[NYTr] Castro Says US Materoialism Threatens Human Existence

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via International Herald Tribune - Aug 4, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/04/news/CB-GEN-Cuba-Castro.php

Castro says American materialism threatens human existence

The Associated Press

HAVANA: Fidel Castro said Saturday that consumerism in the United
States, the perennial enemy of his communist government, is threatening
humanity's very existence.

Castro used the latest of his "Reflections of the Commander in Chief"
columns to lambast American capitalism, quoting a former Russian
defense official who says the world must stand up to the United States
and its money-grubbing ways.

"Commercial advertising and consumerism are incompatible with the
survival of the species," Castro wrote in the essay titled "Hard and
Obvious Realities" and published in Cuba's two leading state-controlled
newspapers.

Castro turns 81 on Aug. 13 and has not been seen in public since July
31, 2006, when he announced that emergency intestinal surgery was
forcing him to cede power to a provisional government headed by his
younger brother Raul.

Recuperating in an undisclosed location, Castro's condition and exact
illness are state secrets, but he says he's enjoyed the extra time to
think since stepping down. He wrote Saturday that he has "spent a year
gathering information and meditating in depth on the vital problems
which today threaten our species as never before."

He devoted 12 paragraphs to quoting retired Col.-Gen Leonid Ivashov,
the former head of the Russian defense ministry's international
military cooperation department.

Ivashov accuses the United States of bullying other countries and
refusing to compromise on international debates about anti-missile
defense and Iran.

Castro noted Ivashov's call for Russia and its regional allies, along
with China, India and nations in the Middle East and Latin America, to
form an "alliance of civilizations" to oppose U.S. dominance and values.

"It is an immense space where we could ... (give) priority to the
intellectual development of man in the face of modern Western
civilization, which emphasizes material goods, and measures success by
the amounts of mansions, yachts and restaurants people have," Castro
quoted Ivashov as saying.

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