Do Not Exclude Cuba from the Summit of the Americas

Cuba denounces U.S. government exclusion of Cuba from preparations for Ninth Summit of the Americas

Excerpts from statement to the press by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

I am obliged to denounce the fact that the U.S. government has decided to exclude the Republic of Cuba from preparations for the Ninth Summit of the Americas set to take place in Los Angeles, June 8-10; and is currently exerting extreme pressure on numerous governments in the region that have privately and respectfully opposed this exclusion.

The U.S. government is misleading the public and governments of the hemisphere by saying that it has not yet made decisions regarding invitations.

I respectfully urge Secretary of State (Anthony) Blinken to say honestly whether or not Cuba will be invited to the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

A central axis, according to preparations for the event, will be health.  And I must inform our people and international public opinion that there are currently negotiations underway, conducted in an unclear manner, with quite a few neoliberal elements, and many shortcomings, in relation to the real needs of the peoples regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the structural causes of precarious health systems that have led to tragic consequences and caused an extremely high number of deaths in our hemisphere, including the United States of America, and have avoided substantial cooperation and basic financing to address these consequences, and are now negotiating in an opaque manner a so-called Health and Resilience Action Plan for the Americas through the year 2030.

I must note that these negotiations are being held, in an obscure manner, with the exclusion of Cuba and other member states of the Pan American Health Organization, which are participating in these processes, in violation of their own mandates.

Cuba has always, in a modest but altruistic and persistent fashion, provided the possibility for international cooperation in health, which has been recognized worldwide.

There are Latin American vaccines against COVID-19 which are Cuban. The medical brigades that responded to the COVID emergency in the region, in the hemisphere in more than 50 countries on the planet, have been Cuban.

It would be convenient to take into account during this process, and benefit our peoples, Cuban medical presence in confronting natural disasters and epidemics in the past, the provision of tens of thousands of medical scholarships for low-income Latin American, Caribbean and United States youth, the existence of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Operation Miracle that returned the sight of millions of low-income persons, Cuba's ability to establish cooperation, transfer state-of-the-art technology, provide pharmaceutical products, vaccines and novel treatments, the ability to share advanced protocols and medicines in the field of health…


Another central axis of the Summit, from which Cuba is intended to be excluded, is emigration.  A document with a long title: Letter of Understanding on Migration Management and Protection of Migrants is also being negotiated behind the back of international, US, Latin American and Canadian public opinion.  It is a code that seeks to force Latin American and Caribbean States to repress migration, to absorb the migrants that the United States decides to process outside its territory, which incorporates elements of the racist, xenophobic and plundering U.S. vision of our migrants.  It does not address in any way the real causes of migration, but it does, however, offer palliatives, stimuli, financing and economic incentives to countries that send migrants to the U.S. and are closer to its borders, to attenuate this process.

With Cuba, however, his recipe is the extreme tightening of the blockade, causing deprivation to Cuban families, the application of Undersecretary Mallory's stark memorandum: "depressing wages, causing hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government," is the American prescription in relation to Cuba…
The exclusion of Cuba from the Ninth Summit of the Americas would constitute a serious historical setback in relation to the two previous editions.  In Panama, in 2015, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz led the delegation from our island which participated on equal footing, and raised his firm, dissenting voice, but always serene, respectful and constructive…

A third axis of the Summit of the Americas is that of democracy and human rights.  In the obscure negotiations taking place today, the intention is to establish the Organization of American States to certify all elections in the region.  This is the same OAS of the coup in Bolivia, and the intention of the United States, historically responsible for coups in our region, and also responsible for the coups in recent decades against progressive governments.

How can a Summit take place, centered on democracy, having excluded, at the arbitrary whim of the host, certain countries of Latin America and the Caribbean?  Can anyone think of something more undemocratic?
The U.S. has no moral authority to set itself up as a model in this matter or to criticize others…

The Ninth Summit of the Americas could still be an opportunity if, in an inclusive manner and on equal terms for all countries, it debated, without exclusions and with sincere commitment, the most pressing problems that affect the continent.

Cuba supports the genuine efforts to promote dialogue, links and cooperation between Our America, the America of Bolivar and Martí, and the United States, between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the United States government…

Cuba, which firmly defends the unity within the diversity of Our America, today expresses our profound gratitude to the peoples and governments that maintain a courageous, dignified, solidary position, demanding of the U.S. government that Cuba not be excluded from the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

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Covid is forever

COVID: THE FEARFUL SYMMETRIES

By Professor Gilbert Morris

IMAGINE: a new brutal variant that exceeds the protection of vaccines…

The Samurai is the finest master of self-discipline the world has ever known; more Stoic than the Stoics of ancient lore, more vicious than the Cossacks of Russia or the Gurkhas of Sri Lanka (the most fearsome worries of modern times).

One core element of Samurai culture is he must contemplate his death dozens of times in a day: he must cultivate commerce and comfort with the varieties of death’s multitudinous propensities.

As a strategist, one’s brief is to show clients the varieties of means, methods, incidences, architectures and emerging possibilities of the death of their enterprises; whether they be companies or countries.

There is a childish notion in modern culture by which disease of the mind, the Samurai imperative is avoided. People say things like: “couldn’t you put a positive spin on that”? As if strategy is their favourite ice cream or pizza, upon which they can heap their desired delights!

Others plead, “let’s look at the bright side”, as if one is the marketing and promotions department.

The strategist is a scavenger of risk: his job is to induce discomfort based on the most realistic analysis, not by prediction or even forecast, but by immediate extrapolation from the factual circumstances.

Where the lazy analyst says “well, thing A could likely impact thing B. The competent strategist demonstrates A and B are extremes of a single continuum.

Or where the fawning ‘yes man’ says: ‘things go in phases, there are always ups and downs’, the master strategist shows the phase-guide lacks structural depth or systemic coordinates.

Where the fool treats “success” as organic. The strategist framed it as a “success window”, that is already closing at the moment of its most obvious prowess (Ask Nokia or IBM).

The role of the strategist is to game the situation, enterprise or national prospects in such a manner, at such a scale and with such dimensional scope as to force the client out of complacency into innovation…before the risk metastasises or is realised; to drive the client into the Samurai imperative.

Let’s take the current pandemic: In 2020, I gave four 90 minute lectures on the history, logistics and economic consequences of pandemics from the 4th Century AD to the present. In interviews leading up to the lectures I extrapologised the following:

1. Covid is forever

2. Covid will change the world more in 3 years than the last 300

3. Countries will optimise to save lives but will cost more lives by the measure they impose

4. Democracy under the pandemic will transition to a power vertical with the public’s safety as an excuse

5. Variants will outrun vaccines

6. Vaccine visas will emerge

7. You have to check into countries the way you check into hotels

8. Health records will become the new identity

9. No country will arrive at “herd immunity”, because of the lack of global coordination

10. A variant will emerge and generate so much fear that citizens and governments would turn on each other

I am satisfied that all of these have proven true…yet, it does not have to be this way: the strategy for which I argued was/is:

1. Universal free testing, with 48 billion free tests in an 8 week period

2. Upload tests to a database to gain pattern and flow of the virus

3. Deploy Blue tooth contact tracing and digital diagnostic surveys to overlay the Fibonacci patterns as the emerge

4. Make decisions from data/extrapolations and not events, because humans react arithmetically but pandemics have exponential velocities.

5. Hold global summit to streamline boarder entry protocols

6. Embark $4.5 trillion for global stimulus (using SDRs) rather than raising interest rates

Across the world, only 8 nations gain a measure of these protocols.

Now, today, during this holiday season, in more than 9 European nations, citizens will suffer lockdowns again because of the result of poor, reactionary Covid management by their governments.

In the US, governors of more than 7 states are openly defying basic public health management measures for purely political reasons.

In much of the rest of the world, useless national dashboards, fascistic attacks on unvaccinated persons, desperate copycatting and inflexible, convoluted procedures rule the day: the result will be VARIANTS!

I seem to see (to quote the ancient Seer) that this is all metastasising toward an eschatological global health crisis orders of magnitude beyond what we’ve witnessed or suffered so far. This level of global leadership vacuum and incompetence cannot continue without consequences.

IMAGINE: a new brutal variant that exceeds the protection of vaccines…countries would slam their doors shut, the global economy would collapse, within countries, their oligarchical structures would undermine public trust, billions of children would go uneducated, those with non-Covid medical complaints would die in equal numbers to Covid sufferers. That is to say…our social worlds are poised to retreat by fear, ignorance and hysterical speculation into the worlds imagined in Zombie apocalypses.

Terrifying?

This is what a Samurai would imagine, given what we are witnessing…then he would act to prevent it.

The problem is…it’s happening now!

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ENDGAME: WHAT’S THE COVID 19 EXIT STRATEGY?

By Professor Gilbert Morris

 

Covid 19’ patterning follows the Bubonic Plague of 1347. Therefore, I reject the notion that Covid 19 will “Peter out”. 

If the vaccinated can still be infected and transmit, mutations are likely and petering out is a hope rather than a scientific extrapolation. 

This means several things: 

1. These vaccines ought never to be compared to previous vaccines - like Polio for instance - those vaccines ended infection and transmission. 

And continued infection and transmission is the anomalous problem of the Covid 19 vaccine regime. 

2. What is missing that is obvious from the facts, is if the vaccinated can become infected and transmit, logically, there will never be “herd immunity”. 

The benefits of being vaccinated are two: 

1. It makes it less likely that a vaccinated person will be sick (within a statistically dense frame) 

2. Therefore, hospitalisation is less likely; as the data shows, only a statically significant, but generally insignificant number of an aggregate of vaccinated persons are hospitalised post-vaccinated infections. 

It is a lively nonsense, oft repeated, that unvaccinated persons pose a threat…because both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons pose the same threat if both can be infected and transmit; without further evidence of any distinctions in the relative infection patterns. 

What is clear is that vaccination is only one tool and it’s foolhardy to assert that with vaccinations, economies can “return to normal”: again it’s perfidious nonsense since infections and spread are still possible. 

The solution is the method which the 7 best performing countries deployed - all of which propose but none of which mandates vaccination: 

1. The 7 best performing nations in the pandemic succeed by mass, spot and randomised testing. 

Why?

1. To gain epistemological coverage of their entire countries: Multimodal testing (eDiagnostics, Bluetooth Thermometers, eTesting and home testing generate DATA!

2. That data then characterises general and interstitial demographics; discrete insular dynamic demographics within a general demographic pool. 

3. That produces granular DATA!

NEXT: 

1. Bluetooth contact tracing links the patterns and the multimodal tests, discovering alignments and positing options for coordination 

2. This produces a national digital “fever map”!

The 7 best performing nations in the pandemic all erected this mechanism, which I lectured about in the SpaceNex Global  ROUNDTABLE Lectures on “The History of Economic Consequences of Pandemics”.

NEXT:

1. Once the ‘fever maps’ are functional, the data produces deep patterns that are at first descriptive; then the data becomes diagnosticative; then the link between data-patterns and policy outcomes error-corrects toward self-evidence…and becomes prognosticative. 

This equilibrium is called generally a “proportionality constant”.

2. At this stage, you can see the effects of social protocols (mask wearing, hand sanitation, social fumigation) immediately.

This multimodal platform is necessary because vaccination and even walk-in testing are arithmetical, but the disease - particularly accounting for superspreaders - is infecting exponentially. 

So its actually counterproductive to depend on vaccinations or walk-in tests alone. One needs dynamic readable datasets. If a country hasn’t done this and merely harps on vaccinations, it will fail!

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The Opposition PLP and the COVID-19 alter of sickness and death in The Bahamas

We are in a general election season in The Bahamas, and all common sense and logic seem to be thrown out the window

By Dennis Dames

COVID-19 is right in our faces, and we don’t see it for what it is. It’s a highly contagious killer virus that’s mutating rapidly into more lethal strains. The coronavirus is a global force to be reckoned with right now, and it is dubbed the invisible enemy for good reasons – because of its potentially devastating impact on the international front.

It is a serious danger to worldwide peace and stability. COVID-19 is also a grave threat to universal commerce and relationships. Every nation appears to be uneasy about their immediate future because of the raging coronavirus.

It doesn’t look like our political leaders get it. We are in a general election season in The Bahamas, and all common sense and logic seem to be thrown out the window, in my view. For example, I saw a PLP ad recently which states that a PLP government will implement free COVID-19 testing and so on.

What does free COVID-19 testing have to do with the reality that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire now? What does free COVID-19 testing have to do with our overcrowded hospitals and morgue at this time? How will free COVID-19 testing curb the spread of COVID-19 in a tourist-dependent economy? How will free COVID-19 testing stop new COVID-19 variants from entering the country?

Let’s get real, PLP. The focus, in my humble opinion, is to convince our hardheaded unvaccinated brothers and sisters to get vaccinated soon. After all, they comprise the vast majority of COVID-19 hospital and morgue clients – 90 percent-plus.

It’s a pity and tragedy that the PLP is prepared to sacrifice many Bahamians on the COVID-19 alter of sickness and death. We lack national unity on such a dreadful issue, PLP; and all of us should be ashamed of it. It’s sad that winning an election tomorrow appears more important than saving Bahamian lives today.

Things are getting absolutely toxic and dire with the livid COVID-19 virus throughout the universe. We need to unite as one people and resolve to fight COVID-19 together. The unvaccinated is the big problem in the battle to defeat COVID-19.

Medical statistics everywhere show this, yet fools are determined to be fools. Yes PLPs, you could continue to promote your time-wasting, money-wasting and bogus free COVID test promise while our unvaccinated folks remain wickedly vulnerable to an unmerciful foe.

Yes PLP, all of your leaders are fully vaccinated. Why is it that they don’t want to share the wisdom and joy of vaccination with the unvaccinated citizens? 

Take note, PLP: There are only two choices to deal with COVID-19 – go back to lockdown, or keep the economy open.

If we choose the latter, then we must encourage the unvaccinated among us to get vaccinated. If we fail to do so, sickness, death and misery will rain down on us like a ton of bricks – and your free testing promise will prove to be dead on arrival.

WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD WITH COVID-19?

 AFRICA IS BEST:

MY BROTHER Ntong Victor Sunday HAS PUT ME TO THE QUESTION: WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THAT WORLD WITH COVID 19?

By:

Gilbert Morris

The African region is the best performing region in the pandemic. Africa’s total deaths are less than 10% of the United State’s daily deaths.

But what are the structural reasons for Africa’s superb performance?

1. SWIFT ACTION: In February 2020, a number of African nations - like Lesotho - shut down public institutions immediately, whilst implementing social protocols. Students of strategy should not see this as merely a decision to act quickly. Instead, it must also be seen as a tactical understanding of the implications of low facilities capacity and financial resources. Understanding these facts about their status, led African governments to act to prevent even the “best case scenarios”.

2. YOUNG POPULATION - I have written that the future belongs to Africa because its the youngest of all regions of the world. It turns out that this is also crucial for Covid 19 infections, since (at least initially), Covid 19 attacked the elderly disproportionately to younger persons. Africa has an added benefit: it does not “warehouse” its elderly. Africa and Japan - followed by the Caribbean - are the zones in which the elderly enjoy a near sacred deference; though in the Caribbean, we are beginning to copy American and European models of parking the elderly in ‘death barns’.

3. POPULATION DISTRIBUTION - Most African nations are arranged and operate on the “city-village” dynamic. As such, the elderly tend to live in the village, whilst younger people crowd to cities. This means the most vulnerable demographic were largely outside the hotspots for Covid 19 infections.

4. COMMUNITY vs. COMMERCIAL HEALTHCARE: Africa - for the most part - does not have large commercial healthcare systems, as in the US and Europe. It turns out that these commercial systems are not very flexible and could not react swiftly to the onslaught of the virus spread. They were limited in capacity, manpower and resources. In Africa, 90% of healthcare is delivered by small clusters of community clinics and a large volunteer sector. This produces a complex local information ecology, but one which can metabolise the best in formation quickly and adjust immediately at the community prevention and treatment levels.

5. EXPERTISE: Africa has a growing number of experienced medical personnel, (like Dr. Denis Mukwege, Dr. Stella Immanuel and beloved Dr. Evan Atar Adaha), who worked (suffered) through AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, Malaria, Dengue and a host of other maladies. Those physicians - as in Senegal - are amongst the most seasoned medical professionals in the world. In fact, they face a conundrum: come together to collect those skills and knowledge or remain in their communities where they are most effective. What is more important, they must not try to adopt Western Institutional models, which failed miserably in this pandemic. Even in countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or New Zealand, which have the best performance records outside of Africa, those nations followed the same decentralised script as African nations.

6. LOCAL KNOWLEDGES: My favourite aspect of the Africa pandemic story is the local knowledge. In Liberia in 2013-15 International Organisations found themselves not only defeated, but found their medical professionals dying in droves in Liberia in the heat of the Ebola outbreak, which spread to Guinea and Sierra Leone. THEN CAME THE GRANDMOTHERS: quietly, they put the men and boys outdoors on cots under trees and in tents, sanitised the entire homesteads, open the little hovels in which people lived to fresh air, and made everyone stay off the streets, such as they were and cooked soups. This broke the spread to nearly nil. (I THOUGHT THESE WARRIOR GRANNIES DESERVED THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR 2014 and 2015, but they are forever in my heart). This exhibition of local knowledge particularly in places like Monrovia and Bensonville, Liberia (one of my favourites), demonstrated a high degree of “social trust”, the same social trust exhibited in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea for their nationals governments.

7. CLIMATE: It is now well-established that SAR-CoV2 - the Coronavirus that caused the pandemic Covid 19 retreats in heat and expands in cooler temperatures. It is also interesting to note that in larger segments of Africa, Covid 19 emerged near the end of their Summer and into the Fall. As such, by time as Winter fell, in South Africa for example, three months ago - social practices had hardened already and populations had been well-schooled in the proper protocols, which they followed reinforced by local systems.

These are the major reasons for the low count in Africa of both infections and deaths compared to the rest of the world. I do not doubt there are anomalies in record keeping, categorisation and other statistical integral systems. However, its been 11 months and likely those anomalies would have collapsed by now. I am concerned about the new strains in Britain and South Africa - an unusual distribution pattern - because a virulent strain that replicates the ‘superspreader’ would be deadly, not only in Africa, but worldwide.

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