Reflections by comrade Fidel

The Insanities of Our Times

We have no choice but to call a spade a spade. Those who still have a
pinch of common sense find it easy to see how little realism is being left in
today’s world.
When American President Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize, Michael Moore said, “Now, earn it.” Many people liked the
ingenious comment; it was a smart phrase, even though many found the
decision of the Norwegian Committee an example of demagoguery and the
exaltation of the apparently harmless petty-politics of the new US President, an
African-American, a good communicator and a clever politician leading a
powerful empire involved in a deep economic crisis.
The World Conference in Copenhagen was about to be held and Obama
sparked off hopes that the United States would join the world consensus in
favor of a binding agreement to prevent the ecologic catastrophe threatening
the human species. What happened there was disappointing; the international
public had become the victim of a painful deception.
At the recent World Conference of the Peoples on Climate Change and
the Rights of the Mother Land held in Bolivia responses were offered filled with
the wisdom of the ancient indigenous nationalities, invaded and virtually
devastated by the European conquerors who, in search of gold and easy
wealth, imposed for centuries their selfish cultures incompatible with the most
sacred interests of mankind.
Two news reports received yesterday are an expression of the empire’s
philosophy intending to make us believe in its “democratic, peaceful, selfless
and honest” nature. Suffice it to read the text of said press dispatches dated in
the US capital.

WASHINGTON, April 23, 2010. - US President Barack Obama is examining

the possibility of deploying an arsenal of missiles with conventional non-nuclear
warheads and a very powerful explosion capacity that can hit their targets
anywhere in the world in about an hour.
Albeit the new super-bomb, delivered by Minuteman missiles, will not
carry nuclear warheads their destructive capability will be similar, as confirmed
by the fact that their deployment is foreseen in the recently signed START 2
agreements with Russia.
The Moscow authorities demanded, and managed to include in the
agreement, that the United States will remove one of its nuclear warhead
missiles for each one of these missiles.
According to reports in the New York Times and the CBS TV network,
the new bomb known as Prompt Global Strike (PGS) should be able to kill Al
Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan, destroy a North
Korean missile in full preparation or attack an Iranian nuclear site, ‘all of this
without crossing the nuclear threshold.’
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The advantage of having the military option of a non-nuclear weapon

with the same effect of the targeted impact of a nuclear bomb is judged
interesting by the Obama Administration.
The project had been initially undertaken by Obama’s predecessor,
Republican President George W. Bush, but it was blocked by Moscow’s
protestations. The Russian authorities had said that given the Minuteman’s
capability to deliver nuclear warheads, it was impossible to determine that the
launching of a PGS did not mark the beginning of a nuclear attack.
However, the Obama Administration feels that it can give Russia and
China the necessary guarantees to avoid misunderstandings. The missile silos
of the new weapon will be raised in areas distant from the nuclear warhead
deposits and they can be regularly supervised by experts from Moscow or
Beijing.
The super-bomb could be delivered by a Minuteman missile capable of
flying through the atmosphere at sound speed while carrying one thousand
pounds of explosives. Then, extremely sophisticated equipment will enable the
missile to release the bomb letting it fall with great accuracy on the selected
targets.
Responsibility for the PGS project –at an estimated cost of $250 million
only in its first experimental year—fell on General Kevin Chilton, commander of
the US nuclear arsenal. Chilton explained that the PGS will be filling up a gap in
the range of options currently available to the Pentagon.
‘At the moment,’ he said, ‘we can target any place in the world with non-
nuclear weapons in a frame of time of no less than four hours.’ ‘For a faster
action,’ he conceded, ‘we only have the nuclear option.’
With the new bomb, in the future the United States could act quickly and
with conventional resources both against a terrorist group or an enemy country,
in a much shorter time and avoiding international indignation over the use of
nuclear weapons.
It is planned to start testing in 2014 and to have it available in the US
arsenal by 2017. Obama will no longer be in power but the super-bomb can be
the non-nuclear legacy of this President who was already awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.

WASHINGTON, April 22, 2010. - A US Air Force non-piloted spaceship took

off from Florida this Thursday, its military mission covered by veil of secrecy.
The automated spaceship or X-37B was launched from Cape Canaveral
in an Atlas V rocket at the 19:52 hours local time (23:52 hrs GMT), according to
a video distributed by the army.
‘The launching is imminent,’ said to the France Press Agency US Air
Force Major Angie Blair.
The plane looking like a miniature spaceship is 8.9 meters long by 4.5
meters wingspan.
It has taken years to manufacture the reusable spaceship and the army
has offered only vague explanations on its objective or its role in the military
arsenal.
The vehicle has been designed ‘to create the ambiance of an “orbital
laboratory” to put to the test new technologies and components before these
technologies are assigned to ongoing satellite programs,’ stated the Air Force in
a recent communiqué.
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Officials have said that the X-37B will be landing at the Vandenberg Air
Force base in California, although they did not say how long its first mission will
last.
‘To be honest, we don’t know when it will return,’ said to the press this
week Gary Payton, second assistant secretary of the Air Force space
programs.
Payton indicated that the ship could stay in space up to nine months.
The aircraft, manufactured by Boeing, started in 1999 as a US National
Space Agency (NASA) project and was later transferred to the Air Force, which
has plans to launch a second X-37B by 2011.

Do they need anything else?

Today they face an enormous obstacle: the already unstoppable climate
change. There is talk of the unavoidable rise of heat by more than two degrees
centigrade, with catastrophic consequences. Within only 40 years, the world
population will increase in 2 billion to reach the figure of 9 billion people in that
short time. Harbors, hotels, tourist resorts, roads, industries and facilities close
to the ports will be underwater in less time than a generation from a wealthy and
developed nation needs to enjoy half their lives, the same nations that today
selfishly refuse to make the least of sacrifices to preserve the survival of the
human species. The farming land and the drinking water will be considerably
reduced. The oceans will be contaminated and many marine species will no
longer be edible while others will be extinct. This is not simply a logical
assertion but the result of scientific research.
Through natural genetics and the transfer of various species from one
continent to another, human beings had been able to increase food and other
useful crop productions per hectare. Thus, for some time, man suffered less
from the shortage of such food as maize, potato, wheat, fiber and other
necessary products. Later, genetic manipulation and the use of chemical
fertilizers also contributed to the solution of crucial needs but they too are
coming to the end of their possibilities to produce healthy food for human
consumption.
On the other hand, we are witnessing the depletion in barely two
centuries of the hydrocarbons that it took nature 400 million years to create.
Likewise, crucial no-renewable mineral resources required by the world
economy are being depleted. At the same time, science has created the
capacity to destroy the planet several times over in a matter of hours. The major
contradiction of our times is precisely the capacity of the human species for self-
destruction and its inability to govern itself.
The human being managed to raise its life possibilities to such limits as
exceed its own capacity to survive, and in this battle they are consuming at an
accelerated pace the raw materials available to them. Science made it possible
to turn matter into energy, as in the case of the nuclear reaction, --through large
investments-- but there is no sign that turning energy into matter is even viable.
The infinite cost of investments in the relevant research is showing the
impossibility to achieve in a few decades what it took the universe tens of
thousands of millions of years to create. Will it be necessary for Barack Obama,
the wunderkind, to explain it to us? Science has experienced a remarkable
growth but ignorance and poverty grow too. Can anyone prove the opposite?
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Fidel Castro Ruz

April 25, 2010
6:30 PM