1. Introduction

In a document that was declassified in 1991, it was revealed that on 6th April 1960, a year before the US-organized invasion of Cuba, the then Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, Lester DeWitt Mallory, submitted a memorandum for discussion at a meeting chaired by the US president, stating that there was no effective political opposition in Cuba  and that consequently the only means open to Washington of undermining internal support for the Revolution was through disenchantment and discouragement, based on dissatisfaction and economic difficulties. It advocated taking prompt action of every conceivable kind to weaken the Cuban economy, and deny funds and other supplies so as to reduce real and monetary wages, thereby causing hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.

Today, 47 years on from the time that document was produced, Washington's policy is still to cause hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government in Cuba, with the aim of returning our country to the neo-colonial status in which it was held for over half a century.

Two-thirds of Cuba's population consists of people born and raised under this policy. Cubans have had to suffer, survive and develop in the extremely difficult conditions imposed on them by the sole superpower, which seeks the elimination of all resistance and of the Cuban nation's example of dignity and sovereignty.

Following the passing of the latest resolution of the UN General Assembly, on 8th November 2006, calling for the lifting of the economic, trade and financial blockade on Cuba, by an overwhelming majority of the member states, and despite the fourteen preceding resolutions to the same just effect, Washington has actually stepped up its anti-Cuba offensive.

Despite the express wishes of the international community, the US administration has introduced further economic sanctions; it has tightened the measures that persecute Cuban firms' activities and the country's international financial operations, including those concerned with paying our dues to UN organizations; it has stolen more commercial brands and additional millions from Cuban funds frozen in the United States; it has adopted sharper reprisals against those who do business with Cuba or establish relations with our country based on cultural or tourist exchanges; it has put heavier pressure on our allies to subordinate their relations with Cuba to the aims of a "change of regime" which are the driving force of its policy of hostility; and it has escalated to an unprecedented degree its financial and material support for action designed to overturn constitutional order in Cuba.

All these measures have been facilitated by the strict application of President Bush's plan for the re-colonization of Cuba and of the steps identified in its revision on 10th July 2006, which included a secret section on under-cover operations.

With the aim of internationalizing its illegal anti-Cuba policy, the US's would-be proconsul in charge of re-colonizing Cuba, Caleb McCarry, has been intensively lobbying in various capitals for support for an internationalization of the blockade imposed on our country.

Washington has similarly redoubled its efforts to incite subversion in Cuba among those willing to sell their services for a share of the $80m-plus earmarked for such purposes.

The ultimate aim is to deprive the Cuban people of its sovereignty and of the exercise of its right to self-determination.

Economic war has been a constant of US policy towards Cuba for nearly five decades. However, no other administration has gone to the maniacal extremes of aggression adopted by the George W. Bush administration.

This report summarizes the recorded consequences of the sanctions in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007, highlighting Washington's actions aimed at intensifying its genocidal policy and identifying certain cases which demonstrate the blockade's increasing extraterritoriality.

As Cuba has demonstrated and denounced in many forums, the US sanctions amount to an act of genocide within the meaning of Article II (c) of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and an act of economic war, according to the definition established at the 1909 London Naval Conference. State terrorism carried out systematically and inhumanly by the US government against the Cuban people regardless of sex, age, race, religious belief or social position, is part and parcel of this policy of hostility, blockade and aggression which has cost the Cuban nation more than 3,000 lives.