This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without
the risk of being mistaken.
Our species faces new problems. When 20 years
ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and
Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I
had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing
perhaps 100 years away.
At that time, a handful of leaders of the most
powerful countries were in charge of the world. They applauded my words as a
matter of mere courtesy and placidly continued to dig for the burial of our
species.
It seemed that on our planet, common sense and order reigned. For a while,
economic development, backed by technology and science appeared to be the
Alpha and Omega of human society.
Today, everything is much clearer. Profound truths have been surfacing.
Almost 200 States, supposedly independent, constitute the political
organization which in theory has the job of governing the destiny of the
world.
25, 000 nuclear
weapons needed to defend the changing order?
Approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of allied or enemy forces
ready to defend the changing World order, by interest or necessity,
virtually reduce to zero the rights of billions of people.
I shall not commit the naïveté of assigning the blame to Russia or China for
the development of that kind of weaponry, after the monstrous massacre at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered by Truman in August 1945 after Roosevelt’s
death [April 1945].
Nor shall I fall prey to the error of denying
the Holocaust that signified
the deaths of millions of children and adults, men or women, mainly Jews,
gypsies, Russians or other nationalities, who were victims of Nazism.
For
that reason the odious policy of those who deny the Palestinian people their
right to exist is repugnant.
Does anyone by chance think that the United States will be capable of acting
with the independence that will keep it from the inevitable disaster
awaiting it?
In a few weeks, the 40 million dollars President
Obama promised to collect
for his electoral campaign will only serve to show that the currency of his
country has lost its value, and that the U.S., with its unusual growing public
debt drawing close to 20 quadrillion, is living on the money it prints up
and not on the money it produces.
The rest of the world pays for what they
waste.
Nor does anyone believe that the Democratic candidate would be any better or
worse than his Republican foes: whether they are called Mitt Romney or
Rick
Santorum. Light years separate these three characters from Abraham Lincoln
or Martin Luther King.
It is really unheard-of to observe such a technologically powerful nation
and a government so bereft of both ideas and moral values.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. It is being accused of producing enriched
uranium that serves as fuel energy or components for medical uses. Whatever
one can say, its possession or production is not equivalent to the
production of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries use enriched uranium as
an energy source, but this cannot be used in the manufacture of a nuclear
weapon without a prior complicated purification process.
However, Israel, with the aid and cooperation of the United States, has
manufactured nuclear weaponry without informing or accounting for their
actions to anybody. Not admitting their possession of these weapons, they
have hundreds of them.
To prevent the development of research in
neighboring Arab countries, they attacked and destroyed reactors in Iraq and
Syria. They have also declared their objective of attacking and destroying
the production centers for nuclear fuel in Iran.
International politics have been revolving around that crucial topic in that
complex and dangerous part of the world, where most of the fuel that moves
the world economy is produced and supplied.
The selective elimination of Iran’s most eminent scientists by Israel and
their NATO allies has become a practice that motivates hatred and feelings
of revenge.
The Israeli government has openly stated its objective to attack the plant
manufacturing Iran’s enriched uranium, and the government of the United
States has invested billions of dollars to manufacture a bomb for that
purpose.
On March 16, 2012, Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham
published an article revealing that,
“A top U.S. Air Force General has described
the largest conventional bomb - the re-invented bunkers of 13.6 tons -
as ‘fantastic’ for a military attack on Iran.
“Such an eloquent comment on the massive
killer-artifact took place in the same week that President Barack Obama
appeared to warn against ‘easy words’ on the Persian Gulf War.”
“…Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for
U.S. Air Force operations
[…] added that probably the bomb would be used in any attack on Iran
ordered by Washington.
“The MOP, also referred to as ‘The Mother of All Bombs’, is designed to
drill through 60 meters of concrete before it detonates its massive
bomb. It is believed to be the largest conventional weapon, non-nuclear,
in the U.S. arsenal.”
“The Pentagon is planning a process of wide destruction of Iran’s
infrastructure and massive civilian victims through the combined use of
tactical nuclear bombs and monstrous conventional bombs with
mushroom-shaped clouds, including the MOABs and the larger GBU-57A/B or
Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) that exceeds the MOAB in destructive
capacity.
“The MOP is described as,
‘a powerful new bomb that aims straight at
subterranean Iranian and North Korean nuclear facilities. The giant bomb, longer than 11 persons shoulder to shoulder, or more than 6
meters from
end to end’.”
The Mother of all Bombs
(MOAB)
I ask the reader to excuse me for this
complicated military jargon.
As one can see, such calculations arise from the hypothesis that the Iranian
combatants, numbering millions of men and women well-known for their
religious zeal and their fighting traditions, surrender without firing a
shot.
In recent days, the Iranians have seen how U.S. soldiers occupying
Afghanistan, in just three weeks,
urinated on the corpses of killed Afghans,
burned copies of the Koran and murdered more than 15 defenseless citizens.
Let us imagine U.S. forces launching monstrous bombs on industrial
institutions, capable of penetrating through 60 meters of concrete. Never
has such an undertaking ever been conceived [and carried out].
Not one word more is needed to understand the gravity of such a policy. In
that way, our species will be inexorably led towards disaster.
If we do not learn how to understand, we shall never learn how to survive.
As for me, I harbor not the slightest doubt that the United States is about
to commit and lead the world towards the greatest mistake in its history.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 21, 2012
