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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 20, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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UN votes to lift Cuba blockade ... again

So why is it still in place?

By Leslie Feinberg

On Nov. 5, the overwhelming majority of the members of the United Nations voted to end the U.S.-enforced economic blockade of Cuba. When the vote was tallied, 143 countries had weighed in against this form of economic warfare against the island nation.

In fact, the only votes Washington could muster to support its economic strangulation of Cuba were from Israel and Uzbekistan. Those two votes come as no surprise. Israel has long been wholly dependent on U.S. dollars. Uzbekistan was recently dragged into the orbit of U.S. finance capital.

While more countries than ever voted with Cuba, this is not the first year that a huge majority opposed the blockade.

On Nov. 8, Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, told an enthusiastic audience at Casa de las Americas in New York that this vote has come up annually in the UN for the last six years.

Alarcon stressed that every year "the number of countries that have voted with us has increased. The great majority have rejected the blockade."

And in each of the last six years, Alarcon noted, the U.S. couldn’t round up a fourth vote.

So why is the blockade still in place? Because a UN vote only has "clout" when it rubber-stamps U.S. imperialism’s world interests.

When the vote abrogates U.S. designs, Alarcon explained, "The media says that General Assembly resolutions are just ‘recommendations’ and are not mandatory. They are not applied as strictly as Security Council resolutions. However, they are morally, politically, juridically and historically mandated."

U.S. politicians talk about "democracy" ad nauseam. But when they use the word, they mean the untrammeled freedom to rule the world’s roost and rake in the mega-profits.

"The U.S. blockade is an attempt to isolate Cuba," Alarcon reminded his audience, "while the worst tyrannies are made in Washington."

But, he concluded, "We will do what is necessary to move ahead and fight for the perfection of our society. For us, democracy means more socialism.

"Our revolution will live on. Cuba will continue to be independent, revolutionary and socialist," Alarcon concluded, "We have the capacity to resist."

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