[act-ma] 4/02 & 09 Lift the Sanctions Now – Stop Coronavirus and more on Cuba

Charlie Welch cwelch at tecschange.org
Mon Mar 30 06:56:08 PDT 2020


See below for info on the National Cuba Conference and a Nova 
documentary on a Cuban Cancer Vaccine

*A coalition lead by Mass Peace Action is doing a series of Zoom 
presentations on the effect of Sanctions around the world*
See background story about sanctions below.

Lift the Sanctions Now – Stop Coronavirus

4/02 focus on Venezuela

4/09 focus on Cuba

Our country’s escalating sanctions on Venezuela in the last few years 
has caused the death of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and led 
to more than 4 million refugees, according to the UNHCR. Now, as the US 
tightens sanctions on Venezuela, our country is responsible for 
impacting that nation’s ability to fight off the coronavirus pandemic, 
which will lead to more death and create more refugees, thus endangering 
all of us, as the pandemic will spread. This policy is as immoral as it 
is unwise.

4/02 Venezuela
Kevin Young
Kevin Young is assistant professor of history at UMass Amherst, focusing 
on modern Latin America. His book ?Blood of the Earth: Resource 
Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia (2017) traces the history 
of Bolivian struggles over mineral and hydrocarbon resources, 
highlighting the complex legacies of Bolivian resource nationalism and 
in the process reappraising the country’s 1952 revolution and the Cold 
War. He is also the editor of Making the Revolution: Histories of the 
Latin American Left (2019), which challenges stereotypes of the 
twentieth-century left as urban, middle-class, and blind to the 
complexities of racial, gender, and national identities. His other 
research analyzes social movements, coalitional politics, and political 
power in the Andes, Central America, and the United States.

Atenea Jiménez Lemón
Atenea Jiménez Lemón has worked as a sociologist and organizer in 
Venezuelan popular movements since the 1990s. In 2009 she founded the 
Red Nacional de Comuner at s (National Network of Communers). Since then, 
the network has grown to include around 500 communes and 100 social 
movement organizations throughout Venezuela. She also founded the 
Universidad Campesina de Venezuela (Venezuelan Peasant University). She 
recently edited a book titled La toparquía comunera: Concreción de la 
utopía (Rule by Communes: Concretizing Utopia) (2014). Her presentation 
will be pre-recorded.

Sign up to attend at 
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uKgJaHoKRS6cdIVaGMm8HQ 
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fzoom.us%2Fwebinar%2Fregister%2FWN_uKgJaHoKRS6cdIVaGMm8HQ%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR06NN0X1AUYG7ekdSsvtXBl3tT9veaU4WQctpN0NXaIocI6gZtshJYH68A&h=AT2ALH_NZLyxpI9OV7Ym8IpH_ckCc2y5qIMBuqU0-6kp9jbw_tWteVaKviOE9UL9HxPI8n5DmWcA9qhXQufvpetJHerxkbQbR58jkRKkc6JzOLOL0zPSIu85NjWWKVrMTQ>

Second of four webinars on the impact of US sanctions on four nations’ 
coronavirus response.

March 26, 7pm: Iran – Dr. Shahin Tabatabaei and a representative of 
NIAC. Register

April 2, 7pm: Venezuala – Prof. Kevin Young (UMass Amherst) and Atenea 
Jiménez Lemon (National Network of Communes in Venezuela). See more 
information and Click here to register

April 9, 7pm: Cuba – Lee Schlenker – International Team member with 
Witness for Peace, based in Havana. Click here to register

April 16, 7pm: North Korea

Recordings will be available online after the events.

Facebook Info <https://www.facebook.com/events/3073598489351719/>

Call on Congress to take action: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/692051821535791/

Sponsored by Lift the Sanctions Mass: Massachusetts Peace Action; 
Massachusetts Bolivia Solidarity Committee of Western Mass; Resistance 
Center for Peace and Justice; Latin America Solidarity Coaliton of 
Western Mass; Boston Democratic Socialists of America; American Friends 
Service Committee; Committee in Solidarity with the People of El 
Salvador; Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security; PSL 
Western Massachusetts. (Organizations please contact us to join this 
campaign)

_________________________

/*Additional importa**nt items.*//
/


  The International Cuba Solidarity Conference is rescheduled for
  November 14th - 15th, 2020

Video of the recent Cuba Solidarity Zoom conference and November info 
<http://www.us-cubanormalization.org/viva-cuba/>

Check our website for more in https://july26.org/


Cuba has continued to show the ability to implement effective healthcare 
despite limited resources.   It beginning to break into main stream media.

Newsweek article on Cuban Interferon 
<https://www.newsweek.com/cuba-drug-fight-coronavirus-us-sanctions-1493872>


  PBS Documentary on Cuban Cancer Vaccine CimaVax

PBS's description
When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, 
Cuban scientists developed their own biotech industry - and promising 
lung cancer vaccines. Can they now team up with U.S. partners to make 
the treatments available to all?

This is trailer for PBS Nova Documentary on Cuba's Cancer Vaccine CimaVax
Cuba's revolutionary cancer vaccine builds bridges between the island 
and the United States 
<https://nnoc.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5f38329862c48a106176438fe&id=12e4a5a4a7&e=21eafbaf3b> 



Nova is scheduled on Apr. 1 at 9 PM on WGBH-TV Chan. 2 in Boston.

It is replayed a number of times on both Channels 2,  44 and WGBH's 
streaming option
9:00pm, 04/05/2020 | WGBX
12:00pm, 04/02/2020 | WGBX
1:00pm, 04/04/2020 | WGBX
1:00am, 04/05/2020 | WGBX
5:00am, 04/03/2020 | WGBX
2:00pm, 04/05/2020 | WGBH CH 2
4:00am, 04/05/2020 | WGBH CH 2
4:00am, 04/02/2020 | WGBH CH 2

Check you local PBS station for details

>From Afrocubaweb <http://www.afrocubaweb.com/william-barr.html>

The fact that the charges against the Venezuelan government were 
presented by Attorney General Barr is particularly over the top - Barr 
was general counsel for the CIA airline Southern Air Transport, modeled 
after Air America and a main player in the arms for cocaine deals in the 
80's, which involved narco-terrorism in Central America and the US. This 
story is developing and we will have more soon (3/27/2020).

In his books Drugging America: A Trojan Horse and Defrauding America: 
Dirty Secrets of the CIA and other Government Operations, whistle blower 
Rodney Stich exposed in exhaustive detail the firsthand accounts of 
whistle blowers and insiders, who participated in the many criminal 
operations that stretched across the Bush and Clinton presidencies.

Some of the shocking evidence exposes Barr acting simultaneously as a 
hands-on covert operative, and as Bush’s judicial/political fixer:

In Drugging America, Stich wrote:

[CIA operative] Terry Reed had been in frequent telephone contact with 
the man he knew as Robert Johnson. Johnson directed the drug trafficking 
and drug money laundering, the training in Arkansas of Contra pilots and 
fighters, and authorized Reed to set up the CIA proprietary in Mexico. 
At a later date, Reed learned that Robert Johnson was really William 
Barr, appointed by President George Bush to be Attorney General of the 
United States.

Reed’s CIA contact, William Barr, known at that time by his alias Robert 
Johnson, told Reed that Attorney General Edwin Meese had appointed 
Michael Fitzhugh to be US Attorney in Western Arkansas, and that he 
would stonewall any investigation into the Mena, Arkansas drug-related 
activities. This obstruction of justice by Justice Department officials 
did occur.






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