UN Scrambles to Defend Communist Dictator

Nov 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

The embargo has been in place for more than 40 years The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for an end to the United States' 40-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. The vote marks the 12th consecutive year that the assembly has called for an end to the blockade. Only three nations voted against the motion - the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands. Two others abstained. [...] "The blockade is a cruel and absurd policy that finds no support within or outside the United States," Cuban Foreign Minister Perez Roque said.

Clearly Israel--someone who the dictatorship loaded UN consistently votes against--is not outside the United States.

"The crime being committed against Cuba today could very well be committed against any other country tomorrow."

And what crime is that? Failing to sanction and financially support a thug and murderer? What about the crime of Castro enslaving Cubans under communism? Observe the hypocrisy here:

 "Cuba's foreign minister cried victory Friday after the U.N. Human Rights Commission voted against condemning his country's recent crackdown on dissidents....The top United Nation rights watchdog rejected a proposed resolution criticizing Cuba's recent moves against opponents, instead approving a milder resolution Thursday calling for a U.N. rights monitor to visit the island. "The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws," [Cuban Foreign Minister] Perez Roque told a news conference. "We express our profound satisfaction." Earlier this month, Cuban tribunals sentenced 75 dissidents to prison terms ranging from 6 to 28 years on charges they were mercenaries working with the American government to harm the island's socialist system...Perez Roque said his country would not comply with the milder resolution, which urged Cuba to accept a visit by U.N. human rights investigator, French jurist Christine Chanet. [AP, April 2003]

Remember who is in charge of the so-called UN "Human Rights" Commission: Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi. The U.N. Inhuman Joke Commission would be more apropos.

Quoting from "Isn't the U.S. embargo of Cuba the cause of Cuba's economic woes?":

As wealthy as Americans are, is the United States the only country in the world that has wealth? The fact is all the countries in Europe, South America, Asia, etc. have trade relations with Cuba. So the real question is: why isn't Cuba rich from its trade with all these other countries?

The reason why Cuba is so poor is that the right to life -- the moral-political basis of a free market -- and all the corollaries of that right (liberty, property, speech, etc.) do not legally exist in Cuba. In Cuba there is no private property, no private employers (the only employer is the state), and the only honest way to support oneself in Cuba is in the 'black market.'

Perhaps, the real reason that American Leftists want the U.S. to establish normal relations with Cuba is that once we do so, they can further bleed Americans taxpayers dry to support the Castro regime, as they do to support other bankrupt, socialist regimes in other countries.

To send money to Cuba will only further enrich Castro, as all foreign funds invested there do now (since foreign investors don't pay Cubans, but pay the Castro regime, from which the actual workers only receive a miniscule portion). It is the looters in these foreign countries, ready to "profit" from slave labor, that prop up and empower the Castro regime. It is they along with Dictator Fidel Castro who should be condemned. 

It is Cuba's absolute socialist system--the hallmark of totalitarianism--that should be condemned--not the U.S. embargo.

Recommend reading:

• A Leftist "Indictment" of Communist Cuba
• Isn't the U.S. embargo of Cuba the cause of Cuba's economic woes?
• Fidel Castro's Dupes

Recommended websites: LibertyForCuba.com and UNisEvil.com.

US Raises Spectre of Conscription

Nov 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

[...] The American defence department has begun a recruitment drive for local draft boards, raising questions about a possible revival of conscription. A notice on a department website invites United States citizens over the age of 18 to volunteer for the boards. The board members will decide who can be exempted if a draft is needed. [...] There has been no draft in the US since it was ended by Congress in 1973, the year that US troops pulled out of Vietnam. [...] Pentagon officials have denied any move to re-instate the draft, saying that this would require a conflict of the magnitude of World War II. They say the Selective Service System (SSS), which runs the draft boards, is merely launching a routine recruitment drive as 80% of places are now vacant.

Lessons from Britain’s Campaign Against the Slave Trade

Nov 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

"A mighty empire launches an unprecedented military campaign. It will patrol the globe to end a heinous and uncivilized form of behavior. Financing this pre-emptive project demands great sacrifices. Old allies refuse to participate. The empire's lonely unilateral exercise drags on for decades, costing thousands of lives. Observers from Cuba to Moscow assume that this folly will bring down the empire." [New York Sun, 11/4/03]

Capitalism Magazine site generates over 3 million page views for October 2003

Nov 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Poking Fun at Democratic ‘Multilateralism’

Nov 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

[S]o eager is Kerry to subordinate U.S. foreign policy to Saddam's patrons that his attacks on America's real allies have become increasingly obnoxious. In the last presidential debate, Kerry said:

''This president has done it wrong every step of the way. He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition.''

... It's taken as a given among Democrats that somehow this administration has needlessly offended the French and Germans. But insulting Britain, Australia and Poland as a cheap way to get at Bush demonstrates your superior sense of the subtleties of foreign policy? I'd say it's going to be very difficult for President Kerry to work with these chaps after his election victory--or I would say it if I could type that sentence without collapsing in giggles.

The really ''fraudulent'' coalition is the one Kerry wants: one that gives the Belgians and Syrians a veto over U.S. action for nothing in return. The ''fraudulent'' coalition is Clark's from the Kosovo war, where all ''allies'' were entitled to advance operational information regardless of whether they were actually contributing to any of the operations, and where, as Clark himself noted in his memoir, ''one of the French officers working at NATO headquarters had given key portions of the operations plans to the Serbs.'' [Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 11/2/03]

“Because Saddam is gone, now I’m getting married!”

Nov 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Freed of an onerous Baath Party bureaucracy that sought to regulate even the most fundamental aspects of Iraqi life -- such as who married whom -- Iraqis lately are tying the knot in numbers not seen in recent memory. Before President Saddam Hussein was toppled, the ruling party imposed a complex and strict set of matrimonial rules on Iraqis, particularly on members of the military.... "Because Saddam is gone, now I'm getting married!" said Wasim Adel, 27, beaming beside his bride, Sheelan Shafeeq, 18, in a crowded corridor at Karrada city hall, which serves a neighborhood in central Baghdad. The hallway was jammed with couples making their way from the office of the registration clerk to the office of the judge who would perform a civil ceremony.