PROPOSED ROAD MAP TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE

The lack of space and the absence of proposals on Climate Change in most of the speeches made by the Heads of State at the last UN Assembly was alarming.

Especially when contrasted with the alarming reality that the planet is beginning to experience climate change, to the point that, by next year, the goal set in Paris for 2050 of a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in temperature above the average of the pre-industrial era is expected to be reached, 26 years ahead of schedule! It is so serious that there is already talk of a goal of 2.6° increase by 2050, which would be catastrophic.

This acceleration in the increase of global warming and its disastrous consequences, impose that humanity urgently implements effective measures to face it.

The UN should be the ideal organization to design, coordinate and guarantee their execution. However, the political-military conception that has prevailed in its constitution and functioning, directed in practice by the five permanent members of the Security Council, has prevented it not only from fulfilling this role, but also from successfully confronting the other serious problems facing humanity, such as migration, hunger, poverty, child malnutrition, human rights, environmental preservation, democracy, drugs, etc.

WHAT IS THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL?

The UN was created by the victorious powers of World War II as a forum for all nations. Since the fundamental fear at the time was the repetition of such terrible conflagrations as that war, they created a body within the UN, the Security Council, with the aim of eliminating any possibility of global armed conflict, granting five nations the right to veto any of its decisions or resolutions.

It certainly achieved its goal. Although opportunities have not been lacking, in nearly eighty years there has been no direct conflagration between the great powers.

This has not meant that wars and conflicts have disappeared. On the contrary, there have never been so many simultaneous wars and upheavals in the history of mankind as in the last eight decades, almost always as a result of the appetite for domination, first by the two poles of power that emerged in the post-war period, and then by the so-called unipolar world. Thus transforming the rest of the world into a bloody chessboard, with many nations becoming its pawns.

Thus we saw wars and invasions in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Haiti, Grenada, Poland, Sudan, Czechoslovakia, Angola, Laos, Cambodia, Algeria, Iraq, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Libya, Syria, Georgia, Tibet, to mention but a few, in addition to the countless coups d'état, political assassinations, civil wars and insurrections that occurred during that period.

With such a structure, the UN is not capable of facing the new realities. Its complete restructuring is urgently needed.

Powerful global economic and political groups see their interests threatened by the measures taken to this end, and will try to contaminate them. An example of this are the cosmetic proposals, in the Catopardian style of changing so that nothing changes, of limiting them to increasing the number of nations with a permanent seat on the Security Council, or of giving greater power to its Secretary General.

MULTIPOLARITY: MORE OF THE SAME

Another proposal that has been circulating is that of moving towards a multipolar and multicentric world, which in practice is nothing more than sanctifying a similar scheme of domination under another name.

What really is a "pole of power"? It is a system in which a nation or group of nations constituting the center of the "pole" has economic, political and military control over another group of dependent nations, a periphery euphemistically called "area of influence".

The power of these "poles" is directly related to the amount of territory, resources and population of these "areas of influence".

The first modern multipolar system was established at the end of the 19th century, when the European powers divided up most of the world through the establishment of colonies. That balance did not last long. A few decades later, the doors were opened to the First World War, due to the desire of some of them to redistribute the possession of those colonies.

If a multipolarity scheme is established, the struggle between "poles" to expand their "areas of influence" at the expense of the other poles will be repeated, and given the impossibility of resolving it with a direct war between them over nuclear weapons, the Third World countries will continue to be the pawns on the global chessboard, as can already be seen in the confrontations in the African Sahel nations such as Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, in Southeast Asia, in Ukraine, in Latin America with wars, sanctions, coups and counter-coups. Burkina Faso, in Southeast Asia, in Ukraine, in Latin America with wars, sanctions, coups and counter-coups. It is in this scenario that we must understand the stimulated aggravation of the confrontation, and probable war, between Venezuela and Guyana.

The other important aspect is that, given the implosion of the instituted "global order", when its main legal, financial and even sporting institutions were placed in defense of the interests of the Western pole in the Ukraine War, such as the IMF, WTO, SWIFT, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, etc., it is obvious that any pole that emerges will take care of itself and build its own economic and legal structures, which would prevent, for a time, any possibility of global institutionality.

Concentrating almost all of humanity's efforts on global power struggles and neglecting its very serious problems would mean the end of our race. We must internalize that these problems, including Climate Change, threaten EVERYONE, and must be faced TOGETHER.

In this sense, our proposal is to replace the current conception of the Security Council with a Council of Humanity, whose main goal would be to successfully confront the enormous problems facing human beings. The main geographical areas of the planet would be represented on an equal footing: South America and the Caribbean, Africa, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia; as well as the most populous countries: China and India. India's recent invitation to the African Union to the G-20 meeting, and not to individual countries of that continent, is an interesting precedent that indicates that this is the way forward.

If consolidated regional blocs can be structured in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, conflicts and wars will be significantly reduced, since no "pole" will be able to intervene either militarily or politically in the countries that comprise them. This would also allow all regions to participate actively and directly in global decision-making.

The road to achieve this will not be easy. Many obstacles will have to be overcome. But reality is stubborn. The worsening of environmental deterioration, and other problems that cannot be hidden or minimized, will serve as a powerful pivot to achieve it.

Two conditions are essential to achieve this objective.

First: the creation of solid organizations that bring together the nations of each region. Let us remember that Africa alone has more than 1.2 billion inhabitants and Latin America more than 650 million inhabitants, which together constitute true unconquerable rocks.

Second: We must de-ideologize the study and the search for solutions, not conditioning them to comply with the postulates of political, economic or ideological theories. With leaders who act without pre-judgments, concentrating on the problems to be faced.

WE MUST KEEP IN MIND THAT THE VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WE SUFFER TODAY ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE NEGLIGENCE OR IGNORANCE OF PAST LEADERS, AND THAT THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ACTIONS OF TODAY'S LEADERS.

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THE UN DECLARED THE ERA OF GLOBAL WARMING IS OVER, THE ERA OF "GLOBAL BOILING" HAS ARRIVED

In contrast to the tens, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of news items, writings, studies and essays published in the last 30 years by the media and organizations, in which they denounced and warned about the dangers that Climate Change would bring to humanity, most of the materials we currently read about the environment describe catastrophic events that occur as a direct effect of the acceleration of Climate Change.

In the news section of our website www.aprosima.com, we present a small sample of information and materials that have been published recently and that will allow the reader to have an idea about the degree of deterioration that the environment is experiencing not only as a result of climate change, but also by the action of human beings in other spheres of our daily lives. Deterioration that will pale before what will happen to humanity in the future if the necessary radical measures are not taken NOW.

Not without reason, the UN Secretary General has declared that "The era of global warming is over, now it is time for the era of global boiling".

It is therefore necessary that those who have, and will have in their hands the ability to take such measures, become aware of these new realities and the danger we are facing.

This is an arduous task, both because of a total or partial ignorance of the seriousness of the situation, and because of the action of powerful economic and political interests that fear that they will be directly affected by the measures to be taken.

To overcome this resistance, it is necessary that human beings as a whole (scientists, organized communities, universities, academia, religious sectors, etc.) internalize the seriousness of the situation we are facing and manage to generate actions that raise awareness at decision-making levels. But this requires an enormous communicational effort.

It is in this sense of divulgation that our Association directs its efforts, and together with this, with the formulation of concrete proposals that allow us to obtain these fruits. We take this opportunity to invite you to join our efforts to our struggle, either with personal participation in the tasks ahead, or with donations that may allow us to have the necessary resources to fulfill these tasks.

WE MUST KEEP IN MIND THAT THE VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WE SUFFER TODAY ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE NEGLIGENCE OR IGNORANCE OF PAST LEADERS, AND THAT THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ACTIONS OF TODAY'S LEADERS.

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THE LAST CELAC-EU MEETING, CONCERN AND SADNESS FOR THE REGION

Climate change is accelerating faster than expected, and humanity is already beginning to suffer its very serious consequences.

In fact, the average temperature increase of 1.5° above pre-industrial values, originally estimated by experts to be reached by the year 2050, and which served as the basis for taking measures to counteract it, is expected to be reached next year, 26 YEARS EARLIER THAN EXPECTED, to the point that the UN Secretary General himself has dramatically expressed that "The climate crisis is killing us"

Just look at what Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Institute for Special Studies, recently said: "The current heat wave is not a surprise and it will continue, because we continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and until we stop doing so, TEMPERATURES WILL CONTINUE TO RISE".

In order for humanity to face it successfully, two key aspects must be kept in mind: It is a phenomenon that affects all of humanity and its solution is political. Not ideologically speaking, but taken by the States.

THE UN IS NOT UP TO THE CHALLENGE

The United Nations, which should be the ideal organization to deal with this type of situation, is not, since it was designed to solve warlike situations, and is inoperative in the face of such situations, as we have seen in the recent COVID 19 pandemic.

In this scenario, it is vital that Latin Americans and Caribbeans have a united and strong voice to defend the interests of the region and the planet because, in addition, we are the continent that is suffering, and will suffer the most from the effects of Climate Change.

But we are very far from achieving this unity of action, as we saw in the recent EU-CELAC summit, which left deep feelings of sadness and concern.

Sadness, because we could see how our region was presented without an agenda or common objectives that could successfully complete the defense of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.

Concern, because the final declaration established concepts and actions that seriously harm us, meekly accepted by the governments of the region.

NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF THE DECLARATION

In order not to go into too much detail, we will highlight only a few points:

* It institutionalizes the practice of directly establishing agreements between the European Union as such and individual countries, behind the back and against the interests of the rest of the CELAC countries;

* The guarantee of the "supply chain" and the guarantee of access to raw materials from our continent was established as a point of the highest order;

* No convincing actions were taken regarding Climate Change, drifting towards the quasi-useless agendas of the already abundant international meetings on the subject;

* The interference of the European Union in the internal affairs of our States is accepted, with phrases such as that of demanding "credible" elections. Credible by whom? by them? And if they are not credible, what would give them the right?

* The issue of the decolonization of our region, in which colonies such as French Guiana, Puerto Rico, the islands of Great Britain, Holland and France and the Falklands still survive, was omitted. This topic was treated as a salute to the flag, but, certainly, treated at last for the first time;

* No forceful action was taken to address the deplorable episodes of migration and drug trafficking.

* There was no explicit condemnation of the plans for military intervention in Haiti, nor the assassination of its President, nor the coups against Evo Morales and Castillo, nor the stripping of Venezuela's valuable assets in countries allied to the EU, nor even a policy of common action against governments that have come to power by force.

* In the case of Ukraine, it was shameful that the delegations took sides by declaring "the ongoing war against Ukraine", instead of "the war in Ukraine", ignoring the peaceful nature of our peoples and boycotting any attempt to re-establish peace. * No forceful action was taken to address the deplorable episodes of migration and drug trafficking.

* And to top it all off, continental support for the neocolonialist plan to "reform" the UN Security Council, incorporating NATO member or "friendly" countries such as Germany, Japan and Brazil with permanent status, has been established.

THIS GENUFLECTING BEHAVIOR MUST CHANGE

With such behavior on the part of the states, the region cannot successfully face the challenges of the future.

Aware of this, our Association has set itself the goal of building a body that brings together NGOs and social organizations in the region, with which we share purposes and objectives, in order to build a powerful movement of action and continental outreach, to help chart the way to achieve, once and for all, a strong political, economic and social unity of our countries.

If you agree with the above and wish to join our struggle, individually or on behalf of any NGO or Social Movement, you can write to our email contacto@aprosima.com

WE MUST KEEP IN MIND THAT THE VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WE SUFFER TODAY ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE NEGLIGENCE OR IGNORANCE OF PAST LEADERS, AND THAT THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ACTIONS OF TODAY'S LEADERS.

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THE UNITY OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN PEOPLES WILL NOT BE ACHIEVED WITH THE PRESENT CELAC

It was demonstrated at the last CELAC meeting held in Argentina that this organization is not currently capable of carrying out the process of unity needed by the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.

This event was limited to the presentation of isolated ideas by some countries, without major previous debates, which in the end ended in nothing, such as the creation of a single Latin American currency; or the construction of a railway system to unite all our countries; or the creation of a Secretary General. Proposals that are really effective if they are part of a guiding project, but that on their own are useless, just as the construction of the Pan-American Highway, conceived at the time as a way for the economic development of the region, was useless.

To top off this inability, we saw how uncomfortable and revealing situations and frictions arose, such as the revelation of the epithets uttered by the Chilean Foreign Minister against the Argentine Foreign Minister, or the annoyance of Uruguay for being considered a minor partner of Mercosur, among other incidents.

The sad thing is that no decisive actions were taken in serious cases such as the shameful situation of the Haitian people; drug trafficking; migration; global warming; wars; the rude attitude of the head of the US Southern Command; or her shameless instruction to the International Court of Justice to rule against Venezuela, remaining only words.

This lack of clarity of the reality in which we live, which prevents us from having a common objective, is what makes it impossible to achieve the desired unity.

We reiterate our argument that it is necessary, and urgent, to take advantage of the presence of several progressive governments in the region so that they can be the seed of Latin American unity, elaborating a road map of concrete actions, probably not so ambitious or utopian.

This was the path of the few countries that formed the European Economic Community and culminated in the creation of the European Union. If they had waited for the consensus of all their nations, it would still only be a project.

WORLD REALITY IMPOSES THE PATH OF UNITY

In addition to the very serious problem of a population in the continent that for the most part cannot satisfy its needs, there is the real and practically imminent danger of the loss of sovereignty in the region, a consequence of both the acute shortage of raw materials at the global level that has produced the conflicts between East and West, and the pre-Christian conception that the leaders of most industrialized countries have of understanding that relations between human beings are necessarily based on a scheme of domination, of the master-slave type.

We have seen how in recent years the proclaimed values of democracy and the self-determination of peoples are being demolished for the sake of selfish interests, so it would be an illusion to imagine that, in the desperate situation of scarcity of raw materials in which the major powers find themselves, they would respect the sovereignty of Latin American countries.

If the progressive leaders of our continent do not become aware of these realities and act accordingly, it will be the Latin American and Caribbean peoples who will have the last word.

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UNITY AGAINST INFLATION IN THE AREA, THE RIGHT WAY FORWARD

The proposal made by the President of Mexico to form a front of Latin American countries to fight the current inflationary wave that is sweeping the region is correct.

This is a direct consequence of the high inflation currently being experienced by the main Western powers, with levels never seen since the 1930s, reaching, in some areas, accumulated figures of three digits since 2020. Inflation originated in its beginnings by the impact on the economy of the COVID 19 pandemic, and which has been exacerbated since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

As a result, on the one hand, manufactured goods imported by Latin America from industrialized countries have risen considerably in price, which has had a strong impact on the costs of local supply chains.

On the other hand, the lower purchasing power of those powers, as a result of their galloping inflation, has reduced the demand for the goods and services that our region has traditionally offered them.

The joint action of our nations proposed by López Obrador must go beyond short-term solutions.

IT IS TIME TO START GUARANTEEING THE FUTURE

These bitter experiences should serve as a basis for designing a road map that will allow the economies of our countries to definitively reach the required levels of self-sufficiency, so that never again will the obstacles of nature or the irrational warlike actions of some of the madmen who lead these powers affect our peoples so negatively.

The immense power represented by the countries mentioned above, which in principle would form part of this anti-inflationary front, constitutes a sufficiently solid support to achieve it.

Indeed, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras and Mexico together have a potential market of more than 475 million inhabitants, with a surface area of more than 16.4 billion square kilometers and a global gross domestic product of more than 6.8 trillion dollars.

This road map is necessary because, what this situation has made perfectly clear, is that the economic model of dependence imposed on our countries since the end of World War II, based fundamentally on activities such as foreign tourism, the internal commercialization of products manufactured abroad, with a modest industry, mostly in the hands of transnationals, and the export of raw materials and agricultural products to other continents, has failed.

This failure had already shown itself to be incapable of satisfying the needs of the growing population of our countries, and has generated serious social upheavals in the area.

This economic system must be replaced by one that is oriented towards the production and interregional exchange (equitable and beneficial for all) of goods and services that satisfy the needs of our population, preventing the imposition of odious protagonisms, as we have seen in the disastrous experience of the EU, where most of its countries are veritable neo-colonies of two great powers, Germany and France.

Such a system must go beyond the simple production of food, generating the necessary wealth through a powerful industrial apparatus, leveraged on the enormous natural resources that we possess, today exploited, for the most part, by foreign powers.

It is essential for the success of this objective that it be internalized by the majority of the population. But we must understand that this has a major obstacle, and that is that this extractive, agricultural and non-industrial model has created a whole ecosystem, to give it a name, of businessmen, politicians, military, media, etc. who have benefited and continue to benefit from it and who, as we have seen recently in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, etc., oppose tooth and nail any change in this neocolonial paradigm.

To overcome this resistance and achieve the ideological hegemony of development and welfare for the population, it is necessary to build a political behavior, not of confrontation, but of conviction. And in this aspect it is vital to transcend the mere initiative of governments, achieving transversal action in the region, of the different components of our societies: Universities, Trade Unions, Business Associations, Political Parties, etc.

WALKING WITH BOTH FEET DEFENDING THE ENVIRONMENT

In addition, it is urgent that this initiative also includes the fight against global climate change that has affected and continues to affect our countries, as we have recently seen in the fires in Chile, the droughts in Argentina and Uruguay, the floods in Brazil, the mudslides in Peru, etc., etc.

We must start now with, to mention just one example, achieving a Colombian-Venezuelan agreement that goes beyond the merely economic aspect, and prohibits the exploitation of coal by German and Chinese multinationals in the Goajira and the Sierra del Perijá, due to its highly depredatory effect on the environment.

It is time to erase the hypocrisy of the past and move from blah, blah, blah, to facts.

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ABOUT THE LAST MEETING OF SOUTH AMERICAN LEADERS

As was unfortunately demonstrated at the recent meeting of South American leaders, the President of Brazil was quite right when he stated that excessive ideologization is the main reason why Latin Americans and Caribbean countries have not been united in the pursuit of our integration.

It is imperative that our Latin American and Caribbean community, which is suffering its consequences in a dramatic way, has a decisive weight within them to promote effective decision making to successfully confront Climate Change.

The unfortunate thing is that, for reasons other than environmental ones, including changes in the world economy, the recent COVID 19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, there is a growing feeling of the need to design a new structure for the United Nations. Indeed, its Secretary General has recently made a clear statement on the subject.

THE ROLE OF OUR COUNTRIES IN THIS NEW WORLD ORDER

If we want to protect ourselves from the effects of Climate Change, our countries must play a leading role in the construction of this new world and not leave it exclusively in the hands of its main causes.

We cannot fall into the same mistake made when World War II ended and the United Nations was created, a process in which our region alienated its positions and interests in the hands of the victorious powers, despite the fact that countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico had an outstanding degree of development that justified their leading role.

This erroneous conduct, which deprived Latin America and the Caribbean of a powerful voice in the international arena, led to the subsequent use of most of our governments as mere pawns in the conflicts between the great powers, causing us to suffer a succession of disastrous events, such as coups d'état, assassinations, cruel dictatorships, civil wars, etc., which castrated our development, to the point of suffering from growing poverty in large social sectors of our countries.

In this new international order that is emerging, it is mentioned that Brazil would have a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations, a fact that seems to us excellent in the defense of our peoples.

But there is a danger that could threaten this defense, and that is the fact that in the future, the country's leaders could come to power because of their extreme ideology, or because they represent the interests of the predators of the Amazon, and act against the causes of the rest of the region.

That is why the other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean should also have a permanent seat in the Security Council.

There are plenty of reasons. For example, our combined population (more than 450 million inhabitants) is double that of Brazil (209 million inhabitants). The same is true of GDP. According to

the IMF, the GDP PPP in millions of dollars of our countries as a whole will total 8,410,944 by the year 2023, while Brazil, according to the same estimate, will reach 4,020,381.

In simple words, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have significant power on the world scene and we must know how to use it to our advantage. To this end, we must achieve a union whose conduct rises above this harmful ideologization, acting for the common good, in which the fight against climate change plays a major role.

AGAINST THE FORMATION OF ISOLATED REGIONAL BLOCS

On the other hand, there is a danger that, with the South American union of nations, the old purpose of the great powers to divide the region into disconnected blocs will materialize. In the past, we have seen this with Mercosur, the Andean Community, the Central American Union, etc.

Latin American and Caribbean unity must include all, or most, of its countries in a single bloc. There is no other.

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THE CELAC-EU MEETING, A SAD MIRROR OF REALITY

The upcoming meeting in Paris between the European Union and CELAC, scheduled for mid-July, should serve as a mirror for Latin Americans and Caribbeans to contemplate our sad reality.

In effect, that meeting will be attended by a European Union that is already constituted, with physical headquarters for its various bodies; with a parliament that is functioning and legislating and whose laws and resolutions are obeyed by its members; with a single currency; with symbols and anthem; with a bureaucratic structure that covers practically all aspects of governance; with a solid management team and, most importantly, with very clear objectives to be achieved in our region, such as guaranteeing access to raw materials and ensuring that our countries open up unconditionally to the commercialization of the products they produce.

That voracity for our resources, even disrespecting the resolutions taken by international organizations to address Climate Change, as we see, for example, in actions as polluting as that of the German government seeking to exploit a large open-pit coal mine in the Colombian Goajira.

On the other hand, we Latin Americans and Caribbeans will be attending under the figure of an organization that, practically speaking, functions only on paper, with no headquarters, no major bureaucratic structure, and worse still, without a union of objectives. Faced with this reality, what negotiating power do we have to defend our interests? How can our proposals be taken seriously? How can we be the protagonists of our own destiny?

And even sadder is the position of the "progressive" President of Brazil, Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva, who seeks to drag the other Mercosur countries into an economic agreement with the European Union, disregarding the interests of the rest of the Latin American community. In this situation, the other members of Mercosur have the floor.

A particularly serious fact, since the major powers intend to place Brazil as a permanent representative in the Security Council IN REPRESENTATION OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN!

In the face of events such as these, we must have a coherent and firm stance on issues such as the brain drain, whose training costs our countries billions of valuable foreign currency without receiving anything in return; the transfer of industrial know-how; the protection of our local production; the fight against climate change; European permissibility in the face of drug trafficking; emigration; among others.

This structural deficiency should be, by itself, a more than powerful reason for us to start immediately on the road to union and integration.

The conditions are in place. It is enough to see how the recent meeting of CELAC science and technology ministers was held quickly, massively and successfully in Caracas.

WE MUST KEEP IN MIND THAT THE VERY SERIOUS PROBLEMS WE SUFFER TODAY ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE NEGLIGENCE OR IGNORANCE OF PAST LEADERS, AND THAT THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ACTIONS OF TODAY'S LEADERS. THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ACTIONS TAKEN BY TODAY'S LEADERS.

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