FIDEL CASTRO highlights the latest military plotting by Washington.

I hope I am this politically active and on the case when I am 80.

I fear when I am 80 we will all be on the set of Mad Max, with roving bands led by Tina Turner fighting over tanks of biofuel in the deserts of Berkshire.


I will probably have to learn how to fire a cross bow so that people don't steal my compost.....oh well. This being Windsor, the Royal Family will hole up in the castle and oppress the local feudal population..Les Vampires continue to vamp plus la change.

I predict by 2046 we will have a Green Party government in England and Wales.

Or may be just may be the best of the Latin American ecoleft will restore green civilisation and we will live well. Anyway on to Fidel

The 4th intervention fleet
(Thursday 08 May 2008)
FIDEL CASTRO


IT came into being in 1943 as a means of combating nazi submarines and protecting navigation routes during the second world war.

It was decommissioned in 1950, when it became superfluous. The US Southern Command was designed to meet Washington's hegemonic needs in our region at the time.

After 48 years, however, the Fourth Fleet has been resurrected and its interventionist aims need not be proved - US military chiefs themselves divulge this in a natural, spontaneous and, at times, discrete fashion.

The decision to reassemble the Fourth Fleet was announced in the first week of April, almost a month after Ecuadorian territory had been attacked by Colombia using US bombs and technology and owing to US pressure, killing or wounding citizens of several countries.

This act was vigorously condemned by Latin American leaders at the Rio Group meeting held in the Dominican Republic's capital.

Worst still, the fleet's establishment comes at a time when the dismemberment of Bolivia, encouraged by the United States, has attracted nearly unanimous condemnation.

US military chiefs themselves have explained that they will be responsible for over 30 countries and for covering 15.6 million square miles of neighbouring waters in both central and south America, the Caribbean Sea and its 12 islands, Mexico and the European territories this side of the Atlantic.

The US has 10 Nimitz aircraft carriers whose parameters, more or less similar, are: a maximum load capacity of between 101,000 and 104,000 tons, a 999-feet-long and 230.4-feet-wide deck, two nuclear reactors, a maximum speed of 35 miles per hour and capacity for 90 war planes.

The last Nimitz ship to be commissioned bears the name of George HW Bush, the current president's father. It has already been baptised with a bottle of champagne by the progenitor himself and should be ready to join the other vessels in coming months.

No other country in the world can boast of vessels like these. They are equipped with sophisticated nuclear weapons and able to get within a few miles of any of our countries.

The next aircraft carrier to be commissioned, the USS Gerald Ford, will be a new type of vessel which employs stealth technologies that cannot be detected by radar and electromagnetic weapons.

The main manufacturer of the two types of vessels is Northrop Grumman, whose current president is also a member of the board of directors of the US oil company Chevron-Texaco. The last Nimitz cost six billion dollars. This did not include the cost of the planes, projectiles or operations, which can also reach figures in the billions.

It sounds like a science fiction story. With that money, the lives of millions of children could have been saved.

What is the declared objective of the 4th Fleet? "To combat terrorism and illegal activities such as drug trafficking," not to mention sending a message to Venezuela and the rest of the region. It has been announced that it will begin operations next July 1.

Head of the Southern Command US Navy Admiral James Stavrides has stated that the US needs to work harder in "the market of ideas, to win over the hearts and minds" of the people in the region.

The US has already deployed the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh fleets in the Western Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Eastern Atlantic and Western Pacific Oceans. The Fourth Fleet was needed to patrol all the seas worldwide.

The US has a total of nine Nimitz aircraft carriers active or nearly ready for combat, such as the George HW Bush.

It has sufficient reserves to triple or quadruple the power of any of its fleets in a given theatre of operations.

The aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs that our countries are threatened with serve to spread terror and death, but not to combat terrorism and illegal activities.

They should also serve to fill the empire's lackeys with shame and strengthen solidarity among the world's peoples.

Fidel Castro Ruz is former president of Cuba.