The empire’s untenable position

R e f l e c t i o n s o f F i d e l C a s t r o

Havana. May 20 2011

Turning on the television at approximately 12:15 midday, because some one had told me Barack Obama was making a speech about foreign policy, I paid attention to his words.

I don’t know why, despite the piles of dispatches and news that I read daily, I hadn’t seen any reporting that this individual would speak at that time. I can assure readers that there are more than a few foolish items and lies that, among dramatic truths and events of all kinds, I read, listen to or view as images every day. This was, however, something special. What was he going to say this time with the world bearing the burden of imperial crimes, massacres, unpiloted aircraft dropping deadly bombs, that not even Obama, now responsible for some life and death decisions, could have imagined as a Harvard student just a few dozen years ago?

No one assumes, therefore, that Obama owns the situation; he only manages a few important words that the long-standing system which originally conceded to the "Constitutional President" of the United States. At this point, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Pentagon and the CIA hold the fundamental instruments created by the imperial power: technology capable of destroying the human species in a matter of minutes and the means to penetrate societies, shamelessly trick and manipulate them whenever they need to do so, thinking that the empire’s power is limitless. They expect to manage a docile world, with no disturbance whatsoever, well into the future.

This is the absurd idea upon which they base the world of tomorrow under "the reign of liberty, justice, equality of opportunity and human rights," incapable of seeing what in reality exists with poverty, a lack of elemental educational and health services, employment and worse: the failure to satisfy basic needs such as food, potable water, shelter and many others.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/20-mayo-empire.html