Two days ago, I was watching Vanessa Davies on her program "Contragolpe" on Venezolana de Televisión's Channel 8. She was talking to and multiplying her questions to Basem Tajeldine, an intelligent, honest Venezuelan whose face radiated his integrity. At the moment when I turned on the television, they were dealing with my position on the fact that only Obama was able to hold back disaster.

Immediately, the idea of the vast power being attributed to him came to the mind of the historian. And so it is, without the shadow of a doubt. But we are thinking about two different powers.

The real power in the United States is wielded by the powerful oligarchy of the multimillionaires who govern not only that country but also the world: the enormous power of the Bilderberg Club described by Daniel Estulin, created by the Rockefellers, and the Trilateral Commission.

The US military apparatus with its security bodies is much more powerful than Barak Obama, the president of the United States. He did not create that apparatus, nor did the apparatus create him. The exceptional circumstances of the economic crisis and the war were the main factors that brought a descendant of the most discriminated against sector in the United States, gifted with culture and intelligence, to the post he now holds.

What does Obama`s power come from at this time? Why do I state that war or peace will depend on him? Let`s hope that the exchange between the journalist and the historian will serve to clarify the matter.

I shall put it in another way: the famous briefcase with its codes and the button to launch a nuclear bomb came up because of the terrible decision that this signified, the devastating nature of the weapon, and the necessity of not losing even a split-second. Kennedy and Khrushchev went through that experience, and Cuba was on the brink of becoming the first target of a massive attack by just those weapons.

I still recall the agony evident in the questions Kennedy indicated that the French journalist Jean Daniel should ask me when he learned that he would be coming to Cuba to meet with me. "Does Castro realize just how close we were to a world war?" He mentioned that he should return to Washington again to talk with him. This is a story we know well.

The subject was so interesting that I invited him to go out of Havana, and we were dealing with the matter well into the morning in a house by the ocean at famous Varadero Beach.

Nobody needed to tell us anything because I was immediately told of the attack and we tuned in to an American radio station. At the same instant, we were informed that several shots had mortally wounded the president of the United States.

Mercenary hands had perpetrated the assassination.

For the right wing in the United States, including the CIA mercenaries who landed in the Bay of Pigs, he had not been sufficiently tough with Cuba.

Since then almost half a century has gone by. The world changed; much more than 20,000 nuclear weapons were developed; their destructive power is equivalent to almost 450 times that which destroyed the city of Hiroshima. Anybody has the right to wonder: what is the use of the nuclear briefcase? Could a president perhaps direct something as sophisticated and complex as a nuclear war?

Such a briefcase is as symbolic as the sceptre held by the president's hand, pure fiction.

The only significant fact is that there is a Constitution in the United States; it establishes that in all the country there is just one person who may declare war and this is now more important than ever since a nuclear war can break out in a minute and perhaps it may last one day.

Therefore, I can ask several questions. Is there anyone else other than the president that can start the war? Did Kennedy himself need some other authority to attack the Bay of Pigs and afterwards declare war on Vietnam? Or Johnson in order to escalate the war? Or Nixon to overwhelmingly bomb that country? Or Reagan to invade Grenada? Or Bush Sr. to attack the cities of Panama and Colón, raze the poor El Chorillo neighbourhood killing thousands of poor people there on December 20, 1989? Did Clinton need it to attack Serbia and create Kosovo? Or Bush Jr. for his dreadful invasion of Iraq? I am mentioning in their order only some of the empire's most known villainous acts. Until today, Obama has only been the recipient of the heritage.

Old ways of thinking do not easily adapt to the new realities.

Well then. I have presented the idea; not the idea that Obama is powerful or super-powerful. He prefers to play basketball or to make speeches. Besides, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Michael Moore urged him now to actually deserve it. Perhaps nobody would ever have imagined, and he the least of all, the idea that in this final phase of 2010, if he observes the instructions of the United Nations Security Council, which perhaps are firmly being urged by a South Korean named Ban Ki-moon, he will become responsible for the disappearance of the human race.

I am ready to continue discussing on the subject.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 22, 2010