The UN General Assembly and the Castro dictatorship

People like to say USA economic sanctions on the Castro dictatorship should end because they don't work, or because the USA lacks the moral standing to criticize and punish human rights abusers. 

I started out to write about the United Nations' yearly vote condemning the economic sanctions, to argue that a vote should be held condemning the dictatorship. But then I realized the UN isn't too focused on freedom of the individual. It's a nations' club, focused on what's good for each nation's ruling class. And this means the UN will never vote to condemn the Castro family dictatorship. 

The actions taken by any power, including the USA, to condemn or punish the Castro dictatorship will be driven by the Cuban people, be It Cubans living abroad or in Cuba, and their allies. This is a war, but the sides are both Cuban. 

Yoani Sanchez, blogger for freedom

The senile dinosaur, Fidel Castro 

One side is the dictatorship, the military and communist party oligarchs, allied with corporate interests and the international left.


The other side is a heterogeneous mix of Cubans, the majority of those living in Cuba, many of them socialists who don't like the Emergng Castro neofascism, plus Cubans abroad, also Ranging from left to right, who simply want the human rights abuses to end, plus  cubans who want revenge against the communists, and their allies, ranging from corporate interests, to Venezuelans who realize their country was colonized by the Castro machine,  to USA and other libertarians who simply hate dictatorship no matter what its color. 

Thus I'm switching gears, I'll write about the USA sanctions and outline why sanctions should remain in place and only end if the Castro regime changes and there's a clear pathway to real democracy:

If the Castro regime were a right wing dictatorship instead of a Stalinist one, the EU and Latin American nations would have cooperated to isolate it and force changes, like was done to the South African apartheid regime. 

Obama, like Bush, is shortsighted and doesn't do nuances. He claims nothing has changed in 50 years, but that's not really true. The two dinosaurs are old, Fidel is senile (they lie about his mental condition), Raul is very old and lacks energy, and the second Castro generation lacks intelligent crafty males. 

Raúl Castr with grandson who serves 

as bodyguard and diaper bag carrier

And I say males because that regime is very old guard, the "communist" oligarchs are male, most of them army or interior ministry/secret police officers. They are not about to allow a woman, a minority, or a homosexual anywhere close to power. 

They lack a member of their upper Mafia able to run the state corporate machine. Diaz Canel, Raul's vicepresident, is a caretaker, lacks power, the senior Prince, Alejandro Castro,  is an untalented psychopath who runs the security services, but lacks political skills. Fidelito Castro and the other descendants are spoiled hedonists, are seen hanging around with Paris Hilton and other celebrities. 

So, at a time when the Castros' hold in Venezuela's riches is tenuous, when Venezuela falls apart because Chávez and Maduro are like little Fidels, the regime lacks the funds to survive. 

This means Obama and his advisors are riding to the rescue at a point in time when the regime is drowning. The USA has a lousy foreign policy,  we have seen the messes in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. The US supports that despicable Netanyahu regime in Israel, helped take down a dictator in Egypt to have him replaced by another dictator, Guantanamo is still there, and on and on. 

And now we are about to see another mess in Cuba and Venezuela. Those two regimes are joined at the hip. In that Cubazuela hybrid the Cubans have the upper hand, because they keep Maduro in power. 

Nowadays Raúl is moving towards Chinese style ruthless capitalism, with a neofascist political control machine. This will take a Cuba-Venezuela axis into a very ugly condition, nations ruled by former Stalinists who adopted capitalism as they like it, with a horrible human rights record, enormously corrupt, a pathological hatred of the US, and support by corporate interests in the USA, Europe, China and Russia.

The Cuban regime controls the majority of Cubans, but there are over 1 million of us they don't control. And we happen to be smarter and harder working. We have spent half a century being insulted, denigrated, trashed, abused, discriminated against by the regime and the international left because we didn't bow down and submit to slavery in a Stalinist dictatorship. The right wing and the racists despise us. And this makes us tougher, and provides the motivation to continue pressing on until that regime is gone.