Middle East Eye
Years ago in Venezuela, a friend and I visited some of the numerous free health clinics established by then-President Hugo Chavez. We weren’t suffering from any particular ailment; we were simply intrigued by the novelty of healthcare as a human right, rather than as a super-expensive commodity, as was the case back home in the United States.
At one clinic, we were attended to by a female Cuban doctor - from none other than the province of Guantanamo - who stressed that Cuban medics would never deny treatment to citizens of the imperial power that had for decades subjected her island nation to a crippling embargo.
She went on to observe that, like the US military, Cuban doctors also operated in many global conflict zones - but to save lives.
Now, as Cuba dispatches medical teams to fight coronavirus and save lives across the world, the US and its buddies appear as committed as ever to ending them - and not just via President Donald Trump’s criminally negligent response to the virus itself.
For one thing, any hopes that the proliferation of coronavirus among the US armed forces might at least result in a full military lockdown were effectively dashed to shreds with the New York Times headline of 26 March: “U.S. Army Halts Training Over Coronavirus but Then Changes Its Mind”. No doubt, inhabitants of countries on the receiving end of US military killing sprees will be heartened by the news.
The article specified that the army was, however, going through with its decision to shift recruitment methods away from face-to-face interviews, “as the military, like the rest of the country, is rapidly adjusting to the coronavirus’s dramatic upheaval of daily routines”.
But as far as US-inflicted mass murder goes, it seems that business will continue as usual.
Take the case of Iran - the preferred nemesis of the Trump administration - where the health ministry recently announced that one person was dying of coronavirus every 10 minutes. The US, to be sure, is more than slightly complicit in the vast loss of Iranian life, on account of its devastating sanctions regime, which severely complicates the import of medical equipment and other necessary materials into the country.
And yet, instead of suspending sanctions in the interest of, you know, continued human existence, the US has used the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to expand them. Call it biological warfare of sorts. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.
