I affirmed recently that the world would soon forget the tragedy that is about to occur as the fruit of the policy followed, for more than two centuries, by the neighboring superpower: the United States.
We are familiar with its devious and cunning way of acting; the impetuous economic growth attained on the basis of its technical and scientific development; the enormous wealth accumulated at the expense of the vast majority of its working people and those of the rest of the world for a demanding minority which, in that country and others, enjoys the unlimited wealth at its disposal.
Who are those who are complaining more and more but the workers, the professionals, those who provide services for the population, the retired, those lacking employment, street children, people deprived of elementary knowledge, all of whom constitute the vast majority of the close to seven billion inhabitants of the planet, whose vital resources are being visibly exhausted?
How do the so-called forces of order, whose job is supposedly to protect them, treat them?
Who are those beaten by the police, armed with every instrument of repression possible?
I do not need to describe events that peoples everywhere, including in the United States, observe via televisions, computers and other mass media.
It is somewhat more difficult to work out the sinister projects of those who have in their hands the destiny of humanity, absurdly thinking that such a world order can be imposed.
What did I write in the last five reflections with which I took up space in Granma and on the CubaDebate website between May 30 and June 10, 2010?
By now the basic elements of a very near future have been launched into flight and there is no possible going back. In the course of a few brief days, the impressive events at the World Cup in South Africa have captured our minds.
We barely have time to breathe during the six hours broadcast live and direct on television in almost all the countries of the world.
Having witnessed the encounters between the most prestigious teams in just six days, and applying my not very reliable points of view, I am venturing to say that the champion of the cup lies between Argentina, Brazil, Germany, England and Spain.
Now there is no team left that has not shown its lion claws in that sport, whereas earlier on I didn’t see anything more than people running across the expansive field from one goal to the other. Now, thanks to famous names like Maradona and Messi, and aware of the feats of the former as the finest player in the history of this sport and his belief that any other player is the same or better than him, I can distinguish the role of each one of the 11 players.
I also learned in the last few days that the new football has a variable geometry in the air, that it is faster and rebounds much more. The players themselves, starting with the goalkeepers, are complaining about these new characteristics, but the forwards and defense are complaining too, and strongly, given that the ball travels faster and they have spent all their lives learning to handle a different one. It is the FIFA directors who decide things in each World Cup.
This time around they have transformed that sport; it’s another, although it still goes by the same name. The fans, who don’t know about the changes introduced to the ball – the soul of a large number of sports activities – and fill the stands of any stadium, are those who enjoy its beauty and all of them will accept those changes in the magical name of glorious football. Even Maradona, who was the best player in history, will calmly resign himself to the fact that other athletes will score more goals, from a greater distance, more spectacular and with better aim than him, in the same goal of the same size as the one where his fame rose to such a dizzying height.
In amateur baseball it was different; the bats changed from wood to aluminum or from aluminum to wood, but specific requisites were established.
The powerful professional clubs in the United States decided to implement rigid standards in relation to the bats and another series of traditional requisites that maintain the characteristics of the old sport. They really gave the spectacle a special interest and also enormous profits paid for by the public and advertising.
In the current sports whirlwind, a sport as exceptional and noble as volleyball, so much enjoyed in our country, is immersed in its World League, the most important tournament in this specialty every year, apart from titles derived from the first place in Olympic or world championships.
The penultimate games scheduled to be played in Cuba took place on Friday and Saturday of last week in Sports City. To date, our team has not lost a single game. The last opponent was no less than Germany. Its athletes included a German giant of 2.14 meters and an excellent spiker. It was a veritable feat to win all the sets, apart from the third in the second game. Our team members, all of them very young, and one of whom is only 16, demonstrated a surprising capacity for reaction. Poland is the current European champion and the German team won the two encounters it had against that team. In the face of these successes, nobody imagined that the Cuban team would once again be among the best in the world.
Unfortunately, on another front, the road in the political sphere is saturated with enormous risks.
One of the subjects that I pointed to earlier, among the basic elements of a very near future launched into flight with no possible retreat, is the sinking of the Cheonan, the flagship of the South Korean Navy, which sank in a matter of minutes on March 26, causing the death of 46 marines and dozens of injuries.
The government of South Korea ordered an investigation to find out whether the event was the consequence of an internal or external explosion. On confirming that it came from the exterior, it accused the Pyongyang government of sinking the submarine. North Korea only had at its disposal an old torpedo model of Soviet manufacture. It lacked any other element except for the most elemental logic. It couldn’t even imagine another cause.
This past March, as an initial step, the government of South Korea ordered the activation of propaganda loudspeakers at 11 points on the demilitarized shared border separating the two Koreas.
For its part, the chief of general staff of the Armed Forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stated that the loudspeakers would be destroyed as soon as that activity began. It had been suspended since 2004. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stated textually that it would convert Seoul into a “sea of fire.”
Last Friday, the South Korean Army announced that it would initiate that as soon as the Security Council announced its measures in relation to the sinking of the South Korean Cheonan corvette. Both Korean republics already have their fingers on the trigger.
The government of South Korea could not believe that its close ally, the United States, had attached a mine to the bottom of the Cheonan, as research journalist Wayne Madsen related in an article published by Global Research on June 1, 2010, with a coherent explanation of what had happened. He bases his information on the fact that North Korea does not possess any type of rocket or instrument to sink the Cheonan that would escape detection by the sophisticated equipment of an anti-submarine warfare corvette.
North Korea had been accused of something that it did not carry out, which prompted the urgent journey of Kim Jong II to China in an armored train.
When these events suddenly occurred, in the mind of the government of South Korea there was and still is no space for any other possible cause.
In the midst of the sporting and happy atmosphere, the sky is growing darker and darker.
The intentions of the United States have been obvious for quite some time, given that the actions of its government are obligatorily measured to its own designs without any possible alternatives.
Its intention – being accustomed to the imposition of its designs by force – is that Israel should attack the enriched uranium facilities in Iran, utilizing the most modern aircraft and sophisticated weaponry that the superpower irresponsibly supplies it with. The United States suggested to Israel, which does not have a border with Iran, that it ask Saudi Arabia for permission to overfly a long and narrow air corridor, thus considerably reducing the distance between the take-off point for the attacking aircraft and the objectives to destroy.
According to the plan, essential parts of which have been made public by Israeli intelligence, waves of aircraft are to attack time and time again in order to obliterate the targets.
This past June 12, major Western newspapers published information on an air corridor granted by Saudi Arabia to Israel, following a previous agreement with the U.S. State Department, with the objective of making test flights with Israeli hunter bombers for a surprise attack on Iran, and that these had already been carried out in Saudi Arabian airspace.
Israeli spokespersons did not deny that, but confined themselves to merely stating that the countries mentioned were more afraid of Iranian nuclear development than Israel itself.
On June 13, when the London Times published information taken from intelligence sources, confirming that Saudi Arabia had announced an agreement authorizing Israel to pass through an air corridor over its territory for an attack on Iran, President Ahmadinejad stated, on receiving the accreditation letters of Mohamad ibn Abbas al Kalabi, the new Saudi ambassador in Tehran, that there were many enemies who did not want close relations between the two countries. “But if Iran and Saudi Arabia remain by each other’s sides, those enemies will give up continuing their aggression.”
From the Iranian point of view, in my judgment, that statement was justified, whatever the reasons were for making it. It is quite possible that he did not wish to hurt his Arab neighbors in the slightest way.
The yankis have not uttered a single word, only to reflect more than ever their ardent desire to sweep away the nationalist government that is leading Iran.
One now has to ask, when the Security Council analyses the sinking of the Cheonan, the flagship of the South Korean Navy: what conduct it will follow after the fingers on the triggers of the weapons on the Korean peninsula fire those weapons; and if it is a certain fact or not that Saudi Arabia, in agreement with the State Department, has authorized an air corridor so that waves of modern Israeli bombers can attack Iranian facilities, possibly even employing nuclear weapons supplied by the United States.
Diabolical news is filtering little by little between games and games in the World Cup, in a way that nobody is paying much attention to it.
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 16, 2010
8:17 p.m.