What the "Tale of Two Disasters" reveals about Western "Civilization"

The two maritime tragedies in recent days could barely be more different. Likewise the response of governments in the Global North and the coverage in the main stream media.

In the first case, it was poor migrants from the Global South…

“Last Wednesday, a fishing trawler carrying more than 700 migrants primarily from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan went down off the coast of Greece, in one of the worst such disasters in more than a decade. Though the death toll is officially at 81, Greek authorities have only counted 104 survivors. Their testimony suggests all the women and children aboard perished. By some estimates, more than 300 Pakistani nationals on the boat died, with one account alleging many were forced to stay below deck in the hold as the ship capsized and sank.

……

“Pakistan is in the middle of a devastating economic crisis, with the rate of inflation at a 50-year high, food shortages, energy blackouts and mounting unemployment. The conditions have compelled numerous people, especially among the poor, to seek a better life abroad.

“The desperate situation has led to the mushrooming growth of people smugglers in Pakistan,” wrote Zahid Shahab Ahmed, a senior research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization in Australia. “In exchange for large sums of money, they offer people transportation, fake documentation and other resources for a swift departure from the country.”

“Shocking as it is, this disaster in the Mediterranean is all too familiar to a global public largely numb to the plight of those making the perilous crossing. The migrants fell victim to a familiar chain of misfortunes: They were exploited by people-smuggling networks that stretched from their countries of origin to the coast of Libya. With the threat of violence, they were forced onto an overcrowded, unseaworthy, ill-equipped boat. The ship that took them to their deaths was stranded for days on its intended journey to Italy without help, despite apparent distress calls made by the migrants. And they endured this all in a desperate attempt to find asylum on a continent whose governments have failed to come up with a collective plan on migration and where many locals would rather push them back into the sea.”

On the other end of the economic spectrum…

“Far away in the North Atlantic, a cinematic ordeal is playing out that has news media and the global public riveted. Somewhere near the famous wreck of the Titanic, a deep-sea submersible is missing. At the time of writing, the search for the 21-foot craft, known as the Titan, was entering its fourth day after it lost contact with Canadian research vessel Polar Prince on Sunday morning. The U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Air Force had scrambled to locate the submersible over a vast 10,000-square mile search zone in the ocean, which reaches 13,000 feet deep in some areas.

The Titan was carrying out a dive organized by OceanGate Expeditions, a private research and tourism company that has conducted trips to the Titanic wreck site. Its passengers reportedly pay $250,000 a head to go on the journey. Though the names of those on board had not been released by authorities, reporting confirmed that British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush were inside the Titan. So too were Shahzada Dawood, heir to one of Pakistan’s biggest private fortunes, and his teenage son Suleman.

Over 27,000 migrants have gone missing and are presumed dead in the Mediterranean since 2014. In general, no US or NATO aircraft or naval vessels scramble to locate and rescue the migrants before their ships go down and even after the tragedy unfolds, “search and rescue” efforts don’t begin to match the efforts made for the 5 who we now know died on the Titan. The mainstream media doesn’t follow the tragedies which take the lives of the poor, again and again. They are expendable, or worse, undesirable.

Both events are terrible tragedies but of very different magnitudes, The response says a lot about our society and those of our allies and friends in Europe. And this is not alone in laying bare the underlying racism and class bias of Western nations and media.

For another excellent analysis of this "Tale of Two Disasters” from the American Prospect, check out  https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-23-tale-of-two-disasters/

 

 

A better world is possible, but only If we keep our eyes on the prize

 As many of my readers know, I am an activist member of the Democratic Socialist of America here in Wilmington, NC. I was unable to attend the recent "How We Win" conference sponsored by the DSA, The Nation, and Jacobin, but was particularly impressed by the following summation by Michael Kazin, which I am posting in its entirety. 

The article (and the underlying position of most of the DSA as far as I can see) follows the same conceptual framework as the modern abolitionist movement; what we, as socialists, are doing is building a movement towards a socialist horizon. We have, and must always maintain, a vision of what a better world will look like, and insist that what we support in our struggle today must be consistent with building toward that vision. 

Having recently returned from a delegation to Cuba, it is clear to me that the leadership of their revolutionary government has that vision; I could see it in everything we learned about while we were there. That is why we, who live in the "belly of the beast", must support the Cuban people and work to end the US blockade.

This vision is what Marx and Engels talked about in the Communist Manifesto 175 years ago, when they wrote that our task is to "represent the movement of the future in the movement of the present". We must understand that while we fight for ourselves and our class today, we are laying the ground work for the struggles of our children and our children's children for a better world. In the words of the FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Movement, A luta continua, vitória é certa.

The Socialist Emergence Inside the Democratic Tradition by Michael Kazin, from the American Prospect, June 21, 2023

“Labels get in the way sometime,” remarked Dylan Wegela, a first-term state representative from Michigan. The teacher and former labor organizer was responding to a question about whether his belief in democratic socialism prevents him from reaching voters in his largely white, working-class district in the suburbs west of Detroit. “I never deny I’m a socialist,” he continued, “but my community doesn’t know what it means. They do like things socialists want, though, like Medicare for All and affordable housing.”

The occasion for these reflections was “How We Win”—a conference sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, The Nation, and Jacobin—held last weekend at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. The 50 or so politicians in attendance occupy elective offices in mostly blue cities and districts all over the nation. They include state senators from Brooklyn and Philadelphia, council members from Knoxville and Pittsburgh, an alderman from Chicago, the mayor of Burbank, California, and a theater director who sits on the board of education in the Riverhead School District on the east end of Long Island. It was a decidedly young crowd. I saw not a single pol with even a trace of gray or white hair, unless one includes Bernie Sanders, who briefly addressed the group via Zoom.

At times, the working conference rocked like a celebration. “This is the largest gathering of socialist elected officials in decades,” exulted Maria Svart, executive director of the DSA Fund. Happy shouts and a stamping of feet followed her statement and other speakers who echoed it. Since Sanders ran for president seven years ago, DSA has boomed to close to 100,000 members; voters have chosen more than 150 socialists to govern them at levels from the House of Representatives to that school board in Long Island. Indeed, not since the heyday of the old Socialist Party of America, more than a century ago, have there been so many victorious politicians who sport the “S-word” on their bios.

Yet, Wegela and his fellow officials devote most of their time to advocating for winnable reforms in the only system we have, not planning how to hurl the rotten machinery of capitalism into the recycling bin of history. Svart claims they all share the goal of learning “how to shift power from the owning class to the working class.” But every panel I attended discussed such practical goals as how to build and support labor unions, reduce the fear of crime, persuade Latinos to spurn right-wing candidates, and stop cities from financing lavish sports arenas. Every official who attended, I believe, had run as either a Democrat or in a nonpartisan contest. I heard no one mention launching a radical third party or backing any of the marginal ones that exist and are running self-described democratic socialist candidates for president next year. During the conference, “socialist” got mentioned almost exclusively as a term of self-identification rather than as the goal toward which all were striving.

The current surge of elected DSA members, while modest, would not have occurred unless socialists ran as Democrats.

The ideological ancestors to this new generation of socialist elected officials defined themselves and their work rather differently. The nearly 1,000 American socialists who got elected to office in the early 20th century ran as the nominees of a party of that name, which proudly belonged to an international socialist movement that was much larger in Western and Central Europe and was growing all over the industrial world. Like their 21st-century comrades, they tried to deliver on the promise of a government that would curb the powers of corporations and the rich and serve the interests of ordinary people. The so-called “sewer socialists” who ran cities like Milwaukee, Berkeley, and Schenectady, New York, instituted factory inspections, built new hospitals and schools and parks in working-class neighborhoods, and prevented the police from aiding employers during strikes.

But they were quite forthright about the limits of what they believed those reforms could accomplish. When Eugene Debs, a former Democratic state assemblyman and union leader, accepted his party’s nomination for president in 1912, he declared, “The Socialist Party is organized and financed by the workers themselves as a means of wresting control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of the nation and the world. Since the socialist revolution cannot be achieved in a day, never for a moment mistake reform for revolution and never lose sight of the ultimate goal.” That year, 19 Socialists held office in the state of Michigan alone.

The current surge of elected DSA members, while modest, would not have occurred unless socialists ran as Democrats, a process Sanders began when he nearly beat Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2016. But that affiliation does raise a question: How does a progressive Democrat who identifies as a socialist differ from a progressive Democrat, like so many in the current party, who does not, when their stances on the key economic and cultural issues are identical or nearly so?

Participants in “How We Win,” a conference sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, The Nation, and Jacobin, gathered last weekend in Washington.

At the end of the “How We Win” conference, a few panelists did suggest an answer. I had to leave early, but David Duhalde, chair of the Fund, a veteran DSA activist, and organizer of the meeting, summed up their arguments in an email: “We are building for a world where democratic socialism is possible, and that democratic socialism is impossible absent political power.” He adds, “The socialist identity is key to show our long-term vision and … counter-intuitively attenuate the effects of some types of red baiting. You can’t accuse someone of being a socialist when they are open about it!”

In the past, American socialists made their most valuable contributions as dedicated, shrewd, and uncorruptible organizers of mass insurgencies, not by dreaming out loud about a revolution to come. Their work was indispensable to the growth of and the gains achieved by the movements for Black and immigrant rights, feminism, organized labor, and more. Most of the socialists at the D.C. conference entered politics through contemporary movements, too. While in office, they continue to employ the kind of methods that succeed outside the electoral realm. “You have to knock on people’s doors not just before elections but all through the year,” advised Phara Forrest, a member of the New York State Assembly who is also a registered nurse. “You have to teach people how to organize themselves.” As two young socialists named Karl and Friedrich put it in a manifesto 175 years ago: The task is to “represent the movement of the future in the movement of the present.”

To expand their influence, the comrades now serving in office and those who follow them may have to be content to regard their ultimate aim the way many a Christian thinks about the Second Coming. As Irving Howe and Lewis Coser wrote 70 years ago in one of the first issues of Dissent: “Socialism is the name of our desire … the desire arises from a conflict with, and an extension from, the world that is; nor could the desire survive in any meaningful way were it not for this complex relationship to the world that is.”

Meanwhile, there is a good deal of vital work to get done, and many elections to win.

 

Solidarity with the Cuban People - End the Blockade!

Below I have reprinted a reflection from another solidarity delegation to Cuba (sponsored by CodePink) earlier this year. It focuses on the economic consequences of the US blockade for the Cuban people, in particular the shortages of fuel.

The delegation that I was on experienced fewer issues with power (only one short outage in the 9 days we were there) despite being housed in a working-class community a good distance from the tourist hotels. But we did see long lines at the gas stations and heard about the effects that lack of fertilizer had on agricultural production. By the way, the Cubans are working towards sustainable food production by focusing on small scale organic farming (we visited one of the farms), an economic plus (they don’t need to pay for importing fertilizers) and an environment plus at the same time. The Cubans are planning for the future and working to get there, poco a poco.

I have edited the article for brevity and included a few comments of my own (in Italics).

 

The fuel shortages in Cuba

Cubans on the island are charting their own course outside U.S. hegemony and it is clear that the U.S.’s policy is to try and deny them that right. 

By Kaitlin Blanchard and Eli Smith, June 15, 2023, Nation of Change

One hundred and fifty young people from the United States and Canada arrived in Cuba in late April 2023, just days before International Workers Day. As members of CODEPINK’s youth cohort, our goal was to understand the Cuban political system, the U.S. blockade and its impacts on everyday life. We sat in a room upon our arrival, listening to our trip hosts explain the issue of fuel shortages on the island. Before they were done talking, the microphones went silent. The power had gone out.

In 1960, following the Cuban Revolution that propelled Fidel Castro to power, a memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs was written and later declassified. It stated that a majority of Cubans supported Fidel, and if the U.S. wanted to counter the rise of communism in its backyard, it would have to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and an overthrow of the government.” 

The U.S. imposed a blockade (over 60 years ago) which still restricts necessary items from entering Cuba and prevents other countries from selling them to the island. On top of the embargo, the Biden Administration keeps Cuba on a state-sponsor of terrorism list, further restricting economic development. The goal of these policies is explicit in the 1960 memorandum: the US is trying to starve socialism out of Cuba.

And we certainly saw misery with our own eyes. Usually for May Day, millions of Cubans rally in Havana, celebrating socialism and workers. May Day was scaled down this year due to fuel shortages (which restricted transportation Havana from around the country) – Cuba has to conserve the fuel it has for farming and other necessities. (When I was there in 1972, we attended the May Day rally of over 700,000 Cubans, many bussed in from rural areas around the country, to hear Fidel speak about the progress of the revolution and the plans for the future.)

Leading up to May Day, a massive storm swept through the island, causing emergencies that the Cuban government couldn’t effectively deal with because of the lack of fuel. We sat through multiple power outages, even in a hotel that had decent fuel access. We toured neighborhoods in transformation, learning how Cubans were developing their own communities to have better access to medical care, food and other life affirming services. Even those tours, full of hope and self-determination, were plagued by outages. Tourism is a huge industry that helps sustain the Cuban economy, so tourists like us are usually shielded from occurrences like this.

Even though the people we met in Cuba had a thorough understanding of what our country was doing to theirs, they welcomed us with open arms. Not only were they kind to us, they were also hopeful for the kind of future we would build together—one where our two countries can base foreign policy on the person-to-person relationships we build rather than deferring to the dinosaurs in Washington who value the victory of their ideologies over millions of Cuban lives.

Our cohort visited the Blas Roca Contingent where we were warmly welcomed with fresh coconuts, t-shirts, and hats. We joined delegations from all over the world: Switzerland, Australia, Uruguay, Panama, just to name a few. It was amazing to see union leaders and organizers from all over the world come to Cuba to show support for the Cuban project. It was also transformative to see how well Cuban workers are taken care of. The entire facility we were in was a place for the workers and their entire families to come for food, community, and fun.

These observations directly parallel what I had seen in its infancy in 1972 in a farmers’ co-op in Alamar, where our Venceremos Brigade worked building some of the first homes for the campesinos in the region. These sturdy prefab concrete homes were replacing the thatched roof, dirt floor “huts” that were destroyed every time a hurricane hit the area. Alamar now has upwards of 100,000 residents.

Later, a smaller group of us took a tour with a worker at the facility. He told us how his father had grown up very poor before the revolution and how much his family’s life changed for the better after the revolution. He spoke of the hardships of the blockade, especially not having access to fertilizers for farming which could easily double their yields. He also mentioned how he has had family emigrate to the U.S. and while he doesn’t fault them for leaving, he himself could never leave the Cuban revolutionary project behind. He is a revolutionary through and through. His story is the kind that the policy makers in the U.S. choose to ignore. Cubans on the island are charting their own course outside U.S. hegemony and it is clear that the U.S.’s policy is to try and deny them that right. 

All of us, like the delegations that have gone before us and the countless ones who will go after, returned to the U.S. with a deeply held commitment to end our country’s blockade on the Cuban people.

 

Why is Cuba on the the list of "state sponsors of terrorism"?

 

The US government maintains a list of countries that it accuses of sponsoring terrorism. Cuba, a small island country (population around 11 million) which has no weapons industry, no navy or air force to speak of, and NO nuclear weapons, is on that list. 

Cuba is on that list even though it does not have military bases abroad. Even though it hasn’t invaded another country recently (actually, now that I think about it, it hasn’t ever invaded another country). It does send some of its citizens abroad, but they are doctors and other medical professionals, who are assisting mostly poor nations in dealing with health crises. The “weapons” they carry don’t wipe out wedding parties, but disease. 

It has a large University dedicated to training family doctors from countries around the world. And it has sent teachers to other poor countries, bringing weapons like books and knowledge, both of which are considered subversive by many in the US.

But still, according to the last two presidential administrations, Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. What is it about the revolutionary government of Cuba that spreads terror in the highest circles of the US government and the wealthy power that dominates our politics? 

Is it the example of a country that has resisted every attempt of the US to reassert control for over 60 years? Is it the example of how under socialism, a government can focus resources (resources that are extremely limited because of a 500 history of exploitation by other countries and by a 60+ year embargo by the US) and respond to crisis after crisis and still continue its work towards that better world that the generation of revolutionaries fought and died for. 

But enough about Cuba. What about the country that accuses Cuba if being a state sponsor of terrorism. A country that has sponsored an invasion of Cuba; that has planned and attempted hundreds of assassinations against Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro; a country that supported direct terrorist attacks against both Cuban and US citizens who support the revolution including the downing of passenger planes and sabotaging vessels in Cuban ports. 

A country that invades other countries based on made up “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction, a country that has military bases in some 80 different countries and claims the “right” to intervene anywhere in the world to protect its interests ($$$), which it calls “a rules-based international order.”

Cuba has a museum that I visited called the Museum of the Denouncement. In two floors and a dozen or more exhibits it documents the terrorist attacks against Cuba, planned, executed and supported by the United States government during the last 63 years. The United States does not have a similar museum for the support of terrorism by Cuba, because its halls would be empty, its exhibits nonexistent.

We, who live in the belly of the beast, need to demand that the US remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Maybe in its place on the list, we could put the name of the real supporter of terrorism and build a Museum of Denouncement of our own. I have the ideal building for such a museum, which would have to be very, very large. It’s a five-sided building just across the Potomac from the nation’s capital. It probably already houses most of the documents we would need.

 

What if?

What if I told you there was a place, say a country, where comprehensive, preventative health care from conception to the grave is provided to all citizens, regardless of wealth, race, gender, gender identification, or any other status? Sounds interesting? Guessing as to what country it is? Let me eliminate some candidates. It’s not a country in Western Europe and obviously it’s not the United States.

Let’s add a few things. In this place, there are family doctors in every community, charged with providing basic care to everyone in that community. And let’s say that these doctors live and work in those communities, and not in some far away gated community.

At this point we need to add that this care is free. No copays, no hidden charges, just part of your social benefits, a right, like the right to free speech or the right to marry whomever you please (which I might add is guaranteed in this country).

By now you might be thinking that I’m making this up. There is no place on earth where this is possible. Think again. I sitting there right now composing this record.

But I’m not done. Some other unbelievable, but verifiable, information. Up until a few years ago, this country of fewer than 10 million people was economically undeveloped, having been exploited by the Global North for some 500 years, with its land decimated in the interests of the profits of a few. But despite this it was able to create its own successful vaccines to combat COVID with no help from big Pharma, and it then proceeded to vaccinate its entire population.

And despite its small size and the domestic needs it has, it sends medical teams around the world to help other people when disaster strikes (or just when they could use assistance in fighting disease) because it believes that we are really one race - the human race - and that it is everyone’s duty to act as our brothers’ keepers.

No, this is not some country where a religious group has taken control and promoted charity as the way to heaven. Again, while individuals in this country are free to practice their religion, many do not. Instead, it could be said that they have answered a higher calling, solidarity, not just with ones’ clan, or ones’ nation, but with everyone, everywhere, all at once.

It’s time for me to come clean. I’m sitting at the Centro de MLK in sunny Havana, Cuba.

I’m sure you are thinking that I’ve left out a lot and that Cuba is not the workers’ paradise I’ve just painted. And I agree. The country and the people face many problems, all of which are made qualitatively worse by the actions of the United States, which for 63 years has been intent on overthrowing the revolution which freed the country from US domination.

But, in this one area it is abundantly clear that the movement which began as a nationalist revolt against foreign domination and morphed into a full-scale socialist revolution, has achieved something truly remarkable. What else could it achieve if the US would end its blockade and allow Cuba to continue its progress?

Undoubtedly that is something that economic and political power in the US is deathly afraid of. A small country on its doorstep would set an example for others to follow, liberating themselves from the US imperialism and working together to build a new world from the ashes of the old.

For those of us who live in the belly of the beast, our task is clear. Build the movement in solidarity with the Cuban people, end the blockade and unleash the power of ordinary people to fight for a better world. “We have nothing to lose but our chains”

Addendum: After returning home, I was surprised to encounter the following article in, of all places, the Washington Post. It captures is a few short paragraphs, the different approaches of US capitalism and Cuban socialism to healthcare. Even more importantly, it demonstrates how “the United States’ age-old embargo is hurting not just Cuba. It’s hurting the world.”

Next pandemic, let Cuba vaccinate the world

By Achal Prabhala and Vitor Ido, June 1, 2023

How can humanity prevent the next pandemic from being as disastrous as this one, in which as many as 15 million people have died? This past week, countries of the World Health Organization met in Geneva to begin debating a pandemic preparedness accord. A primary aim is to quickly develop new cures and vaccines, and the capacity to deliver them to everyone on the planet.

While no one yet knows what the WHO will ultimately recommend, it’s possible to predict one thing it will not: easing U.S. sanctions on Cuba’s homegrown biotech industry, which has the wherewithal to develop cutting-edge vaccines and treatments and share them with countries unable to afford first-world pharmaceutical companies’ premium prices.

This is a mistake.

During the covid-19 crisis, the United States had the opportunity to share its vaccine technology with the world, and its failure to do so prolonged the pandemic at home and abroad. In June 2022, a senior Biden administration official admitted that the omicron variant, which has been responsible for more than 300,000 deaths in the United States and more than 1.5 million globally, might never have emerged if the world been sufficiently vaccinated in 2021.

What is less known is that Cuba had the same opportunity to help vaccinate the world. The story of how Cuba was systematically blocked in its quest to make its own highly effective vaccines widely available offers crucial lessons.

The most recent chapter of this story began in summer 2021. The delta variant was ravaging India and making its way around the world. New vaccines offered hope, but the most under-resourced countries could not get them for love or money. While the United States and Europe donated doses, their efforts were hardly enough to solve the global problem. Crucially, these governments could not persuade the companies they had financed to share the technologies that could have enabled other countries to make vaccines on their own. In this grim landscape, it was astonishing to learn that Cuba had made two effective coronavirus vaccines from scratch, and then vowed to share its intellectual property worldwide.

“We realized we wouldn’t have the money to buy vaccines for our people, so we had to make our own, and we had to do it in a very short time,” Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, the director of science and innovation at BioCubaFarma, told us recently. In August 2021, one of BioCubaFarma’s laboratories also produced a booster. Both demonstrated more than 90 percent efficacy, on par with the leading Western vaccines.

The cost of developing these shots was $50 million, according to BioCubaFarma, far less than the billions invested by the U.S. government and the hundreds of millions invested by Germany in theirs.

Remarkably, Cuba eventually exported almost as many vaccine doses as it used at home, supplying Venezuela, Mexico, Vietnam, Syria, Nicaragua, Belarus and Iran. But while many countries in Africa and South Asia also desperately needed vaccines, they did not take advantage of Cuba’s offer.

To explain why they did not, we must go back to 1962, when the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba went into effect. Since then, escalating sanctions, which the United States has enforced by applying steady political and financial pressure, have isolated Cuba not just from America but also effectively the world. Stiff penalties for violating U.S. sanctions have ensured that institutions and governments routinely over-comply with them.

Cuba could have asked the WHO to certify its vaccines to make it easier for other countries to buy them with international aid. But it couldn’t afford to engage with the WHO after President Donald Trump not only reversed the mild sanctions reforms introduced by his predecessor, but also designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism. This has meant that, even in countries where it is legal to transact with Cuba, few banks are willing to risk hefty fines and criminal sanctions for being perceived as supporting terrorism.

Cuban-American relations are a political live wire, but new times call for new measures. The world has changed since 1962. The specter haunting it today is not communism but another global health emergency. There is little indication that the Biden administration will pressure U.S. pharmaceutical companies to share their medical inventions with the world. But President Biden could take a giant step toward global health security by rolling back the Trump administration’s draconian Cuba policies. If he went further by allowing for new exceptions in the U.S. sanctions regime, then Cuba could keep developing — and sharing — innovative vaccines and treatments for the world’s diseases.

More than three years on, it’s obvious that the world reacted poorly to the onset of the coronavirus, that lives were unnecessarily lost. But there is time now to prepare for the next pandemic, to set a course toward a more equitable distribution of medical technologies. The United States’ age-old embargo is hurting not just Cuba. It’s hurting the world.

Achal Prabhala is the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa. Vitor Ido is a program officer in the Health, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity Program at the South Centre in Geneva.