Category: Donald Trump
LIVE: Historian Gerald Horne on Trump’s Decision to End DACA and Recovery After Harvey
| September 6, 2017 | 12:44 pm | Donald Trump, Gerald Horne | 1 Comment

Foro de Sao Paulo rechaza maniobras de Donald Trump contra Cuba
| June 25, 2017 | 9:27 am | Cuba, Donald Trump | Comments closed

Why an American went to Cuba for cancer care
| April 20, 2017 | 9:07 pm | Cuba, Donald Trump, Health Care, political struggle | Comments closed

20 April 2017

Judy Ingels

Cuba has faced more than 50 years of US sanctions. Now, for the first time, a unique drug developed on the communist island is being tested in New York state. But some American cancer patients are already taking it – by defying the embargo and flying to Havana for treatment.

Judy Ingels and her family are in Cuba for just six days. They have time to go sightseeing and try out the local cuisine. Judy, a keen photographer, enjoys capturing the colonial architecture of Old Havana.

And while she is in the country, Ingels, 74, will have her first injections of Cimavax, a drug shown in Cuban trials to extend the lives of lung cancer patients by months, and sometimes years.

By travelling to Havana from her home in California, she is breaking the law.

The US embargo against Cuba has been in place for more than five decades, and though relations thawed under President Obama, seeking medical treatment in Cuba is still not allowed for US citizens.

“I’m not worried,” Ingels says. “For the first time I have real hope.”

She has stage four lung cancer and was diagnosed in December 2015. “My oncologist in the United States says I’m his best patient, but I have this deadly disease.”

He does not know she is in Cuba. When she asked him about Cimavax, he had not heard of it.

“But we’ve done a lot of research – I’ve read good things,” Ingels says. Since January, Cimavax has been tested on patients in Buffalo, New York state, but it isn’t yet available in the US.

Ingels, her husband Bill and daughter Cindy are staying at the La Pradera International Health Centre, west of Havana. It treats mostly foreign, paying patients like Ingels, and with its pool complex, palm trees and open walkways, La Pradera feels more like a tropical hotel than a hospital.

This trip from their home in California, together with a supply of Cimavax to take back to the US, will cost the Ingels family more than $15,000 (£12,000).

Cimavax fights cancer by stimulating an immune response against a protein in the blood that triggers the growth of lung cancer. After an induction period, patients receive a monthly dose by injection.

It’s a product of Cuba’s biotechnology industry, nurtured by former President Fidel Castro since the early 1980s.

Ironically, Cuba’s biotech innovations can partly be explained by the US embargo – something Castro continually railed against. It meant Cuba had to produce the drugs it could not access or afford. And medications like Cimavax – low-tech products that could be administered in a rural setting – were developed to fit the Cuban context.

Now the industry employs around 22,000 scientists, technicians and engineers, and sells drugs in many parts of the world – but not in the US.

And although the Cubans will not reveal the cost of producing Cimavax, it is cheaper than other treatments.

For Cuba’s residents, all health care is free. One beneficiary is Lucrecia de Jesus Rubillo, 65, who lives on the fifth floor of a block of flats in the east of Havana

Last September she was given two or three months to live. What began as pain in Lucrecia’s leg, was diagnosed as stage-four lung cancer that had spread.

She had chemotherapy. “That was really very hard,” she says. “It gave me nausea, and it hurt. But my kids asked me to fight, so I did.”

After radiotherapy, Lucrecia began Cimavax injections. Now she is strong enough to walk up the five flights of stairs to her home, and her persistent cough has diminished. She feels better, more hopeful, and is thinking about what to do next.

“Perhaps I’ll go to Spain to visit my kid,” she says. “I feel happy, and I’m still dreaming of the future, but I also feel sadness. I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve died of cancer, and they never had the chance I’m having with these injections. I feel privileged.”

Her doctor is Elia Neninger, an oncologist at the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana. Neninger is one of the principal clinicians to trial Cimavax on patients since the 1990s.

“Lucrecia arrived incapacitated by her disease in a wheelchair,” Neninger remembers. “Now the tumour on her lung has disappeared, and the lesions on her liver aren’t there either. With Cimavax, she’s in a maintenance phase.”

In Cuba, specialists like Neninger do not talk about curing cancer – they talk about controlling it and transforming it into a chronic disease. She has treated hundreds of patients with Cimavax.

“I never thought I’d work on something that would improve the lives of so many people,” she says. “I have stage-four lung cancer patients who are still alive 10 years after their diagnosis.”

But mostly Cimavax is proven to extend life for months, not years. And it does not help everyone. In trials, around 20% of patients haven’t responded, Neninger says, often because the disease is very advanced, or they have associated illnesses that make treatment more difficult.

Nonetheless, Dr Kelvin Lee is impressed. He is the Chair of Immunology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, where the American trials of Cimavax are taking place.

It is the first time a Cuban medication has been trialled in the US, and required special permission because the embargo prohibits most collaboration and trade.

Cancer immunotherapy is getting more expensive in the US, Lee says. A cheap vaccine that can be administered at primary care level is very attractive. And he thinks it is possible that Cimavax could be used to prevent lung cancer, too.

“If we could vaccinate the high-risk smokers to prevent them from developing lung cancer, that would have an enormous public health impact both in the United States and worldwide.”

This has not been proven, however, and the initial US trials of Cimavax only began in January.

There is political uncertainty, too. On the campaign trail before his election, President Trump said he would reverse the thaw with Cuba that began under the Obama administration, unless there was change on the island, which is governed as a one-party state.

“Our demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people, and the freeing of political prisoners,” Trump said on the campaign trail in Miami.

So far, Cuba has not made it to the top of his in-tray. There is a large constituency of Americans who believe that Cuba does not deserve the kind of recognition and status the association with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute brings.


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But Lee thinks political arguments against US-Cuba collaboration are misplaced.

“The gas we put in our cars, the iPhones we tweet from, the shoes we buy our kids – all come from countries that the United States has fundamental differences with regarding women’s rights, freedom of speech, personal liberties. Yet that has never stopped us from working with them in areas that benefit the people in both countries.”

For now Bill Ingels, Judy’s husband, isn’t worried about falling foul of US authorities.

“I told them I was coming for educational purposes,” he says. “And I am learning about cancer and medication! I’m basically a very honest person, but if I have to, I will lie.”

Ingels will not know if the vaccine has made a difference until she has a scan in three months.

“We feel pretty positive, and we thought this would be a great experience and journey for my family to take together. It’s the first time I’ve felt up since I was diagnosed.”

Cindy Ingels, Judy’s daughter, is a nurse – she will administer the Cimavax shots to her mother back home in California.

“Even if she remains stable – that it maintains the tumour size, and it doesn’t worsen – we’d be happy with that,” she says. “If the tumour decreases from what it is now, that would really be a miracle.”

Tyrant Trump Romps: Rest of the World Aghast at Unprecedented US Brutality
| April 14, 2017 | 7:26 pm | Afghanistan, class struggle, Donald Trump, DPRK, political struggle, Syria | Comments closed

Tyrant Trump Romps: Rest of the World Aghast at Unprecedented US Brutality

by James Thompson

The bourgeois tyrant Trump has already distinguished himself in his brief period in the Oval Office as one of the most notorious tyrants in US history. Barely 3 months in office and he is already responding to imagined threats to the USA with deadly bombs. A few days after a deadly chemical attack, tyrant Trump unleashed 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian Air Force Base without any substantial evidence that this Air Force Base perpetrated the chemical attack.

The Syrian government and the Russian government have denied that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attack. One must ask what could be the benefit of launching a chemical attack on its own citizens if the government of Syria denies that they were responsible for the attack.

We must remember that the Syrian army was making advances on the terrorists in Syria prior to the attack. President Assad, hated by the US bourgeois media, categorically denied his government’s involvement in the criminal chemical attack.

Who benefited from the chemical attack? Undoubtedly, tyrant Trump, his cronies and the massive munitions industry in the USA, benefited from the deadly, brutal, unprovoked chemical attack on innocent people in Syria.

Without a thorough, unbiased, scientific investigation of the chemical attack, tyrant Trump launched a brutal attack on a Syrian Air Force Base known to heroically fight the criminal puppets of the USA known commonly as ISIS. 59 tomahawk missiles at a cost of $1 million per missile were launched and a great deal of concrete was demolished. Syrians were terrorized as well as many other people in the Middle East.

Not even a week later tyrant Trump authorized a MOAB drop on Afghanistan. The US MOAB is the closest conventional weapon to a nuclear weapon to date. When dropped, it sucks up all the oxygen and sets the air on fire, resulting in the death of all humans in the area. This drop resulted in the deaths of an insignificant number of ISIS members according to the US bourgeois media. The MOAB cost $16 million.

Meanwhile, tyrant Trump has dispatched an unknown number of U.S. Navy attack vessels to the Korean Peninsula to show the socialist country who is boss. North Korea has an unknown number of nuclear weapons. They have not threatened the mainland of the USA. They have loudly stated that they are a sovereign nation and are entitled to defend themselves against US aggression.

Tyrant Trump is effectively seeking to ignite the world on fire through his brutal and provocative action. No one knows where Trump’s reckless behavior will lead.

We do know that there is no overwhelming opposition from the working class in the USA against USA military intervention in either Syria or North Korea. Will Trump continue to romp or will the world working class rise up to oppose the brutality of the bourgeoisie against the working class as led by tyrant Trump?

 

The NDP statement on Trump’s criminal attack on Syria
| April 10, 2017 | 8:43 pm | Analysis, Donald Trump, political struggle, Syria | Comments closed

by Darrell Rankin
The NDP statement on Trump’s criminal attack on Syria

The NDP, Canada’s social democratic party, has complete faith in the outstanding US intelligence agents who say that Syria’s government gassed its own citizens, just when Syria was on the verge of defeating the terrorists. 
“Assad must be held accountable for these crimes,” says the NDP.
The NDP must have information that US intelligence is more reliable compared to 2003 when it made a mistake about Iraq having chemical weapons.
The NDP adds that it supports international law and “a lasting political solution.
Details please, about some political solutions?
Does it include a stop to the West training and arming the terrorists? Does it include condemning the latest criminal Western aggression, rather than saying “it is not clear what the impact of these missile strikes will be”?
Evading these questions will get the NDP nowhere.

Official statement* * * *
NDP statement on U.S. air strikes in Syria
“The chemical weapons attack against civilians this week in Syria was shocking, and is added to a tally of horror that continues to stun the world. Assad must be held accountable for these crimes.
It is not clear what the impact of these missile strikes will be on the conflict. They are not part of a United Nations-sanctioned effort, and it is not clear if they form part of a larger plan to end this crisis.
New Democrats continue to believe that any successful response to this crisis in Syria must be multilateral and compatible with international law.
Now, more than ever, it is important that Canada work with our international partners to secure a lasting political solution to this crisis. Canada must also step up efforts on the humanitarian front, particularly in the face of drastic cuts to United Nations programs planned by the Trump administration.
What the people of Syria need, now more than ever, is the knowledge that the world community is united in making good on the promise to end this devastating war. We will continue to stand with them and support their aspirations for a peaceful, democratic future.”

The split in the US oligarchy about Russia and its significance
| April 10, 2017 | 8:39 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Donald Trump, Imperialism, political struggle, Russia, Syria | Comments closed

by Darrell Rankin

The split in the US oligarchy about Russia and its
significance
Lenin commented that nothing is firm or fixed about
imperialists’ views on war or the right level of
aggression.
He also wrote that imperialism would continue to slide
increasingly towards reaction and militarism, an inevitable outcome of
capitalism’s ever-deepening general crisis.
If we consider that war is merely a continuation of foreign
policy by other (violent) means, this helps to explain the hesitation and lack
of conviction often felt by bourgeois politicians when they believe war could
backfire.
For example, Hitler and his entourage were not of one mind when
to invade Russia. They all thought it was a great idea, but they differed on the
timing to a degree, their disputes kept out of the public eye by means of
threats and backstabbing.
Today, the ferocity of anti-Russian views in the US oligarchy
is such that Trump’s hand is being forced, but not to the degree Clinton wants.
Trump may have thought that an extra $50 billion for the military
industry was enough for his back to be safe from pointy objects for a while.
But it appears not.
The casualties on the Trump side continue to mount from ongoing
investigations into Russia’s role in defeating Clinton and general control of
the Trump administration.
Clinton, who timed her emergence from seclusion perfectly,
demanded completely to obliterate the Syrian air
force.
Trump carried out a so-called “proportionate” strike that
damaged (not destroyed) six Syrian aircraft.
The Trump entourage’s conflict with the faction that wants war
now with Russia (the Clinton Dems and McCain Reps) is sure to Continue.
This a significant split. There are two important reasons why
it is important.
First, we have to recognize that Clinton’s intention to impose
a no-fly zone over Syria would have brought Russian forces into direct,
unannounced conflict with US forces.
There are reports that Trump gave Russia (and thereby Syria) a
heads-up phone call before launching yesterday’s cruise missile strikes.
One understandable casualty of Trump’s missile attack is the
US-Russian exchange of information about US flights over Syrian airspace.
Now, all US flights will be deemed hostile, intrusive and
Unapproved, just like Israeli overflights.
Will US overflights be subject to the same ‘shoot on sight’
rule as Israeli jets? I would say that depends on the target and level of
aggression by US imperialism, which will probably get worse, especially if Trump
continues to prove he dislikes being called a coward, baby-killer and traitor by
the pro-war faction.
Both Syria and Russia could and should realize that restraint
can still help avoid war in the absence of an overflight
agreement.
Still, the danger of war between Russia and the U.S. is higher
because of the ferocity of the pro-war faction.
That intensifying conflict brings me to my second point, the
Importance of what happens ‘on the streets,’ among the popular forces in the
United States who are regularly ignored over Trifling matters such as a world
war.
Trump’s definite restraint compared to the pro-war faction
gives the popular forces in the US time – a breathing space – to mobilize
against war with Russia, a war that would be directed as much against them as
against Russia and the international working class.
They could offer the idea that it is not cowardly to ask for
evidence and follow diplomacy to resolve disputes.
It is necessary and extremely important that the anti-war
sentiments be galvanized and moved into action on the streets.
A powerful and definitely strong clique of the oligarchy
believes war with Russia is necessary and an exceedingly good idea.
We cannot dismiss the importance of popular movements –
especially unions – working to deepen the split in the oligarchy on that
issue.
The strongest united front effort would be one that does not
hide the role of unions and popular forces, emphasizing their leading role in
staying the hand of the most bellicose elements of US
imperialism.
The USA role and the bombings in Syria
| April 9, 2017 | 2:26 pm | Analysis, Donald Trump, political struggle, WFTU | Comments closed

It is known all over the world that the USA, the European Union, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies have founded, financed and armed the ISIS. Their goal was dismembering Syria and founding new puppet states in order to steal the region’s wealth.

Today, with the USA bombings against Syria, the government of Trump continues the policy of the previous Presidents. Through these bombings, it supports the ISIS. It makes the situation even more dangerous for a generalized war.

The class-oriented trade union movement demands:

The foreign troops to leave the Region

To stop the imperialist intervention against Syria and the whole Middle East

The wealth-producing resources of Syria belong to its people.

The peoples of the Region are the only ones who have the right to decide freely and democratically on their present and future.

to stop chemical weapons use by everybody

The Secretariat