The president of the United States of America actually believes that he has divine powers to assume the role of supreme judge on the planet.

But, down on the ground, every time mortals consulted this faculty assumed by Washington, it has been denied.

President George W. Bush recently dictated that Cuba and Myanmar (previously Burma) are guilty of the crimes of trafficking of human beings, forced labor and prostitution.

He also declared that Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Iran are up at the top of the list to have the same sanctions applied, although he invoked his authority to hold off applying them so drastically because of the flow of money linked favors the national interest of the United States.

The president - reports Associated Press - preferred to hold off on applying sanctions to other countries where he has discovered serious problems of trafficking in human beings, such as Saudi Arabia. He also withdrew the immediate threat of sanctions on Kuwait because that country recently opened a refuge for victims of abuse, almost always Asian women forced to work as slaves in wealthy Kuwaiti homes.

How big of him. Bush also decided not to apply sanctions against Iran nor against other nations where the United States sets its sights on extending it cultural and educational services "to prevent abuse".

In the case of the greatest delinquents, Cuba and Myanmar, sanctions imposed by Bush are the withdrawal of US aid and forbidding their participation in cultural and educational exchange programs. Cuba has been submitted to 48 Your browser may not support display of this image.years of a severe commercial blockade and an economic war which has excluded it from these "benefits" for 48 years.

The line of arguments by the US president - assuredly coming to him from divine sources - contradicts the fact that Cuba has been, for more than four decades, victim and not guilty of trafficking of human beings that has become a profitable business for unscrupulous persons based in United States territory with the undisguised support of Florida state authorities and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In the United States there are laws that promote the illegal immigration of Cubans as a means of propaganda against the island's socialist project viciously repressing irregular immigrants of any other country of the third world.

As for prostitution, it is well known that Cuba practically erased this social blight until the decade of the 1990s when it received a boost though an increase in tourism. The island had to confront the crisis unleashed by the sudden end of commercial ties with the Soviet Union and other nations of eastern Europe. The United States took advantage of this situation to strengthen measures of the longest economic blockade against an independent nation.

However, the prevalence of prostitution in Cuba is insignificant in relation to what affected the country before the triumph of the revolution in 1959 and cannot even be compared to the current high indexes of this scourge in other countries of the continent, including the United States.

As for the occurrence of "forced labor" it is a crime that is non-existent on the island while it is widely extended in the United States with irregular immigrants as victims.

All states have the sovereign right and duty to observing others and to conduct itself in bilateral relations as it sees fit. But no one has the faculty of being above the rest without a democratic mandate by the world Your browser may not support display of this image.community in the United Nations system.

The new Human Rights Council of the United Nations created in 2006 to substitute the Commission of Human Rights is now subordinated to the General Assembly that encompasses all member states and its decisions are made by a majority vote. The United States did not even dare to attempt to gain membership because of the certainty of it would be rejected.

The new UN institution is now in charge of checking that violations of human rights are not a scenario manipulated by the United States to pressure and blackmail poor nations. Now, this council can deal not only with violations occurring in Third World nations but, also, in violations occurring more frequently in the United States and other industrialized nations. Now the aggressions of Israel against the Arabs are evaluated the same as any other aggression against human security.

Vigilance over economic, social and cultural violations now have the same priority as civilian and political freedoms, which are much more subjective than the former.

Wherever world-wide decisions are taken by a majority vote of sovereign states, democratically - and without the divine intervention of whispers in the president’s ear the decisions that the United States must take at all cost and under any circumstances - the world community expresses its opposition to unipolar hegemony and domination by a super power.

The nations of the third world, and in first place those of the non-aligned movement, are gaining confidence in the power of unity with every defeat Washington suffers in votes such as those of its enemy which has obtained nearly unanimous votes of United Nations member states against the support of a few of its protectorates and Israel.

The habitual allies of the super power have not accepted the humiliations that the arrogance of the White House systematically imposes on them and Your browser may not support display of this image.have taken distance, risking imperial rage.

A rational position would be for Washington to acknowledge that humanity, already in the 21st century, cannot accept that one state, however powerful, exerts unilateral conduct of the planet, taken from above or regardless of the world community.

Humanity does not acknowledge a supreme judge, regardless of one who claims to be in direct contact with some deity.

*Manuel E. Yepe is a journalist and professor of the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana. October 2007.

A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1606.html

Edited by Walter Lippmann.



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