Register for the Zoom meeting here: http://tinyurl.com/CubaResists Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/254901752450010 Our battle is not only a battle for survival, to survive for the sake of surviving, no; it is a battle to participate in the fight for a better world, to participate in that fight together with the world.’ Fidel Castro, 24 August 1998. Four days before the US presidential elections, we discuss the difficulties facing the Cuban people, with the global Covid-19 pandemic and the tightening of the US blockade, and how the Revolution continues to resist. In 2019 alone, the Trump administration introduced 86 new sanctions against Cuba; to starve the country of revenue, scare off foreign partners, create scarcity, and obstruct oil shipments from Venezuela. The US blockade cost Cuba $4 billion last year. The Trump administration has increased attacks on Cuba to secure victory in the key-state of Florida.
Rock Around The Blockade organised a protest outside the US embassy in London on 17 October. This demonstration was to oppose the illegal US blockade at a time when it is more important than ever to defend the example of socialist Cuba.
Belly of the Beast, a group of independent journalists based in Cuba, have released the first episode in a documentary series about the US blockade of Cuba on their YouTube channel. The series promises to explore the effect of the genocidal blockade on ordinary Cubans, alongside an investigation into the history of US aggression towards socialist Cuba and the latest sanctions which coincide with the Covid-19 pandemic. You can watch the first episode here: Join us on Thursday 29th of October at 7pm BST for an online public meeting: Cuba Resists! Trump, the Blockade and the US Elections. We will hear from various speakers about the various difficulties facing the Cuban people, with the global Covid-19 pandemic and the tightening of the US blockade, and how the Revolution continues to resist. Register for the meeting here Speakers: Cuban Ambassador to Britain, Bárbara Montalvo Álvarez Cuban Ambassador to the US, Jose Ramon Cabañas Gloria La Riva, Presidential candidate for Party for Socialism and Liberation, US Valia Rodriguez, Cuban medical scientist Helen Yaffe, University of Glasgow A speaker from the Rock Around the Blockade campaign
Below we publish an open letter to the BBC in response to their website article " Coronavirus: 'Forced to work' as medics fighting Covid " At a time when the US and EU sanctions on Venezuela are strangling its economy, undermining its currency, restricting access to vital medical and hygiene supplies, and costing damages of an estimated $194bn (2016-2019), it is a distortion from reality to speak of economic shortages in Venezuela without mentioning these crushing sanctions. Yet you routinely fail to do so, and in your video article they were not raised once. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, f ormer UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, estimated these sanctions have killed up to 100,000 Venezuelans.
On the date of Venezuelan national hero Simon Bolivar’s 1815 letter from Jamaica, outlining his vision of anti-imperialist and revolutionary solidarity across the Americas, Venezuela launched their institute for international solidarity. On 6 September 2020 the Revolutionary Communist Group participated in the online launch of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples, hosted by Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza and President of the new institution Carlos Ron, who thanked the RCG for our solidarity campaigns and protest outside of the Bank of England demanding they return the £820 million of gold stolen from Venezuela.
Below we publish an open letter to the BBC in response to their website article 'Evo Morales: Exiled Bolivian ex-president accused of rape' (21 August 2020).
The Revolutionary Communist Group organised a protest outside the Bank Of England in London on 15 August, joined by Latin American solidarity activists. This was to oppose the theft of 31 tonnes, £820m worth of Venezuela’s gold: a violation of the Latin American country’s sovereignty; a breach of international law; an act of piracy; and a dangerous disruption of efforts to defeat the global Covid-19 pandemic. In total alignment with Britain's piratical imperialism, London's High Court of Justice on 2 July ruled against the repatriation of Venezuela's gold destined to be used for emergency Covid-19 provisions.
On 1 August, Rock Around the Blockade held a successful online meeting on 'How Cuba has Covid 19 under control'. Nearly 150 people tuned in to listen and watch presentations and films from the three panellists: Dr Helen Yaffe, author of ' We Are Cuba - How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World' who spoke about the features of Cuba's socialist development which have contributed to the capacity for an effective domestic and international response to Covid-19 . Dr Valia Rodriguez, a Cuban clinical neurophysiologist and cognitive neuroscientist , teaching and researching at Aston University in Birmingham, gave detailed information about public healthcare services, facilities and structure developed since the Cuban Revolution. Testament to this, Cuba's domestic death toll from Covid-19 stood at just 87 by the end of July. Ed Augustin, from Belly of the Beast, an independent group of journalists and filmographers based in Cuba who have been chronicling life on the island, especially in the fight against Covid 19 and who focus on people-centred stories, providing a platform for Cuban voices so often excluded by the mainstream media. Several of their fantastic short videos were presented as part of the session.
At 2.10am on 30 April, the Cuban embassy in Washington was attacked by a hail of machine gun fire. 32 bullets from an AK-47 peppered the entrance to the building and a statue of Jose Marti. No one was injured, though seven people were inside the building. The terrorist was Alexander Alazo Baró, a Cuban-born man who moved to Mexico in 2003 before seeking asylum in the US in 2010. The attack was carefully planned: Alazo reconnoitred the embassy two weeks before; he draped himself in a US flag to avoid being gunned down by police; he attempted to burn a Cuban flag on which was scrawled ‘Trump 2020’. Instead of cooperating and condemning this terrorist attack on Cuba’s diplomatic mission, the US government has added Cuba to a list of countries that are not cooperating with US anti-terrorism activities.
The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. The central plan directs national resources according to a development strategy which prioritises human welfare and community participation, not private profit. HELEN YAFFE reports.