THAT Tuesday, there was no fresh international news. My modest message to the people of Monday, February 18 had no problem being widely circulated. I began to receive news from 11:00 a.m. The previous night I slept like never before. My conscience was at rest and I had promised myself a vacation. The days of tension, with the proximity of February 24, left me exhausted.

Today I shall not say anything about people in Cuba and the world who are close and who expressed their emotions in thousands of different ways. I also received a large number of comments collected from people on the street via confirmed methods who, almost without exception, and spontaneously, voiced their most profound sentiments of solidarity. One day I shall approach that subject.

At this point I am dedicating myself to the adversaries. I enjoyed watching the embarrassing position of all the candidates for the United States presidency. One by one they were obliged to announce their immediate demands of Cuba in order not to risk losing a single voter. Not that I am a Pulitzer Prize winner interrogating them on CNN on the most delicate political and even personal matters from Las Vegas, where the logic of chance of the roulette rules and where one has to make ones humble presence if aspiring to be president.

Half a century of blockade seemed little enough to the favorites. "Change, change, change!" they cried in unison.

I am in agreement, change! but in the United States. Cuba changed a long while ago and will follow its dialectical route. "No return to the past ever!" exclaim our people.

"Annexation, annexation, annexation!" responds the adversary; that is what they are really thinking deep down about when they talk of change.

Breaking the secret of his silent struggle, Martí denounced the voracious and expansionist empire discovered and described by his brilliant intelligence more than one century after the revolutionary declaration of independence of the 13 colonies.

The end of one stage is not the same as the beginning of the end of an unsustainable system.

Immediately, the diminished European powers allied to that system, began to pronounce the same demands. In their judgment, the hour had come to dance to the music of the democracy and freedom that, since the times of Torquemada, they have never really known. The colonization and neo-colonization of entire continents, from which they extract energy, raw materials and a cheap workforce, morally disqualify them.

An extremely illustrious Spanish figure, previously minister of culture and an impeccable socialist, today and for some time now a spokesman on arms and war, is the synthesis of pure wrong. Kosovo and the unilateral declaration of independence is hitting them at this time like an impertinent nightmare.

People of flesh and blood with U.S. and NATO uniforms are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memory of the USSR, disintegrated in part due to its interventionist adventure in the latter of the two countries, haunts the Europeans like a shadow.

Bush Sr. is backing McCain as his candidate, while Bush Jr., in a country of Africa – yesterday the origin of humankind and a martyr continent today – and where nobody knows what he is doing, said that my message was the beginning of Cuba’s road to freedom; in other words, the annexation decreed by his government in a voluminous and enormous text.

The day before, international television showed a group of latest-generation bombers executing spectacular maneuvers, with the complete guarantee that bombs of any type could be launched without radars detecting the aircraft carriers, and this is not even considered to be war crime.

A protest was made by important countries in relation to the imperial idea of testing a weapon on the pretext of avoiding the possible fall over the territory of another country of a spy satellite – one of the many artifacts that, for military purposes, the United States has sent into orbit of the planet.

I was thinking of not writing a reflection for at least 10 days, but I had no right to keep quiet for so long. I revised it yesterday and today, Thursday, will hand it over. I have insistently asked for my reflections to be published on Page 2 or any other page of our newspapers, never on the front page, and to give simple summaries in the other media if they are extensive.

I am now absorbed in the effort of confirming my united vote for the President of the National Assembly and the new Council of State and how to do that.

I thank my readers for your patient wait.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 21, 2008
6:34 p.m.