Updating Cuba's Economy

This Time by Cuba Itself!!
{Tuesday, December 18th, 2018}

     Monday {Dec. 17th, 2018} Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel updated the island's parliament on the status of the economy. The photo above was taken Dec. 18th and shows Diaz-Canel explaining Monday's figures. He has asked to be critiqued and Tuesday he was. Then Diaz-Canel said, "The U. S. Sanctions in 2018 has cost Cuba $4.3 billion, not counting all  the blockage of potential investments. For a small nation that gives free education and free health care to all, that figure is horrendous. It's being imposed effectively by a super rich nation that doesn't provide such free access to its own citizens. We are the only nation in the world that is under such dire and continuous restraints to appease another generation of Counter Revolutionary benefactors."

    Most of the updates on Cuba's fragile economy come from sources off the island. But Monday -- December 17, 2018 -- Cuba's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, personally updated the island's economic condition at the above session that was broadcast to the people. He said:

         "As of the end of 2018, the Cuban economy will show growth slightly more than 1%. But that growth, although discreet and still without the impact we need for the population, is meritorious given the conditions in which it was achieved, without deficit in our running accounts, as a result of measures taken, especially in the second half of the year.

          "Nor can the impact of the blockade be underestimated and it has worsened under the Trump administration, especially financial persecution internationally. We have a plan for 2019 based on the income we can generate. It guarantees growth and ensures investments associated with priority programs."

     As President of Cuba since April 19th, 2018, Miguel Diaz-Canel is very popular with the Cuban people. Born after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Diaz-Canel is the island's first non-Castro leader since 1959. He served as Education Minister and made his political mark outside of Havana. That being said, the island is restive and the young-adult population is particularly impatient. So, improving Cuba's economic situation...against imposing odds imposed by the nearby USA superpower...will gauge how long Diaz-Canel's honeymoon-type popularity remains. But his year-end report on the economy, as depicted above, seems to be an earnest and  honest one. Also honest is his appraisal of the "Trump administration" tightening the embargo, which Diaz-Canel, of course, called "a blockade."

    While outside forces will, as usual, debunk President Diaz-Canel's update on the Cuban economy, his oft-repeated comments about the the U.S. Embargo-Blockade is 100% accurate, especially his reference above to the Trump administration's current effort to strangle Cuba's economy via "financial persecution internationally." For example, recently a French bank was fined $1.4 billion for doing a little business with Cuba; and recently the Secretary General at the United Nations condemned India's refusal to send needed medical material to Cuba because India was afraid of being punished by the mighty U. S. Embargo-Blockade against Cuba. The massive insult to democracy was first imposed back in 1962 to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of everyday Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. Remembering the ruthless Batista-Mafia dictatorship that created the Revolution, Cubans haven't rebelled but they have been grossly harmed by an egregious decades-old policy that has also shamefully enriched and empowered two generations of Cuban-Americans who, along with self-serving sycophants, have imposed the grave injustice on both Cuba and the U. S. democracy. What, for example, would be the conditions of the Canadian and Mexican economies if those bordering nations, instead of being great trade partners and close allies, had been treated since 1959 by the SUPERPOWER USA as Cuba has been treated? Shamefully, since 1959, American citizens...for the most part...have lacked the guts, the decency, and the patriotism to even ask such pertinent questions.

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