Posted on 03/29/2007 2:57:04 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
Cuban President Fidel Castro has strongly criticised the use of biofuels by the US, in his first article since undergoing surgery last year. He said George W Bush's support for the use of food crops in fuel production would cause 3bn deaths from hunger. The article in the Granma newspaper did not mention Mr Castro's health. Officials say they expect Mr Castro - who temporarily handed over power to his brother last July - to resume activities in government soon.
Last month, Mr Castro appeared in a live radio broadcast for the first time since falling ill. The Cuban leader's failure to appear in public - and the silence from the Cuban authorities - had fuelled speculation about the seriousness of his condition. Ethanol targets Mr Castro's article appears in Thursday's edition of Granma, under the headline: "Condemned to premature death by hunger and thirst more than 3bn people of the world."
In it, he says he has been "meditating quite a bit since President Bush's meeting with North American automobile makers". During that meeting on Monday, Mr Castro writes, "the sinister idea of converting food into combustibles was definitively established as the economic line of foreign policy of the United States". Mr Bush has set targets for an increased use of ethanol - which in the US is mainly made from corn. The US government hopes this will reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil. The US and Brazil recently signed an agreement to develop biofuels, and their presidents are expected to hold further talks on the matter at the weekend.
|
Too bad he ruined the soil by overfarming or Cuba could develop a cash crop in ethanol.
Let me get this right. Half of the world's population is going to starve starting tomorrow morning if I fill up with E-85? Bwahahahaha!
Them damn narcotics have made Fidel null and void.
It's a tough one to consider. I'll wait until Dan Rather goes down there and explains it all to me. Harry Belafonte will do in a pinch.
I have been driving on E-85 for largely personal reasons. From now on, I can wallow in the smugness of knowing it breaks Fidel's heart as well.
The US produces more ethanol now than Brazil does and still imports ethanol from Brazil. Brazil may have a higher percentage of biofuel use, but the US uses more gallons.
Does that include or exclude ethanol produced for human consumption? Lotsa "corn squeezins" coming out of the stills at McCormick and Jack Daniels.
i sure hope that fidel thanked nancy pelosi for the donation
Just fuel (denatured) ethanol.
ROTFLMAO!! I'll have to admit, I never thought of that 'angle'.
Castro has a point.
Using food for fuel is dumb. Make the world dependent upon us for food and then use food as a weapon. (The Middle East does this with oil, we should do this with food.)
Does the United States, or Canada, have some sort of "duty" to feed the rest of the world with our successful, productive farmlands? It was to the advantage of our farmers to sell surplusses of grain to Red China and the USSR back in the old days, but if they can find better paying markets for it, why wouldn't they take advantage of it? It's not our fault that various socialist countries around the world are consistenly unable to feed themselves (ie "40 years of bad harvests").
The funny thing is, I agree with him - turning valuable foodstuff into fuel is not viable in the long run, IMO, and is mostly only profitable to farmers due to subsidies.
Well, gosh. Now I'm torn.
On the one hand, I think using food crops to produce fuel is stupid. On the other hand, anything Castro is against, I am for.
What a pickle ...
Cuba is making aggressive measures to develop a sugar cane to ethanol program. The fact is easily determined (took me 15 seconds on Google) and utterly ignored in the shabby, lazy BBC and US lamestream media. Don't want to make their demi-god Fidel look like the mega-liar he is.
Using corn as a feedstock for ethanol is not the most efficient usage of surplus farmland.
But until some better fuel technologies and farming techniques come along, it is a good start.
And I really don't give a rip about Fidel's point of view. I grew up in Miami, and have a lot of Cuban friends. Screw him.
Holy cow, I agree with El Presdiente.
Cost of corn tortillas going up socialism going down.
Fidel is pissed because his buddy Hugo is not getting any money from biofuels.
As for hunger, I don't think hunger has been caused by low food production in over a century. Famine in the 20th century was typically caused by politics. Just ask the Ukrainians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.