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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.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 14, 2008.
7:12 pm. |
