Reflections of Fidel

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The meeting was a great success. Bolivia was the venue. I recently wrote on the excellent prospects of that country, an heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are bent on proving that a better world is possible. The ALBA -created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by Bolivar’s and Marti’s ideas, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity- has showed how much could be done in barely five years of peaceful cooperation. This started shortly after Hugo Chavez’s political and democratic victory. Imperialism underestimated him, and deliberately tried to oust him and remove him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the Yankee transnationals, made the chosen path particularly rough to pursue.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]; two instruments of domination always used after the Cuban Revolution to crush resistance in the hemisphere.

It is irritating to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of over 10 percent growth. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal thrust. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the target of a brutal coup d’etat inspired by the Yankee ambassador and propelled from the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A fifth country, Ecuador, is quickly advancing towards that goal. The comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace in the Third World. The programs of economic development with social justice have become projects of these five states, which already enjoy great prestige in the world for their brave position in the face of the empire’s economic, military and media power. Three English speaking Caribbean countries of black ancestry, determined to fight for their development, have also joined the ALBA.

This alone would be a great political merit if in today’s world that were the only big problem of man’s history.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are hardly longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for mankind. But, a new and extremely serious problem was strongly discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. A danger of such magnitude had never been known in human history.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega waved the people goodbye in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to news spread by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing in London a session of the Major Economies Forum mostly made up by the highest developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for the carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s remarks is that they have not been made by a representative of ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet but of Great Britain, the country where industrial development started and one of those which have released most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The British Prime Minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be ‘devastating.’

Some of the ‘catastrophic’ consequences would be floods, droughts and lethal heat waves claimed the environmental group Nature World Fund referring to Brown’s assertion. “The climate change will be out of control within the next five to ten years if the CO2 emissions are not drastically cut down. There will not be a plan B if Copenhagen fails.”

The same news source claims that: “BBC specialist James Landale has explained that not everything is happening as expected.”

Newsweek reported that “it seems more unlikely every day that the states will commit to something in Copenhagen.”

According to reports from the major American press outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that “if no agreement is reached, there is no doubt that the damage of the uncontrolled emissions will not be repaired with a future agreement.” He then went on to mention such conflicts as “unchecked migration and 1.8 billion people afflicted by water shortage.”

Actually, as the Cuban delegation claimed in Bangkok, the United States led the highest industrialized countries most opposed to the necessary reduction of emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer “Homeland or Death”; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of “Life or Death” for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native, and his having delivered on his promises.

For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective ethnic groups has won the presidency.

I had said several times that Obama is a smart and cultivated man in a social and political system he believes in. He wishes to bring healthcare to nearly 50 million Americans, to rescue the economy from its profound crisis and to improve the US image which has deteriorated as a result of genocidal wars and torture. He neither conceives nor wishes to change his country’s political and economic system; nor could he do it.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three American presidents, one former president and one candidate to the presidency.

The first one was Theodore Roosevelt elected in 1901. He was one of the Rough Riders who landed in Cuba with his riders but with no horses in the wake of the US intervention in 1898 aimed at preventing the independence of our homeland.

The second was Thomas Woodrow Wilson who dragged the United States to the first war for the distribution of the world. The extremely severe conditions he imposed on a vanquished Germany, through the Versailles Treaty, set the foundations for the emergence of fascism and the breakout of World War II.

The third has been Barack Obama.

Carter was the ex-president who received the Nobel Prize a few years after leaving office. He was certainly one of the few presidents of that country who would not order the murder of an adversary, as others did. He returned the Panama Canal, opened the US Interests Section in Havana and prevented large budget deficits as well as the squandering of money to the benefit of the military-industrial complex, as Reagan did.

The candidate was Al Gore – when he already was vice president. He was the best informed American politician on the dreadful consequences of climate change. As a candidate to the presidency, he was the victim of an electoral fraud and stripped of his victory by W. Bush.

The views have been deeply divided with regards to the choice for this award. Many people question ethical concepts or perceive obvious contradictions in the unexpected decision.

They would have rather seen the Prize given for an accomplished task. The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been presented to people deserving that distinction. On occasions it has been received by resentful and arrogant persons, or even worse. Upon hearing the news, Lech Walesa scornfully said: “Who, Obama? It’s too soon. He has not had time to do anything.”

In our press and in CubaDebate, honest revolutionary comrades have expressed their criticism. One of them wrote: “The same week in which Obama was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Senate passed the largest military budget in its history: 626 billion dollars.” Another journalist commented during the TV News: “What has Obama done to deserve that award?” And still another asked: “And what about the Afghan war and the increased number of bombings?” These views are based on reality.

In Rome, film maker Michael Moore made a scathing comment: “Congratulations, President Obama, for the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please, earn it.”

I am sure that Obama agrees with Moore’s phrase. He is clever enough to understand the circumstances around this case. He knows he has not earned that award yet. That day in the morning he said that he was under the impression that he did not deserve to be in the company of so many inspiring personalities who have been honored with that prize.

It is said that the celebrated committee that assigns the Nobel Peace Prize is made up of five persons who are all members of the Swedish Parliament. A spokesman said it was a unanimous vote. One wonders whether or not the prizewinner was consulted and if such a decision can be made without giving him previous notice.

The moral judgment would be different depending on whether or not he had previous knowledge of the Prize’s allocation. The same could be said of those who decided to present it to him.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile creating the Nobel Transparency Prize.

Bolivia is a country with large oil and gas depots as well as the largest known reserves of lithium, a mineral currently in great demand for the storage and use of energy.

Before his sixth birthday, Evo Morales, a very poor native peasant, walked through The Andes with his father tending the llama of his native community. He walked with them for 15 days to the market where they were sold in order to purchase food for the community. In response to a question I asked him about that peculiar experience Evo told me that “he took shelter under the one-thousand stars hotel,” a beautiful way of describing the clear skies on the mountains where telescopes are sometimes placed.

In those difficult days of his childhood, the only alternative of the peasants in his community was to cut sugarcane in the Argentinean province of Jujuy, where part of the Aymara community went to work during the harvesting season.

Not far from La Higuera, where after being wounded and disarmed Che [Guevara] was murdered on October 9, 1967, Evo – who had been born on the 26th of that same month in the year 1959 – was not yet 8 years old. He learned how to read and write in Spanish in a small public school he had to walk to, which was located 3.2 miles away from the one-room shack he shared with his parents and siblings.

During his hazardous childhood, Evo would go wherever there was a teacher. It was from his race that he learned three ethical principles: don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t be weak.

At the age of 13, his father allowed him to move to San Pedro de Oruro to study his senior high school. One of his biographers has related that he did better in Geography, History and Philosophy than in Physics and Mathematics. The most important thing is that, in order to pay for school, Evo woke up a two in the morning to work as a baker, a construction worker or any other physical job. He attended school in the afternoon. His classmates admired him and helped him. From his early childhood he learned how to play wind instruments and even was a trumpet player in a prestigious band in Oruro.

As a teenager he organized and was the captain of his community’s soccer team.

But, access to the University was beyond reach for a poor Aymara native.

After completing his senior high school, he did military service and then returned to his community on the mountain tops. Later, poverty and natural disasters forced the family to migrate to the subtropical area known as El Chapare, where they managed to have a plot of ground. His father passed away in 1983, when Evo was 23 years old. He worked hard on the ground but he was a born fighter; he organized the workers and created trade unions thus filling up a space unattended by the government.

The conditions for a social revolution in Bolivia had been maturing in the past 50 years. The revolution broke out in that country with Victor Paz Estensoro’s Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR, by its Spanish acronym) on April 9, 1952, that is, before the start of our armed struggle. The revolutionary miners defeated the repressive forces and the MNR seized power.

The revolutionary objectives in Bolivia were not attained and in 1956, according to some well-informed people, the process started to decline. On January 1st, 1959, the Revolution triumphed in Cuba, and three years later, in January 1962, our homeland was expelled from the OAS. Bolivia abstained from voting. Later, every other government, except Mexico’s, severed relations with Cuba.

The divisions in the international revolutionary movement had an impact on Bolivia. Time would have to pass with over 40 years of blockade on Cuba; neoliberalism and its devastating consequences; the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the ALBA; and above all, Evo and his MAS in Bolivia.

It would be hard to try summing up his rich history in a few pages.

I shall only say that Evo has prevailed over the wicked and slanderous imperialist campaigns, its coups and interference in the internal affairs of that country and defended Bolivia’s sovereignty and the right of its thousand-year-old people to have their traditions respected. “Coca is not cocaine,” he blurted out to the largest marihuana producer and drug consumer in the world, whose market has sustained the organized crime that is taking thousands of lives in Mexico every year. Two of the countries where the Yankee troops and their military bases are stationed are the largest drug producers on the planet.

The deadly trap of drug-trafficking has failed to catch Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, revolutionary countries members of ALBA like Cuba which are aware of what they can and should do to bring healthcare, education and wellbeing to their peoples. They do not need foreign troops to combat drug-trafficking.

Bolivia is fostering a wonderful program under the leadership of an Aymara president with the support of his people. Illiteracy was eradicated in less than three years: 824,101 Bolivian learned how to read and write; 24,699 did so also in Aymara and 13,599 in Quechua. Bolivia is the third country free of illiteracy, following Cuba and Venezuela.

It provides free healthcare to millions of people who had never had it before. It is one of the seven countries in the world with the largest reduction of infant mortality rate in the last five years and with a real possibility to meet the Millennium Goals before the year 2015, with a similar accomplishment regarding maternal deaths. It has conducted eye surgery on 454,161 persons, 75,974 of them Brazilians, Argentineans, Peruvians and Paraguayans.

Bolivia has set forth an ambitious social program: every child attending school from first to eighth grade is receiving an annual grant to pay for the school material. This benefits nearly two million students.

More than 700,000 persons over 60 years of age are receiving a bonus equivalent to some 342 dollars annually.

Every pregnant woman and child under two years of age is receiving an additional benefit of approximately 257 dollars.

Bolivia, one of the three poorest nations in the hemisphere, has brought under state control the country’s most important energy and mineral resources while respecting and compensating every single affected interest. It is advancing carefully because it does not want to take a step backward. Its hard currency reserves have been growing, and now they are no less than three times higher than they were at the beginning of Evo’s mandate. It is one of the countries making a better use of external cooperation and it is a strong advocate of the environment.

In a very short time, Bolivia has been able to establish the Biometric Electoral Register and approximately 4.7 million voters have registered, that is, nearly a million more than in the last electoral roll that in January 2009 included 3.8 million.

There will be elections on December 6. Surely, the people’s support for their President will increase. Nothing has stopped his growing prestige and popularity.

Why is he not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

I understand his great disadvantage: he is not the President of the United States of America.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 15, 2009
4:25 PM

The Empire has ruled the world through economy and deceit rather than force. At the end of WWII, it had attained the privilege of minting the convertible hard currency, the monopoly over the nuclear weapon and the possession of most of the gold in the world while it was the only large-scale producer of manufactured equipment, consumer goods, food and services worldwide. However, there was a limit to the printing of paper money: the gold standard at a regular price of 35 dollars a troy ounce. This was the situation for over 25 years, until August 15, 1971, when an executive order issued by President Richard Nixon led the United States to unilaterally call off that international arrangement thus defrauding the world. I’ll never tire out of repeating it. That was how it threw on the world economy its military buildup and war adventure expenses, especially the Vietnam War, which according to conservative estimates cost no less than 200 billion dollars and the lives of over 45 thousand American youths.

More bombs were dropped on that small Third World nation than were used in the latest world war. Millions of people were killed or maimed. The suspension of the gold standard turned the US dollar into a hard currency that could be printed at will by the US government without the backing of a regular value.

The Treasury bonds and bills continued to circulate as convertible hard currencies. The states’ reserves continued feeding on that paper money that, on the one hand, could be used to buy raw material, properties, goods and services anywhere in the world while on the other favored American exports with respect to the rest of the economies of the world. Both, politicians and academics repeatedly mention the true cost of that genocidal war admirably portrayed in Oliver Stone’s film. Sometimes in their calculations people tend to overlook the fact that the millions of dollars of 1971 are not the same as the millions of dollars of 2009.

One million of dollars today, when the price of gold — a metal whose value has been the most stable through centuries– exceeds one thousand dollars a troy ounce, is worth about 30 times its value when Nixon suspended the convertibility. Therefore, 200 billion dollars of 1971 amount to 6 trillion dollars of 2009. If this is not taken into account the new generations will not have an idea of the imperialist barbarity.

Likewise, when reference is made to the 20 billion dollars invested in Europe after the end of WWII –through the Marshall Plan to rebuild and control the economies of the main European powers which had the necessary labor force and technical culture for a fast development of production and services — people usually do not take notice of the fact that the real value of what the empire invested at that time amounts to 600 billion dollars at the current international value. They don’t realize that 20 billion dollars would hardly cover today the construction of three large oil refineries with a capacity of 800 thousand barrels of gasoline a day, in addition to other oil by-products.

The consumer societies and the absurd and whimsical waste of energy and natural resources that today threaten the survival of the human species could not be explained in such a short historical period without knowing the irresponsible way in which developed capitalism, in its highest stage, has governed the destiny of the world.

Such amazing waste explains why the debt of the two most industrialized countries in the world, the United States of America and Japan, amounts to approximately 20 trillion dollars.

Of course, the US economy is reaching an annual Gross Domestic Product of 15 trillion dollars. The capitalist crises are cyclical as the history of the system unequivocally shows but this time it is something else: it is a structural crisis, as Professor Jorge Giordani, Venezuelan minister of Planning and Development, explained last night to Walter Martinez in his Telesur program.

The press dispatches released today, Friday October 9, bring some additional irrefutable data. An AFP dispatch from Washington indicates that the US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 amounts to 1.4 trillion dollars, that is, 9.9 percent of the GDP, “something unseen since 1945, after World War II,” it added.

In the year 2007, the deficit had already been one-third of that figure, and high deficits are expected in 2010, 2011 and 2012. That huge deficit has practically been mandated by the US Congress and government to bailout that country’s large banks, to prevent unemployment from rising beyond 10 percent and to release the United States from the recession. It is only natural that if they inundate the nation with dollars, the big stores will sell more goods, the industries will increase their outputs, less people will lose their housing, the wave of unemployment will subside and the Wall Street stocks will see their value grow. It was the classical way to solve the crisis. But, the world will never be the same. Paul Krugman, a celebrated Nobel laureate in Economics, has just said that international commerce has sustained its worst fall, worse even than that of the Great Depression, and expressed his doubts of a speedy recovery.

It is not possible to also inundate the world with dollars and believe that the paper money without a gold backing can retain its value. Other sounder economies have emerged. The US dollar is no longer the hard currency reserve of every state; actually, those who still have it wish to distance from it albeit trying, as much as possible, to prevent its devaluation before they can get rid of it.

The European Union Euro, the Chinese Yuan, the Suisse Franc, the Japanese Yen — despite this country’s debt — and even the Pound Sterling and other hard currencies have come to take the place of the US dollar in international commerce. Once again the metal gold is becoming a significant international reserve currency.

This is not a whimsical personal opinion, nor do I wish to slander that currency.

Another Nobel laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, has said –according to a press dispatch– that it is most likely that the green bill continues to be downcast, that politicians do not determine the exchange rates neither do speeches. He said this on October 6, at the IMF and World Bank Joint Annual Assembly held in Istanbul. The meeting was received with smashed shop windows and fires caused by Molotov cocktails.

Other news related that the European countries were afraid of the negative effect of the dollar’s weakness with respect to the Euro and its consequences for the European exports. The US secretary of the Treasury said that his country was interested in a strong dollar. Stiglitz laughed at the official statement and said –according to EFE– that in the case of the United States the money has been wasted and the reason has been the multimillion bailout of banks and wars like that of Afghanistan. Again according this press agency, the Nobel Laureate insisted that instead of investing 700 billion to help the bankers, the US could have used part of that money to help the developing countries and this would have encouraged global demand.

The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, had sounded an alarm a few days before and warned that the dollar would not be able to endlessly preserve its status as the reserve currency.

An outstanding professor of Economics at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff, has said that the next big financial crisis will be that of the public deficits.

The World Bank has stated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had showed that the world central banks had accumulated fewer dollars during the second semester of 2009 than at any other time during the past ten years while increasing the amount of Euros.

On October 6, the AFP published that gold had reached the record figure of 1,045 dollars for one ounce due to the weakening of the dollar and fear of inflation.

The London daily Independent reported that a group of oil-producing countries were considering the replacement of the dollar in commercial transactions by a pool of hard currencies including the Yen, Yuan, Euro, gold and a future common currency.

The news, either leaked or deduced with impressive logic, was denied by some of the countries supposedly interested in that protective measure. They do not want it to collapse, but they neither want to continue to accumulate a currency that has lost 30 times its value in less than three decades.

I cannot avoid mentioning a dispatch from EFE, that cannot be accused of being anti-imperialist press agency and that in the present circumstances carries especially interesting opinions:

“Experts in economics and finances agreed in New York today that the worst crisis since the Great Depression has resulted in a less significant role for that country in world economy.”

“Recession has changed the way in which the world looks at the US. Now our country is less significant than before and this is something we should admit, said David Rubenstein, president and founder of the Carlyle Group, the largest risk capital firm in the world, in his address to the World Business Forum.”

“The financial world will be less focused in the US. New York will never again be the financial capital of the world, a role it will have to share with London, Shanghai, Dubai, Sao Paulo and other cities, he said.”

“He described the problems the US will face once it leaves behind a major recession that will still be around for a couple of months.”

“The huge public debt, inflation, unemployment, the dollar’s loss of value as a reserve hard currency, the energy prices.”

“The government should reduce public expenses to cope with the debt problem and do something it does not like much: raise taxes.”

“Columbia University economist and special UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs has agreed with Rubenstein that the US economic and financial predominance is fading.”

“We have left a system focused on the United States for one which is multilateral.”

“Twenty years of irresponsibility, first by Bill Clinton’s administration and then by George W. Bush’s, caved in to Wall Street pressures.”

“The banks negotiated with ‘toxic assets’ to obtain easy money, Sachs explained.”

“What is important now is to recognize the unprecedented challenge of achieving a sustainable economic development that is consistent with the basic rules of physics and biology on this planet.”

On the other hand, the reports coming directly from our delegation in Bangkok, capital of Thailand, were absolutely not encouraging:

Our ministry of Foreign Affairs literally reported that:

“[W]hat was under discussion was basically whether or not to ratify the concept of common but differentiated responsibilities among the industrial nations and the so-called emerging economies, essentially China, Brazil, India and South Africa, and the underdeveloped countries.

“China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the ALBA countries are the most active. In general, most nations in the Group of 77 are holding correct and firm positions.

“The figures of carbon emissions reductions under discussion do not correspond with those scientifically calculated to keep the rise in temperature under 2 degrees Celsius, 25-40 percent. At the moment, the negotiation is moving around a reduction of 11-18 percent.

“The United States is not making any real effort but accepting just a 4 percent reduction with respect to the year 1990.”

In the morning of this Friday 9, the world woke up to the news that “the good Obama” of the riddle — as explained by Bolivarian President Hugo Chavez Frias at the United Nations — had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I do not always agree with the positions of that institution but I must admit that, at this moment it was, in my view, a positive action. It compensates the setback sustained by Obama in Copenhagen when Rio de Janeiro, and not Chicago, was chosen as the venue of the 2016 Olympics, a choice that elicited heated attacks from his right-wing adversaries.

Many will feel that he has yet to earn the right to receive such an award. Rather than a prize to the President of the United States, we choose to see that decision as a criticism of the genocidal policy pursued by more than a few presidents of that country who took that nation to the crossroads where it is today. That is, as a call for peace and for the pursuit of solutions conducive to the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 9, 2009
6:11 PM

The United States owns the most patents in the world. It has stolen scientists from every country, developed or developing, who are undertaking research in a myriad of spheres, from the production of weapons of mass destruction to medicines and medical equipment. For that reason, the economic and technological blockade is not something that merely serves as a pretext for blaming the empire for our own difficulties.

Public healthcare is one of the most advanced fields in our country, despite the fact that the United States stole close to 50% of the doctors who had graduated from the only university in Cuba, a figure in excess of 5,000, many of whom lacked employment.

In that area, one of the most beautiful pages of international cooperation on the part of the Cuban Revolution was written, initiated thanks to a group of doctors who were sent to the recently-independent Algeria almost half a century ago. That policy has not ended, and in that highly humane field our country enjoys universal recognition.

No one supposes that it has been an easy task. The United States has done everything possible to prevent it from happening. During the time that has passed, it has made maximum efforts to sabotage it. It applied against Cuba all possible variants of its criminal economic blockade which, later on, in virtue of the Helms-Burton Act, acquired an extraterritorial nature during the administration of Bill Clinton.

When the socialist bloc collapsed and, months later, its principal bastion the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba decided to keep on fighting. By then, our people had acquired a high level of awareness and political culture.

In 1992, Hugo Chávez led a military uprising against the bourgeois oligarchic government of the Punto Fijo pact that had pillaged Bolívar’s homeland for more than three decades. He suffered imprisonment, just as we did. He visited Cuba in 1994 and years later, with the full support of his people, he assumed the presidency and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, soon had to confront the hostility of the United States, which planned the fascist coup d’état in 2002 that was defeated by the people and revolutionary military personnel. Months later, came the oil coup, creating the most difficult moment and one in which, once again, the leader, the people and the Venezuelan military were outstanding. Chávez and Venezuela offered us total solidarity in the midst of the Special Period and we have given them ours.

At that time, our country had no less than 60,000 specialized doctors, more than 150,000 experienced teachers and a people who had written brilliant internationalist pages. After the oil coup, the river of our cooperative workers in education and healthcare programs began to flow, and they cooperated with the Bolivarian Revolution in one of the most profound and rapid social programs undertaken in any Third World country.

I cite these precedents because they are indispensable when it come to judging the treachery of imperialism and comprehending the issue that I am tackling today: the abandonment and betrayal of Cuba and Venezuela by what was a well-known and relatively prestigious European multinational: the Dutch transnational Philips, which specializes in the manufacture of medical equipment.

I wrote a Reflection on this subject two years ago – July 14, 2007 – but I did not want to mention that company by name. I still held out the hope that the situation would be rectified.

We had cooperated with the Venezuelan people in order to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Tens of thousands of specialized doctors and other Cuban healthcare professional had lent their services there. President During one of his visits to Cuba, Hugo Chávez, satisfied with the work of the first contingents who traveled to Venezuela to work within Barrio Adentro – the program aimed at providing healthcare services in the country’s poorest urban and rural areas – asked us to create a program that could benefit every sector of Venezuelan society, working class, middle class or the rich. This led to the emergence of the Advanced Technology Diagnosis Centers; these would complement the task of the 600 Comprehensive Diagnosis Centers which, like polyclinics with a wide range of services, with their laboratories and equipment, would support the Barrio Adentro doctors’ offices. A significant number of rehabilitation centers would assume the humane task of attending to any patient with physical or learning disabilities.

In virtue of this request from the president, we acquired the relevant equipment for 27 Advanced Technology Diagnosis Centers distributed throughout the 24 states of Venezuela, three of which possess two each because of the size of their populations.

It is standard practice for us to always purchase medical equipment from the most prestigious and advanced companies at world level. We even try to ensure the participation of at least two of the most specialized companies in the supply of the most complex equipment.

In this way, the most sophisticated and costly medical imaging equipment, such as multi-slice computed tomography (CT), nuclear magnetic resonance, diagnostic ultrasound and other similar machines were purchased from the German firm Siemens and the Dutch company Philips. Neither of the two produces all of the equipment but they do manufacture some of the most complex and sophisticated equipment. Both are in competition with each other in terms of quality and price. We acquired diagnostic equipment from the two companies for Venezuela and for Cuba, where we were developing a similar plan for medical services that had received very few resources in the most difficult years of the Special Period.

For more than 10 different specialties, we acquired equipment from the two companies for services in the two countries. I will not mention those of the German firm Siemens, which met its commitments. I will confine myself to Philips; this company supplied equipment for 12 specialties sharing the provision of the most important and costly items with the other company: 15 40-slice CT machines, 28 0.23 Tesla Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machines, eight tele-command stations for Urology, 37 3D diagnostic ultrasound machines, two neurological angiograms, two cardiology angiograms, two polygraphs, one double-headed gamma camera, three single-head gamma cameras, 250 mobile X-ray machines, 1,200 non-invasive monitors and 2,000 cardioversion monitors.

In total, 3,553 machines at a value of $72,762,694.

I personally participated in negotiations with these two companies for these purchases.

The prices discussed for each piece of equipment implied significant price reductions, given the quantity – the items for both Cuba and Venezuela together – and the fact that they were to be paid for in cash. It would not be possible to urgently acquire the goods as required, particularly in that country, given the accumulated needs of the poorest sectors of its total population, which numbered 27 million people at that time.

The most complex equipment were destined for the Advanced Technology Centers, the less sophisticated and plentiful items for the Barrio Adentro Diagnosis Centers, although they were not the only ones to use this equipment. Almost all of them were purchased at the beginning of 2006.

I became seriously ill at the end of July of that year. Philips supplied items until the end of 2006. In 2007, it stopped completely: not a single item was supplied.

In March of that year, a Cuban delegation was sent to Brazil where the Philips headquarters for Latin America – the branch that negotiated with Cuba – is located. They began to explain their difficulties. The Bush government had requested detailed information on equipment supplied to Cuba by their company, alleging that some of them contained programs and, occasionally, components bearing a yanki patent, and Philips provided the information requested on the purchases made by Cuba and Venezuela. There had never been any problem with that before.

The director of Philips in Brazil textually informed the Cuban delegation: “There is brutal intransigence on the part of the U.S. government in relation to regulations regarding equipment and the request for permits with respect to Cuba.

“I know that the problem is affecting the Comandante’s plan. Our organization is being affected and threatened. All our organizations are very scared.” He immediately reiterated: “They are very scared.”

Finally, they added that they wished to cooperate and find solutions.

In mid-July 2007, in a so-called White House Conference on the Americas, Bush, the secretary of state, and other U.S. government leaders “talked nineteen to the dozen” according to an AP report, on issues of education and healthcare. It seemed unreal. They were promising to distribute healthcare services throughout Latin America.

They placed special emphasis on the Confort, a former aircraft carrier converted into the “biggest hospital boat in the world,” according to the report, which was to visit each country in this hemisphere south of the United States for 10 days at a time. That was their healthcare program. What they did not say at the time, was that, in Venezuela, they were sabotaging the most serious healthcare program ever proposed for a Third World country.

Despite the coincidence of the timing, at that moment I did not wish to directly tackle the Philips problem. The company had promised to resolve the problem the following March. I still held out the hope that it could be rectified.

I limited myself to writing in that very Reflection: “The problem is that the United States cannot do what Cuba is doing. On the contrary, it is brutally pressuring the manufacturing companies of the excellent medical equipment that is being supplied to our country to prevent them from replacing certain computer programs or providing some spare parts that are under U.S. patents. I could cite concrete cases and the names of the companies. It is repugnant…”

Despite Philips’ solemn promise to Cuba, the rest of 2007 passed by, as well as the whole of 2008 and half of 2009 without a single piece of equipment arriving from that company.

In June 2009, after paying a fine of 100,000 euros to the Barack Obama government, not so distant from the practices of his illustrious predecessor, Philips deigned to communicate that it was about to provide equipment for Cuba.

On the other hand, nobody has recompensed the Cuban people, or the Venezuelan patients of our doctors in the Barrio Adentro program and those attending the Advanced Technology Diagnostic Centers for the human damages that have occurred.

As is logical, we have not acquired a single piece of equipment from Philips since the last purchase in early 2006.

On the other hand, we have cooperated with Venezuela in purchasing medical equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars for its national healthcare network, with a wide range of sophisticated state of cutting-edge equipment from other prestigious European and also Japanese companies. I wanted to believe that that company would make an effort to meet its commitment.

Venezuela now possesses modern equipment in its public hospital network; the richest private clinics will only have been able to acquire some of them. Now, all the rest will depend on the country’s efficiency in its services. The Venezuelan president is seriously interested in achieving this objective. I believe that it will do so very well if it mitigates the Venezuelan custom of purchasing U.S. medical equipment, not on account of its quality – which is very good although with less demanding regulations than those of Europe – but because of what lies at the heart of the policy of this country, capable of blocking the supply of equipment as it did with Cuba.

Of course, we have dispatched to the Venezuelan Diagnosis Centers, the Advanced Technology Centers and others where our doctors are in attendance, equipment of known international makes such as Siemens, Carl Zeiss, Drager, SMS, Schwind, Topcon, Nihon Kohden, Olympus and other European and Japanese companies, some of which were founded more than 100 years ago.

Now that Bolívar’s homeland, which Martí asked to serve, is more threatened than ever by imperialism, the organization, work and efficiency of our efforts must be greater than ever; not just in the healthcare sector, but in all the fields of our cooperation.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 6, 2009
7.17 p.m.

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.

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.