2257. Researchers Study the Benefits of Psychedelics

By Daniel Miller, The Washington Post, April 1, 2016

In 1970, Congress dropped psychedelics into the war on drugs. After a decade of Timothy Leary, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and news reports of gruesome murders, the federal government declared that the drugs had no medical use — and high potential for abuse. The chairman of New Jersey’s Narcotic Drug Study Commission called LSD “the greatest threat facing the country today . . . more dangerous than the Vietnam War.”

But over the past decade, some scientists have begun to challenge that conclusion. Far from being harmful, they found, hallucinogens can help sick people: They helped alcoholics drink less; terminal patients eased more gently into death. And it’s not just the infirm who are helped by the drugs. Psychedelics can make the healthy healthier, too.

On this subject, only a handful of peer-reviewed studies have been conducted; sample sizes are tiny. There’s still a great deal researchers don’t know. But early results suggest that, when used by people without a family history or risk of psychological problems, psychedelics can make us kinder, calmer and better at our jobs. They can help us solve problems more creatively and make us more open-minded and generous. Some experiments even suggest that a single dose can change our personalities forever.

Is it possible that a drug labeled as one of the most destructive and dangerous could make everyone’s lives better?

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Americans have had a complicated history with psychedelics like LSD, magic mushrooms and peyote. In the 1950s, researchers began to investigate whether psychedelics could treat mental-health disorders and addiction. Between 1953 and 1973, the federal government funded 116 studies on the subject, affecting thousands of people.

At the same time, large numbers of Americans started using these drugs recreationally. 

As many as 2 million had dropped acid by 1970. Stories about “bad trips” and psychotic breaks emerged in the press. In one widely publicized incident, a 5-year-old accidentally took her uncle’s drug; people got scared. Meanwhile, soldiers were returning from Vietnam addicted to heroin; the country felt like it was locked in battle with illegal drug use. By 1968, President Richard Nixon had declared drugs “public enemy number one.” Congress banned all psychedelic use in 1970, which made research nearly impossible.

Then, in the early 2000s, a handful of scientists began looking into psychedelics as a way to relieve anxiety and addiction. (They were drawn to the drugs after reviewing the work of researchers from the 1950s and ’60s.) These experiments were successful. In one study, cancer patients were given psilocybin, a component of psychedelic mushrooms. Each patient was given one dose and then allowed to trip in a hospital room designed to look like a living room. Two medical professionals stayed close by.

Afterward, almost all of the participants experienced a significant reduction in anxiety and depression. Scientists checked in with the patients six months later; all reported that they still felt calmer and happier. Volunteer Gail Thomas told me that the treatment helped her overcome a deep sense of loneliness. “The main message from the trip was that we’re all connected,” she said. “We’re not alone.”

“The fact that a drug given once can have such an effect for so long is an unprecedented finding,” NYU psychiatrist Stephen Ross told the New Yorker. “We have never had anything like it in the psychiatric field.”

Other researchers have tested the drug as a treatment for depression, addiction and other mental problems such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Remarkably, in each small trial, scientists saw incredible results.

In a 2014 smoking-cessation study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, 15 participants were given three doses of psilocybin under careful supervision by doctors. The participants were all heavy nicotine users, consuming about a pack a day for an average of 31 years. Six months later, 80 percent were cigarette-free — most smoking-cessation efforts are about 35 percent effective. In a 2015 alcoholism study, also peer-reviewed and published in Psychopharmacology, many of the 10 participants saw a significant decrease in drinking for at least nine months after one or two psilocybin experiences. In both studies, the psilocybin doses were coupled with therapy.

Here’s why scientists think it works: When someone takes a psychedelic, there is a decrease in blood flow and electrical activity in the brain’s “default mode network,” a group of brain structures found in the frontal and pre-frontal cortex. The default mode network is primarily responsible for our ego or sense of self; it “lights up” when we daydream or self-reflect.

When we trip, our default mode network slows down. With the ego out of commission, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object dissolve. These processes may be related to something called the “primary mystical experience,” a phenomena highly correlated with therapeutic outcomes. As Matthew Johnson, a principal investigator in Johns Hopkins’s psilocybin studies, explains, these experiences include a “transcendence of time and space,” a sense of unity and sacredness and a deeply felt positive mood.

Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuroscientist with Imperial College London, notes that the default mode network is responsible for a lot of our rigid, habitual thinking and obsessions. Psychedelics help relax the part of the brain that leads us to obsess, which makes us calmer. And they can help “loosen if not break” the entrenched physical circuits responsible for addictive behavior.

There’s also an increase in activity between different parts of the brain that don’t normally communicate — what scientists call “cross-talk.” That may be why we hallucinate while on psychedelics; the brain’s visual-processing centers are interacting in strange ways with the parts of the brain that control our beliefs and emotions.

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Of course, it’s not just the mentally ill who need to feel less isolated and obsessive, more fulfilled and creative. Research has shown that healthy people also benefit from the brain shift that psychedelics provide. Taking the drug even one time can fundamentally reshape our lives, making us happier and kinder, more productive at work and more open-minded. These findings are one of the reasons I became a psychedelics advocate.

In one study (admittedly, one that didn’t follow today’s rigorous research parameters) conducted at Harvard in 1962, 10 divinity school students were given psilocybin just before a Good Friday service. Eight reported a mystical experience. In the late 1980s, researcher and psychedelics advocate Rick Doblin interviewed seven of the students who’d taken the drug. All said that experience had shaped their lives and work in profound ways. But Doblin also found that several subjects experienced acute anxiety during their experiences. One participant had to be dosed with a powerful antipsychotic after he became convinced that he’d been chosen to announce the arrival of the Messiah and ran from the chapel.

In 2006, Johns Hopkins researchers tested whether psychedelics induce a mystical experience in healthy people. Thirty-six volunteers were given either a hallucinogen or a placebo at one session. In the second session, the pills were reversed. Six months later, the study participants said they were “more sensitive, compassionate, tolerant, to have increased positive relationships, an increased need to serve others,” according to a lead researcher. The doctors interviewed participants’ family members, friends and colleagues as well; they all confirmed that the study participants had become nicer and more pleasant.

The positive changes seen in this study persisted for at least 14 months. A third of the participants in the Hopkins study rated their psilocybin session as the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, even more important than the birth of a child or the death of a parent.

The 2006 study was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. In that issue, several prominent drug researchers were invited to comment; all praised the finding and called for additional research. Columbia University professor Herbert Kleber wrote that he saw “major therapeutic possibilities.”

In a 2011 study, 18 healthy volunteers were given four doses of psilocybin. The vast majority of participants reported prolonged positive changes in attitude and mood, feelings that lasted for at least 14 months. In follow-up research, scientists determined that many of the volunteers from both studies had undergone a change in personality, something that is supposed to remain relatively fixed after 30. Participants had become more open-minded, tolerant and interested in fantasy and imagination.

“People have certain fears and rigid perspectives and ways of seeing the world that often limit what they can do,” said Katherine MacLean, who led the personality research at Johns Hopkins. “A lot of people I saw go through the study as healthy people wanted to make certain changes in their life. And psilocybin helped them make these changes.”

2256. World’s First Plastic Fishing Company Wants to Rid the Oceans of Plastic Pollution

By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, April 1, 2016

The premise behind the Amsterdam-based venture Plastic Whale is beautifully simple. First, the company fishes out plastic bottles and other debris from the city’s numerous canals. Second, when enough bottles are collected, the plastic is transformed into material to make a boat. Third, the new boat is used to fish for more plastic bottles—to make more boats. Genius.

Plastic Whale captures debris and plastic waste from Amsterdam’s many canals. Thousands of discarded plastic bottles are repurposed into building materials for the company’s boats and even bottle caps are used to create a colorful mosaic for the boat’s floor. The company then uses the boats to fish for more trash to make more boats. Photo credit: Facebook/courtesy photos

The goal of Plastic Whale—which describes itself as the world’s first plastic fishing company—is to rid the world’s waters of plastic pollution. With an estimated 8 million tons of plastic trashentering our waterways annually, Plastic Whale is going to need a lot of boats.

Founder and captain Marius Smit, however, is up for the ambitious task. He tells EcoWatch that he not only envisions a world of plastic-free waters but also a world where people understand that everyday trash, such as plastic bottles, can be transformed into “a valuable raw material.”

Since its 2010 launch, the company has fished more than 50,000 plastic bottles and more than 10,000 kilos of various waste from the canals of Amsterdam, according to Smit.

Today, the company offers businesses and individuals plastic fishing tours on its total fleet of seven boats, all made from plastic bottles. One of its newest boats—created in partnership with Interface, the world’s largest carpet tile manufacturer—is made from more than 7,000 plastic bottles. As it turns out, the light and buoyant plastic from PET bottles make great boat building blocks.

Smit took the time to answer a few of EcoWatch’s questions via email:

EcoWatch: Besides boats, what else does your company do with the captured trash? 

Smit: All our boats are made from recycled Amsterdam canal plastic (plastic we fished from our canals). We use the bottle caps to create beautiful mosaics on the floors of our boats. Also, we started a new company WasteBoards, which makes unique skateboards from bottle caps.

EcoWatch: What is the most important thing you tell your Plastic Whale boat riders?

Smit: Obviously we tell them about the problem of plastic soup. But another important issue we tell them is that plastic should not be regarded as valueless waste, but as valuable raw material. We do this by creating beautiful design boats and unique skateboards; products that amaze and appeal to people. The root of the problem, as we see it, is that people regard plastic as a disposable. We try to change people’s perceptions.

EcoWatch: Have you seen a reduction in plastic waste or other debris in the waters?

Smit: It is quite hard to say, because the problem of plastic waste is quite enormous and we have more than 100 kilometers of canals in Amsterdam. Some people say that since we exist the problem has diminished, but I will not claim that. However, we can show the heaps of waste that we have fished from the canals. Without us, a large part would have ended up at sea.

EcoWatch: What inspired you to launch Plastic Whale?

Smit: Twelve years ago I was traveling the world for a year with my girlfriend. We visited beautiful and remote places. And everywhere we came, we saw plastic waste. One day we were staying on a pristine little beach on the North side of Borneo, near Kota Kinabalu. The weather was bad with a lot of on-land wind. When we arrived at the beach it was flooded with plastic debris. I was in shock, because North of Borneo there is nothing but sea for hundreds of miles. That’s when I was first introduced to the plastic soup phenomenon. And I decided that I wanted to do something about it.

When I came home, however, I got frustrated because I did not know where and how to start, because I was a loner. After a few years social media came up. All of a sudden I could connect with people all over the planet with the same mission, ideas or frustration as mine. I was inspired by JFK’s 1961 speech during which he portrayed a man on the moon, which had to be there before the end of the decade. At the time this challenge was impossible but relevant. And mostly, the clear vision of a man standing on the moon excited people. That combination of factors created cohesion and innovative spur. I came to the conclusion that today, because of social media, you don’t have to be called JFK anymore to create a following, but you have to create your own “man on the moon.”

So in 2011 I published my “man on the moon” via social media: “I want to build a boat made from plastic waste, yet I have never driven a boat let alone built one. So please help me!” It worked. Within weeks I was traveling through Holland to talk to people and organizations who wanted to help me.

Two years ago we presented our first boat (made from recycled Amsterdam Canal Plastic) and now we have a fleet of seven boats. We are a fast-growing company: the first professional plastic fishing company in the world.

Captain Marius Smit (center) and his Plastic Whale team.

EcoWatch: Why is fighting plastic waste important to you? What is your ultimate goal with the company?

Smit: Our ultimate goal is to make the world’s waters plastic-free. We won’t claim that we will just achieve that by ourselves, because the problem is simply to huge and complex. But we do want to make a positive contribution towards the solution. Before I started Plastic Whale I had a marketing position, which meant, in my view, getting people to buy things they really didn’t need. During my travels I decided that I wanted to get out of the office, to keep on traveling, leading an adventurous life and contributing something concrete and positive to the world. When I encountered the problem of plastic soup I realized that I had to do something about it. Now I have managed to create a company and a living for my colleagues and myself whilst we add something positive to the world.

2255. Drilling Is Making Oklahoma as Quake Prone as California

By Michael Wines, The New York Times, March 28, 2016

Californians have lived with the risk of a damaging earthquake for centuries. Now Oklahomans, and some Kansans, face the same threat, federal seismologists said on Monday.

In an assessment released by the United States Geological Survey, experts said the chance of a destructive temblor in the next year is as great in parts of north-central Oklahoma and southern Kansas — where oil-and-gas operations have set off man-made quakes for about five years — as it is in the shakiest parts of quake-prone California.

The warning came in the agency’s map of earthquake risks, a document that for the first time included the prospects for human-caused quakes.

“By including human-induced events, our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the U.S.,” Mark Petersen, the chief of the agency’s Natural Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, said in a news release.

Four other states where waste disposal has led to human-induced quakes — Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas — face considerably smaller risks of damaging tremors, the agency said. About seven million people live in the areas at risk of a human-induced earthquake, most of them in Oklahoma and Texas.

Over the last 15 years, those states have experienced an explosion in oil and gas production, which releases huge amounts of toxic wastewater. That wastewater is disposed of by re-injecting it into the ground, into rock formations thousands of feet below the surface, increasing the pressure on existing subterranean faults, and causing them to slip and produce tremors.

Along with the economic boom from oil and gas exploration, Oklahoma has experienced a rising number of earthquakes. In an average year, Oklahoma has historically had fewer than two quakes of magnitude 3 or greater — roughly the level at which a tremor can be felt. Kansas has had even fewer such shocks. But last year, Oklahoma recorded 907 quakes at magnitude 3 and above, and Kansas registered 54.

Oklahoma now ranks behind only Alaska in earthquake frequency, followed by California.

Three of the quakes this year, measured at magnitudes of 4.7, 4.8 and 5.1, were among the largest in Oklahoma’s history.

Including Oklahoma and southern Kansas on the map reinforces what the Geological Survey’s scientists have said for some time: The huge number of small, human-caused quakes in the two states may have set the stage for a larger, more destructive one.

Photo

A United States Geological Survey map showing its forecast of damage from earthquakes in 2016.

Credit

U.S. Geological Survey, via Associated Press 

The area of greatest risk, the agency stated, is a swath of rural land along the Oklahoma-Kansas border that has been repeatedly rocked by tremors. Because the area is thinly populated, damage has so far has been limited.

The assessment said that in that area, there is a 5 to 12 percent chance of a level six earthquake on the Mercalli index of intensity, which rates the potential for damage. Level six indicates a strong earthquake that is widely felt, but that does not cause much damage. Level seven can cause moderate damage in ordinary buildings and considerable damage in lesser ones.

But the area of risk also extends through the central part of the state toward Oklahoma City, where the rate of quakes has recently dropped. Experts estimated the one-year risk there at between 5 and 10 percent.

Twenty other sites in the eastern and central United States have also experienced human-induced quakes, the agency said, but the threat of larger quakes in these areas is small, the agency said.

The Geological Survey emphasized that earthquake prediction was an uncertain science, and that some studies suggested that the maximum magnitude of human-induced quakes was less than that of natural ones.

Much of the region’s boom in oil and gas production comes from wells that employ hydraulic fracturing of shale deep in the earth, a process commonly called fracking. But the scientists said those wells likely are responsible for only a tiny share of quakes; fracking-related earthquakes typically are too small to be felt.

In both Oklahoma and Kansas, some of the tremors over the last five years have rivaled the largest in their histories.

This year, Oklahoma has recorded more than 160 quakes with a magnitude of 3 or more. But the pace appears to have slowed after the state’s oil and gas regulator, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, effectively imposed steep reductions in underground waste disposal in February and March.

Earthquake scientists have nevertheless warned that the risk of a larger quake does not necessarily drop in lock step with a decline in smaller ones. The forces that have been loosed underground, they say, can take years to sort themselves out.

The Geological Survey report also said the chances of a damaging natural earthquake had risen in some parts of the United States. Scientists noted an increase in the number of small tremors along the New Madrid fault, near Memphis, which in the early 1800s was the site of one of the nation’s largest earthquakes. The increase in tremors there has slightly raised the prospects of a larger quake, the scientists said.

2254. Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

By Justin Gillis, The New York Times, March 30, 2016

For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization.

The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds — if not thousands — of years to occur.

Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner.

Continued high emissions of heat-trapping gases could launch a disintegration of the ice sheet within decades, according to a study published Wednesday, heaving enough water into the ocean to raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century.

With ice melting in other regions, too, the total rise of the sea could reach five or six feet by 2100, the researchers found. That is roughly twice the increase reported as a plausible worst-case scenario by a United Nations panel just three years ago, and so high it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.

Under the Ice Sheet

The vast West Antarctic ice sheet sits on bedrock that dips thousands of feet below sea level. New computer simulations suggest that the warming atmosphere and ocean could attack the ice sheet from above and below, causing sea levels to rise much faster than previously thought.

The situation would grow far worse beyond 2100, the researchers found, with the rise of the sea exceeding a pace of a foot per decade by the middle of the 22nd century. 

Scientists had documented such rates of increase in the geologic past, when far larger ice sheets were collapsing, but most of them had long assumed it would be impossible to reach rates so extreme with the smaller ice sheets of today.

“We are not saying this is definitely going to happen,” said David Pollard, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University and a co-author of the new paper. “But I think we are pointing out that there’s a danger, and it should receive a lot more attention.”

The long-term effect would likely be to drown the world’s coastlines, including many of its great cities.

New York City is nearly 400 years old; in the worst-case scenario conjured by the research, its chances of surviving another 400 years in anything like its present form would appear to be remote. Miami, New Orleans, London, Venice, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia, are all just as vulnerable as New York, or more so.

In principle, coastal defenses could be built to protect the densest cities, but experts believe it will be impossible to do that along all 95,000 miles of the American coastline, meaning that immense areas will most likely have to be abandoned to the rising sea.

The new research, published by the journal Nature, is based on improvements in a computerized model of Antarctica and its complex landscape of rocks and glaciers, meant to capture factors newly recognized as imperiling the stability of the ice.

The new version of the model allowed the scientists, for the first time, to reproduce high sea levels of the past, such as a climatic period about 125,000 years ago when the seas rose to levels 20 to 30 feet higher than today.

That gave them greater confidence in the model’s ability to project the future sea level, though they acknowledged that they do not yet have an answer that could be called definitive.

“You could think of all sorts of ways that we might duck this one,” said Richard B. Alley, a leading expert on glacial ice at Pennsylvania State University. “I’m hopeful that will happen. But given what we know, I don’t think we can tell people that we’re confident of that.”

Dr. Alley was not an author of the new paper, though it is based in part on his ideas about the stability of glacial ice. Several other scientists not involved in the paper described it as significant, with some of them characterizing it as a milestone in the analysis of huge ice sheets and the risks they pose in a warming world.

But those same scientists emphasized that it was a single paper, and unlikely to be the last word on the fate of West Antarctica. The effort to include the newly recognized factors imperiling the ice is still crude, with years of work likely needed to improve the models.

Peter U. Clark of Oregon State University helped lead the last effort by a United Nations panel to assess the risks of sea level rise; he was not involved in the new paper. He emphasized that the research, like much previous work, highlighted the urgency of bringing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under control.

Dr. Clark described the new work as “a really important paper that adds to the growing recognition that in the absence of rapid and strong mitigation of carbon emissions, we are in store for a large sea level rise at rates that may be even faster than has been considered.”

It was his panel that had estimated an upper limit of three feet or so on the likely sea level rise in the 21st century, while specifically warning that a better understanding of the vulnerability of Antarctic ice could change that estimate.

The new research is the work of two scientists who have been at the forefront of ice-sheet modeling for years. They are Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Dr. Pollard, who is a colleague of Dr. Alley’s at Penn State.

In a lengthy interview on Monday, Dr. DeConto recounted years of frustration. The computer program he had built in a long-running collaboration with Dr. Pollard showed increasing sophistication in its ability to explain the behavior of ice sheets, but it had some trouble analyzing the past.

Unless global temperatures were raised to unrealistic levels, the model would not melt enough ice to reproduce the high sea levels known to have occurred in previous periods when either the atmosphere or the ocean was warmer. The ability to reproduce past events is considered a stringent test of the merits of any geological model.

“We knew something was missing,” Dr. DeConto said.

The new idea came from Dr. Alley. He urged his colleagues to consider what would happen as a warming climate attacked huge shelves of floating ice that help to protect and buttress the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Smaller, nearby ice shelves have already started to disintegrate, most spectacularly in 2002, when an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, the Larsen B shelf, broke apart in two weeks.

The West Antarctic ice sheet sits in a sort of deep bowl that extends far below sea level, and if it loses its protective fringes of floating ice, the result is likely to be the formation of vast, sheer cliffs of ice facing the sea. These will be so high they will become unstable in places, Dr. Alley said in an interview, and the warming atmosphere is likely to encourage melting on their surface in the summer that would weaken them further.

The result, Dr. Alley suspected, might be a rapid shrinkage as the unstable cliffs collapsed into the water. Something like this seems to be happening already at several glaciers, including at least two in Greenland, but on a far smaller scale than may be possible in West Antarctica.

When Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard, drawing on prior work by J. N. Bassis and C. C. Walker, devised some equations to capture this “ice-cliff instability,” their model produced striking results. In contrast to many prior attempts, it suddenly had no difficulty recreating the high sea levels of past warm periods.

The obvious next step was to ask the model what might happen if human society continues to warm the planet by pouring huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The answer the scientists got is described in their paper in the dry language of science, but it could easily serve as the plot device of a Hollywood disaster movie. They found that West Antarctica, which is already showing disturbing signs of instability, would start to break apart by the 2050s.

Vulnerable parts of the higher, colder ice sheet of East Antarctica would eventually fall apart, too, and the result by the year 2500 would be 43 feet of sea level rise from Antarctica alone, with still more water coming from elsewhere, the computer estimated. In some areas, the shoreline would be likely to move inland by miles.

The paper published Wednesday does contain some good news. A far more stringent effort to limit emissions of greenhouse gases would stand a fairly good chance of saving West Antarctica from collapse, the scientists found. That aspect of their paper contrasts with other recent studies postulating that a gradual disintegration of West Antarctica may have already become unstoppable.

But the recent climate deal negotiated in Paris would not reduce emissions nearly enough to achieve that goal. That deal is to be formally signed by world leaders in a ceremony in New York next month, in a United Nations building that stands directly by the rising water.

2253. Fidel Castro: "Brother Obama"

By Fidel Castro Ruz, Granma, March 28, 2016 

Fidel Castro meeting with Venezuela presidentNicolas Maduro on March 19, 2016. Photo: Juventud Rebelde/EPA.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

Tourism today, in large part, consists of viewing the delights of our landscapes and tasting exquisite delicacies from our seas, and is always shared with the private capital of large foreign corporations, whose earnings, if they don’t reach billions of dollars, are not worthy of any attention whatsoever.

Since I find myself obliged to mention the issue, I must add - principally for the youth - that few people are aware of the importance of such a condition, in this singular moment of human history. I would not say that time has been lost, but I do not hesitate to affirm that we are not adequately informed, not you, nor us, of the knowledge and conscience that we must have to confront the realities which challenge us. The first to be taken into consideration is that our lives are but a fraction of a historical second, which must also be devoted in part to the vital necessities of every human being. One of the characteristics of this condition is the tendency to overvalue its role, in contrast, on the other hand, with the extraordinary number of persons who embody the loftiest dreams.

Nevertheless, no one is good or bad entirely on their own. None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of José Martí’s example. I even ask myself if he needed to die or not in Dos Ríos, when he said, “For me, it’s time,” and charged the Spanish forces entrenched in a solid line of firepower. He did not want to return to the United States, and there was no one who could make him. Someone ripped some pages from his diary. Who bears this treacherous responsibility, undoubtedly the work of an unscrupulous conspirator? Differences between the leaders were well known, but never indiscipline. “Whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will reap only the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the struggle,” stated the glorious Black leader Antonio Maceo. Máximo Gómez is likewise recognized as the most disciplined and discreet military chief in our history.

Looking at it from another angle, how can we not admire the indignation of Bonifacio Byrne when, from a distant boat returning him to Cuba, he saw another flag alongside that of the single star and declared, “My flag is that which has never been mercenary...” immediately adding one of the most beautiful phrases I have ever heard, “If it is torn to shreds, it will be my flag one day… our dead raising their arms will still be able to defend it!” Nor will I forget the blistering words of Camilo Cienfuegos that night, when, just some tens of meters away, bazookas and machine guns of U.S. origin in the hands of counterrevolutionaries were pointed toward that terrace on which we stood.

Obama was born in August of 1961, as he himself explained. More than half a century has transpired since that time.

Let us see, however, how our illustrious guest thinks today:

“I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” followed by a deluge of concepts entirely novel for the majority of us:

“We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans,” the U.S. President continued, “Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners.”

The native populations don’t exist at all in Obama’s mind. Nor does he say that the Revolution swept away racial discrimination, or that pensions and salaries for all Cubans were decreed by it before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old. The hateful, racist bourgeois custom of hiring strongmen to expel Black citizens from recreational centers was swept away by the Cuban Revolution - that which would go down in history for the battle against apartheid that liberated Angola, putting an end to the presence of nuclear weapons on a continent of more than a billion inhabitants. This was not the objective of our solidarity, but rather to help the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and others under the fascist colonial domination of Portugal.

In 1961, just one year and three months after the triumph of the Revolution, a mercenary force with armored artillery and infantry, backed by aircraft, trained and accompanied by U.S. warships and aircraft carriers, attacked our country by surprise. Nothing can justify that perfidious attack which cost our country hundreds of losses, including deaths and injuries

As for the pro-yankee assault brigade, no evidence exists anywhere that it was possible to evacuate a single mercenary. Yankee combat planes were presented before the United Nations as the equipment of a Cuban uprising.

The military experience and power of this country is very well known. In Africa, they likewise believed that revolutionary Cuba would be easily taken out of the fight. The invasion via southern Angola by racist South African motorized brigades got close to Luanda, the capital in the eastern part of the country. There a struggle began which went on for no less than 15 years. I wouldn’t even talk about this, if I didn’t have the elemental duty to respond to Obama’s speech in Havana’s Alicia Alonso Grand Theater.

Nor will I attempt to give details, only emphasize that an honorable chapter in the struggle for human liberation was written there. In a certain way, I hoped Obama’s behavior would be correct. His humble origin and natural intelligence were evident. Mandela was imprisoned for life and had become a giant in the struggle for human dignity. One day, a copy of a book narrating part of Mandela’s life reached my hands, and - surprise! - the prologue was by Barack Obama. I rapidly skimmed the pages. The miniscule size of Mandela’s handwriting noting facts was incredible. Knowing men such as him was worthwhile.

Regarding the episode in South Africa I must point out another experience. I was really interested in learning more about how the South Africans had acquired nuclear weapons. I only had very precise information that there were no more than 10 or 12 bombs. A reliable source was the professor and researcher Piero Gleijeses, who had written the text Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, an excellent piece. I knew he was the most reliable source on what had happened and I told him so; he responded that he had not spoken more about the matter as in the text he had responded to questions from compañero Jorge Risquet, who had been Cuban ambassador and collaborator in Angola, a very good friend of his. I located Risquet; already undertaking other important tasks he was finishing a course which would last several weeks longer. That task coincided with a fairly recent visit by Piero to our country; I had warned him that Risquet was getting on and his health was not great. A few days later what I had feared occurred. Risquet deteriorated and died. When Piero arrived there was nothing to do except make promises, but I had already received information related to the weapons and the assistance that racist South Africa had received from Reagan and Israel.

I do not know what Obama would have to say about this story now. I am unaware as to what he did or did not know, although it is very unlikely that he knew absolutely nothing. My modest suggestion is that he gives it thought and does not attempt now to elaborate theories on Cuban policy.

There is an important issue:

Obama made a speech in which he uses the most sweetened words to express: “It is time, now, to forget the past, leave the past behind, let us look to the future together, a future of hope. And it won’t be easy, there will be challenges and we must give it time; but my stay here gives me more hope in what we can do together as friends, as family, as neighbors, together.”

I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and coercion?

Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture.

I also warn that we are capable of producing the food and material riches we need with the efforts and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, as this is our commitment to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 27, 2016

10:25 p.m.