Reflections by the Commander
in Chief
AN EPIPHANY GIFT
The wires
made the announcement ahead of time. On
January 6th we learned of Bush’s trip to the
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
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;
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
“'Iranian
actions threaten the security of nations everywhere’ Bush said. Therefore, the
“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
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,
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
“But
global soy bean demand is also spiraling upward, again, chiefly due to the
rising consumption in
“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.”
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