Articles of Reflections by Fidel

The serious Obama spoke today. Recently, I recognized two positive features in his behavior: his attempt to make healthcare available to the 47 million Americans who don’t have access to it, and his concern for climate change.

It is our duty to demand the truth. The populations of all countries have the right to know the factors causing climate change and the current scientific possibilities to reverse the tendency, if indeed we still really have any.

I have been watching for hours now on television the tribute that the entire country is paying to Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque. I think that facing death was for him just another duty as so many others he discharged throughout his life. He did not know neither did we how much sadness the news of his physical absence would bring to us.

Humanity has to cope with very difficult problems. I wish our species is not faced with disaster, and many of us could have a clear conscience for having done our best to prevent it.

The head of the Philips office in Brazil literally said to the Cuban representatives: “There is a brutal intransigence on the part of the US Government in terms of equipment regulations and license applications regarding Cuba.” “I know that this affects the Commander’s program. Our organization is being affected and threatened. All our organizations are very scared.” And right after that he repeated: “they are very scared.”

After seizing power, W. Bush not only dragged the country into a war policy but also left the Kyoto Protocol unsigned thus denying the world for ten years the support of that nation to the struggle for the environment, a nation that consumes 25 percent of the fossil fuel, which can bring irreparable damage to the human species.

A country that respects itself needs no US mercenaries, troops or military bases to fight drug-trafficking, to protect the people in case of natural disasters or to provide humanitarian cooperation to other peoples.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghan war to fight the Taliban is wrong. The Soviet Union was trapped in a quagmire there. The US European allies will be ever more reluctant to see the blood of their soldiers shed in that country.  

If robots in the hands of the transnationals can replace imperial soldiers in the wars of conquest, who will stop the transnationals in their quest for a market for their artifacts? Just as they have flooded the world with automobiles that today compete with mankind for the consumption of non-renewable energy and even foods converted into fuel, so too they can flood the world with robots that would displace millions of workers from their workplaces.

There are some who say that the economic crisis marks the end of imperialism; maybe we should wonder whether or not this is something worse for our species. In my opinion, the best thing will always be to have a just cause to defend and the hope to continue moving forward.