Feed aggregator

Memphis Depay bleibt in Brasilien. Der 32-jährige Holländer hat seinen Corinthians-Vertrag bis 2028 verlängert. Er verzichtet dabei auf viel Geld.

By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Aug 19 2026 (IPS)

The 13th of August marked the 100th birthday of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz – in short Fidel Castro. Amidst an intensified US siege and the threat of invasion, Cubans commemorated their dear leader’s centenary birth anniversary with events that included an International Book Fair, art exhibitions, concerts and gatherings of delegates from left-wing organisations across the continent.

Anis Chowdhury

Cuba has withstood more than 6 decades of an illegal US economic blockade – i.e., not authorised by the United Nations Security Council – since its revolution in 1959. It defeated the CIA-backed military invasion (the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion) by the Cubans who fled to the US after the Revolution. Castro survived CIA’s 638 assassination attempts.

Wayne Smith, a US diplomat with a long experience in Cuba, believes Fidel Castro will be remembered because “he stood up to the United States and survived”. When Castro died in 2016, the leading US news media CBS carried an opinion piece, entitled, “How Fidel Castro stood up to the U.S., and won”.

The illegal blockade of Cuba contributes to shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and essential supplies, increasing the cost of everyday life for the Cuban people. However, when Castro welcomed Pope John Paul II in 1998 and let the pictures do the talking, the world saw Cuba surviving in spite of the US trade embargo.

Castro’s legacy

Castro’s legacy was best summarised by Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London. In 2006, during his visit to Cuba, Livingstone said, “What’s amazing here is you’ve got a country that’s suffered an illegal economic blockade by the United States for almost half a century and yet it’s been able to give its people the best standard of health care, brilliant education… to do this in the teeth of an almost economic war is a tribute to Fidel Castro”.

Thus, Cuba attained high human development measured by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Human Development Index (HDI). In comparison with the world average of 0.746 based on 185 countries, Cuba’s HDI was 0.762 in 2023. In 1994, Cuba’s HDI reached 0.887. Underlying the above global average HDI is a high adult literacy rate of nearly 100% and a high life expectancy of approximately 78.1 years at birth.

These are the results of free health care and free education for all, considered a right. Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors to patients in the world, at 9.8 per 1,000 people (2021), which was 0.9 in 1960. Its infant mortality of 3.86 per 1,000 live births is one of the lowest in the world. At the William Soler Paediatric Hospital in Havana, more than 90% of the new-borns who needed neonatal surgery survived their procedures.

Malaria, polio, tetanus, and measles have been eradicated in Cuba due to years of investment in primary care and assiduous attention to the population’s health. Cuba’s long-standing commitment to health has led to a successful COVID-19 pandemic response. Cuba spends a larger proportion of its gross domestic product on education than any other country in the world.

Unfortunately, the recent tightening of the unilateral illegal blockade by the Trump administration is inflicting heavy costs and reversing Cuba’s unique development gains.

A true internationalist

Castro was a true internationalist leader of the proletariat and stood by freedom fighters, especially in Africa. At a rally of approximately 1 million Cubans in 1962, Fidel Castro presented the Second Declaration of Havana, a call to revolutionary action to anti-imperialist and working-class fighters internationally. Castro often reiterated, the Cuban people’s internationalist aid to liberation struggles was “paying our debt to humanity.”

Castro sent his first batch of military support to Algerian President Ben Bellah in 1963. Castro’s Cuba trained the revolutionaries in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cape Verde and fought with them against the colonial rule. Castro branded apartheid “a creation of Western capitalism and imperialism”, and his Cuba helped bring down the system of apartheid in South Africa by providing resources and training to African National Congress (ANC) fighters.

Despite the hardship illegally imposed on it by the US, Cuba always stood by the world’s oppressed and hapless people. In 1960, Cuba joined the relief effort after the Chilean earthquake. In 1963, it sent health-care workers to assist the newly independent state of Algeria.

Castro’s Cuba has been despatching cadres of health-care professionals all over the world to combat disasters and epidemics. Cuban doctors were on the scene in Haiti during the cholera outbreak that followed the 2010 earthquake; they arrived in west Africa during the 2013–16 Ebola crisis. And when COVID-19 spread to Europe, two Cuban health professional teams landed in Italy. By the end of April, 2020, more than 1000 Cuban health-care workers were helping foreign countries respond to COVID-19.

Castro conceptualised and implemented an inclusive model of healthcare that brought doctors to the people. He extended Cuban medical aid to other countries, demonstrating the essentially internationalist and human nature of the Cuban Revolution.

Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science observed, “The international health programme is about solidarity; Cuba believes that healthy populations are the bedrock of global society and they want to support that any way they can”.

Mandela and Castro

Like many revolutionaries and freedom fighters in the Global South, Nelson Mandela was inspired by the Cuban Revolution’s triumph in 1959. Charged with the task of starting a guerrilla army in 1961, Mandela looked to the writings of Cuban Communists for guidance.

Mandela visited Cuba in 1991 to express his gratitude to Castro, calling Castro’s Revolution “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people”. Mandela further added, “We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist-orchestrated campaign. We, too, want to control our own destiny.”

During a public event in Havana, Mandela asked Castro to visit South Africa. Referring to Castro, Mandela asked, “Who trained our people, who gave us resources, who helped so many of our soldiers, our doctors? … “You have not come to our country – when are you coming?”

Castro attended Mandela’s presidential inauguration in May 1994. Barbara Masekela, South Africa’s former ambassador to the US and who accompanied Mandela to Cuba in 1991, said Mandela’s friendship with Castro had been “born in the trenches of the freedom struggle”.

A true friend of the oppressed

Norberto Fuentes, a writer once close to Castro and now living in exile, believes the Cuban leader’s relevance is as “the spokesman for silence, for the man who has no army, no Congress, no face. The man who has nothing”.

Thousands of Cuban internationalists contributed to decisive battles for independence of African countries, while fostering cooperation in the fields of health, education, and training.

Despite hardships due to the US’s illegal blockade, Castro’s Cuba has remained a shining example of internationalism and holds a special place in the history of people’s struggles against imperialism.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

Nach dem plötzlichen Tod von US-Schauspielerin Hayden Panettiere (†36) bricht ihre Mutter Lesley Vogel das Schweigen. Sie erhebt schwere Vorwürfe gegen den On-Off-Freund ihrer Tochter, Brian Hickerson, der bei ihrem Tod anwesend war.

Es ist der Wirtschaftsprozess des Jahrzehnts. Pierin Vincenz und Beat Stocker sollen dank versteckter Deals abkassiert haben. Letzten Montag hat die Verhandlung am Obergericht begonnen. Die zweite Prozesswoche geht bereits dem Ende zu. Blick berichtet livel.

Das Winterthurer Industrieunternehmen Burckhardt Compression will am Standort Winterthur bis zu rund 150 Stellen abbauen. Weitere 70 Stellen sollen an internationalen Standorten gestrichen werden. Grund dafür: Die kommenden Quartale werden voraussichtlich schwach.

Gute Nachrichten aus Italien: Der 20-jährige Yael Trepy befindet sich nach seinem Badeunfall in Porto Cervo auf dem Weg der Besserung.

Der Premier-League-Chef Richard Masters fordert das Ende von Gianni Infantino. Grund: Ein geplanter Verkauf von WM-Anteilen, der laut Masters den Fussball gefährdet.

Mit Martina Voss-Tecklenburg kehrt ein grosser Name in die Schweiz zurück. Wegbegleiterinnen erklären, was die einstige Nati-Trainerin ausmacht und wo sie dem FCZ helfen kann. Und ein deutscher Journalist spricht über ihre wüste Trennung vom DFB.

Die Fussballer vom granadinischen Vorstadt-Klub Arenas CD erleben während ihres Trainings eine echte Überraschung. Plötzlich bebt die Erde.

Videoaufnahmen aus Rumänien zeigen ein dramatisches Ereignis auf einer Schnellstrasse: Ein Junge fällt aus einem fahrenden Lieferwagen. Doch damit nicht genug: kaum steht das Kind wieder, läuft es unter Schock direkt in die nächste Gefahr.

Am Dienstagabend ist auf einem Bauernhof in Neuwilen im Kanton Thurgau ein Grossbrand ausgebrochen. Beim Eintreffen der ersten Einsatzkräfte stand eine Lagerhalle des Landwirtschaftsbetriebs bereits in Vollbrand.

Tesla rollt das «Full Self-Driving»-System in Europa aus. Erste Länder bieten es für die Kunden bereits an, die Schweiz soll ebenfalls folgen. Doch bisher ist es noch nicht zugelassen. Eine Mitfahrt zeigt, was das System kann.

Grossbrand in Neuwilen TG: Eine Lagerhalle geriet am Dienstagabend in Flammen, über 50 Personen wurden evakuiert. Feuerwehr und Autodrehleiter im Einsatz. Der Sachschaden ist noch unklar.

Hayden Panettiere (†36) starb 3500 Kilometer von ihrem Zuhause entfernt. Nun lassen sich die letzten Stunden in ihrem Leben rekonstruieren. Kurz zuvor hatte sie noch für Peta ein letztes Mal vor der Kamera gestanden – für Wale und Delfine im Elend.

Das Openair Gampel startet am Mittwoch im Wallis. Nach einem trockenen Sommer droht Regen, doch die Organisatoren bleiben gelassen und versprechen angenehme Temperaturen unter 30 Grad sowie ein vorbereitetes Sicherheitskonzept.

Goodluck Jonathan war Präsident von Nigeria, dem bevölkerungsreichsten Land Afrikas. Nun warnt er den Kontinent vor zu mächtigen Staatschefs – und erklärt, warum die Schweiz ein Vorbild sein könnte.

Vor mindestens sieben Monsterproblemen steht der US-Präsident am Ende eines für ihn brutalen Sommers. Eingebrockt hat er sie sich selbst. Es wird ihm kaum gelingen, den Kopf vor den anstehenden Zwischenwahlen aus der politischen Schlinge zu ziehen.

Massiver Preisschock in Erlen TG: Die Kosten für schulergänzende Betreuung steigen über Nacht um über 60 Prozent – von 55 auf 90 Franken pro Tag. Familien stehen vor einer finanziellen Herausforderung und zeigen sich hilflos. Die Gemeinde blockt ab.

Neben guter Gesellschaft und der richtigen Ausrüstung braucht man beim Wandern attraktive Ziele. Hier kommen Inspirationen für unvergessliche Ausflüge. Sie sind in Wanderschuhen machbar, die so bequem sind wie Turnschuhe – aber viel sicherer.

Die Arbeitswelt wird schneller, komplexer und anspruchsvoller – hinzu kommt als Herausforderung die KI. Zwei Beispiele aus dem Gesundheits- und Dienstleistungssektor verdeutlichen, weshalb Softskills wie emotionale Intelligenz und mentale Stärke an Bedeutung gewinnen.