“In contrast with what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies the first spot on the Human Development Index for Africa and it has the highest life expectancy on the continent. Education and health receive special attention from the State. The cultural level of its population is without a doubt the highest. Its problems are of a different sort. […] The country needed an abundant foreign labour force to carry out ambitious plans for production and social development.”

“It had enormous incomes and reserves in convertible currencies deposited in the banks of the wealthy countries from which they acquired consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons that were supplied exactly by the same countries that today want to invade it in the name of human rights.

“The colossal campaign of lies, unleashed by the mass media, resulted in great confusion in world public opinion. Some time will go by before we can reconstruct what has really happened in Libya, and we can separate the true facts from the false ones that have been spread.”

“The empire and its main allies used the most sophisticated media to divulge information about the events, among which one had to deduce the shreds of the truth.”

“Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned by the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, where a large part of the oil is generated that sustains the consumer economy of the developed and rich countries – could not help but take advantage of the internal conflict arising in Libya so that they could promote military intervention.”

“In spite of the flood of lies and the confusion that was created, the US could not drag China and the Russian Federation to the approval by the Security Council for a military intervention in Libya, even though it managed to obtain however, in the Human Rights Council, approval of the objectives it was seeking at that moment.”

“The real fact is that Libya is now wrapped up in a civil war, as we had foreseen, and the United Nations could do nothing to avoid it, other than its own Secretary General sprinkling the fire with a goodly dose of fuel.

“The problem that perhaps the actors were not imagining is that the very leaders of the rebellion were bursting into the complicated matter declaring that they were rejecting all foreign military intervention.”

One of the rebellion’s ringleaders, Abdelhafiz Ghoga, declared on February 28th, in an encounter with journalists: “What we want is intelligence information, but in no case that our sovereignty is affected in the air, on land or on the seas.”

“The intransigence of the people responsible for the opposition on national sovereignty was reflecting the opinion being spontaneously manifested by many Libyan citizens to the international press in Benghazi”, informed a dispatch of the AFP agency this past Monday.

“That same day, a political sciences professor at the University of Benghazi, Abeir Imneina, adversary of   Gaddafi stated:

“There is very strong national feeling in Libya.”

“‘Furthermore, the example of Iraq strikes fear in the Arab world as a whole’, she underlined, in reference to the American invasion of 2003 that was supposed to bring democracy to that country and then, by contagion, to the region as a whole, a hypothesis totally belied by the facts.”

“‘We know what happened in Iraq, it’s that it is fully unstable and we really don’t want to follow the same path. We don’t want the Americans to come to have to go crying to Gaddafi’, this expert continued.”

“A few hours after this dispatch was printed, two of the main press bodies of the United States, The New York Times and The Washington Post, hastened to offer new versions on the subject; the DPA agency informs on this on the following day, March the first: “The Libyan opposition could request that the West bomb from the air strategic positions of the forces loyal to President Muamar al Gaddafi, the US press informed today’.”

“The subject is being discussed inside the Libyan Revolutionary Council, ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’ specified in their online versions.”

“’In the event that air actions are carried out within the United Nations framework, these would not imply international intervention, explained the council’s spokesperson, quoted by The New York Times‘”.

“‘The Washington Post’ quoted rebels acknowledging that, without Western backing, combat with the forces loyal to Gaddafi could last a long time and cost many human lives.”

In that Reflection, I immediately wondered:

“Why the effort to present the rebels as prominent members of society demanding bombing by the US and NATO in order to kill Libyans?”

“Some day we shall know the truth, through persons such as the political sciences professor from the University of Benghazi who, with such eloquence, tells of the terrible experience that killed, destroyed homes, left millions of persons in Iraq without jobs or forced them to emigrate.”

“Today on Wednesday, the second of March, the EFE Agency presents the well-known rebel spokesperson making statements that, in my opinion, affirm and at the same time contradict those made on Monday: “Benghazi (Libya), March 2. The rebel Libyan leadership today asked the UN Security Council to launch an air attack ‘against the mercenaries’ of  the Muamar el Gaddafi regime.’”

“Which one of the many imperialist wars would this look like?

“The one in Spain in 1936? Mussolini’s against Ethiopia in 1935? George W. Bush’s against Iraq in the year 2003 or any other of the dozens of wars promoted by the United States against the peoples of the Americas, from the invasion of Mexico in 1846 to the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982?

“Without excluding, of course, the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the dirty war and the blockade of our Homeland throughout 50 years, that will have another anniversary next April 16th.

“In all those wars, like that of Vietnam which cost millions of lives, the most cynical justifications and measures prevailed.

“For anyone harbouring any doubts, about the inevitable military intervention that shall occur in Libya, the AP news agency, which I consider to be well-informed, headlined a cable printed today which stated: “The NATO countries are drawing up a contingency plan taking as its model the flight exclusion zones established over the Balkans in the 1990s, in the event that the international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya, diplomats said’.”

Any honest person capable of objectively observing the events can appreciate the danger lying in the ensemble of cynical and brutal events that characterize United States policy and explain the embarrassing solitude of that country in the UN debate on “The need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba”.

I am closely following the Pan-American Games of Guadalajara 2011, despite my work.

Our country swells with pride for those young people who exemplify for the world their selflessness and spirit of solidarity. I warmly congratulate them; nobody can take away from them the place of honour they have earned.

To be continued on Sunday the 30th.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 28, 2011
7:14 p.m.

The earthquake originated at a depth of 24.4 kilometres and 100 kilometres from the coast. Had it happened at a lesser depth and distance, the consequences would have been more serious.

There was a shift in the earth’s axis. It was the third phenomenon of great intensity occurring in less than two years: Haiti, Chile and Japan. Man cannot be blamed for such tragedies. Every country, surely, will do everything it can to help the hard-working people who were the first to suffer an unnecessary and inhuman nuclear attack.

According to Spain’s Official College of Geologists, the energy released by the earthquake is equivalent to 200 million tons of dynamite.

The most recent information, from AFP, states that the Japanese electric Company, Tokyo Electric Power, informed that according to government instructions, they had released some of the vapour containing radioactive substances…

“We are following the situation. Until the present there is no problem…”

“They also indicated that there were breakdowns related to the cooling of three reactors in a second nearby plant, Fukushima 2.

“The government ordered the evacuation of surrounding areas for a radius of 10 km in the case of the first plant and 3 km in the case of the second one.”

Another earthquake, a political one and potentially more serious, is the one taking place around Libya, and it affects every country, one way or the other.

The drama that country is living through is in full swing and its outcome is still uncertain.

A great hubbub broke out yesterday in the US Senate when James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, stated before the Armed Services Committee that he didn’t believe Gaddafi had any intention of leaving; because of evidence at their disposal, it seems that he is “in this for the long haul”.

He added that Gaddafi has two brigades that “are very loyal”.

He pointed out that the air attacks carried out by the army loyal to Gaddafi “mainly” caused damages on buildings and infrastructure rather than civilian casualties.

Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, at the same hearing before the Senate, said that it seemed Gaddafi had staying power unless some other dynamic changes at this time.

“The opportunity the rebels had at the start of the popular uprising has ‘begun to change’, he assured.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Gaddafi and the Libyan leaders committed an error in trusting Bush and NATO, as can be inferred from what I wrote in my Reflection on the 9th.

Nor do I doubt the intentions of the United States and NATO to intervene militarily in Libya and abort the revolutionary wave shaking the Arab world.

Countries that are opposing NATO intervention and defending the idea of a political solution without foreign intervention harbour the conviction that the Libyan patriots shall defend their Homeland until their dying breath.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 11, 2011
10:12 p.m.

For that reason, it provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other countries. It had enormous incomes and reserves in convertible currencies deposited in the banks of the wealthy countries from which they acquired consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons that were supplied exactly by the same countries that today want to invade it in the name of human rights.

The colossal campaign of lies, unleashed by the mass media, resulted in great confusion in world public opinion. Some time will go by before we can reconstruct what has really happened in Libya, and we can separate the true facts from the false ones that have been spread.

Serious and prestigious broadcasting companies such as Telesur, saw themselves with the obligation to send reporters and cameramen to the activities of one group and those on the opposing side, so that they could inform about what was really happening.

Communications were blocked, honest diplomatic officials were risking their lives going through neighbourhoods and observing activities, day and night, in order to inform about what was going on. The empire and its main allies used the most sophisticated media to divulge information about the events, among which one had to deduce the shreds of the truth.

Without any doubt, the faces of the young people who were protesting in Benghazi, men, and women wearing the veil or without the veil, were expressing genuine indignation.

One is able to see the influence that the tribal component still exercises on that Arab country, despite the Muslim faith that 95% of its population sincerely shares.

Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned by the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, where a large part of the oil is generated that sustains the consumer economy of the developed and rich countries – could not help but take advantage of the internal conflict arising in Libya so that they could promote military intervention. The statements made by the United States administration right from the first instant were categorical in that sense.

The circumstances could not be more propitious. In the November elections, the Republican right-wing struck a resounding blow on President Obama, an expert in rhetoric.

The fascist “mission accomplished” group, now backed ideologically by the extremists of the Tea Party, reduced the possibilities of the current president to a merely decorative role in which even his health program and the dubious economic recovery were in danger as a result of the budget deficit and the uncontrollable growth of the public debt which were breaking all historical records.

In spite of the flood of lies and the confusion that was created, the US could not drag China and the Russian Federation to the approval by the Security Council for a military intervention in Libya, even though it managed to obtain however, in the Human Rights Council, approval of the objectives it was seeking at that moment. In regards to a military intervention, the Secretary of State stated in words that admit not the slightest doubt: “no option is being ruled out”.

The real fact is that Libya is now wrapped up in a civil war, as we had foreseen, and the United Nations could do nothing to avoid it, other than its own Secretary General sprinkling the fire with a goodly dose of fuel.

The problem that perhaps the actors were not imagining is that the very leaders of the rebellion were bursting into the complicated matter declaring that they were rejecting all foreign military intervention.

Various news agencies informed that Abdelhafiz Ghoga, spokesperson for the Committee of the Revolution stated on Monday the 28th that “‘The rest of Libya shall be liberated by the Libyan people’”.

“We are counting on the army to liberate Tripoli’ assured Ghoga during the announcement of the formation of a ‘National Council’ to represent the cities of the country in the hands of the insurrection.”

“‘What we want is intelligence information, but in no case that our sovereignty is affected in the air, on land or on the seas’, he added during an encounter with journalists in this city located 1000 kilometres to the east of Tripoli.”

“The intransigence of the people responsible for the opposition on national sovereignty was reflecting the opinion being spontaneously manifested by many Libyan citizens to the international press in Benghazi”, informed a dispatch of the AFP agency this past Monday.

That same day, a political sciences professor at the University of Benghazi, Abeir Imneina, stated:

“There is very strong national feeling in Libya.”

“‘Furthermore, the example of Iraq strikes fear in the Arab world as a whole’, she underlined, in reference to the American invasion of 2003 that was supposed to bring democracy to that country and then, by contagion, to the region as a whole, a hypothesis totally belied by the facts.”

The professor goes on:

“‘We know what happened in Iraq, it’s that it is fully unstable and we really don’t want to follow the same path. We don’t want the Americans to come to have to go crying to Gaddafi’, this expert continued.”

“But according to Abeir Imneina, ‘there also exists the feeling that this is our revolution, and that it is we who have to make it’.”

A few hours after this dispatch was printed, two of the main press bodies of the United States, The New York Times and The Washington Post, hastened to offer new versions on the subject; the DPA agency informs on this on the following day, March the first: “The Libyan opposition could request that the West bomb from the air strategic positions of the forces loyal to President Muamar al Gaddafi, the US press informed today.”

“The subject is being discussed inside the Libyan Revolutionary Council, ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’ specified in their online versions.”

“‘The New York Times’ notes that these discussions reveal the growing frustration of the rebel leaders in the face of the possibility that Gaddafi should retake power”.

“In the event that air actions are carried out within the United Nations framework, these would not imply international intervention, explained the council’s spokesperson, quoted by The New York Times”.

“The council is made up of lawyers, academics, judges and prominent members of Libyan society.”

The dispatch states:

“‘The Washington Post’ quoted rebels acknowledging that, without Western backing, combat with the forces loyal to Gaddafi could last a long time and cost many human lives.”

It is noteworthy that in that regard, not one single worker, peasant or builder is mentioned, not anyone related to material production or any young student or combatant among those who take part in the demonstrations. Why the effort to present the rebels as prominent members of society demanding bombing by the US and NATO in order to kill Libyans?

Some day we shall know the truth, through persons such as the political sciences professor from the University of Benghazi who, with such eloquence, tells of the terrible experience that killed, destroyed homes, left millions of persons in Iraq without jobs or forced them to emigrate.

Today on Wednesday, the second of March, the EFE Agency presents the well-known rebel spokesperson making statements that, in my opinion, affirm and at the same time contradict those made on Monday: “Benghazi (Libya), March 2. The rebel Libyan leadership today asked the UN Security Council to launch an air attack ‘against the mercenaries’ of the Muamar el Gaddafi regime.”

“‘Our Army cannot launch attacks against the mercenaries, due to their defensive role’, stated the spokesperson for the rebels, Abdelhafiz Ghoga, at a press conference in Benghazi.”

“‘A strategic air attack is different from a foreign intervention which we reject’, emphasized the spokesperson for the opposition forces which at all times have shown themselves to be against a foreign military intervention in the Libyan conflict”.

Which one of the many imperialist wars would this look like?

The one in Spain in 1936? Mussolini’s against Ethiopia in 1935? George W. Bush’s against Iraq in the year 2003 or any other of the dozens of wars promoted by the United States against the peoples of the Americas, from the invasion of Mexico in 1846 to the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982?

Without excluding, of course, the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the dirty war and the blockade of our Homeland throughout 50 years, that will have another anniversary next April 16th.

In all those wars, like that of Vietnam which cost millions of lives, the most cynical justifications and measures prevailed.

For anyone harbouring any doubts, about the inevitable military intervention that shall occur in Libya, the AP news agency, which I consider to be well-informed, headlined a cable printed today which stated: “The NATO countries are drawing up a contingency plan taking as its model the flight exclusion zones established over the Balkans in the 1990s, in the event that the international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya, diplomats said”.

Further on it concludes: “Officials, who were not able to give their names due to the delicate nature of the matter, indicated that the opinions being observed start with the flight exclusion zone that the western military alliance imposed over Bosnia in 1993 that had the mandate of the Security Council, and with the NATO bombing in Kosovo in 1999, THAT DID NOT HAVE IT”.

To be continued tomorrow.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 2, 2011
8:19 p.m.

While food prices triple, real estate fortunes and the treasures of the aristocratic minority reach millions of millions of dollars.

The Arab world, mainly Muslim in its culture and beliefs, has seen itself additionally humiliated by the imposition of blood and fire by a State that was not capable of fulfilling the basic obligations that were part of their origin, from the colonial order existing up to the end of WW II, by virtue of which the victorious powers created the United Nations Organization and imposed world trade and economy.

Thanks to the treason committed by Anwar El-Sadat at Camp David, the Palestinian State has not been able to exist, despite the UN treaties of November 1947, and Israel became a strong nuclear power, an ally of the United States and NATO.

The US Military Industrial Complex supplied Israel with tens of billions of dollars every year as well as to the very Arab States that were submitted and being humiliated by Israel.

The genie has escaped from the bottle and NATO doesn´t know how to control it.

They are going to attempt to wrest the most benefits from the regrettable events in Libya. Nobody can know at this moment what is happening over there. All the figures and versions, even the most implausible ones, have been spread by the empire via the mass media, sowing chaos and disinformation.

It is obvious that inside Libya a civil war is brewing. Why and how did this happen? Who will pay the consequences? Reuters Agency, echoing the opinion of the well-known Nomura Bank of Japan, stated that oil prices could go beyond any limits:

“‘If Libya and Algeria suspend oil production, prices could reach a maximum of more than 220 dollars a barrel and OPEC´s inactive capacity would be reduced to 2.1 million barrels per day, similar to levels seen during the Gulf War and when values touched 147 dollars a barrel in 2008’, the bank asserted in an article.”

Who could pay that price these days? What would be the consequences in the midst of the food crisis? The main NATO leaders are all worked up. British Prime Minister David Cameron, ANSA informed, “…admitted in a speech in Kuwait that the western nations made a mistake in backing non-democratic governments in the Arab world.” One has to congratulate him on his frankness.

His French colleague Nicolas Sarkozy stated: “The extended brutal and bloody repression of the Libyan civilian population is disgusting”.

Italian Chancellor Franco Frattini stated as “‘believable’ the figure of one thousand dead in Tripoli [...] ‘the tragic numbers shall be a bloodbath’.”

Hillary Clinton stated the following: “…the ‘bloodbath’ is  ‘completely unacceptable’ and ‘it has to stop’…”

Ban Ki-moon spoke: “‘The use of violence in the country is absolutely unacceptable’.”

“…‘the Security Council will act according to whatever the international community decides’.”  “‘We are considering a series of options’.”

What Ban Ki-moon is really hoping is that Obama pronounces the last word.

The president of the United States spoke this Wednesday afternoon and stated that the Secretary of State would be leaving for Europe in order to agree with their NATO allies on the measures to be taken. On his face once could note the opportunity to spar with John McCain, the far-right-wing Republican senator, pro-Israel Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut and the leaders of the Tea Party, in order to ensure the Democratic Party demands.

The empire´s mass media has prepared the terrain for action. There would be nothing strange about a military intervention in Libya; besides, with that, Europe would be guaranteed almost two million barrels of light oil per day, unless before that events would put an end to the leadership or the life of Gaddafi.

Anyway, Obama´s role is rather complicated. What will the reaction of the Arab and Muslim world be if blood should flow in abundance in that country as a result of that exploit? Would NATO intervention in Libya stem the revolutionary tidal wave surging in Egypt?

In Iraq, the innocent blood of more than a million Arab citizens was spilt when the country was invaded under false pretexts. Mission accomplished!: proclaimed George W. Bush.

Nobody in the world would ever agree with the deaths of defenseless civilians in Libya or anywhere else. And I wonder: will the US and NATO apply that principle on the defenseless civilians that the unmanned Yankee planes and the soldiers of that organization kill every day in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

It is a cynical dance macabre.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 23, 2011
7:42 p.m.

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

But that’s not the case. The United States Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, will be meeting in Washington on April 24th with the G-7 Finance ministers -the super-rich- and this shall be followed right away by a G-20 ministerial meeting to be held on that same day.

The two meetings will take place before the spring assemblies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the bodies that govern the world’s finances.

The interesting thing is that yesterday the Financial Times of London, the most important economic news journal in Great Britain, described Europe’s complications in the field of energy.

The EFE news agency quoted the above-mentioned paper as stating that the United Kingdom’s North Sea production of oil and gas may decrease because the economic crisis has led to a slow down in exploration in one of the most important reserves of the western world.

The number of exploration wells drilled in the North Sea has decreased by 78 percent during the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the same period last year, according to data supplied by the Deloitte Company and published by the economic newspaper.

Only 18 of the evaluation and exploration wells were worked on in the first quarter, which accounts for a 41 percent drop in the total drilling activity, as compared to the same period in 2008.

The UK Oil and Gas Group is even more pessimistic; it has forecast that drilling could fall off this year by 66 percent.

The newspaper adds that the situation in the North Sea is worse than in other places since the new discoveries tend to be smaller and the oil wells less productive and too expensive to maintain.

According to highly credible sources, on April 4th, during the London Summit presided over by Gordon Brown, the host of the event, the British prime minister behaved in a visibly contemptuous manner towards the Third World participants. He even treated Obama with prejudice due to the fact that he was black.

How much oil will be consumed in the world? At what cost? At what price? Who are the people responsible for the tragedy? What limits will be placed in Copenhagen on the countries that have yet to develop? It is a really complicated problem.

The world does not rest. Neither does Obama.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 14, 2009
7:02 p.m.