Reflections by Comrade Fidel

BUSH IN HEAVENS (Part I)

(This reflection has two parts, both concluded on Saturday, March 22^nd)

In this reflection I will go by the news received from different sources, including international cable services, –without specifically recognizing any of them as the information source, but strictly abiding by the text of the news-- books, documents, the Internet, and even questions asked to well-documented sources.

There is a big hustle and bustle everywhere, as if we lived in a mad house. Our very well-known characters continue on their hectic tour.

After visiting Brazil and Chile, Condoleezza flew to Moscow to sound out the new President. She wants to know his mind. She traveled with the chief of the Pentagon. With a dislocated arm after a fall on February, he said: “With a broken arm, I won't be nearly as difficult a negotiator." A typically Yankee joke. You may figure out the effect this had on the proud ears of a Russian, whose people suffered the loss of so many millions of lives in their struggle against the Nazi hordes which claimed for vital space –what we could call today cheap oil, raw materials, and guaranteed markets for surplus goods.

We have known of the adventures of McCain and Cheney in Baghdad; one of them hopes to become head of government, and the other, being already the deputy head of government, issues more orders than his boss. They were both welcomed with the most unexpected and violent predictions. They devoted less than two days to that, enough time to flood the world with sinister forecasts.

Bush was delivering speeches in Washington while the prices of gold and oil were sky-rocketing.

Cheney didn’t stop. He rushed for the Sultanate of Oman -774,000 oil barrels per day in 2005 and 780,000 in 2004. Last year Oman revealed its plans to invest 10 billion dollars during the next five years to increase its oil production to 900,000 barrels per day and reach the figure of 70 to 80 million cubic meters of gas per day. This is what the Sultanate authorities reported on January 15, 2007.

Cheney, accompanied by his family, sailed on board of the Sultan’s yacht “Kingfish I” on a fishing tour nearby the maritime boundaries between Oman and Iran. How bold! Nobel awards should also be given to those super-brave who run the risk of death or mutilation after a sumptuous private lunch with a fishbone stuck in the throat. The absence of the owner of the luxurious yacht spoiled the hero’s party.

McCain doesn’t stop either. He jumps into a helicopter to move around the territory where the Israeli soldiers, while chasing Palestinian leaders, continue to kill women, children, teenagers and youth in the West Bank with the use of sophisticated technical means. The Republican candidate is an expert on that.

He traveled to Jerusalem and there he promised to be the first to recognize that whole city as the capital of Israel, which the United States and Europe turned into a sophisticated nuclear power, whose satellite-guided missiles could fall in Moscow, more than 5000 kilometers away, in a matter of minutes.

There will be no oil or gas producing State that Cheney would not visit before he returns to attest to the happiness of the world before the President of his country.

Bush, for one, speaks on the 17th for one reason, then on the 18th for another reason, and on the 19th to mark the beginning of his fantastic war. Cuba, as it was to be expected, has not ceased to be at the crosshairs of his invectives.

In the midst of the chaos created by the empire, wars become inseparable sidekicks. It’s been five years since the beginning of the Iraqi war. Profound thinkers have estimated the amounts of persons who have been affected, and have calculated that this war’s total cost amounts to trillions of dollars. Four thousand army soldiers have lost their lives; for every soldier that is killed thirty more are wounded due to the kind of war that is being waged. White phosphorous and cluster bombs are the feed that nurtures this war on a daily basis. Anything goes, except for living.

Cheney and McCain compete with one another, one of them as the father of the creature, the other as the stepfather. They both meet with heads of State and exact compromises: oil and gas production should be increased, with the use of Yankee technology, Yankee inputs, and Yankee weapons from the industrial military complex. Yankee military bases should be allowed.

From Jerusalem, McCain jumps into London to talk with Gordon Brown. Before that, while speaking in Jordan, he made a mistake and asserted that Iran, a Shiite country, was helping to train Al Qaeda, a Sunnite organization. It’s all the same to him; he didn’t even apologize for his mistake.

Cheney jumps into Afghanistan. The war waged by NATO and the Yankees has turned the country into the largest opium exporter of the world. The USSR had worn itself out and plunged into a similar war. Bush launched his first belligerent blow there, supported by NATO.

They are doing all that needs to be done to convene two parallel meetings: one to discuss the fight on terrorism and a NATO meeting.

One thing is certain: Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s top official, will meet with Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan on April 1, 2 and 3 in Bucharest to participate in the Trans-Atlantic Forum to be held in that city. At the same time there will be a conference convened by the GMF (the German Marshall Fund of the United States), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania, and Chatham House which will gather a great number of strategists and politicians to address topics of vital interest for NATO. According to the GMF Chairman, the conference will be attended by 9 Heads of State, 24 Prime Ministers and ministers, and 40 presidents of research institutions from Europe and the Americas, which make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which dissolved Tito’s Yugoslavia and carried out the war in Kosovo. Anyone could understand that any similarity with the interests pursued by the Yankee imperialism is a mere coincidence. The situation in the Balkans, the anti-missile defense system, the energy supply and weapons control are unavoidable issues.

Since Bush needs to perform his main character role, he has already drafted his own schedule: he would be in the city of Neptun, in the Black Sea, to attend a meeting with Traian Basescu, President of Romania, on the eve of the opening of the conference. The fate of humankind which contributes surplus value and blood, are in those hands.

(To be continued tomorrow, in Part II)

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 22, 2008