The leader of the Cuban Revolution launched memories Titled “Guerrillero del tiempo”.Castro launched in this capital two volumes of his memories with the title: Fidel Castro Ruz: Guerrillero del tiempo.

The volumes which have around a thousand pages open with the first memories of the leader’s childhood, and they close on Dec 1958, before the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959.

They are going to talk to you about two books on news you have not been reported, Fidel Castro commented in the Conventional Palace, few minutes before the launching this Friday.

These memories were the result of his conversations with Katiuska Blanco, writer and journalist.

The minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, and Miguel Barnet, president of the National Association of Cuban writers and Artists were responsible for the presentation of the volumes.

Renegades of Funk in Latin America

Fidel Castro, the legendary leader of Cuban revolution praised Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez for its world politics and organization, slammed Us and Europe while sending gratitude to all South American anti-fascist states.

Havana / NationalTurk – Cuban Revolution Leader Fidel castro shed light on one of his most beloved South American leaders, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

Complete Text of Fidel Castro’s latest reflection

President Chavez presented his annual report on activities carried out in 2011 and his program for 2012 to the Venezuelan Parliament. After thoroughly carrying out the formalities required by this important activity, he addressed the official state authorities, members of parliament from all parties, and supporters and opposition members who had come to the Assembly to participate in the country’s most solemn act.

As usual, the Venezuelan leader was gracious and respectful to all those present. When anyone asked for the floor to make a clarification, he granted it as soon as possible. When one of the members of parliament, who had warmly greeted Chavez as did other opposition members, asked to speak, in a great political gesture Chavez interrupted his report presentation and gave her the floor. What surprised me was the extreme severity of the rebuke, launched against the president with words that really put to test Chavez’ chivalry and cold blood. The MPs statement was undoubtedly an insult, although this was not her intention. He alone was capable of calmly responding to the offensive word ‘thief’ that she had used to judge the president’s conduct in terms of the adopted laws and measures.

After verifying the exact term that was used, Chavez responded to the individual challenge for debate with an elegant and sedated phrase, “An eagle does not hunt flies,” and without adding another word he calmly proceeded with his report.

It represented an insurmountable test of mental agility and self control. Another woman, of unquestionable humble origins, expressed her astonishment in moving and heartfelt words over what she had just witnessed and the overwhelming majority present broke out in applause. Judging by the sheer volume, the applause seemed to be coming from all of Chavez’ friends and many of his adversaries as well.

Fidel Castro : Politics is an extensive and decisive battle of ideas

Chavez’ report lasted more than nine hours without the people ever losing interest. Maybe because of that incident, his words were heard by an immeasurable number of people. Many times I have given extensive speeches on difficult topics, always striving to make the ideas I was transmitting understandable. And I was really at a loss to explain how that soldier of humble origins was able to keep his mind so agile and his incomparable talent to deliver such an address without losing his voice or strength.

To me politics is an extensive and decisive battle of ideas. Publicity is the work of publicists, who perhaps know the techniques to get listeners, spectators and readers to do what they are told to do. If that science, or art, or whatever they call it is employed for the good of human beings, they deserve some respect; the same respect merited by those who teach people how to think.

Fidel Castro Reflections : Venezuela is the site of great battle where Chavez will be victorous

Venezuela today is the site of a great battle. Internal and external enemies of the revolution prefer chaos —as Chavez has said— to the just, organized and peaceful development of the country. Being accustomed to analyzing the events that have occurred over more than half a century, and to observing, with greater foundations for judgment, the eventful history of our time and human behavior, one learns to almost predict the future development of events.

To promote a far-reaching Revolution in Venezuela was no easy task. Venezuela is a country full of glorious history, but extraordinarily rich in resources that are of vital importance to the imperialist powers that have, and continue to map out guidelines in the world.

Political leaders the likes of Romulo Betancourt and Carlos Andres Perez lack the most minimal personal qualities to carry out such a task. Furthermore, Betancourt was excessively vain and hypocritical. He had many opportunities to learn about the situation in Venezuela. As a young man he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Costa Rica. He had a strong grasp of Latin American history and the role of imperialism, of poverty rates, and the ruthless plundering of natural resources in South America. He could not ignore that in a vastly rich country such as Venezuela, the majority of the people lived in extreme poverty. The archival footage is irrefutable proof of that reality of life.

As Chavez has explained many times, for more than half a century Venezuela was the world’s major oil exporter. At the beginning of the 20th century, European and Yankee warships intervened to support an illegal and tyrannical government that handed the country over to foreign monopolies. It is well known that incalculable funds flowed out of Venezuela to swell the wealth of monopolies and the Venezuelan oligarchy.

I remember when I visited Venezuela for the first time —after the triumph of the Revolution, to give thanks for the support and friendliness afforded to our struggle—, oil was worth barely two dollars a barrel.

Afterwards when I went to Venezuela to take part in the swearing-in ceremony for Chavez, the day he took an oath on the “dying constitution” held by Calderas, oil was worth seven dollars a barrel, despite 40 years having passed since my first visit and almost 30 years since the “distinguished” Richard Nixon had cancelled the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold and the US began to buy the world with pieces of paper. For a century, Venezuela was a supplier of cheap fuel to the empire’s economy and a net exporter of capital to developed and rich countries.

Castro : Former Latin American generals were trained in US for  Coups d’état

Why did these repugnant situations dominate for more than a century?

Latin American Armed Forces’ officials went to their privileged schools in the United States, where the Olympic champions of democracies gave them special courses on maintaining imperialist and bourgeois order. Coups d’état were always welcomed if their objective was to “defend democracies,” safeguarding and guaranteeing this repugnant system, in league with the oligarchies. Whether voters knew how to read and write, whether they had homes, employment, medical services and education were unimportant as long as the sacred right to property was maintained. Chavez brilliantly explains this situation. No one knows as well as him what happened in our countries.

Even worse was that the sophisticated nature of weapons, the complex workings and use of modern armaments that require years of learning, the training of highly qualified specialists, and the almost prohibitive cost of such weapons for the weak economies of the continent created a very strong mechanism of subordination and dependence.

The US Government, employing mechanisms that did not require prior consultation with the other governments, set guidelines and policies for the military. The most sophisticated techniques of torture were passed on to the so-called security agencies to interrogate those who rebelled against the dirty and repugnant system of hunger and exploitation.
Despite all this, many honest officials, tired of so many indignations, bravely attempted to eradicate that embarrassing treason against the history of our independence struggles.

In Argentina, military official Juan Domingo Peron was able to design an independent and worker-based policy in his country. A bloody military coup overthrew him, expelled him from his country, and kept him in exile from 1955 to 1973. Years later, under the aegis of the Yankees, they once again attacked the government, murdering, torturing and disappearing tens of thousands of Argentines. They were not even able to defend the country during the colonial war that England carried out against Argentina with the conspiratorial support of the United States and henchman Augusto Pinochet with his cohort of fascists officers trained at the School of the Americas.

In Santo Domingo, Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deño; in Peru, General Velazco Alvarado; in Panama, General Omar Torrijos; and in other countries captains and officers who gave their lives anonymously were the antithesis of the traitorous behavior embodied by Somoza, Trujillo, Stroessner and the cruel tyrannies in Uruguay, El Salvador and other countries in Central and South America. The revolutionary military personnel did not expound elaborate theories, nor was this to be expected. They were not academicians educated in political science, but rather men with a sense of honor who loved their country.

But how far can honest men —who deplore injustice and crime— go along the path of revolution?
Venezuela is an outstanding example of the theoretical and practical role that the military can play in the revolutionary struggle for the independence of our peoples, as they did two centuries ago under the brilliant leadership of Simon Bolivar.

Chavez, a Venezuelan military officer of humble origins, stepped into the political life of Venezuela inspired by the ideas of the Liberator of America. On Bolivar, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, Marti wrote: “he won sublime battles with soldiers barefoot and half naked [...] who never fought so much, nor fought better, in the world for freedom …”

“… Of Bolivar, he said, you can talk only after climbing up a mountain to use it as a platform [...] or after freeing a bunch of peoples united in one fist …”

“… what he did not do, still remains undone today, because Bolivar still has things to do in the Americas.”
More than half a century later the famous, award-winning poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem on Bolivar which Chavez frequently quotes. The final stanza reads:

“I met Bolivar one long morning, in Madrid, at the head of the Fifth Regiment, Father, I said, you are or not or who you are? And looking at the Mountain Headquarters, he said:
‘I wake up every hundred years when the people awaken.’ ”

But the Bolivarian leader is not limited to theoretical elaborations. His concrete measures are implemented without hesitation. The English-speaking Caribbean countries, which have to contend with modern and luxurious Yankee cruise ships for the right to receive tourists in their hotels, restaurants and recreation centers, quite often foreign-owned, but at least they generate employment, will always welcome fuel from Venezuela, supplied by that country with special payment facilities, when the barrel reached prices that sometimes exceeded US $100.

Fidel Castro reflects on Mexico : Mexico’s state saddens me deeply

In the tiny state of Nicaragua, the land of Sandino, the “General of Free Men”, the Central Intelligence Agency organized the exchange of guns for drugs through Luis Posada Carriles after he was rescued from a Venezuelan prison. This operation resulted in thousands of deaths and mutilations among that heroic people. Nicaragua has also received the solidarity support of Venezuela. These are unprecedented examples in the history of this hemisphere.

The ruinous Free Trade Agreement that the Yankees intend to impose on Latin America, as they did with Mexico, would turn Latin America and the Caribbean not only into the region with the world’s worst distribution of wealth, which already is. It will turn it into a huge market where corn and other staple foods that are traditional sources of plant and animal protein would be displaced by subsidized U.S. crops, as is already happening in Mexico.

Used cars and other goods are displacing Mexican industry manufactures; job opportunities are decreasing in both cities and the countryside; the drug and arms trades are escalating, growing numbers of youngsters aged 14 or 15 years are turned into fearsome criminals. Never before, buses or other vehicles full of people who even paid to be transported across the border in search of employment, have been kidnapped and mass murdered. Known figures grow from year to year. More than ten thousand people are now losing their lives each year.

It is impossible to analyze the Bolivarian Revolution without taking these realities into account.
The armed forces, in such social circumstances, are forced into endless and wearisome wars.

Honduras is not an industrialized, financial or commercial country, or even a major producer of drugs. However, some of its cities break the record of drug-related violent deaths. There instead stands the banner of a major base of the strategic forces of the United States Southern Command. What is happening there, and is already happening in more than one Latin American country, is the Dantesque picture painted above, from which some countries have begun to escape. Among them and first, Venezuela, not just because it has considerable natural resources, but because it has been rescued from the insatiable greed of foreign corporations and has sparked considerable political and social forces capable of great achievements. Venezuela today is quite another from that I went to only 12 years ago, which had already deeply impressed me, seeing it as a Phoenix rising again from the ashes of its history.

Mentioning the mysterious computer of Raul Reyes, in the hands of the U.S. and the CIA after the attack organized and supplied by them in full Ecuadorian territory, which killed Marulanda’s replacement as well as several unarmed American youths, a version has been released that Chávez supported the “narco-terrorist organization FARC.” The true terrorists and drug traffickers in Colombia are the paramilitaries that supplied drugs to American dealers to sell them in the largest drug market in the world: the United States.

I never spoke with Marulanda, but I did speak with honored writers and intellectuals who came to know him well. I discussed his thoughts and history. He was undoubtedly a brave and revolutionary man, which I do not hesitate to affirm. I explained that I did not agree with him on his tactics. In my view, two or three thousand men would have been more than enough to defeat a conventional army in the territory of Colombia. His mistake was to devise a revolutionary army with almost as many soldiers as the enemy. That was extremely expensive.

Today, technology has changed many aspects of war; the forms of struggle also change. In fact, the clash of conventional forces between powers possessing nuclear weapons has become impossible. We do not have to have the knowledge of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and thousands of other scientists to understand that. It is a latent danger and the result is known or should be known. Thinking beings could take millions of years to repopulate the planet.

Nevertheless, I hold the duty to fight, which in itself is something innate in man, to find solutions that will enable a more reasoned and dignified existence.
Since I met Chavez, now as president of Venezuela, from the final stages of the Pastrana administration, I always saw him interested in promoting peace in Colombia. He facilitated meetings between the Colombian government and the revolutionaries that took place in Cuba, note well, on the basis of reaching a true peace agreement and not a surrender.

I do not recall ever having heard Chavez promote anything but peace in Colombia, nor mention Raul Reyes. We always addressed other issues. He particularly appreciates the Colombians, millions of them live in Venezuela and everyone benefits from the social measures taken by the Revolution, and the people of Colombia appreciate that almost as much as those of Venezuela.

I wish to express my solidarity and appreciation to General Henry Rangel Silva, Head of Strategic Operational Command of the Armed Forces, and newly appointed Minister of Defense of the Bolivarian Republic. I had the honor of meeting him when he visited Chavez in Cuba a few months ago. I could see in him an intelligent, well-meant, capable, and yet modest man. I heard his calm, brave and clear speech, which inspired confidence.

He led the organization of the most perfect parade of a Latin American military force that I have ever seen. We hope it will serve as encouragement and example to other brother armies.

The Yankees had nothing to do with that parade, and would not be able to do better.
It is extremely unfair to criticize Chavez for the resources invested in the excellent weapons which were displayed there. I’m sure they will never be used to attack a neighboring country. The weapons, resources and knowledge must go along the paths of  unity to see America, as  The Liberator dreamed, ”… the greatest nation in the world, greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth as by her freedom and glory..”

Everything unites us more than Europe or the United States itself, except the lack of independence imposed on us for 200 years.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 25, 2012

Here is Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro’s new article;

Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had not seen him since 2006, more than five years ago, when he visited our country to participate in the 14th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries in Havana. During the summit, Cuba was elected for the second time as president of the organization for a three-year term.

I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara.

With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex.

During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms —which, in large part, they produce themselves— to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors.

In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind: “Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history.”

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire.

I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all —regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons— are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world’s economy.

The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction.

I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons.

They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated.

If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception.

However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world’s finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund.

Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, have suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work.

Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states: “The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank.”

During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that “We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures.” This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium.

Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that “China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran’s oil revenues, rejecting Washington’s sanctions on Tehran as overstepping …”

The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency: “The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years.”

On January 12, 2010: “Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital. “

On November 29, 2010: “Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes.” The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors.

On July 23, 2011: “Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten.”

On January 11, 2012 —the same day that Ahmadinejad travelled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana—, scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, “a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran.” As in previous years “Iran once again accused the United States and Israel.”

The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence.

At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that “Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey.

“The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to ‘punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran.’”

“…NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention…This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey.”

“Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a “no-fly” zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev.”

News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region.

The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities.

In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people’s hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies.

“WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 – US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan “utterly deplorable” The video of the act was circulated in the Internet.

“’I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable…’

“’This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold…’”

In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt.

But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country’s borders have been killed by these bombs.

Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was “simply inhumane.” He asked for the US government “to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that “over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported…”

One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world.

Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives.

Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread?

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 12, 2012
9:14 p.m.

Here is Castro ‘s new article;

A well-known European news agency yesterday published from Sydney, Australia that a group of Australian researchers at the University of New South Wales announced the creation of an electrical cable ten thousand times thinner than a strand of hair, capable of carrying as much electricity as a traditional copper cable.

…Bent Weber, lead author of a study published in Science magazine at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia explained that “Interconnecting wiring of this scale will be vital for the development of future atomic-scale electronic circuits”.

“The wires were made by precisely placing chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal, according to the study, which includes researchers from the University of Melbourne and Purdue University in the US.”

The discovery is essential in the international race to develop the first ‘quantum computer’, super-fast machines capable of processing enormous amounts of information in just a few seconds: a series of calculations that would take years, or even decades, for today’s computers.

“In a traditional copper cable, the electricity is generated when the copper electrons flow along a conductor: but as the cable or conductor becomes smaller, resistance to the electrical flow becomes greater.”

In order to solve this problem, Weber and his team used specially designed microscopes with atomic precision that allowed them to place the phosphorus atoms into the silicone crystals.

“This allowed the nanocable to act as the copper, with the electrons flowing easily and with no resistance problems. They are trying to prove that with this technique it is possible to minimize components down to the scale of a few atoms.
If we are going to use atoms as bits, we need cables on the same scale as the atoms ― observed the supervisor of the group physicist, Micelle Simmons.”

With these unstoppable technological advances that ought to be for the well-being of humankind, I was recalling that just four days ago I wrote about the warming of the Earth and the accelerated exploitation of shale gas in a world that in two hundred years is consuming the fossil energy accumulated for 4 billion years.

Imagine Obama, that wordsmith, for whom, in his desperate search for re-election, the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. are light years further away than the Earth is from the nearest inhabitable planet.

Worse yet: any of the Republican Congressmen who are presidential hopefuls, or any leader of the Tea Party carries more nuclear weapons on their backs than ideas of peace in their heads.

Let the readers imagine for one moment that powerful quantum calculator capable of multiplying an infinite number of times the data that today is collected by modern computers.

Is it not perhaps obvious that the worst thing of all this is the absence in the White House of a robot capable of governing the United States and preventing a war that would put an end to the life of our species?

I am certain that 90 percent of registered Americans, especially Hispanics, Afro-Americans and the growing numbers of the impoverished middle class would vote for the robot.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 8, 2012
6:18 p.m.

Without being specific, he has promised to ease restrictions that make it difficult for most Cubans to leave the island and return, one of the biggest gripes about life under the government in power since Cuba’s 1959 revolution.

Castro could disclose the reforms as soon as Friday, when he will speak to a session of the National Assembly, but there are also rumors they will be announced in early January.

The government has been tight-lipped about his plans, but Castro said in an August speech to the assembly that change is coming.

He said officials were working to update migration policy with an eye toward increasing ties with Cubans who have left the Caribbean island and are living abroad.

Today’s emigrants are leaving for economic reasons, not political, he said, and “almost all still love their family and the homeland where they were born.”

Cuban exiles, who send more than $1 billion a year in remittances from abroad, are an important source of money for the cash-strapped island and are expected to bankroll small businesses and real estate purchases now permitted under economic reforms by Castro.

How far he plans to go with travel changes remains to be seen, but Cubans’ hopes are high.

They want him to eliminate costly and time consuming requirements for such things as government permission to both leave and return to the island and for a letter of invitation from a friend or relative in the country they intend to visit.

They also would like to see an end to limits on how long they can be away and on the right to bring their children along on trips, both of which are in place to encourage their return.

CUBAN EXODUS

Cuba imposed travel restrictions to slow an exodus that began with the 1959 revolution and has continued only partly abated. An estimated 2 million Cubans live abroad with most of those in the U.S. and particularly in Miami.

Castro said many of the rules “played their role in certain circumstances,” but then “lasted unnecessarily.”

Cubans agree. They say they would like to visit family members abroad and see more of the world than the island most have never left.

“Everybody has the right to travel, to know other countries for family reasons, economic reasons, work reasons, and I think it would help the development of Cuban society,” student Jose Ricardo told Reuters in Havana.

“I have family in the United States and it would be good for me to go see them,” said retiree Ricardo Cuesta. “It would be good for everyone.”

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit from the country since 2004, said on Twitter that her bags are packed and she was “ready to test the limits of the possible” by going to the airport as soon as changes are announced.

“Rights are not to begged for, they are to be exercised,” she said.

Even if the government loosens travel restrictions, Cubans still will face visa requirements in many countries, including the United States.

But under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, the U.S. also allows them in if they cross the Florida Straits and set foot on the beach.

Tomorrow the G-20 Meeting begins, that is the meeting of the most developed and wealthy countries on the planet: the United States, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and the European Union as a separate entity but with the right to participate; they are the fundamental bastions of NATO plus its allies Japan, South Korea, Australia and Turkey in its double aspect of developing country and NATO member, just as Saudi Arabia – a gigantic reservoir of light oil in the hands of western transnationals, extracting from it 9.4 million barrels a day, whose value at current prices totals one billion dollars per day – on one side of the table, and on the other, a group of countries having growing economic and political clout who, as a matter of fact, because of the number of inhabitants and natural resources, are becoming an expression of the interests of the majority of our long-suffering and pillaged world: the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Spain, also a NATO ally, is just a “Guest Country”.

We are talking about a meeting among the great producers of industrial machinery and articles and of the great suppliers of raw materials that, over half a millennium following the Conquest, were European colonies and in the past century supplied them with agricultural products, minerals and energy resources, victims of a pitiless unequal exchange.
This dark period in history has been going on since the descendants of the Barbarian tribes populating Europe “discovered” and conquered this hemisphere, armed with swords, cross-bows and harquebuses.

“The discoverers”, so covered with excuses by the so-called western world, as if a part of humanity hadn’t been living on the continent for 40 million years, harboured the aim of seeking a shorter trade route to China.
In that country, with which they had antecedents via the silk merchants and merchants of other products prized by the aristocracy and burgeoning European bourgeoisie, they had found a fabulous civilization having a written language, refined arts, agriculture, metals, gunpowder and advanced principles of political and military organization, including armies with tens or perhaps thousands of cavalry.

They were on the point of capsizing when they sighted land, in the vicinity of Cuba. A short while later Columbus took possession of our island in the name of the King of Spain. Would he have been able to do that had he actually landed in China, as he had proposed? His error cost this hemisphere tens of millions of lives that were lost as consequence of the partitioning of the Americas by the Papal Bull between the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, and in the constant conflicts among the medieval nobility.

The Conquest and the search for gold and silver, as the genial native painter Oswaldo Guayasamín pointed out, cost 70 million lives of those living in the hemisphere, birthplace of important civilizations.
Black Africa can also speak about what that Conquest meant for millions of its children, ripped away and sold as slaves in this hemisphere.

The multi-million-dollar oligarchy, whose Heads of State or Government will be meeting in Cannes with the representatives of almost 6 billion inhabitants that aspire to a decent existence for their peoples, should meditate on these realities.

Those countries would like to monopolize technologies and markets through patents, banks, the most modern and costly transportation means, cybernetic supremacy over complex production processes, control of communications and the mass media in order to dupe the world.

Now that the inhabitants of the world number 7 billion, the states representing only one out of seven persons, who, judging by the massive protests in Europe and the United States, are not very happy, put the survival of our species at risk.

Could anyone forget that the US was the country that impeded the Kyoto Agreement when we had a little more time to prevent a catastrophe with the climate change that is being produced as we watch?

On the 28th and 29th of October past, another meeting of Heads of State and Governments took place: the community of Ibero-American countries. Among the calamities that the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking peoples have had to put up with is the fact that they are the region in the world with the most inequalities in terms of the distribution of their wealth.
Cuba’s Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla travelled from the UN meeting in New York on the blockade of Cuba to the capital of Paraguay where that second meeting was being held. There, highly interesting things were being said about the crisis that is sweeping over the European Community.

The new prime minister of Portugal poured out his bitterness with the European Union when he declared that it has become exhausted and without funds with the record rescue of Greece. It could face up to a crisis in Portugal but it would be bankrupt, unable to aid Italy, the seventh world economy, and this would drag down France whose banks hold the greatest part of the Italian debt.

The Iberian leaders doubt that the commitment assumed with Greece would be fulfilled and if it is not fulfilled they predict a longer crisis than that of 1929.

This morning, the news dispatches inform about the drastic consequences of the never-before-seen rainfall in Thailand, the major rice exporter whose sales will be reduced from 25 million tons to 19.
In contrast, news about China increasing its production of metal copper to almost 5 million tons caused considerable effect.

However, while the US keeps intact its veto power at the International Monetary Fund, China is being denied the simple right of approving the Yuan as convertible currency in that body. How long will that tyranny prevail?
It is through this looking-glass that we must analyse every single word that is spoken at the G-20 Summit.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 2, 2011
8:54 p.m.

“NATO´s Genocidal Role” is the title of the most recent reflection by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.

REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL NATO´S GENOCIDAL ROLE

On March 9th this year, under the title of “NATO, War, Lies and Business”, I published a new Reflection about the role of that warlike organization.

I am selecting some fundamental paragraphs from that Reflection:

“As some may be aware, in September of 1969, Muammar al-Gaddafi, an Arab Bedouin soldier of a peculiar character and inspired by the ideas of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, promoted in the heart of the armed forces a movement overthrowing King Idris I of Libya, a country almost completely covered by desert and having very little population, located in northern Africa between Tunisia and Egypt.”

“Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist.”

“…Even Gaddafi´s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enrol in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21. Then he enrolled in the Benghazi Military College where he created what was called the Secret Unionist Movement of Free Officers, concluding his education later on in a British military academy.”

“He had begun his political life with events that were without question, revolutionary.

“In March of 1970, after massive nationalist demonstrations, he managed to have British soldiers evacuated from the country and in June, the United States vacated the great air base near Tripoli, handing it over to military instructors from Egypt, a Libyan ally.

“In 1970, several western oil companies and banking companies having the participation of foreign capital were affected by the Revolution. At the end of 1971, the famous British Petroleum had the same fate. In the agricultural sector, all Italian properties were confiscated, and the colonists and their descendents were expelled from Libya.”

“The Libyan leader got involved in extremist theories that were opposed both to communism and capitalism. It was a stage when Gaddafi dedicated himself to theorizing, something that doesn´t have any place in this analysis, other than to point out that the first article of the Constitutional Proclamation of 1969 established the “Socialist” nature of the Great Socialist People´s Libya Arab Jamahiriya.

“What I wish to emphasize is that the United States and its allies were never interested in human rights.

“The hornet´s nest taking place in the Security Council, at the meeting of the Human Rights Council at the Geneva headquarters and in the UN General Assembly in New York was pure theatre.”

“The empire now wants [...] to intervene militarily in Libya and strike a blow at the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world. Up to now, not one word was said; they kept their mouths shut and carried on with business.”

“With the latent Libyan rebellion being promoted by Yankee intelligence, or by Gaddafi´s own errors, it is important that the people don´t let themselves be deceived, since very soon world opinion shall have enough elements to know what to expect.”

“Like many Third World countries, Libya is a member of NAM, the Group of 77 and other international organizations, through which relations are established separately from its economic and social system.

“As an outline: the Revolution in Cuba, inspired by Marxist-Leninist principles and those of Marti, had triumphed in 1959, 90 miles away from the United States which imposed on us the Platt Amendment and owned the economy of our country.

“Almost immediately, the empire promoted the dirty war against our people, counter-revolutionary gangs, the criminal economic blockade, the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs, watched over by an aircraft carrier and their Marines ready to land if the mercenaries were to gain determinate objectives.”

“All the Latin American countries, with the exception of Mexico, took part in the criminal blockade which is still in place today, with our country never surrendering.”

“In January of 1986, using the idea that Libya was behind the so-called revolutionary terrorism, Reagan ordered economic and commercial relations with that country to be broken.

“In March, a force of aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Sidra, inside what is considered to be Libyan national waters, launched attacks that caused the destruction of several naval units armed with missile launchers and coastal radar systems that that country had acquired in the USSR.

“On April 5th, a Berlin disco that US soldiers went to was the victim of plastic explosives; three persons died, two of them American soldiers, and many were wounded.

“Reagan accused Gaddafi and ordered the Air Force to retaliate. Three squadrons took off from the Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers and bases in the United Kingdom, attacking seven military targets in Tripoli and Benghazi with missiles and bombs. Around 40 people died, 15 of them civilians. Warned of the bombers’ advance, Gaddafi assembled his family and was abandoning his residence located at the Bab Al Aziziya military complex to the south of the capital. The evacuation was in progress when a missile made a direct hit on his residence; his daughter Hanna died and two other children were wounded. The occurrence was broadly condemned: the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning violation of the UN Charter and International law. So did NAM, the Arab League and the OAU, in energetic terms.

“On December 21, 1988, a Pan Am Boeing 747 flying from London to New York disintegrated in mid-air after a bomb exploded…”

“According to the Yankees, investigations implicated two Libyan intelligence agents.”

“A sinister legend was fabricated against him with the participation of Reagan and Bush Sr.”

“The Security Council had imposed sanctions on Libya that were starting to be overcome when Gaddafi accepted to put the two people accused for the plane downed over Scotland on trial, with certain conditions.

“Libyan delegations began to be invited to inter-European meetings. In July of 1999, London initiated the re-establishing of full diplomatic relations with Libya, after some additional concessions.”

“On December 2nd, Prime Minister Massimo D´Alema of Italy made the first visit of a European head of government to Libya.

“With the USSR and the European Socialist bloc gone, Gaddafi decided to accept the demands of the United States and NATO.”

“At the beginning of 2002, the State Department informed that diplomatic talks were going on between the US and Libya.”

“As 2003 began, because of the economic agreement on the compensations reached between Libya and the suing countries, the United Kingdom and France, the UN Security Council lifted the 1992 sanctions against Libya.

“Before 2003 drew to a close, Bush and Tony Blair informed about an agreement with Libya, a country that had handed over to United Kingdom and Washington intelligence experts documentation on the non-conventional weapons programs such as ballistic missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometres. Officials from both countries had already visited various installations. It was the result of many months of talks between Tripoli and Washington as Bush himself revealed.

“Gaddafi fulfilled his promises of disarmament. In a few months Libya handed over five units of Scud-C missiles with a range of 800 kilometres and the hundreds of Scud-Bs whose range surpassed the 300 kilometres for short-range defensive missiles.

“From October of 2002, the marathon of visits to Tripoli began: Berlusconi in October of 2002; Jose Maria Aznar in September of 2003; Berlusconi again in February, August and October of 2004; Blair in March of 2004; Germany´s Schröeder in October of that year; Jacques Chirac in November of 2004.”

“Gaddafi triumphantly toured Europe. He was received in Brussels in April of 2004 by Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission; in August of that year the Libyan leader invited Bush to visit his country; Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and Conoco Philips finalized the re-establishing of extracting crude by means of joint ventures.

“In May of 2006, the United States announced the withdrawal of Libya from the list of terrorist countries and the establishment of full diplomatic relations.

“In 2006 and 2007, France and the US signed agreements for nuclear cooperation for peaceful purposes; in May of 2007, Blair once again visited Gaddafi at Sidra. BP signed an “enormously important” agreement according to statements, in order to explore for gas fields.

“In December of 2007, Gaddafi made two visits to France and signed contracts for military and civilian equipment for the total of 10 billion Euros; and a visit to Spain where he met with President José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Million-dollar contracts were signed with important NATO countries.

“What is it that has now caused the precipitated withdrawal from the embassies of the United States and the other NATO members?

“It´s all extremely odd.

“George W. Bush, father of the stupid anti-terrorism war, stated on September 20 of 2001 to the West point cadets that:

“Our security will require [...] transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment of notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty [...].”

“We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries[...] Along with our friends and allies, we must oppose proliferation and confront regimes that sponsor terror, as each case requires.”

Today I add that Afghanistan, a traditionally rebellious country, was invaded; the nationalist tribes, former allies of the United States in its struggle against the USSR, were bombed and massacred. The Dirty War spread throughout the world. Iraq was invaded under excuses that turned out to be false, its abundant oil resources were handed over to the hands of Yankee companies, millions of persons lost their jobs and were forced to move both inside the country and abroad, their museums were sacked and innumerable citizens lost their lives or were massacred by the invaders.

Returning to the Reflection, I pointed out:

“An AFP dispatch from Kabul, dated today on March 9th, reveals that: “Last year was the most deadly for civilians in nine years of war between the Taliban and international forces in Afghanistan, with almost 2,800 dead, 15% more than in 2009, a UN report indicated on Wednesday, underlining the human cost of the conflict for the population.”

“With exactly 2,777 the number of civilian deaths in 2010 increased 15% as compared to 2009, indicates the annual joint report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan…”

“President Barack Obama stated on the 3rd of March his “profound condolences” to the Afghan people for the nine dead children; US General David Petraeus, commander in chief of the ISAF and Secretary of the Defence Robert Gates made similar statements.” “…the UNAMA report emphasizes that the number of civilian dead in 2010 is four times greater than the number of international forces soldiers killed in combat in that same year.

Referring to Libya, I indicated:

“For 10 days, in Geneva and in the UN more than 150 speeches were made about violations on human rights that were repeated millions of times by TV, radio, Internet and the printed press.

“Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez, in his speech on March 1st before the Foreign Ministers meeting in Geneva, stated:

“Human conscience rejects the deaths of innocent people in any circumstance and in any place. Cuba fully shares world concern for the losses in civilian lives in Libya and wishes that their people attain a peaceful and sovereign solution to the civil war happening over there, without any foreign interference, and ensuring the integrity of that nation.”

“If essential human rights are a right of life, is the Council ready to suspend the membership of states that unleash war?”

“Will it suspend states that finance and supply military aid used by the receiving state in massive, flagrant and systematic violations on human rights and in attacks on civilian populations, such as what is happening in Palestine?”

“Will it apply that measure against powerful countries that carry out extra-judicial executions on the territory of other states, using high technology such as smart bombs and unmanned planes?

“What would happen with states that accept on their territory illegal secret prisons, facilitate secret flights carrying kidnapped persons or participate in acts of torture?”

“We are against the internal war in Libya, in favour of immediate peace and full respect for life and the rights of all citizens, with no foreign intervention that would only serve to prolong the conflict and NATO interests.”

Yesterday, on October 31st, an event was produced that, among others, bears witness to the total lack of ethics in Yankee policy.

UNESCO had just adopted a courageous decision: to grant the heroic people of Palestine the right to participate as an active member of UNESCO; 107 states voted in favour, 14 were opposed and 52 abstained from voting. We all know the reason perfectly well.

The United States representative to that institution, following instructions from the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, immediately stated that as of that moment, their country would be suspending all economic aid to the organization that was destined by the UN for education, science and culture.

The dramatic tone with which the lady announced the decision was totally unnecessary. Nobody was surprised by the expected and cynical decision.

Moreover, as if it were not enough, all we need to do is read the AFP cable dated in Washington this afternoon at 16:05:

“…After the G20 Summit (…) the president (Obama) and President Sarkozy will take part in a ceremony in Cannes to celebrate the US-France alliance’, the office of the US president indicated, adding that the leaders would also be meeting with ‘US and French soldiers who had participated together in the operation’in Libya.”

I shall continue shortly.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Reflections of Fidel Castro: NATO's Genocidal Role

Fidel Castro slammed Nato as he called it as ‘brutal’ and ‘the most perfidious tool of repression’  in the history of mankind.

Havana / NationalTurk –  ’NATO’s Genocidal Role’ is the title of the most recent reflection by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.

NationalTurk is posting below the full text of Fidel Castro’s reflection

THIS brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious tool of repression known in the history of humanity.

NATO assumed this global repressive role as soon as the USSR, which had served as the U.S. pretext for its creation, disappeared. Its criminal purpose became obvious in Serbia, a country of Slavic origin, whose people heroically struggled against the Nazis during World War II.

In March of 1999, when the countries of this nefarious organization, in its efforts to break up Yugoslavia after the death of Josip Broz Tito, sent in troops to support the Kosovar secessionists, they met with strong resistance on the part of the country´s experienced forces which remained intact.

The yankee administration, advised by the right-wing Spanish government of José María Aznar, attacked Serbian television stations, bridges over the Danube River and Belgrade, the capital of the country. The embassy of the People’s Republic of China was destroyed by yankee bombs and several functionaries died. This could not have been any mistake, as those responsible alleged. A great number of Serbian patriots lost their lives.

President Slobodan Miloševic, overwhelmed by the power of the aggressors and the disappearance of the USSR, submitted to NATO demands and allowed the presence of troops from this alliance within Kosovo, under United Nations command, which finally led to his political defeat and subsequent prosecution by the less than impartial court of The Hague. He died under mysterious circumstances in prison.

Had the Serbian leader resisted a few more days, NATO would have faced a serious crisis which was about to erupt. The empire thus had more time at its disposal to impose its hegemony among the increasing number of subordinate members within the organization.

Between February 21 and April 27 of this year, I published, on the CubaDebate website, nine Reflections about the issues, in which I amply addressed the role of NATO in Libya and what, in my opinion, was going to happen.

I therefore find myself obliged to offer a summary of the essential ideas I presented and of the events which have occurred just as they were foreseen, given that a central figure in the story, Muammar Al-Gaddafi, was mortally wounded by NATO’s most modern fighter planes which intercepted and immobilized his vehicle, was captured alive and then assassinated by men armed by this organization.

His body was seized and exhibited as a war trophy, conduct which violates the most fundamental principles of Islamic norms and other religious beliefs around the world. It was announced that shortly Libya will be declared “a democratic state which defends human rights.”

I find myself obliged to devote several Reflections to these important and significant events.

I will continue tomorrow.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 23, 2011

Fidel Castro: NATO’s actions in Libya as “monstrous crime”

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro denounced NATO on Monday for its role in the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, saying the “brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression the history of humanity has known.”

Castro, 85, also expressed indignation at the killing of Gaddafi last week and the subsequent treatment of his body, which he said was “kidnapped and exhibited like a trophy of war, a conduct that violates the most elemental principles of Muslim norms and other religious beliefs.”

His comments were published in Cuban state-run media in one of the occasional opinion columns he has written since falling ill five years ago and handing over the presidency to younger brother Raul Castro in 2008.

The elder Castro has sharply criticized NATO’s intervention in Libya from the beginning and praised Gaddafi, a Castro friend, for his resistance.

He also has attacked NATO as an instrument of his longtime ideological foe, the United States.

His comments on Monday were the first from Cuba since Gaddafi’s death.

Last month, the Cuba government pulled its diplomats from the North African country and said it would not recognize the ruling National Transitional Council or any government established with the help of foreign intervention.

“The Will of Steel” is the title of the most recent reflection by leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro’s reflection posted by Prensa Latina;

When in 1976 the most serious acts of terrorism against Cuba took place, especially the destruction of a Cuban airliner in mid-flight that had taken off from Barbados with 73 persons onboard – including pilots, flight attendants and auxiliary personnel who were providing their noble services on that airline, the complete youth team that had obtained all the gold medals that were being contested at the Central American and Caribbean Fencing Championship, passengers from Cuba and other countries who were travelling full of confidence in that plane – the facts caused such great indignation that during the wake held at Revolution Square the most extraordinary and overflowing crowd ever seen came together and we have photographic records of this. Perhaps the United States leaders and many in the world had no possibility of seeing them. It would be illustrative that those scenes were to be broadcast by the mass media in order to understand full well the motivations driving our heroic anti-terrorist combatants.

Bush Sr. was already an important official in the US intelligence services when they received the mission of organizing the counter-revolution in Cuba. In Florida the CIA created the largest base of operations in the western hemisphere. It became responsible for all the subversive actions carried out in Cuba, including the assassination attempts on leaders of the Revolution and it became responsible for plans and calculations that, had they been successful, would have meant an enormous number of casualties on both sides given the decision of our people, as demonstrated at Giron, of fighting to the last drop of blood. Bush never understood that Cuba´s victory saved many lives, both Cuban and American.

The monstrous Barbados crime was produced when he was already head of the CIA, with almost as much authority as President Ford.

In June of that year he called a meeting at Bonao in the Dominican Republic in order to create the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations with the personal supervision of Vernon Walters, then deputy director of the CIA. Take note: “United Revolutionary Organizations”.

Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles, active agents in that organization, were appointed leaders of that organization. Thus begins a new phase of terrorist activities against Cuba. On October 6th of 1976, Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles personally direct the sabotage for the blowing up of the Cuban airliner in mid-flight.

The authorities arrested the men involved and sent them to Venezuela.

The scandal was so big that the government of that country, then a US ally and accomplice to crimes inside and outside of Venezuela, had no other alternative than to place them at the disposal of the Venezuelan courts.

The Sandinista Revolution triumphed in July of 1979. The bloody dirty war promoted by the United States broke out in that country. Reagan was by then the President of the United States.

When Gerald Ford replaced Nixon, such was the scandal caused by the assassination attempts on foreign leaders that he prohibited the participation of US officials in such actions. Congress denied funding for the dirty war in Nicaragua. They needed Posada Carriles. The CIA, through the so-called Cuban-American National Foundation, bribed the jailers involved with copious sums and the terrorist got out of jail as just another visitor. Urgently moved to Llopango in El Salvador, not only did he direct arms supplies that caused thousands of dead and wounded among the Nicaraguan patriots, but also, with CIA cooperation, he acquired drugs in Central America, brought them into the United States and bought American weapons for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.

In the interest of brevity, I am omitting numerous facts in the brutal story.

It is not possible to understand why the illustrious Nobel Prize laureate who presides over the government of the United States is pleased to reiterate the stupid idea that Cuba is a terrorist country, keeping four Cuban anti-terrorists isolated in prisons and in inhumane conditions, a punishment that nowadays is not applied to any US enemy country, much less if no US military force admits to having being put at risk by them and prohibits René from returning to his homeland and to the heart of his family.

The same Sunday October 9th that René sent his valiant message to the people of Cuba, he taped another fraternal “Message to Fidel and Raul”. Under advice of Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, neither of the two messages was made public until the Probation Official of the Federal Court of Florida should formally communicate the conditions being imposed on him for the three years of “supervised liberty”.

Now that this requisite has been fulfilled, I am pleased to inform our people about the textual content of that message that so much honours our heroes and expresses their exemplary conduct and will of steel:

Dear Commander:

First of all, an embrace, my thanks, the feeling of appreciation not only for the support with which you have showered us, for the way in which you have mobilized an entire people and mobilized international solidarity in favour of our cause but, in the first place, for having served as our inspiration, for having been the example we have followed during these 13 years and for having been for us a flag behind which we were never going to stop marching.

For us this mission has been nothing other than the continuation of everything you have done, what your generation did for the Cuban people and for the rest of humankind.

For me it is an enormous pleasure to send this message to you, to send you a temporary embrace, that goes to you by this channel because I know that we shall embrace at the end; no matter how much our adversaries try to prevent it, I know that we are going to be able to have that embrace. I know that we, the Five, shall return because you promised and because you have mobilized the energy, the best of humankind, the will of the entire world so that it may happen.

For us it is an honour to serve the cause that you have inspired in the people of Cuba, to be your followers, followers on the road that you and Raul opened up, and we shall never stop being worthy of that trust you have deposited in us.

To the two of you, to you Fidel, to Raul who is now guiding us in this new difficult stage, a complicated but glorious stage in which we are embroiled to break the economic dependency that ties us down still and which prevents us from building the society we want, I send you an embrace on behalf of the Five, I tell you that we always had trust in you. When we were alone in The Hole, when we were put in solitary confinement, when we weren´t getting any news, when my four brothers knew nothing about their families because they couldn´t be told, we always trusted you, we always knew that you would not abandon your sons because we always knew that the Revolution never abandons those who defend it. That is why it deserves to be defended and that is why we are always going to do that.

And even though I am not sure we deserve all the honours we have been receiving, I can say that the rest of our lives shall be dedicated to deserving it, because you two inspire us, because you are the flag that taught us how to conduct ourselves and until the end of our days we shall try to deserve the trust you have deposited in us.

For me now this is a trench in which I shall continue in the same battle for which you have called me and I shall be there until the end, until justice is done, following your orders, doing whatever needs to be done.

And I say to Fidel and to Raul: Commanders, both of you, at your orders!

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 17, 2011

Reflections by Fidel Castro: The Two Venezuelas

‘The Two Venezuelas’ is the title of the latest Reflections by leader of Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro.

NationalTurk posts below the full text version of these Reflections by Fidel Castro :

THE TWO VENEZUELAS

Yesterday I spoke about the time when Venezuela was an ally of the US empire and the country where Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch carried out their plans for the brutal in-flight bombing of a Cuban plane that caused the death and disappearance of all people aboard, including the youth fencing team that had just won all the gold medals at the Central-American and Caribbean Championships held in Venezuela. With the Pan-American Games underway in Guadalajara, we remember them with great sadness.

Traitor and Venomous Rómulo Betancourt

It was not the Venezuela of Rómulo Gallegos and Andrés Eloy Blanco but that of the scoundrel, traitor and venomous Rómulo Betancourt. A man who was jealous of the Cuban Revolution and who, as an ally of the imperialists, cooperated so much with their attacks against our homeland. At the time Venezuela was an oil property of the United States and, after Miami, represented the epicenter for counterrevolutionary actions against Cuba. History recalls how Venezuela played a significant role in the imperialist attack on Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs), the economic blockade and countless other crimes against our people. It was the beginning of the dark ages in Venezuela that came to an end when Hugo Chávez was sworn in on the “dying constitution” held in the trembling hands of former President Rafael Caldera.

Forty years had passed since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and more than a century since the Yankee plundering of Venezuela’s oil, natural resources and sweat.

Many Venezuelans died amidst the ignorance and misery imposed by US and European gunboats!

Fortunately the other Venezuela exists, the Venezuela of Bolívar and Miranda, of Sucre and of a legion of brilliant leaders and thinkers who were able to conceive that great Latin American homeland of which we feel a part of and for which we have resisted aggressions and blockades for more than half a century.

“…so that Cuba’s independence will prevent the expansion of the United States throughout the Antilles, allowing that nation to fall, ever more powerfully, upon our American lands. Everything I have done, everything I will do, is toward this end,” wrote the apostle of our independence Jose Marti the day before he died in combat.

Hugo Chavez and Venezuela today

Included among us today is Hugo Chávez who is visiting a part of that great Latin American and Caribbean homeland envisioned by Simón Bolívar. Hugo Chávez understands better than anybody the José Martí principal that “…what Bolívar left undone, is still undone today. Bolívar has things yet to do in America.”

I spoke with him at length yesterday and today. I told him about the great passion with which I dedicate the energy I have left to the dreams of a better and more just world.

It is not difficult to share dreams with the Bolivarian leader when the empire is already showing unequivocal signs of a terminal illness.

Saving humanity from an irreversible disaster is something that today may be compromised by the stupidity of any of those mediocre presidents who in the most recent decades have led that empire or by one of those increasingly powerful leaders of the industrial military complex that rules the destiny of that country.

Friendly nations that have become increasingly important in the world economy -given their economic and technological advances and their condition as permanent members of the Security Council, such as the Popular Republic of China and the Russian Federation, along with the peoples of the so-called Third World in Asia, Africa and Latin America- could achieve this goal. The peoples of the developed and rich nations, increasingly sucked dry by their own financial oligarchies, are also starting to play a role in this battle for human survival.

Meanwhile, the Bolivarian people of Venezuela are organizing themselves and uniting to challenge and defeat the sickening oligarchy at the service of the empire that once again is attempting to take over the government of this country.

Venezuela, given its extraordinary educational, cultural and social developments, and its vast energy and natural resources, is called on to become a revolutionary model for the world.

Chávez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody. The most humble and forgotten sectors of his country are profoundly grateful to him that for the first time in history there is a response to their dreams of social justice.

Hugo -I told him-, I clearly see that in a very short time the Bolivarian Revolution will create jobs, not only for the Venezuelan people, but also for their Colombian brothers, a hardworking people, who fought along with you for the independence of America, and of whom 40 percent live in poverty; a significant portion of them in extreme poverty.

I had the honor to speak with our distinguished visitor, the symbol of this other Venezuela, about these and many other topics.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 18, 2011

10:15 p.m.

Chávez, Evo and Obama (First Part), is the title of the latest Reflections by leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro.

Prensa Latina posts below the full text version of this reflection:

CHÁVEZ, EVO AND OBAMA

Part One

I take a break from the tasks that are occupying all of my time these days to dedicate a few words to the unique opportunity presented by the political science of the sixtieth session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The yearly event demands singular effort from those taking on the greatest of political responsibilities in many countries. For them, it constitutes a tough test; for the fans of that art, and there are many since it vitally affects everybody, it is difficult to remove oneself from the temptation of observing the interminable but educational show.

In the first place, there are infinite thorny subjects and conflicts of interests. For a great number of the participants it is necessary to take positions on events that constitute flagrant violations of principles. For example, what position to take on the NATO genocide in Libya? Would anybody like to leave proof that under their leadership the government of their country supported the monstrous crime being committed by the US and their NATO allies, whose sophisticated fighter planes, manned or unmanned, undertook more than twenty thousand attack missions on a small Third World State that has barely six million inhabitants, alleging the same reasons that were used yesterday to attack and invade Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan and which today threaten to do likewise in Syria or some other country in the world?

Was it not precisely the government of the State hosting the UN that ordered the butchery in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the mercenary attack on the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, the invasion of Santo Domingo, the “Dirty War” in Nicaragua, the occupation of Grenada and Panama by US military forces and the massacre of Panamanians in El Chorrillo? Who promoted the military coups and genocides in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay that cost tens of thousands of deaths and disappeared? I am not speaking about things that happened 500 years ago, when the Spanish were starting the genocide in the Americas, or 200 years ago when Yankees exterminated native peoples in the United States or enslaved Africans, despite the fact that “all men are born free and equal” as the Philadelphia Declaration of Independence states. I am speaking of events that occurred in the last few decades and which are happening today.

These events have to be remembered and repeated whenever an occurrence having the importance and prominence of the meeting taking place at the United Nations where the political integrity and ethics of governments are being put to the test.

Many of these represent small and poor countries needing support and international cooperation, technology, markets and loans that the developed capitalist powers have handled at their whim.

Despite the unabashed monopoly of the mass media and the fascist methods of the United States and their allies to confuse and dupe world opinion, resistance of the peoples grows, and that can be seen in the discussions that are being produced in the United Nations.

Quite a few Third World leaders, despite the obstacles and contradictions indicated, have laid out their ideas with courage. The very voices emanating from the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean no longer bear the lackey and scandalous accent of the OAS that characterized the statements of Heads of State in past decades. Two of them have addressed that forum; both of them, Bolivarian President Hugo Chávez, a mixture of the races that make up the peoples of Venezuela and Evo Morales, pure descendent of age-old native roots, poured out their concepts at that meeting, one of them via a message and the other speaking live, in response to the speech given by the Yankee president.

Telesur broadcast the three statements. Thanks to that, from the evening of Tuesday the 20th, we were able to learn of President Chavez’ message that was thoroughly read out by Walter Martínez on his program, Dossier. Obama gave his speech on Wednesday morning as the Head of State of the UN host country, and Evo gave his speech early that same afternoon. For the sake of brevity, I shall take essential paragraphs of both texts.

Chávez was unable to personally attend the UN Summit, after 12 years of struggle, without one single day’s rest that put his life at risk and affected his health and who today is struggling in self-sacrifice for his full recovery. Nevertheless it was difficult for his courageous message to not deal with the most crucial topic at the historic meeting. I transcribe it, almost in its entirety:

“I address these words to the UN General Assembly […] to ratify, on this day and in this setting, Venezuela’s full support of the recognition of the Palestinian State: of Palestine’s right to become a free, sovereign and independent state. This represents an act of historic justice towards a people who carry with them, from time immemorial, all the pain and suffering of the world.

“The great French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, […] wrote with the full weight of the truth: The Palestinian cause is first and foremost the set of injustices that these people have suffered and continue to suffer. And I dare add that the Palestinian cause also represents a constant and unwavering will to resist, already written in the historic memory of the human condition […] Mahmoud Darwish, the infinite voice of the longed-for Palestine, with heartfelt conscience speaks about this love: “We don’t need memories/ because we carry within us Mount Carmelo/ and in our eyelids is the herb of Galilee./ Don’t say: If only we could flow to my country like a river!/ Don’t say that!/ Because we are in the flesh of our country/ and our country is in our flesh.’

“Against those who falsely assert that what has happened to the Palestinian people is not genocide, Deleuze himself states with unfaltering lucidity: From beginning to end, it involved acting as if the Palestinian people not only must not exist, but had never existed. It represents the very essence of genocide: to decree that a people do not exist; to deny them the right to existence.

“…conflict resolution in the Middle East must, necessarily, bring justice to the Palestinian people; this is the only path to peace.

“It is upsetting and painful that the same people who suffered one of the worst examples of genocide in history have become the executioners of the Palestinian people: it is upsetting and painful that the heritage of the Holocaust be the Nakba. And it is truly disturbing that Zionism continues to use the charge of anti-Semitism as blackmail against those who oppose their violations and crimes. Israel has, blatantly and despicably, used and continues to use the memory of the victims. And they do so to act with complete impunity against Palestine. It’s worth mentioning that anti-Semitism is a Western, European, scourge in which the Arabs do not participate. Furthermore, let’s not forget that it is the Semite Palestine people who suffer from the ethnic cleansing practiced by the Israeli colonialist State..”

“…It is one thing to denounce anti-Semitism, and an entirely different thing to passively accept that Zionistic barbarism enforces an apartheid regime against the Palestinian people. From an ethical standpoint those who denounce the first, must condemn the second.”

“…Zionism, as a world vision, is absolutely racist. Irrefutable proof of this can be seen in these words written with terrifying cynicism by Golda Meir: How are we to return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as people think, that there existed a people called Palestinians, who considered themselves as Palestinians, and that we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.’”

“Read and reread the document historically known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917: the British Government assumed the legal authority to promise a national home in Palestine to the Jewish people, deliberately ignoring the presence and wishes of its inhabitants. It should be added that Christians and Muslims lived in peace for centuries in the Holy Land up until the time when Zionism began to claim it as its complete and exclusive property.”

“By the end of World War II, the Palestinian people’s tragedy worsened, with their expulsion from their territory and, at the same time, from history. In 1947, the despicable and illegal UN resolution 181 recommends dividing Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State, and an area under international control (Jerusalem and Belem). […] , 56 percent of the territory was granted to Zionism to establish its State. In fact, this resolution violated international law and blatantly ignored the will of the vast Arab majority: the right to self-determination of the people became a dead letter.”

“…contrary to what Israel and the United States are trying to make the world believe through transnational media outlets, what happened and continues to happen in Palestine —using Said’s words— is not a religious conflict, but a political conflict, with a colonial and imperialist stamp. It did not begin in the Middle East, but rather in Europe.

“What was and continues to be at the heart of the conflict?: debate and discussion has prioritized Israel’s security while ignoring Palestine’s. This is corroborated by recent events; a good example is the latest act of genocide set off by Israel during its Operation Molten Lead in Gaza.

“Palestine’s security cannot be reduced to the simple acknowledgement of a limited self-government and self-policing in its “enclaves” along the west bank of the Jordan and in the Gaza Strip. This ignores the creation of the Palestinian State, in the borders set prior to 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital; and the rights of its citizens and their self-determination as a people. This further disregards the compensation and subsequent return to the Homeland of 50 percent of the Palestinian people who are scattered all over the world, as established by resolution 194.

“It’s unbelievable that a country (Israel) that owes its existence to a general assembly resolution could be so disdainful of the resolutions that emanate from the UN, said Father Miguel D’Escoto when pleading for the end of the massacre against the people of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

“It is impossible to ignore the crisis in the United Nations. In 2005, before this very same General Assembly, we argued that the United Nations model had become exhausted. The fact that the debate on the Palestinian issue has been delayed and is being openly sabotaged reconfirms this.

“For several days, Washington has been stating that, at the Security Council, it will veto what will be a majority resolution of the General Assembly: the recognition of Palestine as a full member of the UN. In the Statement of Recognition of the Palestinian State, Venezuela, together with the sister Nations that make up the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), have denounced that such a just aspiration could be blocked by this means. As we know, the empire, in this and other instances, is trying to impose its double standard on the world stage: Yankee double standards are violating international law in Libya, while allowing Israel to do whatever it pleases, thus becoming the main accomplice of the Palestinian genocide being carried out by the hands of Zionist barbarity. Edward Said touched a nerve when he wrote that: Israeli interests in the United States have made the US’ Middle East policy Israeli-centric.’”

“I would like to conclude with the voice of Mahmoud Darwish in his memorable poem On This Earth: We have on this earth what makes life worth living: On this earth, the lady of earth, Mother of all beginnings/ Mother of all ends. She was called… Palestine./ Her name later became… Palestine./ My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.’”

“It will continue to be called Palestine: Palestine will live and overcome! Long-live free, sovereign and independent Palestine!

“Hugo Chávez Frías

“President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”.

When the meeting convened the next morning his words were already in the hearts and minds of all the persons meeting there.

The Bolivarian leader was never an enemy of the Jewish people. A man with special sensitivity, he deeply detested the brutal crime committed by the Nazis on children, women and men, young and old in the concentration camps where gypsies were also victims of atrocious crimes and extermination attempts, something nobody of course remembers and is never mentioned. Likewise, hundreds of thousands of Russians perished in those extermination camps, considered to be an inferior race by Nazi racial concepts.

When Chávez returned to his country from Cuba on the night of Thursday September 22nd, he indignantly referred to the speech given by Barack Obama at the United Nations. Few times have I heard him speak with such disappointment about a leader whom he treated with determinate respect, as a victim of his own history of racial discrimination in the United States. He never thought him capable of acting as George Bush would have and he held on to a respectful memory of the words they exchanged at the Trinidad and Tobago meeting.

“Yesterday we were listening to a number of speeches, also the day before yesterday, over there at the UN, lovely speeches like the one made by President Dilma Rousseff; a highly ethical speech like the one made by President Evo Morales; a speech we might catalogue as a monument to cynicism, President Obama’s speech, is a monument to cynicism because his own face was betraying him, his own face was a poem; a man calling for peace, imagine that, Obama calling for peace, with what kind of morals? A historical monument to cynicism, that’s what President Obama’s speech was.

“Lovely speeches, guiding speeches, that’s what we were listening to: the speech by President Lugo, that of the Argentine president, setting courageous positions before the world.”

When the New York meeting convened on the morning of Wednesday, September 21st, the President of the United States, –on the tail of the words spoken by the President of Brazil which opened up discussions and after the de rigueur introduction – took to the podium and began his speech.

“Over nearly seven decades, ―he began ―, even as the United Nations helped avert a third world war, we still live in a world scarred by conflict and plagued by poverty. Even as we proclaim our love for peace and our hatred of war, there are still convulsions in our world that endanger us all.”

We don’t know when, according to Obama, the UN prevented World War III.

“I took office at a time of two wars for the United States. Moreover, the violent extremists who drew us into war in the first place — Osama bin Laden, and his al Qaeda organization — remained at large. Today, we’ve set a new direction. At the end of this year, America’s military operation in Iraq will be over. We will have a normal relationship with a sovereign nation that is a member of the community of nations. That equal partnership will be strengthened by our support for Iraq — for its government and for its security forces, for its people and for their aspirations.”

What country is Obama really talking about?

“As we end the war in Iraq, the United States and our coalition partners have begun a transition in Afghanistan. Between now and 2014, an increasingly capable Afghan government and security forces will step forward to take responsibility for the future of their country. As they do, we are drawing down our own forces, while building an enduring partnership with the Afghan people. So let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding

“When I took office, roughly 180,000 Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of this year, that number will be cut in half, and it will continue to decline. This is critical for the sovereignty of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s also critical to the strength of the United States as we build our nation at home. Moreover, we are poised to end these wars from a position of strength. Ten years ago, there was an open wound and twisted steel, a broken heart in the center of this city. Today, as a new tower is rising at Ground Zero, it symbolizes New York’s renewal, even as al Qaeda is under more pressure than ever before. Its leadership has been degraded. And Osama bin Laden, a man who murdered thousands of people from dozens of countries, will never endanger the peace of the world again.”

Who was Bin Laden’s ally, who really trained and armed him to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan? It wasn’t the socialists, or the revolutionaries in any part of the world.

“This has been a difficult decade. […] But today, we stand at a crossroads of history with the chance to move decisively in the direction of peace. To do so, we must return to the wisdom of those who created this institution. The United Nations’ Founding Charter calls upon us, “to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.”

Who has military bases everywhere throughout the world, who is the greatest exporter of weapons, who possesses hundreds of spy satellites, who invests billions of dollars every year on military expenses?

“This year has been a time of extraordinary transformation. More nations have stepped forward to maintain international peace and security. And more individuals are claiming their universal right to live in freedom and dignity.”

Then he cites the cases of Southern Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire. He doesn’t say that in the former, the Yankee transnationals launched themselves on the oil reserves of that new country, whose president, at that very UN Assembly, said that it was a valuable resource, but would run out and he proposed its rational and best use.

Neither did Obama state that peace in Côte d’Ivoire was reached with the backing of the colonialist soldiers of an eminent member of belligerent NATO which had just dropped thousands of bombs over Libya.

A little later on he mentions Tunisia and he attributed the US with the merit of the popular movement that overthrew that country’s government, imperialism’s ally.

Even more mind-boggling, Obama would like to ignore that the US was responsible for Egypt installing the tyrannical and corrupt Hosni Mubarak government, which betrayed Nasser’s principles and allied itself with imperialism, stealing tens of thousands of millions from his country and tyrannizing that courageous people.

“One year ago ― Obama states―, Egypt had known one President for nearly 30 years. But for 18 days, the eyes of the world were glued to Tahrir Square, where Egyptians from all walks of life — men and women, young and old, Muslim and Christian — demanded their universal rights. We saw in those protesters the moral force of non-violence that has lit the world from Delhi to Warsaw, from Selma to South Africa — and we knew that change had come to Egypt and to the Arab world.”

“Day after day, in the face of bullets and bombs, the Libyan people refused to give back that freedom. And when they were threatened by the kind of mass atrocity that often went unchallenged in the last century, the United Nations lived up to its charter. The Security Council authorized all necessary measures to prevent a massacre. The Arab League called for this effort; Arab nations joined a NATO-led coalition that halted Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks”

“Yesterday, the leaders of a new Libya took their rightful place beside us, and this week, the United States is reopening our embassy in Tripoli.

“This is how the international community is supposed to work — nations standing together for the sake of peace and security, and individuals claiming their rights.”

“Now, all of us have a responsibility to support the new Libya — the new Libyan government as they confront the challenge of turning this moment of promise into a just and lasting peace for all Libyans.”

“The Qaddafi regime is over. Gbagbo, Ben Ali, Mubarak are no longer in power. Osama bin Laden is gone, and the idea that change could only come through violence has been buried with him.”

Observe the poetic form with which Obama deals with the Bin Laden affair, whatever had been responsible for this former ally, executing him by shooting him in his face in front of his wife and children and throwing his body into the sea from an aircraft carrier, ignoring the religious customs and traditions of more than a billion religious persons and the basic legal principles established by all penal systems. Such methods do not lead, nor will they ever lead, to peace.

“Something is happening in our world, —he carries on, regarding Libya ― The way things have been is not the way that they will be. Dictators are on notice. Technology is putting power into the hands of the people. The youth are delivering a powerful rebuke to dictatorship, and rejecting the lie that some races, some peoples, some religions, some ethnicities do not desire democracy.

“The promise written down on paper — “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” — is closer at hand The measure of our success must be whether people can live in sustained freedom, dignity, and security. And the United Nations and its member states must do their part to support those basic aspirations. And we have more work to do.”

Right away he starts in on another Muslim country where, as it is well-known, his intelligence services along with those of Israel, systematically murder the most distinguished military technology scientists.

He follows up with a threat on Syria, where Yankee agressivity could lead to a massacre even more horrifying than that in Libya: “today, men and women and children are being tortured, detained and murdered by the Syrian regime. Thousands have been killed, many during the holy time of Ramadan. Thousands more have poured across Syria’s borders.

“. The Syrian people have shown dignity and courage in their pursuit of justice — protesting peacefully, standing silently in the streets, dying for the same values that this institution is supposed to stand for. And the question for us is clear: Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors? Already, the United States has imposed strong sanctions on Syria’s leaders. We supported a transfer of power that is responsive to the Syrian people But for the sake of Syria — and the peace and security of the world — we must speak with one voice. There’s no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

Could it be that some country has been left out of the bloody threats made by this illustrious defender of security and international peace? Who granted such prerogatives to the United States?

“Throughout the region, we will have to respond to the calls for change. In Yemen, men, women and children gather by the thousands in towns and city squares every day with the hope that their determination and spilled blood will prevail over a corrupt system. America supports those aspirations. We must work with Yemen’s neighbors and our partners around the world to seek a path that allows for a peaceful transition of power from President Saleh, and a movement to free and fair elections as soon as possible.

“In Bahrain, steps have been taken toward reform and accountability. We’re pleased with that, but more is required. America is a close friend of Bahrain, and we will continue to call on the government and the main opposition bloc — the Wifaq — to pursue a meaningful dialogue that brings peaceful change that is responsive to the people. We believe the patriotism that binds Bahrainis together must be more powerful than the sectarian forces that would tear them apart. It will be hard, but it is possible.”

He doesn’t mention one single word about the fact that that’s where one of the largest military bases in the region is and that the Yankee transnationals control and dispose of at will the greatest oil and gas reserves of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates.

“We believe that each nation must chart its own course to fulfill the aspirations of its people, and America does not expect to agree with every party or person who expresses themselves politically. But we will always stand up for the universal rights that were embraced by this Assembly. Those rights depend on elections that are free and fair; on governance that is transparent and accountable; respect for the rights of women and minorities; justice that is equal and fair. That is what our people deserve. Those are the elements of peace that can last.”

“…the United States will continue to support those nations that transition to democracy — with greater trade and investment — so that freedom is followed by opportunity. We will pursue a deeper engagement with governments, but also with civil society — students and entrepreneurs, political parties and the press.

“We have banned those who abuse human rights from traveling to our country. And we’ve sanctioned those who trample on human rights abroad. And we will always serve as a voice for those who’ve been silenced.”

After this long-winded speech, the distinguished Nobel Prize laureate embarks on the thorny issue of his alliance with Israel that certainly doesn’t come up among the privileged possessors of one of the most modern system of nuclear weapons and means capable of reaching distant targets. He knows full well how arbitrary and unpopular that policy is.

“I know, particularly this week, that for many in this hall, there’s one issue that stands as a test for these principles and a test for American foreign policy, and that is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. One year ago, I stood at this podium and I called for an independent Palestine. I believed then, and I believe now, that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own.

But what I also said is that a genuine peace can only be realized between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May of this year. That basis is clear. It’s well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state. Now, I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. I assure you, so am I. But the question isn’t the goal that we seek — the question is how do we reach that goal.

Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now

Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians — not us –- who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.
Ultimately, peace depends upon compromise among people who must live together long after our speeches are over, long after our votes have been tallied.

Next, he goes on to verbosely explain and justify the unexplainable and unjustifiable.

“…There’s no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. It is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and so much effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can deliver a Palestinian state. But understand this as well: America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring..”

“The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth.

“…each side has legitimate aspirations — and that’s part of what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in the other’s shoes; each side can see the world through the other’s eyes. That’s what we should be encouraging. That’s what we should be promoting.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinians remain exiled from their own homeland, their homes are destroyed by monstrous mechanical machinery and an odious wall that is much higher than the Berlin Wall was, separating Palestinian from Palestinian. The best Obama might have acknowledged is that the very Israeli citizens are by now tired of the waste of resources invested in the military sphere that deprives them of peace and access to the elementary means for living. Just like the Palestinians, they are suffering from the consequences of these policies imposed by the United States and the most warlike and reactionary elements in the Zionist State.

“even as we confront these challenges of conflict and revolution, we must also recognize — we must also remind ourselves […]. True peace depends on creating the opportunity that makes life worth living. And to do that, we must confront the common enemies of humanity: nuclear weapons and poverty, ignorance and disease.”

Who can understand this gibberish spoken by the President of the United States before the General Assembly?

He follows up with his unintelligible philosophy:

“To lift the specter of mass destruction, we must come together to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. Over the last two years, we’ve begun to walk down that path. Since our Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, nearly 50 nations have taken steps to secure nuclear materials from terrorists and smugglers”

Could there be any terrorism greater than the aggressive and bellicose policy of a country whose arsenal of nuclear weapons could destroy life on this planet several times over?

“America will continue to work for a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons and the production of fissile material needed to make them”, Obama goes on to promise us. “And so we have begun to move in the right direction. And the United States is committed to meeting our obligations. But even as we meet our obligations, we’ve strengthened the treaties and institutions that help stop the spread of these weapons. […]. The Iranian government cannot demonstrate that its program is peaceful

Back to the same old refrain! But this time Iran is not alone; it is accompanied by the Democratic Republic of Korea.

“North Korea has yet to take concrete steps towards abandoning its weapons and continues belligerent action against the South. There’s a future of greater opportunity for the people of these nations if their governments meet their international obligations. But if they continue down a path that is outside international law, they must be met with greater pressure and isolation. That is what our commitment to peace and security demands.”

To be continued tomorrow.

Fidel Castro Ruz

September 25, 2011

Another piece of Reflections by Fidel : Castro blasts Obama

Legendary Cuban leader Fidel Castro described US President Barack Obama’s speech in the United Nations assembly as ‘gibberish’, NATO’s actions in Libya as “monstrous crime”.

85 years old Fidel Castro has been mostly out of sight in 2011, which combined with the absence of his usual steady flow of columns ‘Reflections by Fidel’, had increased the number of rumors on his worsening health.

Castro wrote he was involved in work that occupied all his time and therefore he had not been writing what he calls his “reflections.” But he said he couldn’t stop the urge to write a comment on the U.N. General Assembly in New York and in particular Obama’s speech in it last week.

Another piece of Reflections by Fidel : Castro blasts Obama

Fidel Castro was his vintage self in his latest reflection, which was published on Cuban government website www.cubadebate.cu., sharply criticising US President Barack Obama and the United States government, his ideological foes for tyeir bellicose and hypocritical behavior. He mocked President Barack Obama the “yankee president.”

Fidel Castro quoted extensively from Obama’s General Assembly speech, inserting paragraphs of his opinions of the U.S. leader’s words. “In spite of the shameful monopoly of the mass information media and the fascist methods of the United States and its allies to confuse and deceive world opinion, the resistance of the people grows, and that can be appreciated in the debates being produced in the United Nations,” he wrote.

Fidel Castro on Obama’ speech at UN : Mispresential and meaningless

Castro called into question many points in Obama’s speech, accusing him of misrepresenting the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine and the uprisings this year in several Arab nations. “Who understands this gibberish of the President of the United States in front of the General Assembly?” the former Cuban leader asked. Castro continued that the General Assembly presented political difficulties for many countries trying to decide the positions they should take on numerous issues.

“For example, what position to adopt about the genocide of NATO in Libya?” Castro wrote in his latest ‘reflection’. “Does anyone wish it recorded that under their direction, the Libyan government supported the monstrous crimes by the United States and its NATO allies?” Castro did not describe the project that had taken him away from his column writing, but his allies President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia said recently he was working on something to do with agriculture.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and President Raul Castro held talks for nearly five hours with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who already returned to his country, national media reported Friday.

Before leaving for Venezuela Thursday night, Raul Castro accompanied Chavez to the Jose Marti International Airport.

Chavez was in Cuba during five days for his fourth chemotherapy session, after undergoing surgery in June to remove a cancerous tumor.

According to Chavez, his vital signs and all medical examinations state he is in good health condition from all points of view.

“We can say the chemotherapy session has concluded. I close this cycle and I will begin recovering through physiotherapy and exercises,” Chavez said after arriving in Venezuela.

Cuba celebrates Fidel Castro birthday

Happy 85th Birthday Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro marks his 85th birthday on Saturday the 13th August and it will be celebrated in Cuba and the rest of the world.

Cuba: The leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel castro’s 85th birthday will be celebrated at parties in Cuba.

Cuba began to celebrate the birthday its spritual leaders birtfday on Tuesday, as parties kicked off birthday celebrations for revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, who will turn 85 years old this weekend.

It is though still unclear whether the guest of honor would appear.

Cuba celebrates Fidel Castro birthday

The parties are set to peak late Friday into Saturday – Castro’s actual birthday – when a “Song of Loyalty” gala will be dedicated to the former leader at the Karl Marx Theater, Cuba’s largest with a capacity of 5,000.

On Tuesday, the festivities began with a concert in Havana featuring a number of Latin American artists from Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as the Cuban duo Buena Fe and Vicente Feliu. Most of the events have been organized by the Guayasamin Foundation, named for the Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, who is a close friend of Castro

Seranade to Fidelity : Fidel Castro Birthday

A music concert by 22 artists from nine countries will take place in the eve of Fidel Castro’s 85th birthday, next Saturday, August 13. CA concert entitled “Serenade to Fidelity” will celebrate Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro’s 85th birthday at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater on the eve of August 13. The concert is sponsored by the Oswaldo Guayasamín Foundation to celebrate Castro’s birthday

Concert coordinator and head of international affairs of the Guayasamin Foundation, Alfredo Vera, said that the cultural gala will be held at the Havana-based Karl Marx theater.

Painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, a close friend of Fidel Castro, celebrated the Cuban leader’s 70th birthday and after he died in 1999, his foundation marked Fidel’s 80th birthday in Havana while he was hospitalized.

The concert coincides with the stay in Havana of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who is taking his second chemotherapy session, after he was removed a cancerous tumor.

Now that Fidel Castro is enjoying good health and is taking care of fellow Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, nationalTurk consider it the right moment to wish him a happy birthday.

Outstanding singers such as Cuban Omara Portuondo, Ecuadorian Pablo Nuevo, Venezuelan Cecilia Todd, Argentineans Liliana Herrero and Raly Barrionuevo, Paraguayan Ricardo Flecha and Uruguayan Daniel Viglieti will dedicate Fidel Castro their songs.

Celebrations for Fidel Castro´s 85th birthday began Tuesday evening with a concert by several Latin American artists, along with exhibits of paintings, photos and ballet performances.

Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

He came to power on New Year’s Day 1959 when his guerrilla forces swept down from the eastern Sierra Maestra mountains to topple U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

As Cuba’s president, he outlasted nine U.S. presidents and five decades of U.S. hostility, but in July 2006 he underwent emergency intestinal surgery and suffered complications and left presidency to his brother Raul Castro.

Santiago de Cuba Carnival 2011 : Time of dance and songs

Carnival time in Santiago de Cuba kicks off this week and continue until July 27, a symbol of traditional popular culture and one of the most famous carnivals in Cuba.

The main areas for these celebrations were ready: Trocha, Marti, Santa Ursula, and the neighborhood of Sueño, while the neighborhood of Victoriano Garzon was set to host the jury that will judge the traditional comparsas (parade groups), floats and congas (music groups).

Santiago de Cuba Carnival 2011 : Time of dance and songs

A children’s carnival parade in the afternoon will be the preamble of the week-long festivities, with dances and songs that reflect the national identity and are performed by groups over 100 years old.

In the evening, fireworks will announce the beginning of the party following an opening ceremony featuring the patron saint of this city, Santiago Apostol, played by an actor, and a ribbon-cutting by Mayor Roberto Alvarez Solano.

The carnival Fidel Castro had used as decoy in 1953

As usual, these celebrations will come to a halt at midnight on July 25 to remember the 58th anniversary of the 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks, led by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and a group of young revolutionaries, who used the carnival activities as cover for their attack.

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Fidel Castro, longtime Communist leader of Cuba, has called the U.S.’s killing of Osama Bin Laden “an abhorrent,” act and says the “assassination” of bin Laden on Pakistan soil violated that country’s laws, “offended” its dignity and “desecrated” its religious customs.

Former Cuban leader and longtime political foe of the United States calls the killing of Osama Bin Laden an “assassination” and an “abhorrent deed” committed by the U.S.

Fidel Castro : Osama bin Laden Killing  is an Assasination

Fidel Castro has criticized the Obama government of United States for the the methods its army forces used in killing the Al-Qaida chief and mastermind Osama bin Laden, saying he was executed in front of his family.

Castro says in an opinion piece published yesterday that the raid inside Pakistan by a team of U.S. Navy Seals also violated that country’s laws and offended its dignity.

The former Cuban leader says is revolted by all forms of terrorism. He notes that he expressed solidarity with the United States and offered his countries’ assistance despite years of political conflict following the infamous Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But the 84-year-old revolutionary says the decision to kill Osama bin Laden and bury him at sea “has turned him into a much more dangerous man”

The former Cuban leader also added his criticism of the U.S.’s actions at its Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, which Castro calls an “occupied Cuban territory.”Last month some horrible facts on Guantanomo Prison were revealed. Fidel Castro stated “horrible images” from the base were “still engraved in the minds of hundreds of millions,” and called actions there “unbearable and agonizing tortures.”

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Former Cuban leader and longtime political adversary of the United States calls the killing of Osama Bin Laden an “assassination” and an “abhorrent deed” committed by the U.S government.

Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro stated that the US public opinion, after the prelusive euphoria of Osama bin Laden’s termination, will realize and start criticizing the methods that, far from protecting its citizen, will intensify the feelings of hatred and revenge against them.

Here is the whole statement of Fidel Castro on Obama Osama bin Laden,  and the US Policy..

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden

Those persons who deal with these issues know that on September 11 of 2001 our people expressed its solidarity to the US people and offered the modest cooperation that in the area of health we could have offered to the victims of the brutal attack against the Twin Towers in New York.

We also immediately opened our country’s airports to the American airplanes that were unable to land anywhere, given the chaos that came about soon after the strike.

The traditional stand adopted by the Cuban Revolution, which was always opposed to any action that could jeopardize the life of civilians, is well known.

Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people. Such behavior, which has been maintained for more than half a century, gives us the right to express our views about such a sensitive matter.

On that day, at a public gathering that took place at Ciudad Deportiva, I expressed my conviction that international terrorism could never be eradicated through violence and war.

By the way, Bin Laden was, for many years, a friend of the US, a country that gave him military training; he was also an adversary of the USSR and Socialism. But, whatever the actions attributed to him, the assassination of an unarmed human being while surrounded by his own relatives is something abhorrent. Apparently this is what the government of the most powerful nation that has ever existed did.

In the carefully drafted speech announcing Bin Laden’s death Obama asserts as follows:

“…And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

That paragraph expressed a dramatic truth, but can not prevent honest persons from remembering the unjust wars unleashed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands of children who were forced to grow up without their mothers and fathers and the parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.

Millions of citizens were taken from their villages in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and many other countries of the world.

Still engraved in the minds of hundreds of millions of persons are also the horrible images of human beings who, in Guantanamo, an occupied Cuban territory, walk down in silence, being submitted for months, and even for years, to unbearable and excruciating tortures. Those are persons who were kidnapped and transferred to secret prisons with the hypocritical connivance of supposedly civilized societies.

Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended and its religious traditions desecrated.
How could he now prevent the women and children of the person who was executed outside the law and without any trial from explaining what happened? How could he prevent those images from being broadcast to the world?

On January 28 of 2002 the CBS journalist Dan Rather reported on that TV network that on September 10 of 2001, one day before the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Osama Bin Laden underwent a hemodialysis at a military hospital in Pakistan. He was physically unfit to hide and take shelter inside deep caves.

Having assassinated him and plunging his corpse into the bottom of the sea are an expression of fear and insecurity which turn him into a far more dangerous person.

The US public opinion itself, after the initial euphoria, will end up criticizing the methods that, far from protecting its citizen, will multiply the feelings of hatred and revenge against them.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 4, 2011

Fidel Castro wrote a new article about NATO. Castro ‘s new article which is the name of  “A Fire That Could Burn Everyone “:

You may agree or not with Gaddafi’s political ideas, but no one has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and member of the United Nations.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet. There is no other in the Solar System that we know that has the most elemental conditions for life.

The United States itself always tried to be a melting pot of all races, all beliefs and all nations: white, black, yellow, the Indians and mixed races, with no other differences than those between the masters and slaves, the rich and poor; but all within its borders: To its North was Canada; to the South, Mexico; to the East, the Atlantic Ocean and to the West, the Pacific Ocean. Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii were simple historical accidents.

What makes the issue complicated is that it does not imply the noble wish of those fighting for a better world, which deserves as much respect as the peoples’ religious beliefs do. It would only take some kind of radioactive isotopes that stemmed from the enriched uranium used by thermonuclear plants in relatively small amounts—since they do not exist in nature—to put an end to the fragile existence of our species. Keeping those wastes in increasing volumes, under reinforced concrete and steel coffins, is one of the major challenges for technology.

Events like the Chernobyl accident or the earthquake in Japan have revealed those mortal risks.

This is not the issue I’d like to address today, but how amazed I was yesterday to see, on Walter Martinez’s show “Dossier” on Venezuelan television, the filmed images of the meeting between the chief of the US Department of Defense Robert Gates and the U.K. Defense Minister, Liam Fox, who visited the United States to discuss the criminal war unleashed by NATO against Libya. It was something difficult to believe, the British minister won an “Oscar”; he was a bundle of nerves, he was tense and spoke like crazy; and he gave the impression that he was just spitting out the words.

Of course, he first got to the entrance of the Pentangon, where Gates was awaiting him with a smile. The flags of both countries, the one of the ancient British colonial empire and that of its stepson, the United States Empire, flew high on both sides as the two national anthems were played. Right hand on chest, the rigorous and solemn military salute of the ceremony given by the host country. This was the initial act. Later, the two ministers stepped into the US Defense building. They are supposed to have spoken for a long time, given the images I saw, as each of them returned with a speech in hand, undoubtedly prepared in advance.

The context of this entire scenario was made up by personnel in uniform. On the left I could see a tall, slim young soldier, who seemed to have a shaved redhead, wearing a cap with the black peak pulled nearly down to his throat, presenting his bayoneted rifle. He did not blink nor seem to breathe, like the figure of a soldier ready to shoot a rifle bullet or a nuclear rocket with a destructive capacity of 100 thousand tons of TNT. Gates spoke showing the smile and natural manners of a host. The British man, however, did so in the way I explained.

I have not often seen anything more horrifying than this; he was releasing hatred, frustration, fury and using threatening language against the Libyan leader and urging his unconditional surrender. He looked indignant because the powerful NATO warplanes had not been able to crush the Libyan resistance in 72 hours.

He was only missing the exclamation: “blood, sweat and tears,” just like Winston Churchill when he calculated the price to be paid by his country in the fight against the Nazi warplanes. But in this case, the Nazi-fascist role is being played by NATO with its thousands of bombing missions by the most modern aircraft ever known by the world.

To cap it all came the decision by the US administration to authorize the use of drones to kill Libyan men, women and children, like in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometers from Western Europe, but this time against an Arab and African country, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Europeans and no less than in the name of the United Nations Organization.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday said that these acts of war were illegal and they are outside the framework of the accords adopted by the UN Security Council.

The crude attacks against the Libyan people, which have taken on a Nazi-fascist character, may be used against any Third World nation.

I am really amazed at the resistance posed by Libya.

The belligerent organization now depends on Gaddafi. If he resists and does not yield to their demands, he will enter history as one of the great figures of the Arab nations.

NATO is poking a fire that could burn everyone!

Fidel Castro Ruz

MY SHOES ARE TOO TIGHT

While the damaged reactors spew radioactive smoke over Japan and monstrous-looking planes and nuclear submarines launch deadly charges tele-directed onto Libya, a North African Third World country with barely six million inhabitants, Barack Obama was spinning a tale for the Chileans that sounded like one I used to hear when I was 4 years old: “My shoes are too tight, my socks are too warm; and I carry in my heart the little kiss you gave me”.

Some of his audience was taken aback in that Cultural Centre in Santiago de Chile.

When the president looked anxiously over his audience after mentioning perfidious Cuba, expecting an explosion of applause, there was icy silence. Behind him, oh, yes! felicitous coincidence! among all the other Latin American flags, there precisely was Cuba´s.

If he were to turn for a second, over his right shoulder he would have seen, like a shadow, the symbol of the Revolution on the rebel Island that his mighty country wanted to destroy, but could not.

Anybody would be, without a doubt, extraordinarily optimistic if they were expecting the peoples of Our America to applaud the 50th anniversary of the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion, 50 years of cruel economic blockade of a sister country, 50 years of threats and terrorist attacks that cost thousands of lives, 50 years of plans to assassinate the leaders of the historic process.

I heard myself being mentioned in his words.

In truth, I gave my services to the Revolution for a long time, but I never eluded risks nor violated constitutional, ideological or ethical principles; I regret not having better health so that I could carry on serving the Revolution.

I resigned, without hesitation, all my state and political positions, including that of First Secretary of the Party, when I became ill and I never tried to exercise them after the Proclamation of July 31, 2006, even when I partially recovered my health more than a year later, although everyone continued to affectionately address me in that manner.

But I am and shall continue to be as I promised: a soldier of ideas, as long as I can think or breathe.

When they asked Obama about the coup against heroic President Salvador Allende, promoted as many others by the United States, and about the mysterious death of Eduardo Frei Montalva, murdered by agents of DINA, a creation of the American government, he lost his composure and began to stammer.

The commentary on Chilean television at the end of his speech was, without a doubt, accurate when it stated that Obama had nothing to offer the Hemisphere.

As for me, I don´t want to give the impression that I felt any hatred for his person, much less for the people of the United States; I acknowledge the contributions many of its sons and daughters have made to culture and science.

Obama now has before him a trip to El Salvador tomorrow, on Tuesday. There he is going to have to be quite inventive because, in that sister nation in Central America, the weapons and training received from the governments of his country spilt much blood.

I wish him bon voyage and a bit more good sense.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Prensa Latina

Humberto Eladio Real, a 40-year-old Cuban American, was convicted of killing a man in 1994 during an attempted insurgency raid.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation commuted his sentence to 30 years in prison.

Cuba has had an effective moratorium on carrying out death sentences for years.

Earlier this month, two other death row inmates also had their sentences commuted.

Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, both from El Salvador, had been convicted over a bombing campaign of tourism sites in Cuba in the 1990s which killed one Italian and injured 11 other people.

They were sentenced to death by firing squad but their sentences were commuted to 30 years at a hearing on 7 December.

Cuba’s last executions were in 2003, when three people convicted of attempting to hijack a boat to escape to the United States were killed by firing squad.

Two years ago, within a month of taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel, Raul Castro issued a decree lifting the death sentence for 30 prisoners.

In a groundbreaking deal brokered by the Roman Catholic church, Mr Castro has also agreed to free the 52 most prominent political prisoners on the island.

“Clinton”s lies” is the title of the latest reflections by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.

IT truly pains me having to deny it. Today he is nothing more than a simple fellow consigned to history, as if the empire’s history, and even more importantly, the history of the human race, were guaranteed beyond a few dozen years, without a nuclear war breaking out in Korea, Iran or some other area of conflict.

As is known, the United Nations has sent a special envoy to Haiti.

Clinton – who was of course President after George H. W. Bush and before George W. Bush – prevented former President Carter from participating in immigration negotiations with Cuba for reasons of ridiculous political jealousy, promoted the Helms-Burton Act and was complicit with the Cuban-American National Foundation’s attacks on Cuba.

There is abundant evidence about this behavior, but we did not for that reason take it too seriously, nor were we hostile towards his activities related to the mission to which, for obvious reasons, the UN assigned him.

We had been cooperating with this sister country for many years in various fields, especially in the training of doctors and the provision of health services to the population, and Clinton didn’t bother us at all. If he was interested in any success, we saw no reason to limit our cooperation with Haiti in such a sensitive area. Then came the unexpected earthquake, bringing death and destruction, and subsequently, the epidemic.

Just two days ago, a meeting took place in the capital of the Dominican Republic about the reconstruction of Haiti, and has complicated things. Approximately 80 people, including several ambassadors, representing the donors of more than $100 million; many members of the Clinton Foundation, of the U.S. government and of that of Haiti participated in it.

Few people took the floor; among them the Venezuelan ambassador who, as one of the most important donors, spoke briefly, using heartfelt, clear and accurate words. Clinton took up almost all of the time in a meting which began at 5:30 pm and ended at midnight. The Cuban ambassador, as a key participant, was there silent witness at the request of Haiti and Santo Domingo. He was not conceded the right to say a single word, although he was a witness to a meeting that accomplished absolutely nothing. It was supposed to continue the following day. But none of that happened.

The meeting in the Dominican Republic was a deceptive maneuver. The indignation of the Haitians was absolutely justified. The country destroyed by the earthquake which occurred almost a year ago has been abandoned to its fate.

Today, Thursday, December 16, a dispatch from the U.S. agency AP published the following:

“Former U.S. President Bill Clinton declared his confidence in Haiti’s post-quake reconstruction effort Wednesday, making a one-day visit amid civil unrest, rampant disease and a seemingly intractable political crisis.

“The U.N. special envoy to Haiti travelled to the troubled country a day after the interim reconstruction commission of which he is co-chairman was forced to hold its meeting in the neighboring Dominican Republic after violence broke out following Haiti’s disputed Nov. 28 presidential election.

“Clinton visited a cholera clinic run by Doctors Without Borders that has treated some of the more than 100,000 people sickened in the epidemic that broke out in October. He then went to the main U.N. peacekeeping base for meetings with Haitian and international officials.

“The meeting a day before approved some $430 million in projects. But it was more notable for anger over the slow pace of reconstruction and a letter from frustrated Haitian members who said they were left out of decision-making and complained that approved projects do not advance the reconstruction of Haiti and long-term development.’”

Notice what he said later in a press conference, according to the dispatch.

” Hundreds of thousands of Haitians would find new permanent housing next year and many more would move out of the tent and tarp camps that have been home to more than 1 million people since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

“But such promises have been made before. The house-less believed they would start getting new homes or at least sturdier temporary shelters months ago. Only $897 million of the more than $5.7 billion pledged for 2010-11 has been delivered.”

The $897 million mentioned is nowhere to be seen.

It constitutes, moreover, a total disregard for the truth to assert that 100,000 people have been treated in a clinic administered by “Doctors without Borders.”

In a statement to the press by Dr. Lea Guido, representing the Pan American Health Organization-World Health Organization (PHO/WHO) in Haiti, reported today that the number affected through December 11 had reached 104,918 people, a truly unprecedented number of people who could not have been treated in a “Doctors without Borders” clinic.

It is clear, and Clinton knows full well that Europe, the United States and Canada drain doctors, nurses, therapists and other health technicians from Caribbean countries, which lack the personnel needed to carry out that task, with a few honorable exceptions.

Obviously, with his lies, Clinton is presuming to ignore the work of more than 1,000 Cuban and Latin American doctors, nurses and technicians bearing the brunt of the battle against the epidemic in the only way possible, that is by reaching the most remote corners of the country. Half of Haiti’s 10 million inhabitants live in rural areas.

Such a great number of people, under such conditions, would not have been treated without the support of the eminent Latin American woman who represents the WHO in Cuba and Haiti.

Our country has committed to mobilizing the human resources needed to complete this noble task.

As she stated, “The human resources Cuba is sending are, at this moment, moving to the most isolated areas of the country. And this is very timely.”

They are arriving now and very soon the necessary personnel will be there.

Yesterday, the Cuban Medical Brigade treated 931 patients, with two deceased, for a mortality rate for the day of 0.2%.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Cuban leader Fidel Castro came close to death in 2006, according to the latest secret US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks.

Mr Castro almost died after suffering a perforated intestine during an internal flight, unnamed sources told US diplomats in Havana.

The illness led Mr Castro to hand power to his brother Raul, although he has since returned to public life.

The 84-year-old’s health is considered a state secret in Cuba.

The Wikileaks cables, published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reveal the intense efforts made by US diplomats in Havana to find out the nature of Fidel Castro’s illness and his chances of recovery.

The names of the sources of information reported in the cables have been redacted by Wikileaks, but some apparently knew people who were close to the Cuban leader, or had access to his medical records.

The details of what they say cannot be independently verified.

One cable, sent in March 2007 by the then-head of the US interests section in Havana, Michael Parmly, quotes a report by an unnamed doctor on the moment Mr Castro fell seriously ill in July 2006.

“The illness began on the plane from Holguin to Havana,” reports the cable.

As it was a short flight there was no doctor on board and they had to land urgently once they knew of Mr Castro’s bleeding. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis of the colon.

The source said Mr Castro had a perforation of the large intestine and needed surgery.

But it says he “capriciously” refused to have a colostomy, with the result that his condition deteriorated over time and he required further surgery.

“This illness is not curable and will not, in her opinion, allow him to return to leading Cuba,” the report concludes.

“He won’t die immediately, but he will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies.”
Defiance

Further leaked cables quote other sources as saying Mr Castro was terminally ill, and examine statements by his medical team and reports of specialist drugs being brought into Cuba.

Television still of Fidel Castro drinking orange juice, 30 Jan 2007 Pictures released in January 2007 showed Fidel Castro looking thin and weak

But the reports of his imminent death have proved to be exaggerated.

Mr Castro has since made an apparent recovery and earlier this year returned to making speeches and appearing in public, though he has not taken back the reins of power from his brother Raul.

The former Cuban leader recently praised Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, saying the leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables had brought the US “morally, to its knees”.

“Julian Assange, a man who a few months ago hardly anyone in the world had heard of, is showing that the most powerful empire in history can be defied,” he wrote in an article published by Cuban state media.

The US government and its intelligence agencies have been staunch enemies of Mr Castro and the communist government in Cuba for more than half a century.

So far, all their predictions of the imminent demise of communist party rule on the island have proved false.

THE EMPIRE FROM WITHIN

(PART TWO)

In yesterday´s Reflection there appears a key paragraph taken from Woodward´s book: “One important secret that has never been reported in the media, or anywhere else, was the existence of a covert army of 3,000 men in Afghanistan, whose objective was to kill or capture Taliban and sometimes venture into the tribal areas to pacify them and get support.” That army, created and handled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), trained and organized as a “special force” has been made up on tribal, social, anti-religious and anti-patriotic bases; its mission is the follow-up and physical elimination of Taliban fighters and other Afghans, described as extreme Moslems.A Saudi recruited and funded by the CIA to fight against the Soviets when their troops were occupying Afghanistan has nothing in common with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.When Vice President Biden traveled to Kabul at the start of 2009,David Mckiernan, chief of American troops in Afghanistan told him in answer to a question about Al Qaeda that he hadn´t seen one single Arab in two years there. Despite the relatively brief and ephemeral importance that the principal international press gave to “Obama´s Wars”, without a doubt these did not shirk from recording this revealing piece of news.

The American government was faced with an unsolvable problem. In one of the last meetings of the National Security Council during the Bush presidency, a report was approved that stated that the US could not keep itself in Afghanistan unless three great problems were to be resolved: improve governability, decrease corruption and eliminate the Taliban sanctuaries…

One might add that the problem is more serious if one takes into account the US political and military commitments with Pakistan, a country endowed with nuclear weapons, whose stability in the midst of a tense ethnical balancing act has been affected by Bush´s war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of kilometres of mountainous borders, with populations having the same origin, that are being attacked and massacred by unmanned planes, are shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan. NATO troops, whose morale diminishes day by day, cannot win this war.

Without enormous amounts of fuel, food and ammunition no army can move itself. The very struggle of the Afghans and Pakistanis, on one side or the other of the border, has discovered the weakness of the sophisticated American and European troops. The long supply routes are turning into a graveyard of enormous trucks and tankers destined for that task. Unmanned planes, the most modern of communications, sophisticated conventional, radio-electrical and even nuclear weaponry, abound.

But the problem is much more serious than these lines express.

However, let us continue with the summary of Woodward´s spectacular book.

CHAPTER 8

Jack Keane, the retired General, a man who is very close to Hillary Clinton, advised that the strategy being followed in Afghanistan was incorrect, that the high toll of victims wasn´t going to put an end to the insurgency, that these were having the opposite effect, that the only option was a counterinsurgent offensive to protect the Afghans. McKiernan wasn´t interacting with the governors of the provinces.Keane told him that they were resorting too much to the antiterrorist struggle and that the counter insurgency strategy wasn´t keeping pace.

Keane proposed replacingMcKiernan with Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin III, the second in command in Iraq; and he also proposed McChrystal, adding that he was, without a doubt, the better candidate.

McChrystal had run good antiterrorist campaigns in Iraq but the tactical successes did not translate into strategic victories. That was why counterinsurgency was necessary.

CHAPTER 9

At his confirmation hearing as CIA director before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Leon Panetta stated that the Agency would no longer be sending alleged terrorists to another country to be tortured because this was forbidden under the new president´s executive orders.He said that he suspected that the CIA was sending people to other countries to be interrogated using techniques that “were violating our norms”.

Hayden was watching him on TV and, bothered, he was wondering whether Panetta had overlooked the conversation the two had had the month before.Hayden contacted Jeff Smith, the former CIA general adviser who had been assisting in the transition from Hayden to Panetta and he threatened him, saying that either tomorrow he retract what he said in the public testimony or they would have a show where the current CIA director tells the future CIA director that he doesn’t know what he´s talking about.Hayden said he would say it publicly and that it wouldn´t benefit anyone. The next day it was Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the Republican head of the Intelligence Committee, who asked Panetta whether he would retract what he had said the previous day and Panetta said he would.

Hayden subsequently met with Panetta and told him that he had read his work where he was saying that the Bush government had chosen the best intelligence information to allege the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.Panetta had laid the blame for it upon a special Pentagon unit that had been created by Rumsfeld.Panetta replied that it wasn’t true, that it had been their error and he agreed that a catastrophic lapse of intelligence had occurred in the agency of which he was about to be the director.

On February 13, the president again met with the National Security Council to discuss four options for the deployment of troops in Afghanistan.

1. To decide only after defining a strategy.

2. To immediately send17,000 troops.

3. To send the 17,000, but in two installments.

4. To send 27,000, thus filling Gen. McKiernan’s request.

Clinton, Gates, Mullen and Petraeus backed sending 17,000 troops immediately.This was also Jones’ recommendation.Richard Holbrooke, in a security video, warned that 44 years ago President Johnson was discussing the same thing with his advisors in the case of Vietnam. “We cannot forget history”, he added.Vietnam had taught us that the guerrilla wins in an impasse situation and so he was supporting sending the 17,000.Obama finally notified the Pentagon that he had decided to send 17,000 troops.

CHAPTER 10

The objective for the Obama government was clear: dismantle and finally defeat Al Quaeda and its extremist allies, its support structures and its sanctuaries in Pakistan, and prevent its return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.Jones, Gatesand Mullen were wondering whether they could trust the Pakistanis.Biden was proposing reinforcing antiterrorist operations and concentrating onAl Quaeda and Pakistan.Obama asked if sending 17,000 troops and 4,000 more later on would make any difference and the answer was that it would.Obama asked how much this operation would cost and the answer was that nobody knew, that this was just a study and that no budget estimate had been made, but that the cost of stationing a soldier in Afghanistan, including a war veteran pension, health insurance, the cost of family care, food and weapons, would amount to approximately $25,000 a year. The cost of an Afghan soldier in the terrain would amount to some $12,000.Later Obama confirmed that Pakistan would be the centrepiece of any new strategy.

At a meeting with the National Security Council, Obama said that he was hoping on counting with popular support for his strategy for at least two years.Biden stated that the die had been cast, even though he remarked that he was in disagreement he assured that he would support the president’s strategy.

CHAPTER 11

Petraeus was appearing to be worried.He was worried about becoming the victim of his earlier successes in Iraq. Probably counterinsurgency was not the correct strategy for Afghanistan, but Petraeus had assigned the task of studying the matter to a group of experts in operations and intelligence activities who held an opposing view.It seemed that the president had not accepted his arguments in favour of counterinsurgent operations.The president announced his strategy of dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda in a speech.A Washington Post editorial praised the plan with the headline: “The Price of Realism.” The speech surprised some. The president had made changes to the wording himself.Obama had not totally committed to sending all the troops requested by the army. Obama said that he would analyze the matter again after the elections in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense Gates appeared comfortable with the decision: two days later he declared that he didn´t see the need to ask for more troops or to ask the President to approve them until such time as the performance of these could be seen.

The president of Pakistan met with Obama in his office. Obama told him he didn’t want to arm Pakistan against India.He acknowledged that they had moved forward in Swat but that the ceasefire had resulted in the extremists subverting the legitimacy of the Pakistani government, and that the government would be giving the impression that nobody was in charge.Obama acknowledged that Pakistan was now acting more decisively, something that had become evident by its performance in Swat and because they had allowed the CIA to launch an average of one attack with unmanned planes every three days during the course of the past month.The Pakistanis had launched an operation with 15,000 troops, one of the best until that time, against Taliban.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs realized that the solution to Afghanistan was right before his eyes, walking through the hallways of the Pentagon.McChrystal was already a legend.He had worked harder than anyone, solving problems and not complaining.He would follow all orders to the letter.Gates finally announced that McChrystal would be the new commander of the troops in Afghanistan. “Our mission there,” he said, “requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders”.Later Obama stated that he had been in agreement with this decision because he trusted the opinions of Gates and Mullen, but that he hadn´t had a chance to talk to him in person.

On May 26, 2009, one of the most sensitive reports from the world of deep intelligence appeared in the TOP SECRET/ CODEWORD Presidents’ Daily Brief. Its title was: North American al Qaeda trainees may influence targets and tactics in the United States and Canada.According to the report, around 20 Al Qaeda members with US, Canadian or European passports were undergoing training in the sanctuaries of Pakistan in order to return to their countries of origin and perpetrate high profile terrorist acts. Among them there were half a dozen in the United Kingdom, several Canadians, some Germans and three Americans.Their names were not known. Dennis Blair thought that the reports were alarming and believable enough so that the President should be informed.But Rahm Emmanuel didn´t agree.Blair replied, as the president´s intelligence advisor, that he felt quite concerned and Emmanuel accused him of trying to make him and the President feel responsible.

Upon leaving the White House, Blair was convinced that they were living on different planets in terms of the matter.He was seeing, evermore, a flaw in the government.

CHAPTER 12

General Jones was used to travelling to Afghanistan himself to make his own assessments.It was his opinion that the US could not lose that war, because people would say that the terrorists had won and this type of action would be seen in Africa, South America and in other places.Organizations such as NATO, the European Union and the United Nations could be dumped into the trash bin of history.

Jones visits the wounded soldiers; he meets with the colonels and talks with McChrystal.McChrystalconfesses to him that Afghanistan was much worse than he had anticipated.He noticed that there were reasons aplenty for worry and that if the situation did not soon turn around it would become irreversible.Jones asked him to list the problems and McChrystal started to quote a veritable litany: the number of Taliban in the country was much higher than they thought (25,000). Jones commented that that was the result of the treaty signed by Pakistan with its tribes because it was there that the new Taliban could train without interference.The number of Taliban attacks was close to 550 a week and in the last few months they had almost doubled.Bombs going off by the side of the highway were killing approximately 50 soldiers from the coalition troops each month, as compared to eight reported the previous year.

Jones was insisting that the new strategy had three stages:

1. Security

2. Economic development and reconstruction

3. Governance by the Afghans under the rule of law.

Jones was insisting that the war was not going to be won by the army alone, that during the next year the part of the strategy that would be starting to work was economic development, and if this wasn´t done well there wouldn´t be enough troops in the world to achieve victory.Jones pointed out that this was a new phase and that Obama was not going to give all the forces the army commanders were asking for, like Bush used to do during the Iraq war. Jones added that the president knew that he was treading on the razor´s edge, meaning that times were not just difficult and dangerous but that the situation could move forward in some other different direction.

In Helmand province, Jones made clear that the Obama strategy was designed to reduce US envolvment and commitment, that he didn´t think Afghanistan should be only an American war, but that there had been a tendency to Americanize it.

Upon his return, Jones informs Obama that the situation is disconcerting; that there was no relationship between what he was being told during the last few months and what General McChrystal was facing.Finally Obama asks him how many troops are needed and Jones informs him there is no definite number yet.He thought it was necessary to complete the first two phases of the strategy -economic development and governance -otherwise Afghanistan would simply swallow up any additional number of troops.

The reaction was very different at the Pentagon.Jones was accused of wanting to set limits on the numbers of troops.He was claiming that it wasn´t fair for the president to make the decision he took in March, and before reaching the number of 21,000 troops stationed there, to decide that since the situation was going so bad, 40,000 to 80,000 additional troops were needed.

The chasm between the White House and the Pentagon was growing deeper and this was happening only four months after the President informed of his new strategy.

CHAPTER 13

Some US government officials were describing the Obama government using Afghan terminology and they were saying that the presidency was populated by “tribes”, representing its divisions.The Hillary tribe lived in the State Department; the Chicago Tribe occupied Axelrod´s and Emmanuel´s offices; the presidential campaign tribe was occupying the National Security Council that was headed by the cabinet chief Mark Lippert and the director of strategic communications Denis McDonough.This group was known as the “insurgency”.

The Taliban defeat required more men, money and time than its dismantling.Defeat meant unconditional surrender, total capitulation, victory, winning in the broadest sense of the word, completely destroying the Taliban.

Richard Holbrooke was looking pretty pessimistic closet o the August 20th elections in Afghanistan and stated: “If there are 10 possible outcomes in Afghanistan, 9 of them are bad.They range from civil war to irregularities”.

As soon as the polling booths shut down on August 20th, there were reports of voting fraud.Many officials from the UN and the State Department did not leave their residences to visit the voting locations for security reasons.

The day after the elections, Holbrooke and the American ambassador met withKarzai, and they asked him what he would do if there were a second round.Karzai said that he had been reelected and that there would be no second round.

After the meeting Karzai called the State Department operations centreand asked to speak to either Obama or Hillary.The American ambassador recommended that the president not take the call since Karzai had taken the offensive saying that a second round was impossible.Obama agreed not to speak with him.

Intelligence reports would describe Karzai as a person who was increasingly more delusional and paranoid.Karzai told them:”You guys are oppossing me. It´s a British- American plot.

In August, a group was created to interview the members of General McChrystal’s strategic group who had just returned from Afghanistan in order to know what was happening in the terrain, how the war was going, what was working and what was not. McChrystal gave the group three questions as a guide for his study: Is the mission achievable?; if so, what needs to be changed to accomplish the mission?; are more resources necessary to complete the mission?

McChrystal told the group to be pragmatic and focus on things that would actually work.

The group came to the conclusion that the army understood relatively very little about the Afghan population. They couldn´t understand how the intimidation campaigns launched by the Taliban were affecting the population.The intelligence information gathering was a disaster. The group discovered that 70 percent of the intelligence requirements were enemy-centric.Some group members thought that within one or two years the war would be completely Americanized.The Americans preferred that the NATO allies supplied money and advisors for the Afghan security forces, instead of wandering throughout the country asking for air support to attack suspicious-looking Afghans.

The group had only bad news forMcChrystal. They could carry out the best counterinsurgency campaign in the history of the world, and even so it would fail because of the weakness and corruption existing in the Afghan government.McChrystal looked as if he´d been hit by a train.In any case, he thanked the group.

McChrystal told Gates he would need 40,000 more troops. After lengthy discussions, Gates promised to give him as many troops as he could, while he could. “You´ve got a battle space over there and I´ve got a battle space over here”, he told him.

“CHAPTER 14

“Biden had spent five hours trying to design an alternative for McChrystal, something he called ‘counterterrorism plus’. Instead of an intensive amount of troops, the plan concentrates on what he believed was the real threat: Al Qaeda. This strategy emphasizes the destruction of the terrorist groups by the murder or capture of its leaders. Biden thought that it was possible to dissuade Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, and so to avoid getting involved in the costly mission of protecting the Afghan people.

“Biden thought that Al Qaeda would take the path of least resistance and that they would not return to their former places of origin if:

“1.The U.S. mantained at least two bases- Baram y Khandahar- so Special Operations Forces could raid anywhere in the country.

“2.The U.S. had enough manpower to control Afghan air space.

“3.Human intelligence networks inside Afghanistan provided targeting information to Special Operations Forces.

“4.The CIA´s elite, 3,000-Afghan-strong-Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPT) could move freely.

“Afghanistan had to become a slightly more hostile environment for Al Qaeda than Pakistan so that they would decide to not return.

“Obama needed someone to guide him. He had been in the Senate for only four years and Biden had been there for 35. The President thought that the military couldn´t put pressure on him, but they could crush an inexperienced President.Biden came to Obama´s aid and Obama said to him: ‘You know these guys. Go after it. Push’.

“Later Obama confessed that he wanted his vice president to be an aggressive detractor, and that he said exactly what he was thinking, that he would ask the most difficult questions, because he was convinced that that was the best way to serve the people and the troops, establishing a strong discussion about these matters of life or death.

“Obama called on a small group of the most experienced members of his national security staff in order to analyze the 66-page classified assesment written by McChrystal which, in summary, said that if more troops were not going to be sent it was probable that the war would likely end in a failure in the next 12 months. The President added that the options in this case were not good and he made it clear that he would not automatically acceptthe solution proposed by the general or by anyone else. ‘We need to come this with a spirit of challenging our assumptions’.

“Peter Lavoy, the deputy for analysis in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, believed that behind the attacks of the unmanned planes, Bin Laden and his organization had been beaten, beseiged, but not finished off, that Al Qaeda had become the Taliban leech.

“Obama wanted to know if it were possible to defeat Al Qaeda and how; if it were necessary to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda; that it could occur in the next few years; what kind of presence was it necessary to have in Afghanistan in order to be able to have an efficacious antiterrorist platform.

“What wasn´t said and what everyone knew was that a President could not lose a war nor could he be perceived as losing it.Obama said that it was going to be necessary to work for five years and he was proposing that other national priorities be considered.

Fidel Castro Ruz

A birds-eye-view of the oil spillage on the Gulf Of Mexico which is crippling the environment - Image by : REUTERS/DanieliBeltra/Handout

The article wrote “The ecological disaster which occurred in the Gulf of Mexico shows how little governments can do against those who control financial capital, who in both the United States and Europe are, due to the economy of our globalized planet, those who decide the destiny of the public. the hateful tyranny imposed on the world.”

The former Cuban leaders’ writing continued “These companies decide the fate of the people, and the economy in our globalized world.” Talking mainly of US and European based companies.

The oil leak which occurred almost three weeks ago after the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded on the Gulf of Mexico, and then collapsed. Experts are already saying that the incident is one of the worst environmental disaster, in the history of the U.S. oil industry.

The natural disaster was described by Obama as a “national catastrophe.” After the oil platform owned by British Petroleum (BP) collapsed on 22, April releasing oil to the open waters. Experts say that over 800,000 liters of oil has polluted the waters.

Castro also said he believes the president of the United States, Barrack Obama, was not responsible for the “current threats to the survival of the human being imposed on the world by imperialism.”

He continued “Obama ignores reality and cannot or does not want to overcome it, he rather dreams unreal things in a dream world.”

Video of Latest spillage in the Gulf of Mexico

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Fidel Castro or Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, was born on August 13, 1926, in the eastern Oriente province of Cuba, in a town called Birán. Castro was born into a wealthy family as his father, Ángel Castro y Argiz, an immigrant from North-West of Spain was a large sugar plantation owner. Fidel’s mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, was a maid to, Maria Luisa Argota, Angel’s first wife in which he split from her when Castro was 15 and married Lina, Castro’s mother two-years-later.

Castro was the third of six children with four sisters, Antelita, Juanita, Emma, and Augustina and two brothers, Raul and Ramon. Castro was educated in private Jesuit boarding schools and was financially well compared to the majority of the country that could not afford basic needs including hospital care and education.

He graduated in 1945 and enrolled into law school at the University of Havana and became embroiled in the political unrest within the country. The political atmosphere mainly involved Cuban nationalists, anti-imperialist, and socialists and also people who were against the influence of the United States in Cuba.

Castro’s passion for social justice had increased in the next few years at University, he even travelled to the Dominican Republic to join a coup against the countries dictator at the time, Rafael Trujillo. The coup was unsuccessful and failed before it even started. Rafael Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, with rumors that the CIA was involved.

After the failed coup in the Dominican Republic Castro returned to the University of Havana where he joined the Partido Ortodoxo, formed by Eduardo Chibás, a charismatic leader who promised social justice, honest government, and political freedom and was able to gain many followers.

Castro married Mirta Diaz Balart the daughter of a wealthy family in 1948, which opened the doors to political connections. Castro carried on his political ambitions and was a candidate for a seat in the Cuban parliament. However these ambitions were stopped by a coup which was led by General Fulgencio Batista who successfully overthrew the government. Castro at this point had very little income and no legitimate political platform.

Batista was able to cement his relations with the military and Cuba’s economic elite and also got the government recognized by the United States. Castro and members of the Ortodoxo party organized a plan to overthrow Batista. 150 supporters of the Ortodoxo attacked the Moncada military barracks on 26, July, 1953 but failed. Castro was captured by the military and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The incident had an unexpected effect on Cuban’s as groups and parties opposing the government had gained more courage and Castro had become very popular in the country.

No one really knows why Castro and his brother Raul who also was in the attack did not get executed but some suggest that one of the officers had known Castro from University days and treated him in good way while his men were executed. Castro was released from prison after serving just two years under a general amnesty from the Batista regime who was under pressure both politically and from the Cuban’s. Castro went to Mexico to re-group and gain more strength to his cause of overthrowing the Batista regime.

While in Mexico Castro had met Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a charismatic revolutionary with very similar thoughts to one-another. “Che” was a greatly influential person in Castro’s political beliefs who believed only a violent revolution can overthrow the government. With the protection of the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro’s men or better known as the 26th of July Movement went to guerrilla war against the Batista government. Groups were found in virtually every major city that backed the Castro warfare.

A series of blows to the Batista regime forced the dictator to launch an operation called “The Offensive” Castro’s men who were heavily outnumbered gave some serious blows to the Batista Regime. From one part of the nation to another the Castro onslaught with the help of Che Guevara, Raul Castro, Huber Matos and many more. The most influential win of the Castro regime was the taking of Santa Clara, the provincial capital, in just one day on 31 December 1958.

The blow of losing the Battle of Santa Clara and expecting betrayal from his own men as Castro’s army advanced, Batista escaped to the Dominican Republic in the early hours of 1st January, 1959 on a plain with an estimated $300 million dollars which he amassed through payoff and bribery. At just 31-year-old Castro successfully masterminded and led the guerrilla campaign that over through a military dictator.

Castro and his army went into Havana in a victorious fashion on 8th January, 1959, with crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns blowing from the city. Castro was put into the role of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in Cuba, and famiously said “Power does not interest me, and I will not take it”. Castro immediately called for a general strike to protest to Piedra’s government and demanded Dr. Urrutia, former judge of the Urgency Court of Santiago de Cuba, to be put into the role of the provisional President, a move which was backed by the The Cane Planters Association of Cuba.

Castro, became Prime Minister of Cuba with no real opposition left as he attacked liberals and democrats which resulted in the leaders of both parties to resign. The president Manuel Urrutia Lleó urged for an election but Castro had apposed this notion and famously said “Revolution first, elections later”.

The chief of intelligence in Cuba, Ramiro Valdés almost immediately contacted the KGB in Mexico City which resulted in the USSR to send over one hundred advisors to Cuba to help in the defense of the revolution. Ties were strengthened further between the two countries when Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. However the Agreement with the USSR was the climax of the Cuba, US relations as the refineries owned by the United States refused to process the oil, Cuban officials and army forcefully took over which ended all diplomatic ties between the two countries. Eisenhower, the president of the United states at the time reduced Cuba’s sugar import by 7 M tons which Cuba responded by nationalizing almost $1 billion dollars worth of U.S. property and businesses. Both the health care and education system was nationalized, along with the industry. This led to the government to redistribute property, collectivize agriculture and create policies that would benefit the poor. The new laws had been a major his with the majority of Cuba as there were so many poor but the laws also alienated the rich and middle class people. Approximately 1 million Cuban’s immigrated to the U.S including some of Castro’s own family.

Castro famously declared Cuba a socialist state and abolished multiparty elections on May 1, 1961. The Cuban leader said in a speech to hundreds-of-thousands of Cubans “The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government. If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like capitalism”

Tensions between the US and Cuba was at its worst in the 1962 so called “Cuban missile Crisis” which almost left the USSR and the U.S. engage in Nuclear war fear. The USSR sent missiles to Cuba to scare the U.S from trying to enter the country, but the act was seen as a threat to U.S. security by polititians. The USSR defended it self by saying it was a retaliation of the U.S missiles which were deployed into Turkey. The aggressive word exchange between the three countries involved when Khrushchev the Premier of the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba only if the missiles in Turkey and Italy are removed and if Cuba would not be invaded by the U.S.

There has been an estimated 638 assasination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro according to Fabian Escalante, the man who’s job was to protect the life of the Cuban leader. According to Escalante the assasination attempts were all planned by the U.S. and the CIA. An exploding cigar, a mafia style shooting, fungal-infected scuba-diving suit, women, poison pills and many more. According to intel on Castro, no one really knows how many siblings or wifes he has in case his enemies try to harm them. The exact number of assasination attempts on Castro’s life will probably never be known but it is for sure that the task has failed greatly.

Cuba came close to bankrubtsy in the 90’s due to the colapse of the Soviet Union as the country had depended greatly to the super power at the time. The Latin American country had major problems with gas, water, power, and food shortages. However Cuba came went through this rough period or better known as the “Special Period” by legalising US dollar, turning to tourism and allowing financial help from Cubans living in the United States. These small supplies helped the country greatly and stopped the country and government from near colapse. Castro also agreed on exchanhing man power for basic needs for his country such as sending Cuban doctors to Venezuela in exchange for oil.

There have been many speculations between the year of 1998 to 2005 regarding the health of Fidel Castro. Many of the specuations were said to be only rumors but the Cuban leader had come to the age of 80 and perhaps leading a country was getting to be very difficult. Fidel Castro passed all his duties over to his brother Raúl Castro. Even at the time of the passing of power which was supposed to be temporary, there were rumors that Fidel Castro had terminal pancreatic cancer and was refusing treatment, which was later denied by Cuban officials.

Fidel Castro retired from governmental duties in 2008 on a letter by the former Cuban leader posted on the official Communist Party newspaper, Granma. A section of the letter read, “I’m really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least having a neighbor, the greatest power in the world, trying to kill me every day,

“It would betray my conscience to take up a responsibility that requires mobility and total devotion, that I am not in a physical condition to offer”.

Raul Castro was chosen as the Cuban president, unanimously by the National Assembly of People’s Power on 24, February, 2008. Raul publically said that though his brother Castro is not in power, he will be consulted on important matters involving the government.

Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva will meet with Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Wednesday for a meeting of “friends” during which they will discuss aspects of international politics, Lula’s spokesman Marcelo Baumbach said Friday.

Da Silva will arrive in Havana on Tuesday evening, coming from Cancun, Mexico, where he will attend the Rio Group Summit.

Castro and Lula da Silva are friends since the early 1980s, when the Brazilian former union leader founded the Workers’ Party (PT), through which he became Brazil’s president since 2003.

“The meeting that President Lula will have with President Fidel Castro is a visit of a friend to another, during which they will discuss current issues concerning international politics,” the spokesman said.

After this meeting, Lula will be present at the closure of the Working Group Brazil-Cuba on Trade and Economic Affairs, and in the evening he will have dinner with Cuban President Ral Castro.

Lula’s visit to Cuba next week will conclude the cycle of visits that he paid to the Caribbean country during his two terms as president.

Now, with Zelaya still holed up in the Brazilian Embassy, voters will choose a new president this Sunday from the political establishment that has dominated Honduras for decades. No one is pushing the leftist agenda of the ousted leader, who said he was trying to lift a country where seven in 10 people are poor.

“It’s a risk-averse culture,” said Manuel Orozco, a Central America expert with the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

The months of turmoil as Zelaya pressed for his reinstatement, the negotiation and U.S. shuttle diplomacy are about to be overtaken by business as usual – Honduran style.

Even many of the poor who supported Zelaya as he aligned himself with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Latin America’s new left say they will vote for conservative front-runner Porfirio Lobo, a 61-year-old wealthy businessman who is ahead by double digits in the polls.

“I will vote for the one who can fix this and give us work right now, because those suffering are the poor,” said Reina Gomez, 53, a single mother who washes clothes for a living and who supported Zelaya in 2005.

Zelaya was prohibited by the constitution from running for more than one term – even before the military whisked him out of the country at gunpoint in the June 28 coup. His opponents said he wanted to follow in Chavez’s footsteps and revise the constitution to extend his time in office. Zelaya denies any such intention.

Honduras has always been run by a handful of families who control the news media, economy and every power sphere from the military to the Supreme Court. It remains one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nations, where gaunt workers in torn shoes survive on $250 a month.