- The Guardian
- Issue #2196
Party President Vinnie Molina getting his booster.
The US fuel blockade on Cuba is increasing the risk of the next global pandemic, experts, and campaigners have warned.
World-class vaccine research that produced three COVID vaccines is grinding to a halt as 20-hour blackouts continue to grip the island.
US President Donald Trump imposed his brutal blockade in late January in a bid to topple its socialist government.
Any country that intervenes faces sanctions. Child mortality – once lower than in the US – has more than doubled with nearly every facet of life in Cuba affected.
British union Unison demanded more from UK Labour as delegates heard invasion fears are mounting following the US humiliation by Iran.
Speaking at the union’s conference, Cuban health chief Dr Mitchell Valdes-Sosa warned that the US vendetta is putting lives across the world at risk of the next pandemic.
The director of the Cuban Centre for Neuroscience said “Even for vaccine development we really have to shop around and use all our imagination to bypass the blocks that the US has put in place.
“COVID really underlined an idea that world connectivity – planes going everywhere, ships – that anything that starts in one country can spill over to the whole world.
“That is very clear with COVID. The thing is that getting vaccines to under-served countries, countries that don’t have resources is a very important task that is sometimes left aside.
“Cuban vaccines are inexpensive, well made, safe with the latest advances in biotechnology, but US sanctions try to discourage the use of Cuban products.”
Cuba made and sent three COVID vaccines to the poorest parts of the world that couldn’t afford Big Pharma prices during the pandemic.
That wasn’t Cuba’s first contribution to global health. In 1989, it quickly developed a meningitis B vaccine after an epidemic on the island killed children. The jab went on to save Brazilian youngsters when the disease broke out there just months later and was then supplied to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for bouts in sub-Saharan Africa when “Big Pharma was not interested,” said Dr Valdes-Sosa.
“So Cuba has a lot to contribute to the world and instead of persecuting Cuban biotechnology, medicine and people, what the US should do is collaborate,” he said. “It will save not only lives in Cuba, but lives around the world.
“When they force countries that were working with Cuba to take medicines to the poorest areas with medical brigades, to break off collaboration with Cuba they are putting in jeopardy the lives of people in those poorest areas. They don’t care.”
UK Labour MP Jon Trickett said: “Cuba developed one of the finest health systems in the world. But the crazy man who lives in the White House is deliberately raising the stakes with the blockade as it hits Cuba’s healthcare.
“It is an act of unjustified and immoral aggression. All progressives should raise their voices and act in solidarity with the people of Cuba.”
Fellow backbencher Richard Burgon MP said: “Donald Trump’s siege on Cuba is not just a threat to the Cuban people – it risks harming the whole world.
“Cuba has shown that international solidarity saves lives: its doctors and its COVID vaccines, developed on Cuban soil, helped protect millions of people across the globe during the pandemic and saved thousands of lives.”
Communist Party of Britain general secretary Alex Gordon warned the illegal and immoral US blockade of Cuba “is a death sentence for millions far beyond Cuba’s shores.
“The US blockade on Cuba is a war on the peoples of the whole world and a crime against humanity.”
He urged the public to support the Cuba Vive appeal. The appeal has raised almost £480,000 in two years (just under AU$1 million).
Delegates passed a motion calling on the government to vote against the blockade at the UN and press the US to normalise its Cuba relations and end its sanctions.
A spokesperson for British left group Momentum said “The brutal US fuel blockade is strangling Cuba’s economy and crippling its healthcare system.
“It’s up to MPs, trade unionists and activists to continue to speak up and demand an immediate end to this collective punishment, ensuring Cuba’s doctors have access to basic resources and world-class research to save lives.”
The World Health Organisation added Disease X – the placeholder name given to the next pandemic – to its research and development priority list in 2018. It urged the global health community to improve co-ordination, establishing global agreements and research protocols so countries can respond within 100 days of identifying a new pathogen. Without US sanctions, Cuba could be making a much greater contribution to battling that pathogen.
Morning Star (edited for space)
(Australian readers are urged to contact their local Australia Cuba Friendship Society to donate to the ACFS campaign to raise funds for solar power for Cuban schools.)
Cuba announces new economic policies
Graham Holton
The Communist Party of Cuba has announced an emergency economic plan that has been unanimously approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz asserted that the market can serve as an “instrument for the efficient allocation of resources.” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that Cuba “cannot continue on its current course … there is no sovereignty with empty plates.”
This shift expands the role of private enterprise and reduces the reliance on the state. The government insists that the objective is not capitalism, but a “socialist market economy” adapted to current realities. Supporters of the reforms say it is necessary to preserve socialism under difficult circumstances rather than abandon it. Even so, this is the biggest change to Cuba’s socialist model since the 1959 Revolution.
The reforms have been introduced amid severe shortages, inflation, electricity blackouts, and falling productivity. Trump has threatened a US military intervention and demanded changes to Cuba’s economic model before the oil blockade is lifted. The Trump administration is continuing to apply economic and political pressure. The illegal oil blockade and the strict sanctions have created great hardship to the Cuban people, who face acute shortages of medicine and food, and cancelled surgeries.
The 176 economic measures include the expansion of the private sector, allowing entrepreneurs to own multiple businesses and employ more than 100 workers. Private and foreign investors will be allowed to purchase shares in state enterprises, with some state firms becoming shareholding companies. More sectors will be opened to foreign investment.
Universal subsidies are being progressively replaced with targeted assistance for vulnerable groups. Agricultural reforms include long-term usufruct rights over land and expanded powers for cooperatives to engage in foreign trade and obtain financing.
Cuban-American political scientist Luis Carlos Battista said that “the state monopoly on foreign trade and the centralisation of productive forces, have been dismantled.” The changes have been compared to the reforms introduced in China after 1978 and in Vietnam under Đổi Mới in 1986. Cuban president Miguel Canel-Díaz mentioned China and Vietnam in his speech introducing the new policies.
Interviews in Havana found that many residents have a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude. After repeated economic crises, many Cubans want reforms that will lead to reliable electricity, guaranteed food supplies, and higher living standards.
The US will continue to illegally blockade and sanction Cuba, regardless of lives lost and the suffering of the Cuban people. The US State Department has labelled the measures “superficial smoke signals” and the Trump administration demanded “more substantial economic and political reforms.” Unless the US removes its sanctions and the oil blockade these measures will have limited impact on the widespread blackouts and food supplies.
