Reflections of Fidel

Three days ago, on Friday October 10, the world was shocked by the impact of the Wall Street financial crisis. There is no way to count the millions of dollars in paper money injected by the Federal Reserve into the world’s finances to keep up banking operations and to prevent depositors from losing their money.

In a brief 15-minute speech, the President of the United States made some assertions that, had they come from the mouths of any of his adversaries, they would have been described as atrocious and cynical slanders against the economic system of his country which he named “democratic capitalism”.

In the reflection titled “Bush in Heaven,” published by our newspapers this past March 23, I affirmed that Bush would get up to his old tricks during the NATO meeting in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, from April 1 through 3.

On the day when hundreds of intellectuals coming from every continent are meeting in Havana to take part in an International Conference for World Equilibrium on the date of José Martí’s birth, on that same day, by some strange quirk, the President of the United States spoke. In his last State of the Union address to Congress, making use of the teleprompter, Bush tells us more with his body language than with the words arranged by his advisors.

The wires made the announcement ahead of time. On January 6 we learned of Bush’s trip to the Middle East, just as soon as his very Christian Christmas holiday break was over. He would be going to Muslim territory, lands having a different religion and culture from that of the Europeans, who converted to Christianity, declared war on the infidels, in the 11th century A.D.

For the first time, just before the UN discusses Cuba’s proposed resolution condemning the blockade, as it does every year, the president of the United States has announced that he is to adopt new measures to accelerate the “transition period” in our country, equivalent to a new conquest of Cuba by force.