Hurricane Melissa has left a trail of devastation through the Antilles with over 30 deaths in Haiti and Jamaica to date. The Eastern part of Cuba was also slammed by Melissa; the strongest hurricane to hit in the last 150 years. As of now no lives were lost in Cuba and that is due to its national unity and preparedness that was able to evacuate over 700,000 people and their belongings out of harm’s way before the storm arrived.

—Editorial, Granma

“Our triumph is life itself, that the population of the eastern provinces was able to protect itself from the blow of Melissa, and it is also the life of the entire nation defended without fear in the face of a deceitful and cynical empire,” said Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the National Defense Council, at the meeting of this body broadcast on the television program Mesa Redonda.

These days have been very challenging, very tense, but also very instructive and very illustrative of the power of unity and the mobilizing and unifying capacity of our Party at the forefront of the Revolution.

The danger has not yet passed. The strong winds and heavy rains left behind by the hurricane, the overflowing rivers, the fallen trees and poles, the pollution generated in these circumstances… all of this can lead to further damage, disease, and even the loss of human lives and material goods that were preserved at the worst of times. We could lose them if there is negligence, if there is inaccuracy.

Now it is important to carry out the survey that has been directed of all the damage; to clean up and control the epidemiological situation; to restore energy, communications, and drinking water services; to ensure a responsible and orderly return of evacuees to their places of residence when directed; to immediately resume health and education services at all levels; to guarantee food production and distribution; save whatever can be saved from the sugar and coffee harvests (…); restore services to the population and begin the rescue of damaged infrastructure, especially housing.

Today we are all Fidel and Raúl. Today we are all the Party of unity defending life. Our greatest recognition at a time like this goes to those in the eastern provinces who faced Melissa and those at the United Nations who faced the empire.

Winning these battles is only the obligation to continue winning those that are yet to come.

Another No! From the World to the Blockade

Cuba was once again supported by the overwhelming majority of the countries that make up the United Nations, 165 of which voted on Wednesday to lift the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States government against the archipelago.

However, it was not just another victory on the same terms as in previous years, because, as never before, the White House instructed the deployment of a campaign of discrediting, pressure, and direct blackmail against several governments in exchange for an adverse vote or abstention, in the futile aspiration to deny the genocidal nature of that core of economic warfare that is the blockade.

Nevertheless, the resistance of the Cuban people has also been unprecedented, and it is to them that the triumph of reason belongs, which imposed the favorable vote of 165 countries against seven and 12 abstentions: a Pyrrhic result of the dirty diplomatic maneuvering that characterizes the Washington leadership, in collusion with its usual allies and cronies of the moment.

In the vote count, of course: the United States and Israel, at the head of a lineup bought or forced to demand that the longest policy of economic suffocation against any nation continue to be tried against Cuba. But no one is surprised that the same people who finance and fire the missiles that exterminated 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza are the leading promoters of this other genocide by attrition to kill through hunger, disease, and deprivation.

It is an overwhelming figure that certifies another colossal defeat for imperialist arrogance and exposes the ridicule of that great power that sought to legitimize the crime of the blockade of the largest island of the Antilles in the UN, using its best tools: intimidation and political extortion.

[Source: Granma. Courtesy: Resumen: Latinoamericano and the Third World. Resumen is a newsletter whose focus is news and analysis coming primarily from Latin America by writers, researchers, and activists living there.]