"I chose the colors as I hear them screaming" (Pablo Picasso)

CAN it be a coincidence? It doesn’t really matter. But, at the same time as the United States was again putting on its show in Geneva, establishing the "good, bad and ugly countries," the famous Colombian painter Fernando Botero shook the world from its lethargy by showing it in 50 paintings the barbaric acts against the Iraqi people, thus exposing which country is really violating human rights.

Imitating Picasso’s Guernica, Botero shows in his paintings impaled people, in despicable and humiliating postures, women and men harassed by dogs and other animals, bars, blood, shadows and pain, based on the torture US soldiers have inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners in the unspeakable prison of Abu Ghraib, and who are said to still perpetrating such crimes in different sites of the bleeding country.

"The US behavior totally shocked me, the same shock as it provoked in the whole world – especially because the United States portrays itself as a model of compassion – the events that took place in the cells, and even more so because they are in complete disregard of what is stipulated in the Geneva Convention, which that nation signed," Botero stated, indignant at the "illegal and abusive" US invasion of Iraq.

From 1988 the UN Human Rights Commission, which meets in Geneva, has annually done the dirty work of the US State Department: to condemn Cuba for violating human rights. The superpower’s cynicism and that of its obedient followers has reached such an extent that already nobody cares about its resolutions, condemnations and recommendations because everyone, like Botero, knows that the country assuming the role of the sole and supreme judge of the world is, in truth, the greatest violator of human rights on the planet.

This year, the farce occurred once again when Washington once again accused Cuba, obtaining 21 votes in favor of its resolution, 17 against and 15 abstentions. The fact is so risible because the UN did not even pay attention to the fact that the US Congress had just approved a motion, presented by Democrat Edward Markey, against torture in his own country because they "have discovered" that the CIA is using a method referred to as "aggressive interrogation," as torture is being called nowadays. Congressman Markey stated after the vote that "the war on terrorism also includes combating the torturers."

The UN should not ignore that, and because of this, just as Botero, the world is sick of the Geneva Commission’s double standards, to the point that nobody gives a damn any longer what this institution determines.

The European Union, so full of praise for its own democratic system and philosophy, supposedly the oldest in the world, became, after WWII, a simple follower of the United States, finally losing its identity, as the philosophers Derrida and Habermas who, in May 2003,stated that without open opposition to the current US policy of preemptive war and the violation of international laws, it is not possible to build a European identity.

Europe did not want to listen to its best philosophers, and its apparent disagreements with the United States – as happened with Japan – are designed for domestic consumption, but really carry no weight.

Cuba should no longer be upset because of the ingratitude of the Ukraine. The new master Victor Yuschenko instructed it to forget the 35,000 children from Chernobyl affected with cancer as a result of that tragic nuclear accident for whom the island provided free medical care for over 15 years. Cuba does not have to lament the betrayal of Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica or Honduras, which also sold their identity for the promise of a fistful of dollars.

Cuba does not need to insist on denouncing what is happening to the detainees at the US base in Guantánamo either. What for? The paintings of the maestro Fernando Botero, his "instrument of war to contain brutality and darkness," have immortalized for history the barbarism of this time.