Cuba Delivers UN Anti-Blockade Plan

[Say_What]

For the 15th year in a row, the UN General Assembly is getting ready to denouce the USSA's 45 year embargo on the island.

<clips>

United Nations, Oct 5 (Prensa Latina) The Cuban diplomatic mission at the UN delivered all member countries of this organization Thursday a draft resolution against the US-imposed blockade of that Caribbean state for over 45 years.

Officials from the island s embassy told Prensa Latina that the distribution of the document was done personally, during meetings with the UN member ambassadors.

The debate and later voting on the draft resolution is slated for November 8 in the General Assembly plenary session.

This will be the 15th consecutive year that Cuba presents a resolution entitled "Need to end the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the US on Cuba."

Last year, the statement was approved with 182 votes for, four against and one abstention, of the then 191 UN members.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={68A5484E-D813-4EB8-AA73-BC0B6E7EEACB}&language=EN

[Crayson]

1. so...

what's going to change THIS time... ?
(In cartoons this is usually the situation where you hear this cricket sound and everybody waits for something to happen... but nothing happens.)


Who are the 4 votes against?
Guessing...
US, Britain, Canada, and ??

And who is the one abstention who doesn't dare to say "no" to the US?

[Say_What]

3. The four votes against are the US and its bought-and-paid for

countries of:

Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands

not sure who the absention was. You'd have to google it from last year.

[eallen]

2. It's an embargo, not a blockade.

They are different. Were it a blockade, US warships would be blocking Cuban trade with Canada, Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and all the other nations of the world. The US blockaded the Confederacy during the Civil War. The US blockaded Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962. It is not blockading Cuba today. The many Canadians planning a winter vacation to Havana need not worry about the US military interfering.

An embargo is where one nation selectively stops its own trade, either with another nation or trade of some particular type.

[Say_What]

5. Background on the Embargo...

Call it whatever you want. There's still no excuse for trying to strangle the island's economy and make life so difficult for the Cubans that they will overthrow their government. The POS archaic embargo by the planet's only super power against an island the size of Florida is dispicable. But that's the USSA's version of bringing *freedom and democracy* to other countries. :puke: :puke: :puke:

"For the thing we should never do in dealing with revolutionary countries, in which the world abounds, is to push them behind an iron curtain raised by ourselves. On the contrary, even when they have been seduced and subverted and are drawn across the line, the right thing to do is to keep the way open for their return." Walter Lippmann, July 1959

A Closer Look at Helm's-Burton

Economic Embargo Timeline

RFK proposal to withdraw prohibitions on travel

[Mika]

7. By your definition, it is neither.

Posted by eallen--->"An embargo is where one nation selectively stops its own trade, either with another nation or trade of some particular type."


Not only does the US sanction on Cuba include general domestic trade with Cuba, the US's Helms-Burton law is an extra territorial sanction on Cuba.

Any foreign or domestic company that does business with/in the US is forbidden from doing business with/in Cuba (without a special OFAC permit, and Bushco is making that all but impossible).

For example: Bayer AG would not be permitted to sell Aspirin in the US if it were to choose to sell Aspirin to Cuba's Ministry of Health. Bayer chooses the much larger and more profitable market.

Currently, Bushco is prosecuting several Canadian companies that do biz in Cuba as well as the US.

[eallen]

8. Interesting. Stupid law. That just creates resellers.

Undoubtedly, there are now plenty of small companies whose sole purpose is to purchase aspirin from Bayer, etc., and resell to Cuba.

The real harm of the embargo isn't on the import side, but on the export side. The embargo has effectively stopped travel from the US, and since the Soviet Union's collapse, Cuba has shifted largely to a tourist economy.

[Mika]

11. 3rd party resellers make drugs too expensive..

.. so that is just why Cuba has its own drug/biotech industry.


FYI, the US's travel sanctions on Americans is an entirely different
issue than the trade sanctions on corporations.

Once again, Bushco has made travel to Cuba all but impossible, even
going so far as to restrict religious missions and academic researchers
from travelling to the island - both were permitted forms of travel to
the island prior to the _Bush regime.

[Judi Lynn]

14. The perception of Cubans is that it most certainly is a blockade.

But what do they know?

[Say_What]

4. Former diplomats to debate Cuba relations

<clips>

With Fidel Castro's future in doubt, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba will take center stage this month when two career diplomats address the "Vermont Forum on Cuba — Perspectives on Change."

Ambassador Dennis Hays and Wayne Smith are Cuba experts who differ sharply on the course U.S. foreign policy has taken since Castro seized power in 1959 and established a communist enclave on the largest island in the Caribbean.

...Smith, an embargo opponent, spent 25 years with the State Department, including a stint as chief of missions at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

"Our policy is counterproductive. It hasn't worked," Smith said during a telephone interview from Washington. "If the idea was to get rid of the Castro government or if the idea was to encourage the Castro government to move toward a more open society, it has obviously failed."

A far more productive course of action, Smith said, would be for the United States to lift the travel ban on U.S. citizens.

..."… the United States is not only not allowing American citizens to travel, but saying we are going to bring down the Cuban government," Smith said.

Efforts by Smith and others to lift the nearly 50-year-old embargo have largely failed. The only exceptions are food and agricultural products that U.S. companies began selling on a cash-only basis in 2001. Last year, Vermont farmers made their first sale of heifers to help replenish Cuba's dairy herd.


http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061003/NEWS/610030387/1002/NEWS01

[Vidar]

6. Too bad the UN won't back it up with an embargo on the US.

[Igel]

9. That would be intriguing.

Would they stop importing water, food, and electricity? Toilet paper and pens?

In some respects, the UN is dysfunctional. But surely that would make the NY UN HQ site even more dysfunctional.

[Vidar]

12. Just a dream. The first step is obviously to move the UN to

Europe or elsewhere, where it can't be bullied by the US.

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. The US's attitude to Cuba since they assassinated JFK is part of a plan

.
.
.

As we can see the US embarking even further on it's Global Domination goal,

They sure wouldn't want a well armed country right beside it

And that includes US!

We ain't well-armed by Murikkkan standards,

But we got oil, lumber, steel, water and so on that the US desperately needs - -

But so far the World sorta likes us Canuks -

So the PNACers big chore is to make the world DISLIKE us so they can invade us for some fabricated reason, - as they did in Iraq - -

And here we are in a combat role in Afghanistan - -

PNACers plan is working . . .

(sigh)

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

13. I don't like Castro or his regime,

but this embargo is stupid.

The time to end it has long since past.

[Judi Lynn]

15. An Economic War: The Truth About the "Embargo" on Cuba

October 5, 2006

An Economic War
The Truth About the "Embargo" on Cuba
By RICARDO ALARCÓN

"To bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government"

State Department, April 6, 1960

A few weeks from now, the UN General Assembly will pass, with practical unanimity, a new resolution, the number 15, condemning the blockade on Cuba, which Washington tries to describe as barely an "embargo". The United States Government will try to justify its policy once again without success. They have been doing this for almost half a century now, concealing the truth behind their fabrications and lies.

The truth is, however, contained in documents that were kept secret by Washington until 1991. More than an embargo or blockade, it is in fact an act of ¨economic warfare¨, as the then secretary of state, Christian Herter, said in 1959. An economic warfare that began with the triumph of the Revolution in January of 1959 and it is still in force today, a war which has always had the same genocidal purpose: to bring about hunger, misery and desperation among the people of Cuba.

Dictator Fulgencio Batista and his main accomplices plundered the Republic's Treasury and upon fleeing Cuba in January of that year they took with them more than 424 million dollars which came to rest in the United States and form the economic basis of a mafia often hailed by the US press as ¨successful businessmen¨ of Miami. For Cuba the situation was critical and Washington knew it. The Department of State described it as such, saying in February 1959 that:

"the serious threat to the stability of the Cuba peso which results from the fact that following the departure of the Batista administration it was determined that the currency reserve of the country is depleted", something which, "would tax the governing abilities of any of the best leaders".
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon10052006.html