Category: Cuba

Reflections on Cuba’s Black Radical History, Revolutionary Health, and Grassroots Media

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30 April 2021 — Internationalist 360°

Semassa Boko and Jeanette Charles

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z1mknIkBGUA/maxresdefault.jpgIt is vitally necessary to bridge the gap in knowledge and dismantle US misinformation campaigns against Cuba’s realities for international English-speaking audiences.

“We wanted to reach a young audience in the United States that is not typically exposed to engaging and in-depth stories about Latin America and US policy in the region.”

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” — Frantz Fanon[i]

Radicals, revolutionaries, and freedom fighters committed to imagining and building new societies must demonstrate a willingness to experiment with our strategies. Media, education, healthcare, and governance policies are important arenas where movements and masses materialize political visions. The Black Radical tradition on the continent and in the Diaspora provides strong references in this regard. Cuba is a critical example.

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A Bit of Hope That Doesn’t Come from Miami: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2021)

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22 April 2021 — Tricontinental

Mohsen Taasha Wahidi Afghanistan Rebirth of the Red 2017 3Mohsen Taasha Wahidi (Afghanistan), Rebirth of the Red, 2017.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

After twenty years, the United States government – and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base. After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.

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“Questionable Activities”: CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Raul Castro

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16 April 2021 — National Security Archive

As Castro retires on 60th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, National Security Archive posts declassified, top secret CIA cables, reports from 1960

Agency officials willing to pay over $10,000 for ‘fatal accident’

Washington D.C., April 16, 2021 – In the earliest known CIA assassination plot against leaders of the Cuban revolution, high agency officials in 1960 offered the pilot of a plane carrying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “payment after successful completion of ten thousand dollars” to “incur risks in arranging accident” during the flight, according to formally top secret documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The pilot, who the CIA had earlier recruited as an intelligence asset in Cuba, “asked for assurance that in event of his [own] death the U.S. would see that his two sons were given a college education.” “This assurance was given,” his CIA handler in Havana, William J. Murray, reported in a later memorandum titled “Questionable Activities.”

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Medicare-for-All Is a Beginning, Not the End Point

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1 September 2020 — Green Social Thought

What Can We Learn from Cuba?

by Don Fitz

As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All asa final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world.

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Cuba and the complex relationship between the individual and the collective

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30 July 2020 — MRonline

El Carro de la Revolución, by painter and engraver Alfredo Sosabravo, portrays the history of the Cuban people on the road to independence and sovereignty. Photo: Abel Rojas

Originally published: Granma English by Karima Oliva Bello (July 23, 2020)

Just recently, the 59th anniversary of Fidel’s quintessential words to Cuban intellectuals was commemorated. One passage in the speech is particularly noteworthy. Fidel said, and I quote:

The Revolution… must act in such a way that the entire gamut of artists and intellectuals who are not genuinely revolutionary, find that within the Revolution they have an arena in which to work and to create; and that their creative spirit, even if they are not revolutionary writers or artists, has the opportunity and freedom to be expressed. That is, within the Revolution.

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A Statue of Hatuey

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3 July 2020 — The New Dark Age

By Don Fitz

Hatuey

A monument to Hatuey is in Baracoa, Cuba. The plate at the base reads “To the memory of Chief Hatuey, unforgettable native, precursor of the Cuban liberty, who offered his life, and glorified his rebellion in the martyrdom of the flames on 2/2/1512. Monuments Delegation of Yara, 1999”.

If you look at a US $20 bill, you might notice Andrew Jackson nervously watching statues of Columbus and Robert E. Lee coming down and wondering if his face is going to disappear from currency. As Democrats ponder which militarist they wish to glorify in the next round of monuments, it is critical to realize that statues which go up are at least as important as the ones that come down. Perhaps the best nominee for a new statue is Hatuey.

A few years ago, while visiting my daughter and grandson in Havana, I learned that his favorite playmate was Hatuey. “I recognize a lot of Spanish names,” I told my daughter. “But I’ve never heard that one.”

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US Senate Initiates Legislation Which Would Categorize Cuba’s Medical Missions as “Human Trafficking Operations”

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19 June 2020 — MintPress News

In an act of pure hypocrisy and obsessive cruelty, GOP Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Ted Cruz joined together to penalize developing nations who seek to take advantage of Cuba’s hands-on humanitarian work.

In what has already become a parody of a shrinking empire’s habit of clutching at the vestiges of its Cold-War era mistakes, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and fellow war-hungry reactionaries in the United States Senate, Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ted Cruz ((R-TX) have put a bill on the Senate floor meant to undercut Cuba’s medical missions program, which sends trained medics all around the developing world to assist in general healthcare services and emergencies in more than 60 countries.

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U.S. sanctions abort delivery of Covid-19 aid from Alibaba chief to Cuba

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3 April 2020 — Counter Currents

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Cuba has slammed the U.S.’ “criminal blockade” of the country after the embargo stood in the way of the delivery of Covid-19 test kits and ventilators donated by Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack Ma.

“The criminal blockade of the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” tweeted Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez on Wednesday.

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BioCubaFarma guarantees production of 22 medications for the treatment of Covid-19

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20 March 2020 — Counter Currents

Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus Alvarez

Although there is no preventive vaccine or specific treatment, at this time, for the new coronavirus SARS COV-2, which causes COVID-19, the Cuban pharmaceutical industry guarantees the production of proven, high efficacy medications, including recombinant human interferon alpha 2b, in addition to another group of drugs that are included in protocols for treating patients with this disease and the complications that may arise.

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