In all of the noise about Iraq, Iran, Mukasey, FISA, and the upcoming Annapolis Peace Summit on Israel/Palestine, I neglected to mention that a vote was taken in the UN General Assembly condeming America's embargo against Cuba.

The vote was 184-4. The four were the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands, and Palau. Micronesia didn't even vote with the U.S. and abstained.

Japan voted against us. Germany voted against us. The Philippines voted against us. Poland voted against us. Mexico and Canada voted against us. The UK, Iceland, Brazil, and Singapore voted against us.

And while Israel voted with us, Israeli firms are nonetheless managing citrus groves in Cuba.

Hillary Clinton has unfortunately said that she would continue the Bush administration's policies on Cuba -- and that there are more differences between her and Barack Obama on the family-damaging restrictions on travel and trade than between her and George W. Bush.

I hope that she finds a way to change her mind -- because we need a NEW direction in US foreign policy not hug-sessions with the past, particularly policies that have clearly failed not only recently but over four decades.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

When Fidel Castro dies, something fascinating will happen in America. The History Channel will run extensive coverage of Castro's life. CNN will air over and over again profiles of Castro and the many American presidents he outwitted and survived. Every major network, even Fox, will be obligated to remind Americans of how big a personality and player Castro was on the world stage.

We will see replays of the Kennedy-Khrushchev standoff over the Cuban missile crisis. People will learn about Batista and the fact that the pre-Castro Cuba was a playground for gambling, drugs, prostitution, and organized crime. They will learn about the failures of Communism, Castro's battles with intellectual and political dissidents -- but they will also learn than Cuba today is not what Cuba was yesterday.

Today, Cuba exports doctors and not arms. Today, there is a Benetton store in downtown Havana, Venezuela and China are Cuba's largest economic partners, and the Cuban economy grew by approximately 10% last year -- with little of that driven by US economic interests.

They will learn a lot about Fidel Castro -- and whether people find him admirable in some ways or despicable -- most young Americans who have no tangible memory of the hottest parts of the Cold War will sense that one of the last giant personalities of the last century just passed.

And then they will learn how a small cabal of Miami-based Cuban-Americans manipulated laws and our institutions to wage a personal war against Castro and sacrificed core American interests in doing so. It is stranger than fiction when one realizes that a grandson of Batista is now on the Florida Supreme Court and has allegedly helped the most extreme, violent Cuban Americans escape indictment. And that two nephews (by former marriage) of Fidel Castro represent their Florida constituents in the US Congress reflects the oligarchical realities of political power in America and in Cuba.

Almost every assessment of US-Cuban relations feels an obligation to mention Fidel, or to mention the dissidents in jail today, or to start with a discussion of whether the current Cuban government will survive a transition to something beyond Fidel Castro or not.

We need to make judgments about the future course of US-Cuban relations according to our parochial interests today -- and to realize that commerce, travel, the exchange of people, ideas, facebook commentary, and money are powerful empowering forces that cannot make the current situation worse than it is. In fact, there is every indication that ending the travel and economic embargo of the United States would open many new positive and constructive possibilities both within Cuba and between Cuba and the United States.

We have been lousy at trying to script a regime strategy for Cuba. We need to stop it -- and stop thinking about it and let Cubans determine their own course, which I think America can softly and positively influence if we stop trying to demean and humiliate that nation.

The Miami Herald in a lead editorial today, "More Remittances, Travel for a Free Cuba -- Our Opinion: US Can Help Break the Isolation Imposed on Cuban People," speaks to this logic:

The U.S. government should do more to break the regime's imposed isolation of the Cuban people. How will civil society grow without outside resources and contacts? How will Cubans, including government and military officials, overcome their fear of change?

More family travel and cultural and academic exchanges would open a world of information and supportive contacts for Cubans on the island. More remittances would help sustain political prisoners as well as Cuban democrats stripped of jobs. This would allow Cubans to compare democracy and free markets to the regime's alternative.

President Bush should take the advice of experts like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, who lived the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe, and most Cuban dissidents including hard-liner Martha Beatriz Roque. All push for more openings, travel and contact with Cuba. It is no accident that Cuba and North Korea are the longest-lasting dictatorships left. Both have used isolation to keep people enslaved.

After Fidel Castro dies, Cubans will have a chance to shape their destiny. Opening up to Cuba now will encourage a transition to freedom.

As much as I generally support the objectives and policy targets of the Miami Herald editorial, I do find it odd that the blame for Cuba's isolation is placed on the Cuban government. It is America that has maintained an ineffective embargo.

Last I looked 184 nations voted at the UN against the embargo -- and are taking advantage of America's absence in Cuba's economic life.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

If you thought federal policy towards Cuba was something, wait until you get a load of what state legislators have been up to.

In a rush to be tough on terror, a number of state legislators from Massachusetts to Michigan are attempting to push through bills that would require their state's public pension funds to sell off certain investments with countries on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Guess which country is still on that list? (It rhymes with "Tuba.")

As written, legislation in Pennsylvania would require divestment from companies doing any amount of business with Cuba, which is on the terrorist list right next to Iran and Syria.

This is a curious pursuit, given that delegations of farmers and businessmen -- along with the Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture -- have visited Cuba in recent years. In 2005, after returning from a trip to Cuba, the State's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff indicated that, "Building relationships with domestic and international markets is consistent with Gov. Edward G. Rendell's commitment to economic development, and is a win-win situation for Pennsylvania agriculture and for Cuba’s dairy industry." After a separate trip, Wolff said that, "Cuba is a new market opportunity, has a close proximity to the U.S., and is willing to purchase quality Pennsylvania products at a fair price."

In a race to "do something," Pennsylvania legislators may wind up punishing companies that do business in Cuba while simultaneously promoting trade with Havana. Confused?

State legislators might rethink the message that this type of legislation sends to the world. And the federal government might consider taking Cuba off the terrorist list, which would enable the Treasury Department to focus on Osama bin Laden's finances instead of prosecuting grandmothers on bicycle tours.

-- Jake Colvin

(Havana) -- Sometimes you just have to lighten up this US-Cuba thing. And for me, Saturday's Granma newspaper did the trick. The official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba carried in its cultural pages a review of an interesting interactive debate among Latin American, US and European intellectuals about the commercialization of culture, and the imperial reign of US cultural values and their "thingamatization" of just about every ‘thing'. The Cuban Minister of Culture was among the more eloquent. All true, I thought, especially when it comes to the US megaindustries of movies, music and consumer festishism in general.

Then my eyes panned down to the weekend's TV guide. Cuba has four national TV networks, all government-owned, but serving up different programming profiles from news, sports and drama, to comedy and soaps, and even lessons in French and geography. But come the weekend, they all scramble to please a viewer passion second only to baseball: the movies, the more action the better. And on this weekend in Havana, Cuban television carried no less than 17 Hollywood films (out of 21 total) -- including a couple of premieres which I couldn't figure out from the translated titles, plus re-runs of Die Hard 4, Return of the Jedi, Gigli, and The World According to Garp. In fact, Die Hard 4 was listed in the coveted nightowl spot reserved for the film most in demand over the week.

Havana's Hollywood weekend went on to sport at least three children's films, Disney cartoons, and episodes of The X Files, Law & Order, and CSI. We get Dr. House another day, and for years have been treated to Murder She Wrote, Degrassi Junior High and other US TV favorites. And these are the best of the lot -- some Saturday nights, there's not a recognizable name in the credits of the worst US flicks in the business, direct-to-video, made-for-TV, all beaming their way into homes from Pinar del Rio to Bayamo.

Now, I hope Cuban television doesn't get me wrong -- I'm the first one to want to hold on to my better hometown shows (especially Law & Order, please) -- but with such freewheeling, non-discriminating shoppers at the helm, I see us sliding down the slippery slope towards daytime soaps, sob-confessions, and do-or-die reality shows.

The more macho guys on my block are probably groaning at this critique, but believe me, even the most addicted Cuban households are beginning to clamor for better US TV. All the more because they know Cuba's government-run stations have decided for years that the US embargo removes any obligation they might have to pay licensing fees -- so they have a totally free hand to pick and choose, and swipe as they like.

But if they don't do a better job now, I shudder to think what will happen when the embargo is lifted, and the media moguls begin the hard sell (planning a fair share of revenues to their writers by then?).

On a related topic: In this culture war, I've always wondered why Cuba's burger joints (El Rapido's) are painted the same garrish yellow and red as McDonald's. Is it because they serve the same awful burgers? Copycat marketing? Both?

In conclusion, before there's even a whif of change in the air for US policy towards the island, my advice to Cubans -- on the shows, the hamburgers and the whole megillah --is the same my grandmother once gave me: never swallow anything whole.

-- Gail Reed