Voice of the dark corners
Fidel Castro
The Guardian - Thursday March 6, 2003
These are hard times we are living in. In recent months,
we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his
speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United
States president declared: "Our security will require transforming
the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike
at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world."
That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive
strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of
the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost
certain military action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is
forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the
United States army."
That statement was not made by the government of a
small and weak nation, but by the leader of the richest and mightiest
military power that has ever existed, which possesses thousands of
nuclear weapons, enough to obliterate the world's population several
times over - and other terrifying conventional military systems and
weapons of mass destruction.
That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That
is the perception some have of the third world nations. Never before
had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt.
The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and
plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped
countries.
There is nothing like full independence, fair treatment
on an equal footing or national security for any of us; none is a
permanent member of the UN security council with a veto right; none
has any possibility of being involved in the decisions of the international
financial institutions; none can keep its best talents; none can protect
itself from capital flight or the destruction of nature and the environment
caused by the squandering, selfish and insatiable consumerism of the
economically developed countries.
After the last global carnage in the 1940s, we were
promised a world of peace, a reduction of the gap between the rich
and poor and the assistance of the highly developed to the less developed
countries. It was all a huge lie. We had imposed on us an unsustainable
and unbearable world order.
The world is being driven into a dead end. Within
hardly 150 years, the oil and gas it took the planet 300 million years
to accumulate will have been depleted. In just 100 years, the world
population has grown from 1.5 billion to over 6 billion people, who
will have to depend on energy sources that are still to be researched
and developed. Poverty continues to grow while old and new diseases
threaten whole nations with annihilation. The world's soil is being
eroded and losing its fertility; the climate is changing; the air
that we breathe, drinking water and the seas are increasingly contaminated.
Authority is being wrenched away from the United Nations,
its established procedures are being obstructed and the organisation
itself destroyed; development assistance is being reduced; there are
continuous demands on the third world countries to pay a $2.5 trillion
debt that cannot be paid under the present circumstances, while $1
trillion dollars are spent in ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons.
Why and for what?
A similar amount is spent on commercial advertising,
sowing consumerist longings that cannot be satisfied in the minds
of billions of people. Why and for what? For the first time the human
species is running a real risk of extinction due to the insane behaviour
of the very same human beings, who are thus becoming the victims of
this "civilisation".
However, no one will fight for us, that is, for the
overwhelming majority, only we will do it. Only we can save humanity
ourselves with the support of millions of manual and intellectual
workers from the developed nations who are conscious of the catastrophes
befalling their peoples. Only we can do it by sowing ideas, building
awareness and mobilising global and North American public opinion.
No one needs to be told this. You know it very well. Our most sacred
duty is to fight, and fight we will.
© Fidel Castro
Ruiz 2003
