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MARSHALL ISLANDS AND PALAU
What is the status of those nations
voting with the United States?
BY LAZARO
BARREDO--Special for Granma International--
IN
13 consecutive votes in the UN General Assembly, the
United States has been isolated not only by the
overwhelming majority of nations (94% of the
international community), which reject its genocidal
policy made material by the blockade against Cuba,
but also because, despite all their pressure, they
cannot find allies to vote against the UN resolution
of condemnation.
Since 1992, this has increasingly become the
resolution most unanimously voted on at the UN, an
institution of 192 countries, whereas the record of
votes against the resolution has remained almost the
same. The United States has never been able to
garner more than two or three countries to vote with
it.
On
those 13 occasions, the “filial love” sealing the
relationship between the United States and Israel
has clearly come to light (the United States vetoes
all resolutions condemning Israel at the Security
Council and Israel unconditionally supports the
United States by always voting against the end of
the blockade) along with the consistent support of
two additional countries, depending on the pressure,
Uzbekistan and Romania in the early years and the
Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau in recent
times.
The
Marshall Islands and Palau are two of the newest UN
members. They are located in Micronesia, an
archipelago of 343 islands of which only eight are
inhabited. The United States has had a strong
influence on these islands since 1944. This
influence recently caught the public attention when
the US authorities turned the atolls of Kwajalein
and Bikini into a military training ground. The
former has been a practice target for
intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from
California and the latter for the detonation of some
20 nuclear tests, including the first H-bomb.
The
Marshall Islands, with about 70,000 inhabitants, and
Palau, 20,000, are small islands whose total surface
adds up to 640 square kilometers (the Isle of Youth
is 2,398 square kilometers, almost four times larger
than that total). Both territories were under US
trusteeship, and now they are free states associated
with the United States, and almost totally dependent
on the US government. Palau, for instance, has a
$63-million budget, and almost half of it, $30
million, is secured by the US authorities. The
situation is similar in the case of the Marshall
Islands.
It
is interesting that Palau gained its full autonomy
in a compact of free association with the United
States in 1994, and the republic was named after
Luis Palau, an electronic evangelist preacher, what
some people on the internet call a cyber-apostle.
This Argentine-born evangelist has lived in
Portland, Oregon in the United States for over 30
years, and his preaching has been broadcast in over
60 countries.
When
Luis Palau visited the island’s capital, Koror, in
1998, he not only received honors but also the
gratitude of the masses, “enthusiastic multitudes
anxious to follow the gospel” (as stated on his web
site), because through the media and recorded
cassettes he managed to convert to Christianity a
large percentage of the inhabitants who, in
gratitude, named the new republic after him.
Several web sites mention the fact that Palau has
many things in common with George W. Bush such as
the prayer meetings and discussions on God both have
held. The preacher blessed Bush after the September
11, 2001 attacks.
Therefore, in truth, there were not four votes
against the resolution condemning the criminal
blockade against Cuban people, but only one, that of
the United States, because Israel is a US
protectorate and the Marshall Islands and Palau are
two states of free association with the United
States. |
