Tomorrow will be a day of great significance. The world will be following the elections in the United States. It is the most powerful nation on Earth.

With less than 5% of the world’s population, every year it consumes great amounts of oil and gas, minerals, raw materials, consumer goods and sophisticated products brought from overseas. Many of  these, particularly the fuels and those extracted from mines, are non-renewable.

It is the largest producer and exporter of weaponry. Its industrial military complex also has an insatiable domestic market. The army and navy deploy personnel in scores of military basis located in the territories of other nations. The United States strategic warhead-carrying missiles can reach any place in the world with absolute precision.

Placed at the service of the system are a great number of the cleverest minds in the world, uprooted from their countries of origin. It is a parasitical and plundering empire.

It is a known fact that the black population introduced in the US territory throughout centuries of slavery is the victim of a marked racial discrimination.

The Democratic candidate Obama is partly black; the dark skin and features of that race are predominant in him. He was able to study at a higher education center where he graduated with outstanding results. He is surely cleverer, better educated and calmer than his Republican adversary is.

I¹m analyzing tomorrow’s elections when the world is enduring a serious financial crisis,  ¬the worst since the 1930s,  among many others which have seriously affected the economy of many nations in the course of over three fourths of a century.

The international media, the political analysts and commentators are using part of their time to discuss the issue. Obama largely considered the best political orator of the United States in the past decades.

His compatriot Toni Morrison, a 1993 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature and first from her ethnic background born in the United States awarded such a prize --an excellent author-- has referred to him as the future President and poet of that nation.

I have been watching the struggle between the contenders. The black candidate caused much amazement with his nomination in the face of strong adversaries. He has well articulated ideas, which he hammers repeatedly into the voters´ minds. He does not hesitate to claim that more than Republicans or Democrats they are all Americans, the citizens he qualifies as the most productive in the world. He says he will reduce taxes for the middle class, where he includes practically everybody, while he will completely remove them for the poorest and raise them for the wealthiest.
The revenues, he claims, will not be used to bailout the banks.

He insists repeatedly that the American taxpayers will not pay the ruinous spending of Bush´s war in Iraq.

He will put an end to it and bring the US troops back home. Perhaps he is mindful of the fact that that country had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The blood of thousands of US troops has been shed, killed or injured in battle, and over a million lives have been squandered  in that Muslim nation. It was a war of conquest imposed by the empire seeking oil.

In light of the current financial crisis and its consequences, the American people are more concerned over the economy than the war in Iraq. They are anguishing over their jobs, the safety of their bank deposits and their retirement funds, and the fear of loosing the purchasing power of their money and the houses where they live with their families. They wish to have the certainty that whatever the circumstances they will receive adequate medical care and that their children will accede to higher education.

Obama is challenging and I think he has taken and will still take great risks in a country where any extremist can legally purchase a sophisticated modern weapon anywhere, as it was the case in the first half of the 18th century in the west of the United States. He supports the system and will be supported by it. The pressing problems of the world are not really a major source of concern for Obama, much less to the candidate who as a war pilot dropped scores of tons of bombs on Hanoi City, more than 9,375 miles away from Washington, with no remorse.

When last Thursday I addressed a letter to Lula, in addition to what I already mentioned in my Reflections of October 31, I wrote:

“Racism and discrimination have been present in the American society ever since its birth, over two centuries ago. Latin Americans and blacks have always been discriminated against there. Its citizens have been brought up in a consumer society. Humanity is objectively threatened by its weapons of mass destruction.”

”The American people are more concerned over the economy than the Iraq war McCain is an old, confrontational and uneducated man; he is not very smart and he is in poor health.”

Finally, I said, “If my estimates were wrong and racism would still prevail and the Republican candidate won the Presidency, the danger of a war would increase and the peoples´ opportunities to progress would be reduced. Nevertheless, we need to fight and to build awareness about this, whoever it is who wins this election.”

When these views that I sustain are published tomorrow, nobody will have time to say that I wrote something that could be used by any candidate to advance his campaign. I had to be, and I have been, neutral in this electoral contest. It is not “prying in the internal affairs of the United States”, as the State Department would put it, respectful as it is of other countries´ sovereignty.

Fidel Castro Ruz

November 3, 2008

4:10 p.m.