Dear Comrades,
In Jewish families, upon the death of a loved one, it is customary for the family to observe a week of grieving during which friends come to the home of the deceased to comfort the family. This practice is known as "sitting Shiva (Shiva in Hebrew means seven)." Helen's daughter, Suzanne, and Helen's partner, Bob, will be sitting Shiva at Helen and Bob's apartment from Tuesday, 3/30 through Friday, 4/2 from 5-8 PM and on Saturday, 4/3 from 1-4 PM. The address is 30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23 in Farmington Hills (The Hunters Ridge apartment complex is located near the intersection of Orchard Lake and Fourteen Mile Roads.). It is customary, but not required, to bring food for the family.
In Solidarity,
David Green, Chair
Detroit DSA
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
An interesting analysis: Reflections of Fidel Health reform in the United States
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. March 25, 2010
http://tinyurl. com/yk78mlc
Reflections of Fidel
Health reform in the United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system
imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he
ends his speeches.
Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with
sympathy the African-American candidate?s victory over that country?s
extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic
crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans
who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor?s
genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of
Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.
Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from
accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000
soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.
The current administration?s militarist policies, its plunder of natural
resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World
are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them
extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.
The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the
international community ? which had given credit to his promise to cooperate
in the fight against climate change ? was another act that disappointed many
people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse
gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet
words of its president beforehand.
It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which
the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the
egotistic policies of that colossal empire.
In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the
U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle,
and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something
truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in
Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists,
that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the
vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire
population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade
imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed.
Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody
war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.
On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than
one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines
essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as
climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a
globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing,
agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in
which the human species that inhabits it ? which emerged less than 200,000
years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life
emerged on the planet ? is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.
Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government,
the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to
health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world?s nations,
when the increase in temperatures ? beyond the critical limits that are in
sight ? is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of
millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in
the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen
years, leaving underwater all of the world?s port facilities and the lands
where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and
works.
Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists
and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for
them not to know it.
I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and
recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who
made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the
government?s position vis-?-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who
are limiting the administration?s faculties. It would be worse if those who
engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy
the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and
sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not
clouding his intelligence.
In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all
Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American,
Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization
of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the
hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in
which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to
their countries.
The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of
the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United
States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result
of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family
remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies.
They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act
was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession
of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against
illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?
The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti ? the poorest country in Latin
America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that
involved the death of more than 200,000 people ? and the terrible economic
damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence
of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for
drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.
The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense
economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not
be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President
Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with
his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being
the model for humanity he extols.
Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of
discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he
knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he
was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the
privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social
system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of
Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral
victory.
Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an
extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate
to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in
various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.
The problems of our era are far more serious still.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international
credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing
the large U.S. banks ? the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for
the financial chaos on the planet ? to be kept afloat by the government of
that country in each one of the system?s frequent and growing crises.
The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that
pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial
complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large
investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries
in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into
gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of
gold, something more than 25% of the world?s reserves of this metal, a
figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued
that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP,
like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is
affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that
debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to
acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country
have taken over a considerable part of the world?s wealth, and which sustain
that nation?s consumer society.
Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the
wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a
system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in
world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the
principal Internet networks.
Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of
climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity
in an exceptional dilemma.
Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major
contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but,
in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival
possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current
intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.
A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant
scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems
on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance
that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years
distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second ? if
there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of
that sun.
The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water
on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or
exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific
curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our
planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.
The new laws of science ? based on Einstein?s theories on energy and matter
and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and
infinite stars or other hypotheses ? have given way to profound changes in
fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying
theologians? attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei
Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision
hol?stica del Universe (The Artist?s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe),
launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.
Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional
approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and
even in philosophy and theology.
The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge
is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama?s thinking on
the compatibility of consumer societies with science.
Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on
those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things
with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty ? at
least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and
essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
Havana. March 25, 2010
http://tinyurl.
Reflections of Fidel
Health reform in the United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system
imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he
ends his speeches.
Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with
sympathy the African-American candidate?s victory over that country?s
extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic
crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans
who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor?s
genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of
Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.
Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from
accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000
soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.
The current administration?s militarist policies, its plunder of natural
resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World
are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them
extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.
The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the
international community ? which had given credit to his promise to cooperate
in the fight against climate change ? was another act that disappointed many
people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse
gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet
words of its president beforehand.
It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which
the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the
egotistic policies of that colossal empire.
In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the
U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle,
and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something
truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in
Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists,
that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the
vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire
population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade
imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed.
Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody
war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.
On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than
one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines
essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as
climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a
globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing,
agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in
which the human species that inhabits it ? which emerged less than 200,000
years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life
emerged on the planet ? is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.
Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government,
the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to
health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world?s nations,
when the increase in temperatures ? beyond the critical limits that are in
sight ? is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of
millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in
the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen
years, leaving underwater all of the world?s port facilities and the lands
where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and
works.
Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists
and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for
them not to know it.
I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and
recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who
made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the
government?s position vis-?-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who
are limiting the administration?s faculties. It would be worse if those who
engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy
the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and
sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not
clouding his intelligence.
In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all
Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American,
Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization
of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the
hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in
which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to
their countries.
The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of
the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United
States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result
of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family
remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies.
They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act
was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession
of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against
illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?
The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti ? the poorest country in Latin
America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that
involved the death of more than 200,000 people ? and the terrible economic
damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence
of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for
drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.
The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense
economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not
be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President
Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with
his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being
the model for humanity he extols.
Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of
discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he
knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he
was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the
privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social
system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of
Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral
victory.
Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an
extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate
to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in
various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.
The problems of our era are far more serious still.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international
credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing
the large U.S. banks ? the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for
the financial chaos on the planet ? to be kept afloat by the government of
that country in each one of the system?s frequent and growing crises.
The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that
pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial
complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large
investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries
in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into
gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of
gold, something more than 25% of the world?s reserves of this metal, a
figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued
that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP,
like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is
affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that
debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to
acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country
have taken over a considerable part of the world?s wealth, and which sustain
that nation?s consumer society.
Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the
wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a
system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in
world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the
principal Internet networks.
Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of
climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity
in an exceptional dilemma.
Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major
contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but,
in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival
possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current
intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.
A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant
scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems
on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance
that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years
distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second ? if
there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of
that sun.
The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water
on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or
exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific
curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our
planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.
The new laws of science ? based on Einstein?s theories on energy and matter
and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and
infinite stars or other hypotheses ? have given way to profound changes in
fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying
theologians? attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei
Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision
hol?stica del Universe (The Artist?s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe),
launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.
Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional
approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and
even in philosophy and theology.
The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge
is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama?s thinking on
the compatibility of consumer societies with science.
Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on
those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things
with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty ? at
least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and
essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
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