[Marxism] Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council and the United States is not.

["Darrel Furlotte" <darrel.furlotte@xxxxxxxxx>]

The speech below is a powerful example of "speaking truth to power"! The Cubans 
carry out Lenin's charge to revolutionary socialists, to function as "tribunes 
of the people" within parliamentary arenas, with an incredible verve and élan. 
They restore your confidence, and even pride, in humanity when it gets buried 
under the weight of imperialist horrors.

Roque ends his speech with the traditional Cuban slogan of ¡Patria o Muerte! 
(Homeland or Death).  Maybe he should have included another Cuban slogan, for 
those who can't "read" it in his speech: Homeland is Humanity! 

Darrel
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The absence of the United States on the Human Rights Council is moral 
punishment for the arrogance of an empire 
SPEECH BY FELIPE PEREZ ROQUE, FOREIGN MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, DURING 
THE HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

Excellencies:

Today is a particularly symbolic day. Cuba is a founding member of the Human 
Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba was elected with the 
overwhelming support of 135 countries, more than two-thirds of the United 
Nations General Assembly, while the United States did not even dare to run as a 
candidate. Cuba relied on the secret vote for the same reasons that the United 
States was afraid of it. 

Cuba's election epitomizes the victory of principles and truth; it stands as 
recognition of the value of our resilience. The absence of the United States is 
the defeat of lies; it is the moral punishment for the haughtiness of an 
empire.  

The election entailed a demanding assessment. Each one got what they deserved. 
Cuba was rewarded and the United States was punished. Each one had its history 
and the voting countries were well aware of it.

The African countries recalled that over 2,000 Cuban fighters had shed their 
generous blood in the struggle against the outrageous Apartheid regime, which 
the United States supported and furnished with weapons, even nuclear ones.

The election for Cuba came at a moment in which nearly 30,000 Cuban doctors 
were saving lives and alleviating the pain in 70 countries, while the United 
States reached that stage with 150,000 invading soldiers, sent to kill and die 
in an unjust and illegal war.

The election for Cuba came with more than 300,000 patients from 26 countries in 
Latin America and the Caribbean who were recovering their eyesight thanks to 
the cost-free surgeries performed by Cuban eye specialists. It came for the 
United States with over 100,000 civilians murdered and 2,500 American youths 
dead in a war concocted to steal a country's oil and give away sumptuous 
contracts to a group of cronies of the President of the world's sole superpower.

The election for Cuba came with more than 25,000 youths from 120 Third World 
countries studying in its universities and colleges free of charge. It came for 
the United States with a concentration camp in Guantánamo, where prisoners are 
subjected to torture and where the official statement of the prison wardens was 
that the suicide of three human beings "is not an act of despair but an act of 
war and propaganda."

full:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/junio/mar20/26felipe.html
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