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
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
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
Fidel
Castro is president of the