Cuba:
US "policy shift" mere window dressing

January 1 marked the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban 
revolution which ousted US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and brought to 
power a revolutionary movement backed by the overwhelming majority of the 
Cuban people.

That revolution has endured despite 40 years of unremitting hostility by 
the US, including the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion, repeated attempts to 
assassinate President Fidel Castro and an economic blockade.

A few years ago, the Miami Herald conducted a public opinion poll in 
Cuba. Asked to describe themselves, 70 percent chose one word: 
"Revolutionary".

Thanks to its embargo, the US itself is losing out. US companies are forced 
to stand idly by and watch European, Asian and even Canadian companies race 
to seize investment opportunities in Cuba. Now, the Clinton administration 
is under mounting Wall Street pressure for a full review of US policy 
toward Cuba.

But the package of measures announced with great fanfare earlier this month 
does nothing to lift the blockade, which remains firmly in place.

The measures include an increase in the amount of money Americans can send 
their friends and relatives in Cuba and permission for the Baltimore 
Orioles to play a couple of baseball games in Havana.

Despite a smokescreen or protest by right-wing US Congressmen and women, 
worried that they might lose the financial support of the Cuban mafia in 
Miami, and despite US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's attempt to 
portray the new measures as some kind of radical shift in US policy 
designed "to help the ordinary people of Cuba", this clutch of half 
measures is a desperate attempt to disarm the movement for a total end of 
the embargo.

The US is on the back foot over Cuba, and knows it. The whole world rejects 
its Cuba policy.

In the latter part of last year, the UN voted by the widest margin yet to 
condemn the embargo. Only Israel sided with the United States.

Meanwhile, the Cuban revolution continues.