The imperial arrogance of the U.S. rulers was dealt a blow that left them sputtering and lashing out not only at Cuba and China, two countries they had targeted recently at the commission's session in Geneva, but at their European allies as well. U.S. officials began questioning the need for the anonymity of the secret vote that prevents the most egregious forms of imperialist bullying and blackmail.

The Wall Street Journal editors wailed that "the torments of the world's most unfortunate men, women, and children will be monitored not by the U.S., but by the likes of Sudan, China, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Vietnam and Cuba." The wealthy owners of the Journal did not, however, indicate even a short list of countries where they consider the "most unfortunate" to reside. Perhaps Iraq, where U.S. imperialism and its allies are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands; Angola, where a rightist army unleashed by Washington and its apartheid allies in the 1980s has killed and maimed countless numbers; Puerto Rico, whose people are kept in colonial subjugation by the U.S. government; or the United States itself, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world along with a record number of state-sponsored executions.

The Journal editors lamented the fact that John Negroponte, "an experienced and savvy diplomat" nominated by President George Bush to be U.S. ambassador to the UN, has not been confirmed yet. Negroponte's qualifications to monitor human rights include his stint as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, when he was a key actor in the U.S.-backed contra war that aimed to overturn the Nicaraguan workers and farmers government and that was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguans.

The vote also brings into relief the rising tensions between U.S. and European capitalists over markets, military jurisdiction, and trade. U.S. elected officials and pundits in the bourgeois press attacked France and other European "allies" for not making way and giving Washington what it considers its anointed place on the human rights body.

In the weeks leading up to the election, U.S. officials had organized to once again use the commission as a platform to advance--not human rights--but U.S. imperialism's drive to deal blows to the Cuban and Chinese workers states. They failed to get a resolution passed condemning China for human rights violations, but succeeded by a narrow margin in bringing their economic and political clout to bear to push through a condemnation of Cuba, leaning heavily on representatives of countries that depend on U.S. trade and aid.

The resistance by workers and farmers in other countries to the brutality of the U.S. capitalists, which the UN vote in part and in a distorted way expressed, encourages the toilers in the belly of the beast to refuse to tolerate a system in which cops in Miami, Cincinnati, Newark, New Jersey, and elsewhere walk away scot-free after killing unarmed workers.

This is at the same time as the so-called U.S. justice system has now put nearly 2 million people behind bars and as capitalists who deal in energy and medicine make huge profits while workers pay sky-high prices for fuel and die for lack of medical treatment. And it makes clear why the Nicaraguan revolutionaries that Negroponte and his masters attacked called the U.S. ruling class "the enemy of humanity."  
 
 
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