their air and naval troops, are leaving Venezuela no other choice but to invest in weaponry the resources it could use for the economy, social programs and cooperation with other countries of the region having less resources and development. Venezuela’s military build-up is not aimed against the fraternal people of Colombia but against the empire which already tried to overthrow its Revolution and today intends to set up its sophisticated weapons near the Venezuelan border.

It would be a serious mistake to believe that only Venezuela is being threatened. Actually, every country in the south of the continent is under threat. Not one of them will be able to avoid the issue as some of them have already stated.

The present and future generations will pass judgment on their leaders for the way they conduct themselves at this moment. It is not only the United States, but the United States and the system. What does it offer? What does it want?

It offers the FTAA, that is, the early ruin of our countries: free transit of goods and capital, but not free transit of people. They are now afraid that the opulent consumerist society is inundated by poor Hispanics, indigenous people, black, mulatto or whites who cannot find jobs in their own countries. They return everyone who commits an offense or that they do not need; quite often these people are killed before they enter that country or returned like animals when they are not necessary. Twelve million Latin American or Caribbean immigrants remain in the United States illegally. A new economy has emerged in our countries, especially in the smallest and poorest: that of remittances. In times of crisis, this strikes mostly the immigrants and their families. Parents and children are separated, sometimes forever. If the immigrant is of military age, he is given the chance to enlist for fighting thousands of miles away from home “on behalf of freedom and democracy,” and if they do not get killed, on their return they are given the right to become US citizens. Then, as they are well trained they are offered the possibility of a contract, not as official soldiers but as civilian soldiers for the private companies that provide services to the imperial wars of conquest.

There are other extremely serious dangers. There are always news of immigrants from Mexico and other countries of our region dying as they try to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. The number of victims each year widely exceeds the totality of those who lost their lives in the almost 28 years of existence of the famous Berlin Wall.

But what is most incredible is that there is hardly any news in the world about a war that is taking thousands of lives every year. In 2009, more Mexicans have been killed than the number of American soldiers who died during Bush’s war on Iraq in the course of his administration.

The cause of the war in Mexico is the largest drug market in the world: the United States market. But there is no war going on in the American territory between the U.S. police and the military fighting the drug-traffickers. The war has instead been exported to Mexico and Central America, but especially to the Aztec country which is closer to the United States. Dreadful images of dead bodies are shown on TV while news keep coming in of people murdered in the surgery rooms where their lives were being saved. None of these images originates in the U.S. territory.

Such a wave of violence and bloodshed is expanding through the countries of South America, affecting them to a lesser or greater extent. Where does the money come from if not the endless source of the U.S. market? Likewise, consumption tends to expand to the rest of the countries in the region causing more victims and direct or indirect damages than AIDS, malaria and other illnesses put together.

The imperial plans of domination are preceded by huge sums of money assigned to the task of deceiving and misinforming the public. For this purpose, they have the full complicity of the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the rightist intelligentsia and the media.

They are experts in spreading news of the politicians’ mistakes and contradictions.

The fate of mankind must not be left in the hands of robots turned into people or people turned into robots.

In the year 2010, the U.S. government will promote its policy through the State Department and USAID spending 2.2 billion dollars -12 percent more than the Bush administration received in the last year of its second term– and almost 450 million of them will be used to prove that the tyranny imposed on the world means democracy and respect for human rights.

They constantly appeal to the human beings’ instinct and selfishness; they despise the value of education and conscience. The resistance put up by the Cuban people throughout 50 years is evident. Resistance is the weapon that peoples can never give up. The Puerto Ricans were able to stop the military exercises in Vieques by standing on the site of the firing range.

Bolivar’s homeland is today the country they are most worried about for its historical role in the struggle for the independence of the peoples of the Americas. Cubans working there as healthcare and informatics specialists, educators, physical education and sports professors, agricultural technicians and specialists in other areas should do their best to fulfill their internationalist duty to prove that the peoples can put up a resistance and carry forward the most sacred principles of human society. Otherwise, the empire will destroy civilization and even the human race.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 5, 2009
11:16 a.m.

The never-ending document read yesterday by the Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias is much worse than the 7 points of the surrender paper he had proposed on July 18th.

He wasn’t communicating with international opinion in Morse Code. He was speaking in front of the TV cameras that were transmitting his image and all the details of the human face that tends to have as many variables as a person’s fingerprints. Any intent to lie can be easily discovered. I was observing him carefully.

Among those watching the television, the great majority knew that Honduras had had a coup d’état. That medium gave information about the speeches made at the OAS, the UN, the SICA (Central American Integration System), the NAM Summit and other forums; they had seen the violations, the assaults and the repression inflicted on the people engaged in activities that brought together hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the coup.

The strangest thing was that when Arias was laying out his new peace proposal, he wasn’t delusional; he believed what he was saying.

Even though very few in Honduras were able to see the images, in the rest of the world many did see them and they also saw when he proposed the famous 7 points on July 18th. They knew that the first of them said, verbatim: “The legitimate restitution of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the presidency of the Republic of Honduras until the end of the constitutional term for which he was elected…”

Everyone wanted to know what the mediator would be saying yesterday afternoon. The acknowledgment of the rights of the constitutional president of Honduras, with the powers reduced almost to zero in the first proposal, was relegated to sixth place in the second Arias plan, where the phrase “to legitimate the restitution” is not even being used.

Many honest people are amazed and they perhaps attribute what he said yesterday to some dark maneuvers of his. Perhaps I am one of the few in the world that understands that there was an auto-suggestive element rather than a deliberate intent in the words of the Nobel Peace Laureate. I noticed that especially when Arias, using special emphasis and labored phrasing on account of the emotion, spoke about the multitude of messages that presidents and world leaders, moved by his initiative, had sent him. It’s what was going through his mind; he doesn’t even realize that other Nobel Peace Laureates, honest and modest individuals such as Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, are outraged by what has happened in Honduras.

Without any shadow of a doubt, a large part of the civilian governments of Latin America, the ones who knew that Zelaya had approved the first Arias plan and were confident in the good sense of the perpetrators of the coup and their Yankee allies, breathed in relief; that lasted only 72 hours.

Seen from a different angle, and returning to the things that prevail in the real world, where the dominant empire exists and almost 200 sovereign states have to wrestle with all kinds of conflicts and political, economic, environmental, religious and other interests, the only thing missing is to award the brilliant Yankee way of thinking of Oscar Arias, trying to gain some time, strengthen the coup, and dishearten the international bodies that supported Zelaya.

On the 30th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Daniel Ortega, bitterly remembering Arias’ role in the first Esquipulas Treaty, declared before a huge crowd of Nicaraguan patriots: “The Yankees know him well, that’s why they chose him to be the mediator in Honduras”. At that same event, Rigoberta Menchú, of indigenous descent, condemned the coup.

If the measures agreed to at the foreign ministers meeting in Washington would be merely fulfilled, the coup d’état would not have been able to survive the non-violent resistance of the Honduran people.

Now the perpetrators of the coup are already moving around in the oligarchic spheres of Latin America, some of which, from high state positions, no longer blush when they speak of their sympathies for the coup and imperialism goes fishing in the choppy waters of the river that is Latin America. Exactly what the United States wanted with the peace initiative, while it accelerated negotiations to surround Bolivar’s homeland with military bases.

We must be fair, and while we await the last word of the people of Honduras, we should demand a Nobel Prize for Mrs. Clinton.

Fidel Castro Ruz
July 23, 2009
2:30 p.m.