http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/febrero/juev5/07reflex1-i.html
Havana. February 5, 2009
Reflections of Fidel
Contradictions between the politics of Obama and ethics
THE other day I noted some of Obama's ideas that point to his role within
a system that is the negation of every just principle.
There are people who throw up their hands in horror at the expression of
any critical opinion of this important figure, even when it is done decently
and respectfully. This is always accompanied by subtle and not so subtle darts
from those who possess the means to circulate and transform such opinions into
components of media terrorism, which they impose on the peoples in order to
sustain the unsustainable.
Without exception, any criticism of mine is qualified as an attack, a
charge or other similar nouns that reflect a lack of consideration and courtesy
toward the person to whom they are directed.
On this occasion, it is necessary to ask certain questions to which the
new president of the United States should respond, among the many that could be
formulated.
For example, the following:
Will he renounce or not his prerogative as president of the United States
- and as exercised by many in the same office with very few exceptions as a per
se right - of the power to order the assassination of foreign political
adversaries, who always tend to be from underdeveloped countries?
Maybe one of his various collaborators has informed him at some point of
the sinister actions against Cuba undertaken by presidents, from Eisenhower and
those who followed him, in the years 1960, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66 and
'67, including the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion, campaigns of terror, the
smuggling of vast quantities of weapons and explosives into our territory and
other similar actions?
I do not wish to cast any blame on Barack Obama, the current president of
the United States, for acts that his presidential predecessors carried out
before he was born or when he was just a child of six, born in Hawaii to a
Muslim, black Kenyan father and a white American Christian mother. On the
contrary, in the society of the United States, that constitutes an exceptional
merit, which I am one of the first to recognize.
Does President Obama know that for entire decades, our country was victim
to the introduction of viruses and bacteria carrying diseases and plagues that
affected humans, animals and plants, some of which - like hemorrhagic dengue
fever - subsequently led to epidemics that cost the lives of thousands of
children in Latin America, and plagues that affected the economy of the nations
of the Caribbean and the rest of the continent, as collateral damage that it
has not been possible to eliminate?
Was he aware that a number of politically subordinated Latin American
countries - today ashamed of the damage that they caused - participated in
these acts of terrorism?
Why has a disruptive Cuban Adjustment Act been imposed on our people, the
only such case in the world, engendering the trafficking of humans and acts
that have cost people's lives, fundamentally women and children,?
Was it just to implement an economic blockade against our people that has
lasted for close to 50 years?
Was it correct to arbitrarily demand of the world the extraterritorial
extension of that blockade, which can only generate hunger and scarcity for any
nation?
The United States cannot satisfy its vital needs without the extraction
of vast mineral resources from a large number of countries which, in many
cases, are restricted to exporting these without intermediary refining
processes, an activity that, in general, if it suits the empire's interests, is
marketed by the large transnational corporations of yanqui capital.
Will that country renounce such privileges?
Is such a measure compatible with the developed capitalist system?
When Mr. Obama promises to invest considerable sums in order to become
self-sufficient in oil, in spite of his county currently constituting the
largest market in the world, what will happen to those nations whose basic
income is derived from exporting that energy, many of them without any other
significant source of income?
When, as after any crisis, the competing and battling for markets and
sources of employment are once again unleashed among those who best and most
efficiently monopolize technologies with sophisticated means of production,
what possibilities are left to the underdeveloped countries that dream of
industrialization?
However efficient the new vehicles that the automobile industry attains
might be, will those procedures perhaps be what ecology requires for protecting
humanity from the growing deterioration of the climate?
Can the blind philosophy of the market replace what only rationality can
promote?
Obama is promising to print vast quantities of money in search of
technologies that will multiply the production of energy, without which modern
societies would be paralyzed.
The energy sources that he has promised to rapidly develop include
nuclear plants, which already have a high number of opponents, given the large
risk of accidents with disastrous effects on life, the atmosphere and human
alimentation. It is absolutely impossible to guarantee that such accidents will
not take place.
Without any need for such disastrous accidents, modern industry has
contaminated all the seas of the planet with their toxic emissions.
Is it correct to promise the conciliation of such contradictory and
antagonistic interests without transgressing ethics?
In order to please the trade unions that supported their campaign, the
U.S. House of Representatives, dominated by Democrats, has launched the
extremely protectionist slogan "Buy U.S. products," which casts aside a basic
principle of the World Trade Organization, given that all the nations of the
world, large or small, base their dreams of development on the exchange of
goods and services for which, however, only the largest and those rich in
natural resources have the privilege of surviving.
Republicans in the United States, hit hard by the discredit brought upon
them by the blunders of the Bush government, have been neither slow nor tardy
in forestalling Obama's indulgencies to his trade union allies. Hence, the
credit that voters granted the new president of the United States is being
squandered.
As an old politician and fighter, I am committing no sin by modestly
expounding these ideas.
Questions without easy answers could be formulated every day in line with
the publication of hundreds of news items from the political, scientific and
technological spheres that are reaching every country in the world.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 4, 2009
5:14 p.m.
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