Wednesday, July 14, 2010


USA Not Playing Fair

Or Telling The Truth


By Fidel Castro Ruz


Taken from CubaDebate

The United States is not playing fair and is not telling the truth, affirmedComandante en Jefe Fidel Castro on the special Roundtable program broadcast on Cuban television on Monday evening, and hosted by journalist Randy Alonso.

Fidel gave an exhaustive analysis of the situation in the Middle East, particularly the crisis provoked by the United States and Israel in their policy of harassing Iran, as well as an assessment of the nuclear arsenal at the disposal of the major international powers and the sinking of the Cheonan, the flagship vessel of the South Korean Navy, an attack that has been attributed to DPK Korea.

Reiterating the danger of unleashing a war using nuclear weapons, as he previously mentioned in his Reflections, the leader of the Revolution provided a vast range of arguments and commented on the opinions of political analysts on the latest events in the Middle East.

During the Roundtable, also attended by historian Rolando Rodríguez; Osvaldo Martínez, director of the World Economy Research Center; and Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez, director of the National Scientific Research Center (CNIC), Fidel analyzed the enormous military arsenal at the disposal of the principal world powers headed by the United States: “The number of strategic warheads is absurd,” he confirmed.

Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said Fidel, left no doubt whatsoever as to the danger facing humanity. The total military spending of the United States in 2009 was $1.531 trillion, representing a 49% increase in relation to 2000.

It is not difficult to imagine what would happen if even just a small part of this arsenal were to be used and “in (U.S.) Congress, some members’ positions are even more aggressive than that of the president,” added the leader of the Revolution.

Military spending in the United States has continued to grow. Fidel noted that the budget of its Defense Department was in excess of $316 billion in 2001 and $565 billion in 2010, a 2.16-fold increase.

“The United States alone spends more than all the other countries put together,” he said. “It has 2,002 strategic and 500 non-strategic warheads. It has deployed 2,702, while Russia has 2,787 strategic and 2,047 non-strategic warheads. Between the two, that is almost 7,000 strategic warheads. It is a ludicrous figure.”

AGREED ON THE RISK OF WAR

Responding to a comment from Randy about the danger that a war in the Middle East could produce, Fidel confirmed, “I fully agree about the imminent risk of war,” adding, “I started writing about this subject after the accusation was made against North Korea, which was accused of sinking the very sophisticated South Korean submarine, one of the U.S. industry’s most modern models, which uses special metals, items that they do not sell to North Korea.”

He scorned the accusation made against DPK Korea which, they claim, used an old torpedo manufactured in the 1950s for the attack. “Imagine that! An old torpedo against that sophisticated boat!” he commented.

He confirmed that a U.S. analyst had provided a logical explanation: “South Korea was engaged in maneuvers with its ally, the United States. The worst thing about this event – one which is very difficult for the United States to admit – is that it was them who sunk the sophisticated South Korean vessel. Forty-six men died….A boat like that could only have been blown up with a mine. And they did it.”

Fidel said that he was convinced that if this situation with Korea had gotten out of hand then, it would have been a very dramatic situation, and he recalled what the Koreans had said: “There will be a sea of fire, of flames.” He acknowledged that “this was what I had thought initially, that the problem was going to break out there, because the (Security Council) resolution on Iran had not yet been passed.”

When it was passed, “It became evident that conflict would first be unleashed against Iran, and then in Korea. The people who should pay most attention to what happens in Iran are those in North Korea.”

OBAMA’S MOST SERIOUS CRISIS

Fidel commented on recent statements by U.S. political scientist Noam Chomsky, who confirmed that the U.S. position on Iran “is the most serious foreign policy crisis that the Obama administration is facing.”

“Iran is the big apple of discord,” stated Fidel, “because it is a certain fact that they will not be able to carry out their inspections. Thirty-one years ago, when they launched their chemical war against Ayatollah Khomeini who managed to overthrow the Shah of Iran without the use of weapons, there was no army, they just had the Revolutionary Guards.”

Fidel added, “Ahmadinejad is not an improviser – you may or may not be in agreement with him – but he is not an improviser. To make a calculation on the basis that the Iranians are going to come running out to ask the yankis for forgiveness is absurd.”

He argued that the Iranians “have spent 30 years preparing themselves, with industrial development, acquiring planes, radars, anti-aircraft weapons…The Russians committed themselves to providing them with S-300 missiles, but they are taking their time and have not handed them over. All the planes that they have been able to buy, they have bought. They have Russian weapons. They have hundreds of rocket launchers alone. The Army also has its forces, in the air, on land and sea. The Navy also has air, land and sea capability. Soldiers – just the Revolutionary Guards alone – there are more than one million of them. They are training everyone above 12 years of age and younger than 60. And there are 20 million Shiite Muslims. Who is going to sympathize with that enemy who wants to destroy everything and announce it as well?”

Fidel stated that the nuclear powers jointly possess some 20,000 nuclear weapons and the pretext used against Iran is risible: “This problem that has been created is risible, as are all the resolutions (of the UN Security Council). The risk is that Iran could develop or manufacture two nuclear weapons within the next two or three years. Where is the logic? This whole problem is because of this.”

In the opinion of the Comandante en Jefe, the real cause is “the control and the influence that the state of Israel has over the United States. A country that has become a nuclear power in the space of a few years.”

He affirmed that Cuba understands the nuclear experience very well: “We have lived under the threat of being attacked. During the Reagan government, they carried out a nuclear test in the ocean. In a boat. We guessed that because we had troops on their way to Namibia.”

Via Israel, “they provided the South Africans with 14 nuclear weapons, more powerful than those that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This situation is nothing new. We were there (Angola) with 60,000 men advancing. And we had already felt the threat of a nuclear experience.”

He recalled the moment when the Soviets installed their nuclear rockets in Cuba; “From then on they didn’t like us, because when we made this Revolution, we didn’t have any alliance with the USSR.” That alliance “came to us at a very opportune moment, because when (the U.S.) took away our oil, (the USSR) gave it to us. We are not talking without having lived through that experience: we went through it in ’62 and in ’70 and a bit, on an internationalist mission. And we adopted all the measures; advancing and going underground. We couldn’t take any chance. Everything had been confirmed. Not even Mandela knew what they did with those weapons. I asked him: ‘I don’t know,’ he said. They took them away. They have never acted cleanly.”

“Could they be playing around with this?” he added. “If you’re talking about a hypothesis, you’re not going to convince anybody. There is no need to dramatize, because the events are dramatic enough in themselves.”

The leader of the Revolution provided a new analysis on these dangerous events for humanity in his Reflection published on the CubaDebate website on Sunday, July 11.





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