Reflections by Comrade Fidel

A QUESTION WITH NO ANSWER

Our world is not only threatened by the cyclical economic crises which are ever more serious and frequent. Unemployment, bankruptcy, and the huge losses in goods and wealth are inseparable companions of the blind market laws which govern the world economy today. Neo-liberalism proscribes any interference by the State, considering it a disturbing element for the economy, as if the domestic order, the army, health, education, culture, science, the courts, the judges, and many other activities could exist without the State and its laws.

Obviously, the State, with its rigor and coercive force, was considered an obstruction by those like Marx, Lenin and other theoreticians, who saw it as an instrument used by the exploiters to impose the heinous capitalist system, and conceived the idea of turning it into an instrument of the Revolution in the stage of transition to and entirely new society.

Colonialists, capitalists and imperialists have created their own codes of conduct and imposed their values. They talk about freedom, democracy, human rights and so on. After the United States was founded, millions of human beings continued working as salves; the Creator had not granted them any right, as was stated in the Philadelphia Declaration. During almost 100 years they were like merchandise which was bought and sold in the market, and for another 100 years, after the civil war, they were atrociously discriminated against and marginalized. Today, together with the American Indians and the Latin Americans, they are the poorest citizens to be found in the US prisons; they do the toughest and worst paid jobs.

It is never said that billions of people in the world suffer the consequences of ignorance, unemployment, underdevelopment, diseases that curtail their life span to two thirds or by one half –and sometimes less than that- as compared to the life span enjoyed by people in rich countries.

New problems, such as drug trafficking, organized crime, brain drain and illegal migration, add to the old ones. There is even an attempt to submit the human minds using the mass media and the most modern techniques of the so called entertainment industry.

What supports that order? Wealth and the use of force. For that they have all the money in this world and the most sophisticated military means. Besides, they are the big producers and exporters of weapons that pose no threat whatsoever to their international hegemony, but spur local wars, multinationals profits and their allies’ dependence.

They mint unlimited amounts of the hard currency required by international trade, and with that they acquire properties for their multinationals and take hold of the natural resources and the fruits of peoples’ labor in order to prop up the societies of consumption and waste that they have created.

Furthermore, the United States keeps a monopolist control over the international credit and investment agencies.

Whenever these concerns start going around the minds of many millions in the world who do not let themselves be misled by the lies that are proclaimed, news begin to flow showing different realities.

For example: In the year 2004, the last shown by statistics, the US multinationals’ profits abroad amounted to 700 billion dollars, for which they paid to the Treasury only 16 billion dollars in discounts, which grant special privileges to US companies investing in other countries, thus affecting those which do it inside the US and create jobs in that country. The mere attempt by the present US administration to reduce that privilege gave rise to a protest by important US business organizations whose economic and political power no one can deny.

Gathering a number of national and international news showing the national privileges that country has imposed on the whole world could even be an enlightening pastime. There are politicians inside and outside the United States who take offense if someone dares to describe that system as an empire, as if there were another word that could better define it.

The other side of the coin offers a much gloomier picture. On several occasions reference was made to the seven fleets with which the US imposes its military might on the world, resorting to more than 800 military bases scattered throughout the planet. Guantánamo, whose prison camps and tortures astonished the world’s public opinion, is only one of the hundreds of military bases that they have.

Maybe we could have a better idea of the military power with which the superpower supports the economic and social system it has imposed on humankind by referring to some data which were recently published by the specialized press.

The US military power is based on its nuclear arsenal.

It has 534 Minuteman III and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM); 432 Trident C-4 and D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) installed on board of 17 Ohio submarines; and around 200 long-range nuclear bombers that can be supplied in mid-air, among them 16 invisible B-2. The missiles carry several warheads. The number of nuclear warheads deployed ranges between five thousand and ten thousand. Its Armed Forces are made up by more than 2 million men. Added to all these there are hundreds of military and communication satellites which make up the space shield and are the means for an electromagnetic war.

Russia, the other big nuclear power, has been surrounded by offensive nuclear weapons.

It is hardly necessary to add one more word, except for being reminded that thanks to the monopoly over money and natural resources, the United States announced yesterday through the Pentagon’s principal commander for cyber-war that that country was determined to lead the global effort to use computer technology to deter or defeat the enemies, while protecting people’s constitutional rights. The news was broadcast by the AP, the main US news agency.

How much security can be found in today’s world? That is a question with no answer!

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 6, 2009

3:32 p.m.