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Reflections of Fidel
The empire and the robots
(Taken from
CubaDebate)
A
little while ago, I wrote about U.S. plans to impose
the absolute superiority of its air force as an
instrument of domination over the rest of the world.
I mentioned the project of that country possessing
more than 1,000 state-of-the-art F-22 and F-35
bombers and fighter planes in its fleet of 2,500
military aircraft. By 20 years later, the totality
of its warplanes will be robot-operated.
Military budgets always have the majority support of
U.S. legislators. There are very few states where
employment is not at least partially dependent on
the defense industry.
On a global level and constant value, military costs
have doubled in the last 10 years, as if no danger
of crisis existed at all. At this juncture it is the
most prosperous industry on the planet.
In 2008, approximately $1.5 trillion was invested in
defense budgets. Forty-two percent of world spending
on defense, or $607 billion, corresponded to the
United States, not including war expenditures, while
the number of hungry in the world reached the figure
of one billion people.
A Western news agency reported two days ago that in
mid-August the U.S. army exhibited a
remote-controlled helicopter, as well as robots
capable of doing the work of sappers, 2,500 of which
have been sent to combat zones.
A robot marketing company maintained that new
technologies are revolutionizing the ways of
commanding war. It has been published that in 2003
the United States had next to no robots in its
arsenal but “today it has — according to AFP —
10,000 ground vehicles and 7,000 aircraft, from the
little Raven, which can be launched with one hand,
to the giant Global Hawk, a spy plane of 13 meters
in length and 35 in wingspan capable of flying at a
great height for 35 hours.” Other weapons are listed
in that dispatch.
While that colossal expenditure on technologies for
killing is taking place in the
United States,
the president of that country is sweating blood in
order to bring health services to 50 million U.S.
citizens who lack them. The confusion is so great
that the new president affirmed that reform of the
health system was closer than ever but “the battle
is turning ugly.”
“But now’s the hard part,” he added. “Because the
history is clear – every time we come close to
passing health insurance reform, the special
interests with a stake in the status quo use their
influence and political allies to scare and mislead
the American people.”
It is a true fact that in Los Angeles, 8,000 people
– the majority of them unemployed, according to the
press – gathered in a stadium to receive medical
attention from a free traveling clinic that provides
services in the Third World. Most of them had waited
there overnight. Some of them had traveled from
hundreds of kilometers away.
“‘What do I care if it’s socialist or not? We are
the only country in the world where the most
vulnerable of us have nothing,’ said a woman from a
black neighborhood and with higher education.”
It was noted that a “blood test could cost $500 and
routine dental treatment more than $1,000.”
What hope can that society offer the world?
Congressional lobbyists are spending their August
working against a simple bill that is an attempt to
provide medical care to tens of millions of poor
people — the vast majority of them black or Latino —
who lack that service. Even a blockaded country like
Cuba has been able to do that and, moreover,
cooperate with dozens of
Third World
countries.
If robots in the hands of the transnationals can
replace the imperial soldiers in wars of conquest,
who will detain the transnationals in the search for
markets for their artifacts? Just as they have
inundated the world with automobiles that are now
competing with humans for the consumption of
non-renewable energy and even for foodstuffs
converted into fuel, they can also inundate it with
robots that will displace millions of workers in
their workplaces.
Better still, scientists can likewise design robots
capable of governing; thus sparing the government
and Congress of the United States that horrible,
contradictory and confused labor.
No doubt they would do it better and more cheaply.
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 19, 2009
3:15 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
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