[Peace-discuss] Reflections from Fidel Castro

[Brussel Morton K.]

REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
Seven daggers in the heart of America
Taken from CubaDebate

I read and re-read data and articles written by intelligent figures,  
known or little known, who contribute to various media and take their  
information from sources that are not questioned by anyone.
The peoples who inhabit the planet – everywhere – are running  
economic, environmental and military risks derived from the policies  
of the United States, but in no other part of the world are they  
threatened by such grave problems as those of its neighbors, the  
peoples located on this continent to the south of that hegemonic  
country.
The presence of such a powerful empire which has deployed – on every  
continent and in every ocean – military bases, aircraft carriers,  
nuclear submarines, modern warships and sophisticated combat planes  
carrying all kinds of weapons, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers  
whose government demands total impunity for them, constitutes the most  
important headache for any government, whether it is leftist, centrist  
or rightist, an ally or not of the United States.
For those of us who are its neighbors, the problem is not that another  
language is spoken there and that it is a different nation. There are  
U.S. citizens of all colors and origins. They are people just like us  
and capable of any sentiment in one sense or another. The dramatic  
aspect is the system that has been developed there and imposed on  
everybody. Such a system is not new in terms of the use of force and  
methods of domination that have prevailed throughout history. The new  
part is the epoch in which we are living. Approaching the issue from  
traditional points of view is an error and does not help anybody.  
Reading and learning about what the defenders of the system are  
thinking is highly illustrative, because it signifies being aware of  
the nature of a system that is based on constantly appealing to  
egotism and people’s most primary instincts.
If a conviction of the value of conscience and its capacity for  
prevailing over instincts did not exist, one could not express even  
the hope of change in any period of the extremely brief history of  
humankind. Neither could one comprehend the terrible obstacles that  
are being raised for various political leaders in the Latin American  
or Ibero-American nations of the hemisphere. At the end of the day,  
the peoples that lived in this region of the planet from tens of  
thousands of years ago to the famous discovery of America, had nothing  
Latino, Iberian or European about them; their physical traits bore a  
closer resemblance to Asian peoples, from where their forebears came.  
Nowadays we see them in the face of the Indians of Mexico, Central  
America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay  
and Chile, this last a country in which the Araucanos wrote indelible  
pages. In certain areas of Canada and Alaska they conserve their  
indigenous roots with all possible purity. But in the principal  
territory of the United States, many of its former inhabitants were  
exterminated by the white conquistadors.
As everybody knows, millions of Africans were torn away from their  
lands to work as slaves in this hemisphere. In certain nations like  
Haiti and a large part of the Caribbean islands, their descendents  
constitute the majority of the population. In other countries they  
form broad sectors. In the United States the descendents of Africans  
constitute tens of millions of citizens who, as a rule, are the  
poorest and most discriminated against.
Throughout the centuries that nation demanded privileged rights over  
our continent. In the time of [José] Martí it attempted to impose a  
single currency based on gold, a metal whose value has remained the  
most constant throughout history. In general, international trade was  
based on it. Nowadays, not even that. Since the Nixon years, world  
trade has been conducted with the paper bill printed by the United  
States: the dollar, a currency that is now worth approximately 27  
times less than at the beginning of the 1970s, one of the many forms  
of dominating and swindling the rest of the world. However, today,  
other currencies are replacing the dollar in international trade and  
in hard currency reserves.
While on the one hand the empire’s hard currency is being devaluated,  
on the other its reserves of military force are growing. The latest  
science and technology, monopolized by the superpower, has been  
directed to a considerable degree to weapons development. At the  
present time, we are not just talking of thousands of nuclear  
missiles, or the modern destructive power of conventional weapons; we  
are talking about drone aircraft, automatically piloted. That is not  
just simple fantasy. Some aircraft of this type are already being used  
in Afghanistan and other points. Recent reports note that in the  
relatively near future, in 2010, long before the Antarctic cap melts,  
the empire plans to have available – among its 2,500 warplanes – 1,100  
F-35 and F-22 combat planes, in their fifth-generation fighter and  
bomber versions. To have some idea of that potential, suffice it to  
say that the ones they have on the Soto Cano base in Honduras for  
training that country’s pilots are F-5’s; the aircraft supplied to the  
Venezuelan air forces before Chávez, to Chile and other countries were  
small squadrons of F-16’s.
More importantly still, the empire is planning for all U.S. combat  
planes, from fighters to heavy bombers and tanker aircraft, to be  
crewed by robots within 30 years.
That military might is not a necessity of the world; it is a necessity  
of the economic system that the empire is imposing on the world.
It is within anyone’s comprehension that if robots can replace combat  
pilots, they can also replace workers in many factories. The free  
trade agreements that the empire is trying to impose on the counties  
of this hemisphere imply that their workers will have to compete with  
the advanced technology and robots of the yanki industry.
Robots don’t go on strike, they are obedient and disciplined. We have  
seen machines that pick apples and other fruits on television. It is  
worth asking the question of U.S. workers as well. Where will the jobs  
be? What is the future that a capitalism without borders, in its  
advanced phase of development, is assigning to citizens?
In the light of this and other realities, the governments of the  
countries of UNASUR, MERCOSUR, the Rio Group and others cannot avoid  
analyzing the extremely just Venezuelan question: what is the meaning  
of the military and naval bases that the United States wants to  
establish around Venezuela and in the heart of South America? I recall  
that a number of years ago, when relations between Colombia and  
Venezuela, two nations twinned by geography and history, became  
dangerously tense, Cuba quietly promoted important steps toward peace  
between those two countries. We Cubans will never encourage war  
between sister countries. Historical experience, the manifest destiny  
proclaimed and implemented by the United States, and the weakness of  
the charges against Venezuela of supplying weapons to the FARC,  
associated with negotiations aimed at Colombia conceding seven points  
of its territory for the aerial and naval use of the armed forces of  
the United States, unavoidably oblige Venezuela to invest in arms  
resources that could be utilized in the economy, the social programs  
and cooperation with other countries in the region with less  
development and resources. Venezuela is not arming itself against the  
sister nation of Colombia, it is arming itself against the empire,  
which tried to destroy the Revolution and is now attempting to install  
its sophisticated weaponry in the vicinity of the Venezuelan border.
It would be a grave error to think that the threat is only against  
Venezuela; it is directed at all the countries of the south of the  
continent. None of them can avoid the issue and a number of them have  
stated that.
The present and future generations will judge their leaders in the  
light of the conduct that they adopt at this moment. It is not just  
about the United States, but the United States and the system. What is  
it offering? What it is seeking?
It is offering the FTAA; in other words, the anticipated ruin of all  
of our countries, the free movement of goods and capital, but not the  
free movement of people. They are currently experiencing the fear of  
that opulent consumer society being inundated with poor Latinos,  
Indians, people of African or mixed descent or whites without  
employment in their own countries. They are returning all those who  
commit offenses or are surplus to requirements. They are killing them  
on many occasions before they enter, or returning them like herds when  
they no longer need them; 12 million Latin American or Caribbean  
immigrants are illegal in the United States. A new economy has arisen  
in our countries, particularly in the smallest and poorest: that of  
remittances. When there is a crisis, it hits immigrants and their  
families the hardest. Parents and children are cruelly separated,  
sometimes for ever. If immigrants are of military age, they are given  
the possibility of joining the army to fight thousands of kilometers  
away, "in the name of freedom and democracy." On their return, if they  
don’t die, they are granted the right to become U.S. citizens. As they  
are well-trained, they are offered the possibility of being contracted  
not as official soldiers, but as the civilian soldiers of the private  
companies that provide their services in the imperial wars of conquest.
There are other extremely grave dangers. News is constantly coming in  
of immigrants from Mexico and other countries of our region dying  
trying to cross the current border of Mexico and the United States.  
The quota of victims every year is exceeding in bounds the total  
number of those who lost their lives during the close to 28 years of  
existence of the famous Berlin Wall.
What is even more incredible is that news of a war that is currently  
costing thousands of lives per year is barely circulating in the  
world. To date in 2009, more Mexicans have died than U.S. soldiers who  
died in Bush’s war on Iraq throughout his entire administration.
The war in Mexico has been unleashed because of the largest market for  
drugs in the world: the United States. But within its territory there  
is no war between the police and the armed forces of the United States  
and the drug traffickers. The war has been exported to Mexico and  
Central America, but in particular to Mexico, closer to U.S.  
territory. The footage of piled-up corpses broadcast on television and  
news arriving of persons murdered right in the operating rooms where  
doctors were trying to save their lives are horrifying. None of those  
images come from U.S. territory.
That wave of violence and bloodshed is spreading to a greater or  
lesser degree throughout the countries of South America. Where does  
the money come from without the infinite spring that emerges from the  
U.S. market? In its turn, consumption is also tending to expand to the  
other countries of the region, giving rise to more victims and more  
direct or indirect damage than AIDS, malaria and other diseases put  
together.
Imperial plans of domination are preceded by enormous sums assigned to  
the tasks of lying and misinforming public opinion. For that, they  
have the total complicity of the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the  
intellectual right and the mass media.
They are experts in divulging the errors and contradictions of  
politicians.
Humanity’s fate cannot be left in the hands of robots converted into  
persons or persons converted into robots.
In 2010, the U.S. government is to spend $2.2 billion via the State  
Department and USAID to promote its politics, 12% more than the sum  
received by the Bush government in the last year of his mandate. Of  
that total, close to $450 million is allocated for demonstrating that  
the dictatorship imposed on the world signifies democracy and respect  
for human rights.
They constantly appeal to the instincts and egotism of human beings;  
they scorn the value of education and awareness. The resistance  
demonstrated by the Cuban people over 50 years is evident. Resisting  
is the weapon that can never be renounced by the peoples; the Puerto  
Ricans succeeded in halting the military maneuvers on Vieques by  
placing themselves on the firing range.
The homeland of Bolívar is currently the country that most concerns  
them, given its historic role in the independence struggles of the  
peoples of America. Cubans providing services there as health  
specialists, educators, teachers of physical education and sports and  
computer studies, agriculture technicians and those working in other  
areas, must give their all in fulfilling their internationalist  
duties, in order to demonstrate that the peoples can resist and be the  
bearers of the most sacred principles of human society. If not, the  
empire will destroy civilization and the species itself.


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