Military budgets always count on
the support of the immense majority of American legislators.
There is hardly any state in the Union where employment does not
depend in part on the defense industries.
On a global level and with
constant value, military expenses have doubled in the last 10
years as if there were no danger at all of any crisis. At this
moment, it is the most prosperous industry on the planet.
By 2008, approximately 1.5
trillion dollars were invested in defense budgets. The US spends
42% of world expenses in this area --607 billion- - not
including war expenses, while the number of people who go hungry
in the world has reached the figure of 1 billion.
Two days ago a western news
dispatch informed that in mid-August the US army exhibited a
tele-guided helicopter along with robots capable of working as
sappers, 2500 of which have been sent into combat zones.
A company marketing robots
maintained that the new technologies would revolutionize the
manner of directing the war. It has been published that in 2003
the US barely had enough robots in its arsenal and, according to
AFP, “today it has 10,000 land vehicles as well as 7000 air
devices, from the small Raven that can be hand-launched right up
to the gigantic Global Hawk, a spy plane 13 meters long and with
a 35 meter wingspan capable of flying at great altitudes for 35
hours.” This dispatch lists other weapons as well.
While the United States is
spending such huge figures in killing technology, the president
of that country is sweating buckets trying to bring health
services to 50 million Americans who don’t have them.
There is such confusion that the
new president said that he felt he was closer than ever to
achieving reform of the health care system but that the battle
is becoming fierce.
He added that the story is clear,
that every time health care reforms seem closer on the horizon,
special interests fight with everything they’ve got applying
their leverage, launching publicity campaigns and using their
political allies to scare the American people.
The fact is that in Los Angeles
8000 people –most of them unemployed, according to the press–
turned up in a stadium to receive medical care from a traveling
free clinic that provides services to the Third World. The
crowds had spent the night there. Some of them had traveled from
as far away as hundreds of miles.
“’What do I care whether it’s
socialist or not? We’re the only country in the world where the
most vulnerable people have nothing’, said a college-educated
woman from a black neighborhood.”
According to the report “a blood
test can cost 500 dollars and a routine dental treatment more
than 1000 dollars.”
What kind of hope can that society
offer the world?
The lobbyists in Congress make
their profits working against a simple law intended to provide
medical care to tens of millions of poor people, mostly blacks
and Latinos who lack it. Even a blockaded country like Cuba has
been able to do it and is even cooperating with dozens of
countries in the Third World.
If robots in the hands of the
transnationals can replace imperial soldiers in the wars of
conquest, who will stop the transnationals in their quest for a
market for their artifacts? Just as they have flooded the world
with automobiles that today compete with mankind for the
consumption of non-renewable energy and even foods converted
into fuel, so too they can flood the world with robots that
would displace millions of workers from their workplaces.
Better yet, scientists could also
design robots capable of governing; that way they could spare
the US government and Congress that terrible, contradictory and
confusing work.
No doubt they would do it better
and cheaper.
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 19, 2009
3:15 p.m.
