There has been as yet no new hurricane, no earthquake, no tornado this year, affecting our dear Cuba. But there has been a combination of two things: a plague and an intensification of the viciousness of panicked imperialism.
This combination is compelling friends of Cuba to take some urgent action to help Cuba to alleviate the burdens being piled onto the island. Revolutionary Cuba has always been blessed with leaders who know how to think, to think with compassion about the interests of their own people and with extraordinary generosity about others. That attribute has gone a long way to keeping the country bouyant, spiritually and materially. Cuba knows how to multiply whatever help it gets. These qualities have evoked in frustrated imperialism the most flagrant manifestations of imperialist hatred.
Hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes lack this cruel emotion which imperialism with its present leader is now displaying. U.S. imperialism with its control of the world's reserve currency is able to print as much money as it wants to and to purchase the compliance of some of its own citizens and of others in other parts of the world, in the ugliest schemes devised by its government in the attempt to frustrate Cuba's principled defiance of oppression.
One of the Revolution's great achievements in education has made it possible for Cuba to produce a therapy to combat the new corona virus, COVID-19: its Interferon Alfa 2B. The Trump administration's answer to this success is to launch an intense campaign to dissuade countries, desperate to help their people, from purchasing this desired source of reasonably priced medicine.
Already as of March 29, 45 countries have requested Cuba's inhalant Interferon. This includes Brazil, which, in a moment of Bolsonaro's extreme irrationality and mimicking imperialist propaganda, had expelled Cuban doctors from Brazil calling them terrorists. 6,000 Cuban doctors will now be redeployed to repentant Brazil. But the provocations will not end. The U.S. keeps arbitrarily imposing sanctions against the island and its stalwart allies, such as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, whose president it now, in a preposterous gesture of war promotion, attempts to demonize as a narcotrafficker.
Firstly, we have to let Cuba's achievements be known. Interferon Alfa 2B has a high profile right now, but the lung cancer vaccine known as CIMAvax—developed by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center based in Buffalo, New York, and Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology, and produced at the first-ever joint venture between an American hospital and Cuba, launched in September 2019 in Cuba under the name: Innovative Immunotherapy Alliance, S.A. —may soon be seen as equally important.
Secondly, we have to help Cuba not only to continue providing for a healthy life for its heroic people, but to go further in fulfilling the potential of its educational and social systems so that it can contribute even more amazingly to human well-being and development. We will recognize the crucial importance of helping Cuba at this time by initiating a vigorous fundraising campaign, to support Cuba’s humanitarian efforts in this fight against COVID-19.
The CNC is launching this Cuba Against COVID-19 and 100 percent of all funds used will be sent to Cuba. Cheques should be made out to the Canadian Network on Cuba note in the memo line – Cuba Against COVID-19. Mail to: Sharon Skup, 56 Riverwood Terrace, Bolton, Ontario L7E 1S4.
Unfortunately we are still not able to provide charitable tax receipts, although we send receipts for the funds donated, together with our thanks for your support.
March 30,2020
Keith Ellis, Coordinator
CNC Campaign to Support Cuba's Contribution to World Fight Against COVID-19
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