Left I on the News

Yesterday at a press conference, President Obama was asked about the U.S. maintaining its blockade ("embargo" in the inaccurate U.S. language) on Cuba. His response (in part):

"What we haven’t seen is the kind of genuine spirit of transformation inside of Cuba that would justify us eliminating the embargo."

He claims that the "embargo" is all about human rights, political prisoners, and so on.

But earlier this year, Obama renewed the statement which legally justifies the blockade. It asserts that the U.S. is in a state of "national emergency" (!), and that

The Cuban government has not demonstrated that it will refrain from the use of excessive force against U.S. vessels or aircraft that may engage in memorial activities or peaceful protest north of Cuba. In addition, the unauthorized entry of any U.S.-registered vessel into Cuban territorial waters continues to be detrimental to the foreign policy of the United States.

Of course this is lie upon lie. How Cuba could "demonstrate" that it will "refrain from the use of excessive force" is of course an impossibility. The phrase "north of Cuba" is curiously ambiguous. Cuba retains the right, as do all nations, to deal with foreign aircraft overflying its territory in however they see fit, based on the perceived threat of such aircraft. And all this has nothing whatsoever with Obama's claimed justification for the continuation of the blockade, which could never be legally justified based on U.S. perceptions of human rights in Cuba (and if it could, the U.S. would be blockading an awful lot of countries in the world, starting with stopping the importation of oil from Saudi Arabia). Not to mention the preposterous notion that the U.S. is in a state of "national emergency" over anything happening in Cuba.

The blockade has one purpose and one purpose only - overthrowing the government of Cuba. Regime change. It has been thus ever since 1959, when the U.S. State Department wrote this:

"The majority of Cubans support Castro...the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba...a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."