Who the Hell Would Vote For the Blockade Against Cuba?

Che Guevara and Chairman Mao during the Cuban-Argentine revolutionary's visit to China in 1964. A high-level delegation from the Communist Party of China was in Cuba in April 2007.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Who the hell would vote for the blockade?

Even Hillary Clinton’s spokesman is wondering.

WHICH are the only two countries that voted on the side of the United States at the UN on the blockade against Cuba?

In a press conference after the condemnation of that U.S. aggression against the island for the 18th year running, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly was left speechless by a question put to him by a journalist.

When Kelly couldn’t respond to the above question, journalists suggested that maybe it was the Solomon Islands or Micronesia.

During the exchange between Kelly and an unidentified journalist, Kelly was asked to remind the journalists which two countries had voted against the Cuban resolution and comment on their votes.

Kelly said he thought one was Palau but didn’t know the other one.

The journalist suggested that it was Micronesia or Israel. Kelly was left with only one way out: the usual anti-Cuban rhetoric. He began, “All right. Well, let me give you the guidance on this. The United States believes it has the sovereign right to conduct economic – its economic relationship with Cuba as determined by U.S. national interests.”

“Sanctions on Cuba are designed to permit humanitarian items to reach the Cuban people, while denying the Cuban Government resources that it could use to repress its citizens.”

He argued that the United States has exported $717 million to Cuba over the last year. “Sanctions are one part of the United States policy approach to Cuba”…

A journalist interrupts him: “But, I mean, you have no opinion on the fact that the rest of the world thinks that this is a bad way to go?”

Kelly: “Well…”

Journalist: “That the whole world – I mean, Palau notwithstanding – excuse me.”

Kelly: “This – it seems to me to be an annual exercise that –”

Journalist: “It’s an annual exercise to tell you that the rest of the world thinks –”

Kelly (even more taken aback): “-- seems to be – kind of has inertia from the Cold War. The suggestion that we’re not assisting Cuba is just false. I mean, we are one of the major providers of humanitarian assistance to Cuba.”

One has to understand that for Kelly, the sales of agricultural products to the island paid for in cash by Cuba, count as “humanitarian assistance” on the part of the U.S. government.
The rest of the conversation becomes lost in the usual profusion of attacks against Cuba and a strange discussion about human rights given by a nation that still has not closed Guantánamo and in which more individuals, especially African-Americans and Latinos, are incarcerated, without mentioning the massive unemployment that forces millions of the State Department spokesman’s fellow countrymen to sleep on the street. (JGA)