Articles of Fidel Castro Ruz

Haiti, in the midst of the destruction by the earthquake, the epidemic and poverty, cannot now dispense with an international force cooperating with a nation ruined by foreign interventions and the exploitation of the transnationals. The UN not only must fulfill the elementary duty of fighting for reconstruction and development in Haiti, but also of mobilizing the necessary resources to eradicate an epidemic which threatens to spread to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, Latin America and other similar countries in Asia and Africa.

At the present, Haiti’s situation is very serious, and the emergency aid required is far too little. Our hectic world invests one million 500 thousand million dollars every year on weapons and wars; Haiti, a country that less than a year ago suffered a brutal earthquake that caused 250,000 dead, 300,000 injured and enormous destruction, needs an ever growing amount for its reconstruction and development; according to experts’ calculations the figure totals around 20 billion, just 1.3% of what is being spent in one year for such purposes.

There is a lot to talk about when the United States is embroiled in a colossal scandal as the result of the documents published by Wikileaks; nobody doubts their authenticity -notwithstanding any other motivation of that website.

The Cuban Medical Mission is looking after 37 centres dealing with the epidemic where, until today, they have cared for 26,040 persons affected with cholera; to these they will immediately add, along with the Henry Reeve Brigade, 12 more medical centres (for a total of 49) with 1,100 new beds, in tents that were designed and made for those purposes in Norway and other countries, already purchased with earthquake funds, delivered to Cuba by Venezuela for the reconstruction of the Haitian health system.

Different UN officials were lamenting the fact in the last few days that the response from the international community to the call for aid made to confront the situation was not even reaching 10% of the 164 million dollars urgently being requested.

An unusual meeting took place at the United States Capital Building between a group of US legislators from the fascist right and Latin American leaders from the rightwing oligarchy and coup promoters to discus the overthrow of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

There are moments in history that require a speech, even if it is as brief as the “Alea jacta est” (“The die is cast”) pronounced by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. It had to be crossed that day, precisely when the ministers of defence of the sovereign states of the western hemisphere were meeting in the city of Santa Cruz, where the Yankees had been encouraging secessionism and the disintegratrion of Bolivia.

In just 10 days -less than two weeks -world opinion has received three great and unforgettable lessons: G-20, APEC and NATO, in Seoul, Yokohama and Lisbon, in such a way that all honest persons who can read and write and whose minds haven’t been warped by the conditioned reflexes of the imperialist mass media machine, can have a true idea about the problems affecting humankind today.

According to Roman Catholic practice, when someone is deathly ill, they make their confession and then receive extreme unction. This is what has happened with United States credibility in the almost simultaneous meetings of the G-20 and APEC. On the basis of this, we don’t know what’s coming next. Perhaps they shall give a Christian burial or cremation to the remains of the absurd illusion that it is possible to keep alive a social system that is incompatible with the life of humanity whose members today…

Many readers, saturated with acronyms, may wonder: What is the G-20? This is one of the many miscreations concocted by the most powerful empire and its allies, who also created the G-7: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada. Later on they decided to admit Russia in a club that was then called the G-8.