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Havana, December 17, 2007.
Dear Randy:
I
listened to the entire Round Table programme on Thursday the
13th, without missing one single second of it.
The news about the Bali Conference, commented on by Rogelio
Polanco, the Director of the newspaper "Juventud Rebelde",
confirms the importance of the international agreements and
the necessity of taking them very seriously.
On that small island of Indonesia, there was a meeting of
many Heads of Government of countries of the so-called Third
World; they are fighting for their development and they
demand fair treatment, financial resources and transferrals
of technology from the representatives of industrialized
nations which are also being represented there.
The UN Secretary General, faced with the tenacious
obstruction by the United States in the midst of the 190
representatives meeting there, and after twelve days of
negotiations, stated on Friday the 14th, Cuban
time, when it was already Saturday in Bali, that the human
species could disappear as a result of climate change. And
then he went off to East Timor.
That declaration transformed the conference into a shouting
match. On the twelfth day of pointless persuasive efforts,
the American representative Paula Dobriansky, after sighing
deeply, said: "We join the consensus." It is obvious that
the United States made moves to get around its isolated
position, even though it didn’t change the empire’s dismal
intentions one iota.
The grand show began: Canada and Japan attached themselves
immediately to the American coat-tails, facing the rest of
the countries that were demanding serious compromises on the
emissions of gases that are causing the climatic change.
Everything had been foreseen ahead of time between the NATO
allies and the powerful empire which, in one fell swoop of
deceit, agreed to negotiate during 2008 in Hawaii, U.S.
territory, for a new convention project that would be
presented and approved at the Copenhagen Conference in
Denmark in 2009; this would take the place of the Kyoto
Protocol which is due to expire in 2012.
The theatrical solution was reserved for Europe in the role
of saviour of the world. Brown spoke, as did Merkel and
other leaders of the European countries, requesting
international gratitude. What an excellent present for
Christmas and the New Year! None of the eulogists mentioned
the tens of millions of poor people who go on dying of
diseases and hunger each year given the complex realities of
the present, just as if we were living in the best of all
worlds.
The Group of 77, which includes 132 countries that are
struggling to develop themselves had achieved consensus to
demand from the industrialized countries a reduction of the
gases that cause climatic change, for the year 2020, from 20
to 40% lower than the level attained in 1990, and from 60 to
70% in the year 2050, something which is technically
possible. Furthermore, they were demanding the assigning of
sufficient funds for the transferral of technology to the
Third World.
We cannot forget that those gases give way to heat waves,
desertification, the melting of the glaciers and the
increase of the levels of the seas which could cover entire
countries or a large part of them. The industrialized
nations share with the United States the idea of converting
foods into fuels for luxury cars and the other wasteful
practices of the consumer societies.
All of this that I am stating was demonstrated when on that
very Saturday, December 15th, at 10:06 Washington
time, it was announced that the President of the United
States had asked the Senate, which had then approved it, for
696 billion dollars for the military budget for the 2008
fiscal year; in this amount, 189 billion was ear-marked for
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A
feeling of sound pride came over me as I remembered the
dignified and calm way in which I responded to the hurtful
proposals directed to me in 1998 by the then Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chrétien. I harbour no illusions.
My most profound conviction is that the answers to the
current problems of Cuban society which possesses an average
educational level close to Grade 12, almost a million
university graduates and the real possibility for its
citizens to become educated with no discrimination
whatsoever, require more varieties of answers for each
concrete problem than those contained on a chess board. We
cannot ignore one single detail, and we are not dealing with
an easy path, if the intelligence of a human being in a
revolutionary society truly needs to prevail over instinct.
My fundamental duty is not to cling to positions, much less
to stand in the way of younger persons, but it is to bring
experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the
exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.
Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right
up to the end.
(Signed) Fidel Castro Ruz
(Handwritten)
Please include this letter in the Round Table programme that
is announced today to be about Bali.
F. C.
5:16
p.m.
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