A science fiction story

HOW I regret having to criticize Obama, knowing that in that country there are other potential presidents worse than him. I understand that in the United States that office is currently a tremendous headache. Perhaps nothing could explain it better than the information in yesterday’s Granma that 237 members of the U.S. Congress; in other words, 44% of them, are millionaires. That does not mean that every one of them is obliged to be an incorrigible reactionary, but it is very difficult that they might think like any of the many millions of U.S. citizens who lack medical care, are unemployed or have to work hard to earn a living.
Obama, of course, is not a beggar, he possesses millions of dollars. As a professional he was outstanding; his domination of language, his eloquence and his intelligence are undisputed. Despite being an African American he was elected president for the first time in the history of his country in a racist society that is suffering from a profound international economic crisis, the responsibility for which falls upon itself.
It is not about being or not being anti-American, as the system and its colossal media try to describe its adversaries.
The U.S. people are not responsible for, but the victims of an unsustainable system and, what is worse, one that is now incompatible with the life of humanity.
The intelligent and rebel Obama who had to endure humiliation and racism during his childhood and youth understands that, but the Obama who is educated and committed to the system and the methods that led him to the presidency of the United States cannot resist the temptation to pressure, threaten and even deceive others.
He is obsessive in his work; possibly no other president of the United States would be capable of committing himself to a program as intensive as the one that he proposes to undertake in the next eight days.
According to his program, a wide-ranging tour will take him to Alaska, where he is to talk with troops deployed there; to Japan, Singapore, the People’s Republic of China and South Korea; he is to take part in the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); he will have talks with the prime minister of Japan and His Majesty Emperor Akihito in the Land of the Rising Sun; the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang; of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, and of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao; he will give speeches and press conferences; he will carry his nuclear briefcase that we trust he will not need to use during his accelerated tour.
His security adviser has informed that he is to discuss with the president of Russia extending the START-1 Treaty, which expires on December 5, 2009. Certain reductions in the enormous nuclear arsenal will doubtless be agreed, without significance for the economy and world peace.
What is our illustrious friend thinking of taking on during his intensive voyage? The White House has solemnly announced it: climate change, economic recovery, nuclear disarmament, the war in Afghanistan, the risks of war in Iran and in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is enough material here to write a book of fiction.
But how is Obama going to resolve climate problems if the position of his representation in the preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen Summit on greenhouse gas emissions was the worst of all the industrialized and rich countries, both in Bangkok and in Barcelona, because the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, nor is that country’s oligarchy disposed to genuinely cooperate.
How is he going to contribute to the solution of the grave economic problems affecting a large part of humanity, when the total debt of the United States – which includes federal government, state and local governments, companies and families – amounted at the end of 2008 to $57 trillion, equivalent to more than 400% of its GDP, and when that country’s budget deficit rose to close to 13% of its GDP in the fiscal year 2009, a figure that Obama is doubtless aware of.
What can he offer Hu Jintao when his policy has been openly protectionist in order to hit Chinese exports; when he is demanding at all costs that the Chinese government should revalue the yuan, which would affect growing Third World imports proceeding from China.
The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff – who is not a disciple of Karl Marx, but an honest Catholic, one of those who is not prepared to cooperate with imperialism in Latin America – recently affirmed: "…we are risking our destruction and the devastation of the diversity of life."
"…almost half of humanity is now living below the poverty level. The richest 20% consume 82.49% of all the Earth’s wealth and the 20% poorest have to sustain themselves with a miniscule 1.6%." He quotes the FAO warning that "…in the coming years there will be between 150 and 200 million climate refugees." And he adds that in his estimate: "humanity is now consuming 30% more than its reposition capacity… The Earth is showing unequivocal signs that it cannot take any more."
What he affirms is a fact, but Obama and the U.S. Congress have not as yet heard that.
What is he leaving us in the hemisphere? The shameful problem of Honduras and the annexation of Colombia, in which country the United States is to install seven military bases. They also established a military base in Cuba more than 100 years ago and still occupy it by force. On it they installed the horrific torture center known worldwide, which Obama has been unable to close as yet.
I sustain the belief that before Obama concludes his mandate there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America allied to the empire. Likewise in the near future, the most right-wing sector in the United States will try to limit his mandate to a period of four years. A Nixon, a Bush or somebody like Cheney will once again be new presidents. Then one would see with all clarity the significance of those absolutely unjustifiable military bases that are now threatening all the peoples of South America on the pretext of combating drug trafficking, a problem created by the tens of billions of dollars from the United States being injected into organized crime and drug production in Latin America.
Cuba has demonstrated that in order to combat drugs what is needed is justice and social development. In our country, the crime figure per every 100,000 inhabitants is one of the lowest in the world. No other [country] in the hemisphere can show such low indices of violence. It is known that in spite of the blockade, none other possesses such high educational levels.
The peoples of Latin America will know how to resist the onslaughts of the empire!
Obama’s tour would seem to be a science fiction story.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 11, 2009
7:16 p.m.

Food stamp usage at record levels - America the hungry

A front-page report in Sunday’s New York Times, detailing the skyrocketing rise in food stamp use, provides a far different picture of America at the end of 2009 than the complacent assurances of economic “recovery” voiced by Wall Street and the Obama administration.

The Times conducted a statistical analysis of food stamp use by county, in an effort to present a more detailed social portrait of the 36 million people currently on the food stamp rolls. “They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare,” the report noted.

Among the significant findings:

* In 239 counties, more than a quarter of the population receives food stamps.
* In more than 750 counties, at least one in three African-Americans receives food stamps.
* In more than 800 counties, more than one-third of all children depend on food stamps.
* In 62 counties, food stamp rolls have doubled over the past two years.
* In 205 counties, food stamp rolls are up by two-thirds.

The geographical dispersal of the mounting social need for food is staggering, from traditional centers of poverty such as rural Appalachia and inner-city urban ghettos to the suburbs built up in the Sunbelt in the last two decades. The map showing the counties where food stamp usage is growing most rapidly includes the affluent Atlanta suburbs, most of the state of Florida, most of Wisconsin, western and northern Ohio, and most of the Mountain West, including large swathes of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho.

While unemployment is the main trigger of rising food stamp usage, the immediate economic cause varies widely, from the collapse of the housing bubble in the southwestern states and Florida, to the collapse of the auto industry in the Great Lakes region, to the layoffs sweeping through white collar America as the recession worsens.

The Times notes the impact on affluent suburban areas, long dominated by the Republican Party, where food stamp usage has more than doubled since the official start of the slump in December 2007, such as Orange County, California and Forsyth County, Georgia. Food stamp use has grown more slowly, in percentage terms, in cities like Detroit, St. Louis and New Orleans, but only because so much of their populations were already living in poverty and receiving food assistance when the slump began.

All these figures significantly understate the level of social deprivation. An estimated 18 million people who are eligible for food stamps do not receive them, partly because of institutional barriers like inadequate outreach services, particularly to immigrant communities—the state of California reaches only half of those eligible—and partly because of the social stigma attached to receiving “welfare,” especially in suburban areas where impoverishment has been a sudden and recent event.

According to a study by Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell University and Mark R. Rank of Washington University in St. Louis, half the children in America will depend on food stamps at some point during their childhood. The figure rises to 90 percent for black children. The study was published this month in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Since it is based on analyzing 29 years of data, the latter study gives a picture of the levels of social need during a period when unemployment averaged well below the 10.2 percent mark hit last month. A protracted period of double-digit unemployment—now widely predicted by business and government economists—will make more and more children dependent on federal aid to meet their basic nutritional needs.

The findings of both these studies confirm the conclusions of a US Department of Agriculture survey released November 16 that found 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, were not consistently getting enough food to eat in 2008. The vast majority of the 17 million families struggling to put food on the table had at least one employed worker in the household, but with wages too low to ensure basic necessities. The level of food insecurity was the highest since the USDA began keeping records in 1995.

These figures demonstrate that for American working people, the social reality today is the worst since the Great Depression. Some 30 million people are unemployed or underemployed. Nearly 50 million lack health insurance. Nearly 50 million have difficulty feeding themselves and their children. Some 40 million live below the official poverty line, and the figure would rise to 80 million if a realistic family budget were used as the yardstick.

Young people face the greatest challenge. According to a Pew Research Center report issued last week, 10 percent of adults under 35 have moved back with their parents due to the recession. More than half of men 18 to 24 were still living with their parents, and 48 percent of young women. The proportion of young people with jobs—46 percent—is the lowest since records began in 1948.

These figures are an indictment of American capitalism and its criminal sabotage of the productive forces of society. How is it possible that in a country whose agriculture is so productive that it can literally feed the world, tens of millions of people struggle to feed their children and themselves? It is because production and distribution take place on the basis of private profit, and feeding hungry children is far less profitable for the ruling elite than speculation in the financial markets.

These figures are also an indictment of the political representatives of big business in the Obama administration and the Democratic and Republican parties. Apparently hunger, like unemployment, is viewed by Obama merely as a “lagging indicator”—something that the American people simple have to endure, but not a crisis, not even a cause to lift a finger.

Having funneled trillions into the financial system, to ensure a return to profitability and seven-figure bonuses on Wall Street, and set his course for military escalation in Afghanistan at the cost of countless billions, Obama is now declaring that his top domestic priority is deficit reduction. After Wall Street and war, there will be little or nothing left over to meet the needs of hungry children—or their parents.

Patrick Martin