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During Trump’ s first term, 240 new sanctions were imposed on Cuba. American healthcare companies stopped sending medicines to the island. With nearly 80 % of medical patents held by American multinational pharmaceutical companies, Cuba is unable to benefit from them. Cuba is a country of 11 million people. Sixty-three years of economic siege. For what crime? For having the audacity to survive less than 150 kilometers off the coast of Florida with a universal healthcare system and a literacy rate of 99 %.
Africa: Punishing the Ungrateful for Decolonization
Flashmag! Issue 170 March 2026
This is perhaps the most painful chapter. When African peoples fought for their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, who stood by their side? Not Washington, which supported the European colonial powers, its Atlantic allies. It was the Soviet Union, Cuba, and later China that provided weapons, military training, doctors, and teachers to the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The Soviet Union supported anti-colonial movements, and much of the South remembers this. This fact still has a positive impact on relations between Russia and African countries today. Wikipedia The CIA contributed to the capture of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of independent Congo, who was handed over to his assassins in 1961. Nelson Mandela’ s ANC was classified as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2008. Washington supported the apartheid regime until the very end. Today, African countries that gained their independence with the help of the socialist bloc and are trying to build independent economies find themselves in a stranglehold: their CFA franc is tied to Paris, their debt is denominated in dollars, and their trade depends on the SWIFT system controlled by Washington. When Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger turn to Russia and China, they are doing exactly what their founding fathers did to gain independence: seeking an alternative partner that does not impose its political conditions on them. The Western response? Sanctions, diplomatic pressure, destabilization. It is colonization without soldiers. Empire without flags.
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