On 23 June, 184 nations at United Nations voted for an end to the half-century long USA embargo against tiny Cuba. Only the USA and Israel voted against the resolution.
A Reuters article reprinted in the New York Times wrote:
Cuba said earlier this month the decades-old U.S. trade embargo cost it a record total of more than $9 billion over the last financial year, hurting its ability to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the General Assembly that sanctions had made it harder for Cuba to acquire medical equipment needed to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines and for other uses as well as equipment for food production. “Like the virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills, it must stop,” Rodriguez told the General Assembly.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark once wrote of America’s penchant for violence:
The consistent underlying psychology of the United States, … should be understandable to anyone who has ever known a violent neighborhood bully. The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate. ((US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, in his forward to nuclear physicist Micho Kaku’s To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans.))
In the case of Cuba, US President Kennedy, approved bombing, an invasion that took the lives of 900+ Cubans, brought even the threat of nuclear war to bear, and thereafter had his Attorney General Robert Kennedy run what was called Operation Mongoose, which included deadly sabotage and attempts to assassinate Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro.
All, while at the same time, USA’s greatest trading partner was, and is more than ever, Communist Party run China.
USA Does Not Embargo Communist China
The USA has not invaded China big time since the US looted imperialist Peking in 1900.
But it tried to stop the Chinese revolution and in 1950 used its 7th Fleet to protect Chiang Kai-shek who with his Nationalist (Capitalist) Army invaded Taiwan and installed a draconian dictatorship. ((“The Great Debate: Chiang Kai-shek’s Role in 21st Century Taiwan,” The Diplomat.))
However, China has the gumption to call for the US to end its embargo of Cuba. Newsweek reported, “China has called on the United States to promptly lift its decades-long trade restrictions on Cuba.” ((“China Says U.S. Should ‘Immediately’ Lift Cuba Embargo and Stop Interfering,” Newsweek, 7/19/21. ))
Might Cuba Herself Request Help with Such a Boycott?
If no other agency sees fit to call for an international boycott of American products in sympathy with the US caused suffering of the Cuban people, may heaven see the Cuban government itself call for such a boycott of US products.
We have seen for some years now, Russia, China, and Iran avoiding the use of the US dollar currency.
In any obviously unequal fight, the tendency is for onlookers to side with the little guy, for the underdog and against the bully. This could auger success for such a boycott to catch on.
A lot of salt-of-the-Earth hard-working, ordinary citizens and their families might enjoy joining in to help fight the injustice of the superpower nation of 331 million in a land of 3.797 million square miles relentlessly attacking a nation of 11 million on an island of 42,426 square miles.
Millions of shoppers passing up buying “Made in USA” or an American brand name made in Vietnam, Thailand, or Indonesia, when a non-American-made item from, for example, Japan or China is just as acceptable, might just be a little unsettling with all the other troubles America seems to be having these days.
What the Hell! When all is said and done and everything settles down, ending the embargo might be the best thing for all sides in both countries.
- Cubans in Cuba could lead more enjoyable and normal lives with the latest modernities.
- The Communist Party of Cuba could focus on what is most important for the welfare of Cubans, rather than be focused and concerned about finances and providing food.
- Americans aware of the genocidal crimes of their government against Cuba and most other Latin American peoples (and Asian, Middle Eastern and African nations), could applaud at least one improvement in US genocidal foreign policy and feel hopeful for more.
- The evil minds of the criminal Deep-State-Military-
Industrial-Complex-Wall Street investors in war, for the flood of US tourists and visitors and money and consumer culture and indulgence into Cuba, could have a good chance of witnessing the demise of the intensity of Cuban revolutionary spirit for overthrowing (perhaps too precipitously), the neocolonial capitalist domination of society at home in the USA as well as abroad in the poor and still financially plundered captive Third World. After all ‘they,’ the bad guys of Wall Street, are still number one, though probably not for all that much longer. Imperialist White folks are losing their edge in weaponry, and though there are so so very many of those people of differing hues of skin color, they haven’t yet gotten riled up enough to realize that they really don’t have to put up with just a few White US billionaires owning more wealth than half of humanity collectively.) ((“These 6 Men Have as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population,” Common Dreams.
“Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world,” Oxfam.
“World’s Richest 1 Percent Own Twice as Much as Bottom 90 Percent,” PND.))
In any case, with all the changes now happening in the USA about “Whose Lives Matter,” maybe this murderously long, unfair Yankee embargo of Cuba and military occupation of Guantanamo will just logically peter out.
Your author won’t prejudice such an expected felicitous outcome, by crowding it with the mention of more recent crimes against humanity by the United States of America in and on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti. However, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti’s turn at rectification, if not remuneration, should follow on the heels of the end of the crimes against Cuba, whether or not hastened by the international boycott suggested in this brief article.