Fw: PHA-Exchange> Voice of the dark corners by Fidel Castro

[Mathura P Shrestha]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: UNNIKRISHNAN PV (Dr) 
To: PHA Global ; pha-ncc at yahoogroups.com ; PHA-Europe at egroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 12:44 AM
Subject: PHA-Exchange> Voice of the dark corners by Fidel Castro


Voice of the dark corners

Fidel Castro
Thursday March 6, 2003
The Guardian

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











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