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GUEST:Saul Landua, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Author of “A Bush in a Botox World,” and Director/Producer of “We Don’t Play Golf Here”

A United Nations resolution against the U.S. embargo on Cuba received a record number of votes last Tuesday. Of the 192 members in the General Assembly, 184 countries voted in favor of the lifting of the 46-year-old economic embargo of Cuba. Only Israel, the Marshall Islands, and Palau joined the United States in voting against the resolution. The U.S. international trade restrictions are said to be against international law and the U.N. charter. This latest vote is the strongest of seventeen condemnations against the embargo handed down since 1992. The Bush Administration has shown no signs of changing policy in accordance to the resolution. In fact, just days before the U.N. vote, President Bush made a policy speech on Cuba where he declared that “a restive people who long to rejoin the world at last have hope and they will bring to Cuba a real revolution.” A letter which includes signatories such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and James Cockcroft, is demanding that the U.S. respect Cuban sovereignty. It cites the most recent declaration of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” as a reason for concern. For supposed reasons of “national security,” and “effective implementation,” measures of the latest plan will remain secret.