• Reflections of Fidel
A brilliant and valiant statement
July 4.11
ATTENDING to other matters currently priorities momentarily took me away from the frequency with which I wrote Reflections during 2010; however, the proclamation by the revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez last Thursday, June 30, obliges me to write these lines.
• REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
The empire’s untenable position
May 20.11
NO one can be sure that, in its agony, the empire might not drag humanity into a catastrophe.
As is known, as long as human life exists, everyone has the sacred responsibility to be optimistic. Ethically, any other type of behavior would be inadmissible. I remember well a day, almost 20 years ago, when I said that one species was in danger of extinction: the human race.
• The lies and unknowns in the death of Bin Laden
May 9.11
THE men who executed bin Laden did not act on their own account: they were fulfilling orders from the government of the United States. They had been carefully selected and trained for special missions. It is known that the President of the United States can even communicate with a soldier in combat.
• The murder of Osama Bin Laden
May.5.11
THOSE who pay attention to these issues know that, on September 11, 2001, our people expressed solidarity with the United States and offered the modest support we could provide in the area of emergency care for the victims of t
• A fire which could burn everyone
April.28.11
ONE can be in agreement or not with Gaddafi’s political ideas, but nobody has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and a member of the United Nations.
• The restless and brutal North
April.25.11
I was reading a large amount of material and books to keep my promise and continue my Reflection of April 14th about the Bay of Pigs when I took a look at yesterday’s latest news items, which were abundant, as they are everyday. Mountains can pile up every week, ranging from the earthquake in Japan, Ollanta Humala victory in Peru over Keiko, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori.
• My absence on the Central Committee
April.18.11
I was familiar with the content of compañero Raúl’s report to the 6th Congress of the Party. He had shown it to me a few days previously on his own initiative, as he has done on many other occasions without me asking him to because, as I already explained, I had delegated all my responsibilities within the Party and the state in the proclamation of July 2006.
• The Congress Debates
April.18.11
THIS morning at 10:00am I listened to the delegates’ debates at the 6th Congress of the Party.
• The 50th anniversary parade
April.18.11
TODAY I had the privilege of appreciating the impressive parade with which our people commemorated the 50th anniversary of the socialist nature of the Revolution and the Bay of Pigs victory.
• Better and more intelligent
April.1.11
YESTERDAY, for reasons of space and time, I didn’t say one word about the speech on the Libyan War given by Barack Obama on Monday the 28th. I had a copy of the official version, supplied to the press by the U.S. government. I had underlined some of the things that he asserted. I reviewed it again and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth wasting too much paper on the matter.
• Reflections of Fidel
The disaster in Japan and a friend’s visit
March.31.11
TODAY I had the pleasure of greeting Jimmy Carter, who was President of the United States between 1977 and 1981 and the only one, in my opinion, with enough equanimity and courage to address the issue of his country’s relations with Cuba.
• Reflections of Fidel
NATO’s Fascist War
March.29.11
I didn’t have to be a fortune teller to divine what I foresaw with rigorous precision in three Reflections which I published on the CubaDebate website between February 21 and March 3: “NATO’s plan is to occupy Libya,” “Cynicism’s danse macabre,” and “NATO’s inevitable war.”
• Reflections of Fidel
Between emigration and crime
March.28.11
LATIN Americans are not innate criminals and neither did they invent drugs.
The Aztecs, Mayas and other pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico and Central America, for example, were excellent agriculturalists and knew nothing about coca cultivation.
• Reflections of Fidel
The real intentions of the “Alliance of Equals”
March.22.11
YESTERDAY was a long day. From midday I paid attention to Obama’s vicissitudes in Chile, as I had done the day before with his adventures in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
• Reflections of Fidel
My shoes pinch
March.22.11
WHILE the damaged reactors are emitting radioactive smoke in Japan and monstrous looking aircraft and nuclear submarines are launching lethal guided missiles over Libya, a North African Third World country with barely six million inhabitants, Barack Obama was telling Chileans a story similar to the ones I heard when I was four years old: “My little shoes are pinching me, my stockings are hot; but the little kiss you gave me, I carry in my heart.
• Reflections of Fidel
Certificate of good behavior
March.21.11
DURING these bitter days we have seen footage of a 9.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, with hundreds of powerful aftershocks, and a tsunami 10 meters in height, which with waves of dark water swept tens of thousands of people between automobiles and trucks, over 3-4 story houses and buildings.
• Reflections of Fidel
An Alliance of Equals
March.21.11
ON the evening of Saturday the 19th, after a sumptuous banquet, NATO leaders ordered the attack on Libya.
Of course, nothing could happen without the United States reclaiming its obligatory role as supreme leader. From this institution’s command post in Europe, a high-level official announced that Odyssey Dawn was being initiated.
• Reflections of Fidel
The disasters threatening the world
March.15.11
IF the speed of light didn’t exist, if the closest star to our sun weren’t four light years away from Earth, the only inhabited planet in our solar system, if UFOs truly existed, imaginary visitors to the planet would continue their journey without understanding much of anything about our long-suffering human race.
• Reflections of Fidel
Two earthquakes
March.14.11
A powerful 8.9 magnitude earthquake shook Japan today. Of greatest concern is that the first news items report thousands dead or missing, figures truly extraordinary in a developed country where everything is built to withstand earthquakes.
• Reflections of Fidel
NATO, war, lies and business
March.10.11
AS some people know, in September of 1969, Muammar al-Gaddafi, a Bedouin Arab soldier of unusual character and inspired by the ideas of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, promoted within the heart of the Armed Forces a movement which overthrew King Idris I of Libya, almost a desert country in its totality, with a sparse population, located to the north of Africa between Tunisia and Egypt.
• Reflections of Fidel
NATO’s inevitable war (Part II)
March.4.11
WHEN Gaddafi, aged just 28 and a colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he implemented important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil.
• Reflections of Fidel
NATO’s inevitable war
March.3.11
AS opposed to the situation in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies first place in the Human Development Index within Africa and has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention.
• Reflections of Fidel
Cynicism’s danse macabre
February.24.11
THE politics of plunder imposed by the United States and its NATO allies in the Middle East is in crisis. This was inevitably unleashed with the high cost of grain, the effects of which are being felt with more force in the Arab nations where, despite their enormous oil resources, the shortage of water, arid areas and generalized poverty of the people contrast with the vast resources derived from oil possessed by the privileged sectors.
• Reflections of Fidel
NATO’s plan is to occupy Libya
February.21.11
OIL became the principal wealth in the hands of the large yankee transnationals; with that source of energy, they had at their disposal an instrument that considerably increased their political power in the world. It was their principal weapon when they decided to simply liquidate the Cuban Revolution as soon as the first, just and sovereign laws were enacted in our homeland: by depriving it of oil.
• Reflections of Fidel
The Revolutionary Rebellion in Egypt
February.14.11
I said several days ago that the die was cast for Mubarak and that not even Obama could save him.
The world knows what is taking place in the Middle East. The news is circulating at incredible speed. Politicians barely have time to read the cables coming in by the hour. Everyone is aware of the importance of what is occurring there.
• Reflections of Fidel
The die is cast for Mubarak
February.3.11
THE die is cast for Mubarak and not even the support of the United States can save his government. An intelligent people, with a glorious history which left its mark on human civilization, live in Egypt. “From the height of these pyramids 40 centuries contemplate you,” Bonaparte exclaimed, it is said, in a moment of passion when the encyclopedists’ revolution took him to that extraordinary crossroad of civilizations.
• Reflections of Fidel
The grave food crisis
January.31.11
JUST 11 days ago, January 19, under the title “Now is the time to do something,” I wrote:
“The worst is that, to a large degree, their solutions will depend on the richest and most developed countries, which will reach a situation that they really are not in a position to confront, unless the world which they have been trying to mold… collapses around them.”
• Reflections of Fidel
The State of the Union
January.28.11
THE President’s speech about the topic has been anxiously awaited, after his words at the University of Tucson, in Arizona, on January 12, about the killings which had taken place in that city four days earlier.
• Reflections of Fidel
Now is the time to do something
January.21.11
I shall recount a little bit of history.
When the Spaniards “discovered us” five centuries ago, the estimated figure for the population of the island did not exceed 200,000 inhabitants, who lived in harmony with nature.
• Reflections of Fidel
Obama’s speech in Arizona
January.14.11
I listened to it yesterday when he spoke at the University of Tucson during a tribute to the six people murdered and the 14 injured in the Arizona massacre, and in particular to the Democratic Congresswoman for that state, seriously wounded by a shot to the head.
• Reflections of Fidel
The crime against the Democratic Congresswoman
January.11.11
AS is known, the state of Arizona, a territory that was snatched from Mexico by the United States together with many other expanses of land, has been the scene of painful events for the hundreds of Latin Americans who die trying to immigrate to the United States in search of work or to join parents, spouses or other close family members who are there.
• Reflections of Fidel
Another Tea Party star
January.11.11
NONE other than Ileana Ros, the woman who held the child Elián kidnapped in Miami, the promoter of coups d’état, crimes like those of Posada Carriles and other misdeeds, is to travel to neighboring Haiti, where the…
• Reflections of Fidel
Without violence, without drugs
January.10.11
YESTERDAY I analyzed the atrocious act of violence against U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in which 18 people were shot, six died and another 12 were wounded, several seriously, among them the Congresswoman with a shot to the head, leaving the medical team with no alternative other than to try to save her life and minimize, as much as possible, the consequences of the criminal act.
• Reflections of Fidel
An atrocious act
January.10.11
A sad news item was circulated this afternoon from the United States: Democratic Congresswoman for Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, was the victim of a criminal attack while taking part in a political event in her electoral district of Tucson.
• Reflections of Fidel
What would Einstein say?
January.7.11
IN a Reflection published on August 25, 2010, under the title “The opinion of an expert,” I mentioned a totally unprecedented activity on the part of the United States and its allies which, in my view, underlined the risk of a conflict of a nuclear nature with Iran.
