- Please read this talk for it makes a lot of sense. The
old man is still sharp, he still understands the world extremely well.
For those who never came across this author it will be quite a surprise
- he is better than Chomsky anyday. Our man, positively one of us...
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- ------
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- The wires made the announcement ahead of time. On January
6th 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.
-
- The Christians themselves killed each other, both for
religious reasons and national interests. It seemed that everything had
been overcome by history. Religious beliefs remained that should be respected,
the same as their legends and traditions, whether Christian or otherwise.
On this side of the Atlantic, as in many parts of the world, children
anxiously awaited every 6th of January, gathering enough hay for the camels
bringing the Three Wise Men. I also shared in these hopes during the early
years of my life, asking those three fortunate Wise Men for the impossible,
with the same wishful thinking that some compatriots expect miracles from
our determined and dignified Revolution.
-
- I am not physically apt to speak directly to the citizens
of the municipality where I was nominated for our elections next Sunday.
I do what I can: I write. For me, this is a new experience: writing
is not the same as speaking. Today, that I have more time to inform myself
and to meditate about what I see, I have barely enough time to write.
-
- One always expects good tidings; bad tidings tend to
surprise and demoralize us. Being prepared for the worst is the only way
to be prepared for the best.
-
- It seems unreal to see Bush, the conqueror of other peoples'
raw materials and energy resources, setting out guidelines for the world
careless about how many hundreds of thousands or millions of people die
or how many clandestine prisons and torture centers must be created to
attain his objectives. "Sixty or more corners of the world"
must expect pre-emptive attacks. Let us not shut our eyes; Cuba is one
of those dark corners. The head of the empire said that in just so many
words and I have warned the international community of this on more than
one occasion.
-
- In Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a
few miles from Iran, AP says that "The President of the United States,
George W. Bush said Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the
world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to
confront the danger before it's too late.
-
- "Bush has accused the Teheran government of funding
terrorists, undermining stability in Lebanon, and sending weapons to the
Taliban, the Afghan religious militia. He added that Iran is trying to
intimidate its neighbors with alarming rhetoric, defying the United Nations
and destabilizing the region as a whole by refusing to be open about its
nuclear program."
-
- "'Iranian actions threaten the security of nations
everywhere' Bush said. Therefore, the United States is strengthening our
long-range commitments to security with our friends in the Persian Gulf
and calling on our friends to confront this danger."
-
- "Bush spoke at the Emirates Palace Hotel, built
at a cost of 3 billion dollars, and where a suite costs 2,450 dollars a
night. It is one kilometer from end to end and has a 1.3 kilometer white
sand beach. According to Steven Pike, spokesman of the of the US Embassy
in the United Arab Emirates, every grain of sand on this beach was imported
from Algeria."
-
- The entire world knows that he wants war against Iran,
it is his war. Furthermore, he promises that U.S. troops will remain in
Iraq for at least 10 more years.
-
- What is worse is that the main candidates of the two
parties in line to succeed him are incapable of remedying this. Not one
of them dares to even slightly contest this imperial practice, which is
based on the excuse of fighting terrorism, an evil engendered by the system
itself and its colossal and unsustainable consumerism, while striving for
the impossible: sustained growth, full employment and no inflation.
-
- These were not the dreams of Martin Luther King, Malcolm
X and Abraham Lincoln; nor were they the dreams of those great dreamers
throughout humanity's turbulent history.
-
- Whoever has the time to read and analyze the news coming
in on the Internet, cable and in books, can ascertain the contradictions
to which the world has been driven.
-
- In an article run by El País, a widely read Spanish
newspaper, the subject of the prices of food and fuel are dealt with.
Signed by Paul Kennedy, professor of history and director of International
Security Studies at Yale University and one of the country's most influential
intellectuals, the article states that "oil is the greatest element
of dependency for the United States in terms of external forces."
-
- "By the mid-18th century, Great Britain had the
largest shipbuilding industry in the world. Yet, as its yards were launching
hundreds if not thousands of sailing ships each year, certain English inventors
were creating the magic of the steam engine, which used vast amounts of
energy secured in the especially bituminous depots of South Wales. The
steam and coal engine carried the British Empire onward for another 150
years."
-
- Later on he indicates the point of view that is most
interesting for us: the ever-greater interconnection between oil and foods.
The reasons are well-known: the enormous energy demands of the large Asian
economies and the inability of the wealthiest countries the United
States, Japan and Europe to reduce their consumption.
-
- "But global soy bean demand is also spiraling upward,
again, chiefly due to the rising consumption in Asia; China's tens of millions
of pigs devour an awful amount of soy bean meal in a year. The soy bean
futures prices are 80 percent higher this year (December 2007) than last
(2006)."
-
- "No one can be certain of that, but the continued
increases in overall world population, and the surge in real incomes for
more than two billion people over the recent past, will surely translate
into ever-greater demand for the world's protein: for more beef, more pork,
more chicken, more fish, and thus for more grains to feed them."
-
- The Yale professor might as well have added: more eggs
and more milk, since their production requires considerable amounts of
fodder. But a little later, he alludes to an article published in The
Economist, the main newspaper of European finance, describing it as "highly
detailed, impressive and very scary"; it is entitled "The End
of Cheap Food". "That magazine began its food-price index way
back in 1845. The price index is higher today than in anytime in its entire
162 years."
-
- Brazil, which is now self-reliant in fuel and has abundant
reserves, will doubtlessly escape this dilemma. Stretching on a plateau
at 300 to 900 meters altitude, it is 77 times bigger than Cuba. This sister
republic enjoys 3 different climates. Almost every food can be grown there.
It is no hit by tropical hurricanes. Together with Argentina, they could
save the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico,
although they could never guarantee security for them because they are
at the mercy of an empire which will not allow that union.
-
- Writing, as many people know, is an instrument of expression
that lacks speed, tone and the intonation of spoken language, and it doesn't
use gestures. It also takes several times our scarce available time.
Writing has the advantage that it can been done at any time, day or night,
but one doesn't know who will read it; very few can resist the temptation
to improve it, to include what was not said or to cross out what was said;
sometimes one has the urge to throw it all in the waste basket since you
don't have the interlocutor there in front of you. All my life I have
transmitted ideas about events as I was seeing them, from the darkest ignorance
until today when I have more time available and I have the possibility
of observing the crimes being committed against our planet and our species.
-
- To the youngest of our revolutionaries, in particular,
I recommend to be extremely demanding with themselves and to observe an
iron-clad discipline. They should avoid being ambitious for power, presumptuous
or boasters. They should be watchful about bureaucratic methods and mechanisms
and avoid succumbing to simple slogans. They should recognize bureaucratic
procedure for the worst obstacle they are and use science and computation
without falling prey to the excessively technical and unintelligible jargon
of the elitist specialists. They should always be hunger for knowledge;
and perseverance, and both physical and mental exercises should be part
of their lives.
-
- In this new era in which we live, capitalism is not even
a useful instrument. It is like a tree with rotten roots, from whence only
the worst forms of individualism, corruption and inequality sprout. Nor
should we give away anything to those who could be producing and who don't
produce, or who produce very little. Reward the merits of those who work
with their hands or their minds.
-
- Just as we have universalized higher education, we must
also universalize simple physical labor; it helps us to at least carry
out a part of the infinite investments demanded by everyone, as if there
was an enormous reserve of money and labor force. Be especially wary of
those inventing State enterprises with just any excuse and then managing
the easy profits as if they had been capitalists all their lives, sowing
egoism and privileges.
-
- Until we become aware of such realities, no effort can
be made, as Martí would have said, to "timely prevent"
that the empire which he saw surging up, living as he did in its entrails,
may destroy the future of humanity.
-
- We must be dialectic and creative. There is no other
possible alternative.
-
- We are grateful for Bush playing his part as one of the
Wise Men, visiting the place where the son on the carpenter Joseph was
born, if truly someone knows where the exact spot of that humble crib is,
where the Nazarene was born. The leader of the empire bears the gift,
this time, of tens of billions of dollars to the Arab countries to buy
weapons that come from the industrial-military complex; and at the same
time, two dollars for every one supplied to them to arm the state of Israel,
where the United Nations agency which tackles the subject assures us that
3.5 million Palestinians have been deprived of their rights or expelled
from their territory.
-
- His obsessive instrument is to threaten the world with
nuclear war. Only he is capable of bearing this Epiphany Gift.
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- Fidel Castro Ruz
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- January 14, 2008.
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