Left I on the News

It might have seemed impossible last year, when the U.N. already voted 185-3 with 2 abstentions to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, but this year the vote edged up yet again, to a resounding 187-3.

The three opposed, as last year, were the U.S., its politically, militarily, and economically dependent lackey Israel, and its economically dependent former territory Palau. But it turns out there's even more to that Palau vote than you might think:

The only country that joined, once again, team USA-Israel against the overwhelming majority of countries that recently pushed back against the U.S. blockade against Cuba at the U.N., has as its ambassador in that institution Stuart Beck, an American with Israeli citizenship, Long Island lawyer, friend of John Bolton. [Translated online with some improvement by me]

It's not even a big enough country to have its own actual ambassador!

And, irony alert! Rising to defend the U.S.' Cold War policy, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice calling the Cuban Ambassador's statements "hostile" and "straight out of the Cold War era." You might want to rethink that name-calling, Susan.

The U.S. continues its arrogant policy of saying Cuba must "change" before the U.S. removes the blockade. Really an almost unbelievable statement considering that the blockade (and the entire U.S.-Cuba relationship) is an entirely one-way street, Cuba never having done a single thing to the U.S. (other than existing) while the U.S. has waged an unrelenting 50-year war against the Cuban Revolution.

An interesting example of that arrived in my mail the other day. There are new postal regulations involving Cuba, which allow people to mail gifts to Cuba more frequently. Well, to some Cubans anyway. Excluded from receiving anything (other than simple letters) in the mail from the U.S. are "certain government officials and Cuban Communist Party members." Talk about interfering in the affairs of another country!