The cruelest face of the blockade

The repercussions on health care of the economic war imposed by the United States were in excess of $25 million from May 2008 to April 2009

• THE blockade of Cuba, maintained for more than 50 years by successive U.S. administrations with the intention of undermining the population through hunger and disease has led to repercussions in the public health care sector amounting to $25 million from May 2008 to April 2009 alone.

The report titled The need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba, to be put to the vote in the UN General Assembly on October 28, states that the damage caused in this sensitive sphere is cruel not only in terms of its material effects but particularly for the suffering that it causes patients and their families and for the direct incidence on the health of the population, especially children.

The document states that the list of Cuban children to undergo open heart surgery increased by eight last year: Osdenis Díaz, 30 months; Leinier Ramírez Pérez, 9 months; Leidy Reyes Blanco, 2 years; José Luis Sanamé, 13 years; Yusmary Rodríguez Márquez, 12 years; Pedro P. Valle Ros, 5 years; Osniel Pérez Espinosa, 5 years, y Roilán Martínez Pérez, 3 years.
The William Soler Pediatric Hospital’s Cardio-Center in Havana has been prevented from acquiring devices used to diagnose and treat children with complex congenital cardiopathies via catheterization. The U.S. Numed, AGA and Boston Scientific companies are prohibited from selling these products to Cuba.

In addition, Cuban children suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia cannot be treated with Erwinia L-asparaginasa, a medicine commercially known as Elspar, given that the U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck and Co. refuses to sell this product to Cuba.
Children’s hospitals face serious obstacles when it comes to acquiring materials suitable for small children, such as better quality and more durable vesicular, digestive and tracheal probes, Huber needles for tracheotomies and lumbar injections, most of which come from the United States.

The National Genetic Medicine Center (CNGM), the institution of national reference for the Cuban Diagnosis, Management and Prevention Program for Genetic Diseases and Heart Defects, is likewise suffering from the effects of this cruel and unjust blockade.

Since 2003, the center has been trying to acquire, without any result, analyzer equipment for genes with the capacity for automatic sequencing capability and fragment analysis, essential for the study of the origin of high-incidence diseases in the population and which are among the prime causes of death: breast, colon and prostate cancers; arterial hypertension; asthma; diabetes mellitus and mental disorders, among others.

In an interview with Granma International (published edition Number 30 on July 26, 2009) Dr. Beatriz Marcheco Teruel, the director of CNGM, spoke about this case and noted that they had been unable to acquire it because the company that produces the equipment and software, ABI, is American.

Dr. Marcheco also said that the institution is forced to pay up to three times more than any other laboratory in the world to obtain certain reagents needed for investigations being carried out by the center.

Another of the various examples mentioned in the report is that of MEDICUBA, an entity that requested, via the Cuban company Alimport, the purchase of vascular prostheses from Bard, forceps for Endomyocardial biopsies from Cordis, and implements for inflation to be used with balloon catheters from Boston Scientific. Just one negative response was received from the Bard Company along with notification that it could not provide Cuba with a quote on the product requested because of the blockade law. The other companies did not even reply to the requests.

The economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba for over 50 years is the most elevated expression of a cruel and inhuman policy, lacking in legality and legitimacy and deliberately designed to create hunger, disease and desperation within the Cuban populace.

There has never been such a wide-ranging and brutal blockade of any nation.

On the one hand, this classifies as genocide by virtue of Section C of Article II of the Geneva Convention of 1948 on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and, on the other hand, as an act of economic warfare, according to the stipulations of the declaration regarding Maritime War adopted by the 1909 London Naval Conference. In addition, the blockade of Cuba is more than a bilateral issue between our country and the United States.

THE EXTRATERRITORIAL APPLICATION OF A POLICY OF GENOCIDE

The report also shows how the public health sector is affected by the extra-territorial application of that policy of genocide imposed on Cuba by successive U.S. administrations over the course of more than 50 years.

The repeated extraterritorial application of US laws and the persecution of legitimate interests of companies and citizens of third countries have significant repercussions on the sovereignty of many other states.

Under that policy, persons who are ill in Cuba cannot benefit, in many instances, from new diagnostics, technologies or drugs, even though if their lives depend on them because – independently of the fact that these products are available in a third country, the blockade laws forbid that Cuba acquires even one single component or program originating in the United States.

In this way, the document explains how non-U.S. companies like Hitachi and Toshiba are refusing to sell high technology equipment to Cuba.

For example, Hitachi is refusing to sell Cuba an electronic microscope of the kind used in pathological anatomy, which is forcing the island to look elsewhere for alternatives, making the final price of the product much more expensive.

Meanwhile, Toshiba is acting in the same way with high technology equipment such as the gamma chamber (used to do studies with radioactive isotopes in nuclear medicine), magnetic resonance, and high precision ultra-sound. As a result, health services for the Cuban population have been affected.

Another eloquent example is that of the Cuban company GCATE S.A., which specializes in the purchase of technological equipment for the health sector; it has faced serious difficulties with the Dutch company Philips Medical because, after a range of equipment was bought and installed, the Dutch company refused to provide spare parts, forcing us to buy them through third countries; this increases the price and makes maintenance an even more difficult task.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, analyzed the case of that Dutch company in his September 6 Reflection titled "The double betrayal of Philips."

The economic damages are basically due to the need to acquire products and equipment in markets that are further away, using intermediaries for such purposes, and the subsequent increased price that such procedures bring with them.

Likewise, the refusal to grant visas to Cuban scientists and health specialists so that they can take part in numerous scientific congresses and events in the United States constitutes an obstacle for professional updating, their witnessing of techniques being used in the treatment of different conditions, and an exchange of experiences that, under different conditions, could be beneficial to both countries.


Lilliam Riera

Voices against the G20

A SUMMIT meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) in Pittsburgh September 24-25 was met by an outpouring of challenges and protests by activists from a broad range of social movements, community groups, unions and progressive organizations.
The G20 is made up of finance ministers and central bankers--and at such summit meetings, heads of state--of the world's top 19 most economically developed countries plus the European Union. Its critics in labor and social movements charge that it represents multinational corporations and banks whose single-minded quest for maximizing profits is responsible for the devastation of the economies, cultures and environments of countries throughout the world.
Educational forums and other activities--including several demonstrations--were the result, culminating in a massive Peoples' March, with some 8,000 participants, according to march organizers, on Friday, September 25.
Starting off the "G20 week" in Pittsburgh was a Peoples' Summit September 19-22, organized by educators and activists who called for "a world in which basic rights--freedom of expression, freedom of thought and religion, freedom from fear and freedom from want--are enjoyed by all people."
Peoples' Summit organizers estimate that 700-800 people attended one or another session of the three-day event. Among those addressing the Peoples' Summit were global justice activist Walden Bello of the Philippines; Privilege Haangandu from Jubilee Zambia; Mexican labor leader Benedicto Martinez; journalist Jeremy Scahill; and historian Howard Zinn, who called for the gathering to challenge "the bigwigs of finance and industry who are trying to determine our fate" with an agenda of "what working people need," based on "solidarity across national lines."
United Steel Workers (USW) Education Director Lisa Jordan and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka brought to the Peoples' Summit their sense of optimism from the just-concluded AFL-CIO national convention, which had taken place in Pittsburgh.
Also drawing support from the USW and United Electrical workers (UE) was a "March for Jobs" through the Hill District, in the heart of Pittsburgh's African American community. The march on September 20 drew some 500 people and was organized by Bail Out the People. Speakers included USW Vice President Fred Redmond and Clarence Thomas of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Bail Out the People also organized a weeklong "Tent City on the Hill" to focus attention on the plight of the unemployed and the homeless and the need for a jobs program.
UE's International Labor Affairs Director Robin Alexander was a key organizer of "Peoples Voices," another series of forums on the problems of the G20 and corporate globalization, on September 23-25. Sponsoring groups included Jobs with Justice, Grassroots Global Justice and Alliance for Responsible Trade/Hemispheric Social Alliance.
The first day's panel discussion included community and international activists; Steelworkers President Leo Gerard; and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, former World Bank vice president and chief economist, and critic of global economic policies and bodies. The next day's event featured 10 issue circles that indicted the G20's policies and called for alternatives; this led to a "People's Tribunal," that found the G20 guilty of violating human rights.
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A VARIETY of other activities took place. Among these were demonstrations, vigils and educational efforts by a progressive and ecumenical religious coalition dubbed the G6 Billion. An educational encampment was organized by Code Pink and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and another by the Three Rivers Climate Convergence (which was, however, targeted and essentially closed down by police repression).
Public officials and news media--in particular TV news--spent the months leading to the G20 stoking fear and loathing of protestors and predicting violence. Outside police agencies augmented Pittsburgh's 900-officer police department to a security force of 4,000 police and 2,000 National Guard troops. As one newspaper columnist noted, this was the largest mobilization of armed force in Southwest Pennsylvania since 8,000 National Guard troops were sent to crush the Homestead steelworkers in 1892.
Considerable media attention was attracted on September 24 by the anarchist-led confrontations of the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project. Its non-permitted actions, drawing about 1,500 people, were repressed fairly quickly by several thousand heavily armed and armored police forces, using tear-gas and pepper-spray, disrupting the working-class neighborhoods of Lawrenceville and Bloomfield, and making over 40 arrests.
Far more impressive, however, was the week's culmination--a Friday afternoon peaceful, legal Peoples' March with a broad and diverse outpouring of 8,000. Demands included: End war and occupations; Allow public input; jobs for all; Environmental justice; Economic justice.
Initiated by the Thomas Merton Center and its Anti-War Committee, the action drew endorsements from 70 organizations, including the USW and UE. The three-mile march was punctuated by three enthusiastic rallies, which included labor and community representatives and whose co-chairs included labor musician Anne Feeney and UE News editor Al Hart.
An ugly aftermath occurred on Friday evening, at the University of Pittsburgh, in the form of an unprovoked yet massive, highly coordinated police assault on students and others. Many saw this as "pay-back" from militarized and hyped-up police forces who had anticipated large-scale street battles that never materialized.
Over 100 arrests were made--including a number of by-standers and journalists. The assault has been widely denounced, including by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh (Communications Workers of America Local 38061), representing employees of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noting that:
[M]any of those arrested were attempting to lawfully exercise their First Amendment rights of peaceful assembly and of press freedom, rights that are essential to the survival of democracy. Others were bystanders who found themselves caught between lines of police ordering them to disperse and then blocking their dispersal until they were arrested.
The consensus among organizers and activists was that the week's events posed an important and effective challenge to the policies represented by the G20.

Washington faces deepening debacle in Afghanistan

Today marks eight years since the launching of the US war against Afghanistan. The aerial bombardment of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad was followed by the deployment of CIA and military special forces units which directed US warplanes in the annihilation of Taliban fighters. The militias of the Northern Alliance—a collection of warlords tied to the opium trade and implicated in war crimes over the previous decade—served as Washington’s proxy army.
Within two months, all of Afghanistan’s provinces had fallen to the US intervention, with large numbers of the Taliban resistance taken prisoner and massacred and others driven into the Tora Bora mountains or across the border into Pakistan. In those two months, a total of 12 US soldiers were killed.
Now, eight years later, the Obama White House and the Pentagon are engaged in a heated debate over whether to send another 40,000 troops—on top of the 68,000 US and 38,000 NATO troops already deployed—in an attempt to salvage an intervention that has succeeded only in intensifying the resistance to the US-led occupation and spreading it throughout the country.
The number of US and NATO troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year has risen to 400—nearly six times as many as died in the first year of the US intervention. The war has gone on twice as long as US forces were engaged in World War II.
The Bush administration launched the war in the name of smashing Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. It was justified as retribution for the attacks of September 11, 2001, tragic events whose real origins have not been seriously investigated to this day.
The Obama administration employs this same essential pretext, describing Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”—in contrast to the “war of choice” in still-occupied Iraq. Like his predecessor, Obama insists that the war is aimed at preventing another terrorist attack, maintaining this pretense even as his national security adviser, retired General James Jones, admitted this week that there are no more than 100 members of Al Qaeda in all of Afghanistan, with no means of attacking the US.
The World Socialist Web Site rejected this rationale as a lie from the outset. In an editorial board statement posted on October 9, 2001, two days after the war was launched, the WSWS explained:
“… while the events of September 11 have served as the catalyst for the assault on Afghanistan, the cause is far deeper. The nature of this or any war, its progressive or reactionary character, is determined not by the immediate events that preceded it, but rather by the class structures, economic foundations and international roles of the states that are involved. From this decisive standpoint, the present action by the United States is an imperialist war.
“The US government initiated the war in pursuit of far-reaching international interests of the American ruling elite. What is the main purpose of the war? The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago created a political vacuum in Central Asia, which is home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world.”
The statement continued, “By attacking Afghanistan, setting up a client regime and moving vast military forces into the region, the US aims to establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control.”
There is no need to revise a single word in this analysis. Since October 2001, ample evidence has emerged that the decision to invade Afghanistan—like the one to conquer Iraq—was made well before the 9/11 attacks. These served as the pretext, not the cause, of two wars of military aggression.
The debacle confronting US imperialism in Afghanistan is one of its own making. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are both the products of previous US interventions in Afghanistan. Beginning in 1979, Washington funneled billions of dollars in arms and aid to Islamist guerrillas seeking to topple the country’s Soviet-backed government. It deliberately instigated a Soviet invasion and war that claimed over a million lives, turned another five million into refugees and wrecked the entire society.
At that point, bin Laden was part of the CIA-Saudi-Pakistani pipeline. Much of the US aid went to the forces of mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now blamed for last weekend’s attack that killed eight US soldiers in the remote province of Nuristan.
The US-led occupation begun eight years ago has proven another unmitigated catastrophe for the Afghan people. Thousands have been killed in aerial bombardments and repressive raids across the country, with the civilian casualty rate steadily rising.
Already desperate conditions of life have only worsened. The United Nations recently ranked Afghanistan at 181 out of 182 countries in the world in terms of human development indices. Only Niger ranked lower.
Life expectancy has fallen to 43 since the US invasion. At least 40 percent of the population is unemployed and 42 percent live on less than $1 a day. One in five children die before his or her fifth birthday, while one in 50 births ends in the death of the mother, one of the highest rates in the world. Two-thirds of the country’s adult population can neither read nor write.
Conditions have steadily worsened even as some $36 billion in foreign aid has been delivered to the country since October 2001, the bulk of it flowing into the pockets of the kleptocracy headed by the US-installed puppet president, Hamid Karzai.
Hated by the majority of the population and having blatantly stolen the August 20 presidential election, Karzai remains in power solely thanks to the support of Washington, which has concluded that it has nothing with which to replace him.
These conditions of violence, destitution and corruption have created broad popular support for those resisting the occupation. The ongoing debate in Washington is how best to suppress this resistance.
Two main options are reportedly under discussion: the deployment of another 40,000 troops in a redoubled counterinsurgency campaign, as demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the Pentagon, or an intensified use of drone attacks, aerial bombardment and special forces incursions into Pakistan, as proposed by Vice President Joseph Biden and others in the administration. Both spell increased bloodshed and a far wider war.
While there are no doubt bitter divisions over how the war should be conducted, all sides begin from achieving the aims upon which the war was launched: establishing a stranglehold over the energy resources of Central Asia in order to seize a decisive advantage for US imperialism over its economic rivals in Asia and Europe.
The onset of the global financial crisis has only intensified the underlying contradictions that are the driving force of American militarism, above all the conflict between a globally integrated economy and a world system divided by rival capitalist nation states. This finds its most explosive expression in the decline in the economic dominance of US imperialism.
The majority of the American people oppose both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and millions voted for Obama on the basis of this opposition. Yet both wars continue, and Obama is preparing to escalate the carnage in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while threatening military aggression in Iran.
No less than Bush and the Republicans, the Obama administration represents—in both its foreign and domestic policy—the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy that rules America. Wars abroad go hand in hand with mounting social inequality and an assault on the living standards and social and democratic rights of working people in the US itself.
The discussion now going on in the White House—and behind the backs of the American people—about how best to advance US imperialism’s interests in Central Asia poses immense dangers. An escalation of the war, either with more ground troops or intensified air attacks, threatens to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan and all of South and Central Asia. China, a rising power, and Russia, with longstanding interests in the region, will not remain on the sidelines indefinitely while Washington attempts to exert its dominance by armed force.
The war begun eight years ago and the threat of its escalation into a far bloodier conflagration can be ended only by the intervention of the working class in the US and internationally, fighting against the capitalist profit system which is the source of militarism.
In this struggle, the demands must be raised for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, a halt to the US attacks on Pakistan, and the dismantling of the US military and intelligence apparatus so as to provide billions of dollars for reparations to the victims of US aggression and to secure jobs and improve living standards for working people in the US and internationally.
Bill Van Auken