Only US and Israel voted no. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR2010102603414.html UN condemns Cuba embargo _ again The Associated Press Tuesday, October 26, 2010; 1:21 PM UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn almost a half-century of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, demanding an end to what member states say is a cruel Cold War anachronism that only hurts ordinary people. The final vote Tuesday by U.N. member states was 187 in favor of ending the sanctions, with two countries - the U.S. and Israel - in favor of keeping them. There were three abstentions. It was the 19th consecutive year that the General Assembly has taken up the symbolic measure, calling for the "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba."
It's so strange having an embargo on an island where we have a military base and it's less than a 100 miles away (from Florida). I want to fly Southwest Airlines to Havana.
Along with an occasional island in the So Pacific or two that we control, we return the favor by keeping it from being unanimous in the UN when Israel violates UN resolutions wrt to occupying Palestinians land or embargoing Gaza etc. Iraq, of course, had to be invaded at a cost of a trillion or two because they violated a UN resoloution.
Please let this embargo end... I want to go back to my mother's birthplace, see my grandfather's hospital, see my great grandfather's brewry, drink a cold bottle of Cristal on the beach like my family did before Castro came. WHY ARE WE STILL UPHOLDING THIS BULLSH**?? Can anyone give a logical reason? Are we afraid The Soviets will flood them with ballistic nukes?
I've heard from some Canadians I know, that the beaches there are pretty damn nice, and the party scene is pretty damn fun. It sucks that those fools get to travel there and we can't. The people there are dirt poor thanks to Castro, unfortunately.
The soviet excuse quietly died in 1989 when the USSR collapsed. Amazingly (not really) no one in the media seemed to note the subtle shift in rationale - US policy towards Cuba magically converted from "protect us from the russians" to "we need to enable democracies". Obviously, anyone with half a brain can spot the current parallel. The real reason of course, is that Cuba had the audacity to try to free itself from the typical Central American country's position as a subservient US corporate-colony. I mean, from the standpoint of International Law the UN has every right to be flabbergasted at the US attitude, except that it's absolutely our standard modus operandi. Take a look at the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 that essentially escalated the embargo to illegal levels. Universally condemned but the US did not care, and Israel backed us up at the UN then, too. No, they're dirt poor because of the USA.
Obama and most Dems are afraid to be called "communists" or not militaristic enough. On a practical level Florida is a large swing state and a few thousand right wing Cubans could conceivably swing the state. Remeber Gore vs. Bush?
Look, they screwed up and ticked us off and gave the US every excuse to treat them however they saw fit, and upon soviet collapse was not exactly the time to say "now that you're on your own and have no ground at all to stand on, we're all good." Perhaps that would be a good thing, but anyone who thinks it should or would have happened that way, I don't know what to tell you. It should have ended by now, but I suspect it won't until Castro passes and they re-posture as eager for a new beginning. Whether you believe that means they have to agree to be subservient or not is semantics. I agree that it is the US that continues this policy that keeps Cuba poor, but I don't agree with the implication that it was a move of pure unprovoked oppression. They are dirt poor because they postured communist threat when it mattered, and we have been holding one big badmofo grudge. It's past time to get over it I agree, and I also agree that were it not for internal political ramifications, it probably would have happened by now. Can you imagine the o u t r a g e if Obama were to put that in motion? Maybe right before he leaves, eh?
Repped. Excellent post. Very well informed. I can't laud the current Cuban regime or speak of their motivation as altruistic. They took away everything my family had, including (as previously mentioned) a brewery and a hospital... not to mention the home they built. But... and this is why I repped you... most people don't want to talk about the American goverment's role in creating this situation. The embargo lasting beyond the fall of the Soviet governmet is laughable, if it wasn't so sad and frankly, embarassing. Cuba should be free to run their country however they want as long as they are lawful and do not infringe on other countries rights. If we were so into "democracy building," where's the embargo on Saudi Arabia? China?
Right? We're not into democracy (as is obvious from any sort of intellectual analysis of the US corporate fascist machine). We only support "democracies" that are totalitarian. If a democratic election leads to populist control the US will crush it. Not a matter of if but when. This has happened from Italy post WWII in the late 1940s up through Haiti in the 90s and, to a certain extent, even in Iraq (although that one is way more convoluted than the usual US policy battle).
Don't forget Honduras in 2009. We may not have been that involved in the original coup as customary in the past, but we are still trying to pressure Latin America into accepting the coup there. Certainly conservative senators like Jim DeMint and others managed to get Obama to back off on getting President Zelaya back. For the most part not a peep from Obama and Hillary as they still are torturing and kiling l journalists, union leaders etc.
I clearly remember the embargo against China in early 1990s. It did not slow down China any bit but confirmed to Chinese people that Americans are truly their enemies, not the democracy priest shown in 64-1989.
