Just ran across this item from last month: the February 12 “Annual Threat Assessment” testimony by Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence.
Excerpts:
- “Cuba, though an economic basket case, can still influence the Latin American left because of its so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ stance.”
- “President Raul Castro’s record since formally taking power in February 2008 indicates his primary objective in the coming year will be to make Cuba’s dysfunctional socialist economy more efficient. His task has been made more difficult, however, by the extensive damage to the country’s already weak agricultural sector and infrastructure by three major and successive hurricanes last year. The global economic downturn will further slow growth, diminishing the regime’s options for addressing public dissatisfaction with living conditions.”
- “Havana’s competent and immediate response to the hurricanes underscores the effectiveness of regime controls and indicates that it remains capable of preventing a spontaneous mass migration. Nevertheless, we judge that at a minimum the annual flow of Cuban migrants to the United States will stay at the same high levels of about 35,000 legal and illegal migrants annually that have prevailed over the past several years.”
- “Raul almost certainly will continue to proceed cautiously on any reforms to the economy in order to maintain elite consensus and avoid raising public expectations beyond what he is able or willing to deliver.”
- “We assess Raul will continue his efforts to bolster Havana’s international legitimacy by projecting a more moderate political image. Nevertheless, Cuba almost certainly will remain heavily involved behind-the-scenes in counseling and supporting authoritarian populist governments in Latin America and otherwise seeking to undermine US influence across the region.”
9 comments:
Peters, why won't you tell us that you were the one who brought the naive Lugar staff member to Cuba to show him all you wanted him to see? Quite a coup. Why don't you salute yourself?
I hardly accept your characterization of him or the trip, but it's a matter of public record that we hosted the trip, in fact it's mentioned in his report.
why you people are so interest to rescue the tyranny in cuba ? don't you know that slave society are unable to bring prosperity or even bussiness?
that report was bought and paid for then by pro-Castro foundations that keep the likes of you in business...
An "economic basketcase" that grew well faster than most countries in the region for the 5th year in a row - according to the CIA.
Leftside,
if Cuba is not an economic basket case, why does a nation that was the world's biggest exporter of sugar has under this new regime to import sugar for domestic consumption? Why under the sociaslisy system it produces almost 5 miilion less metric tons of sugar from the same land?
Why even according to Raul Castro himself, is 51% per cent of the arable land covered with marabu which are weeds full of thorns?
Why does a country with one of the best soils to plant anything and a blessed weather has to import pineapples for it domestic market from Colombia? Why odes it still have the rationing system for food after 49 years of the communist system? Why is it that all the adults from 7 years old to 65 cannot get a glass of milk a day?
Raul said in 2007 that we they needed to do was improve the system so that all adults could have a galss of milk. He said this himself on the 26th of July in Camaguey. So why after 49 years adult Cubans cannot get a glass of milk every day?
Are the cows comming from the USA too?
You sure love to cover the sun with onbe finger, dude. You just cannot admit that the system is a total failure when it come to provideing food on the table for Cubans. It is a miserable failure but you continue to deny what is evident and obvious to everyone else.
Take off your ideological blinders.
leftside sourcing the CIA....great. The CIA also said Saddam had WMD. Slam dunk, right?
Cuba surely has its economic problems. But if the key indicator in the capitalist world is economic growth, Cuba has been besting almost everyone in the region since the mid 90s.
why does a nation that was the world's biggest exporter of sugar has under this new regime to import sugar for domestic consumption?
Because the global market for sugar tanked. And because Governments like the US directly subsidize their sugar industries to the tune of billions of dollars. And because many of the old plants were inefficient and a strategic decision was made to mothball them and wait for prices to increase before wasting money on upgrades.
Why even according to Raul Castro himself, is 51% per cent of the arable land covered with marabu which are weeds full of thorns?
This is an agricultural problem that is being addressed in truly impressive fashion. Food production is already up.
Why odes it still have the rationing system for food after 49 years of the communist system?
Because they don't want anyone to face hunger, as is common throughout the region.
Leftside,
you need to tell me the kind of pills you take so I can live in the same unreal world you seem to inhabit.
Sugar production tanked? So why do they import sugar from Brazil for domestic consumption and not produce it there in Cuba?
Why has the land been unprodcutive and full of marabu for so long and even Raul admits is a disaster? (see 26th of July speech in your records at home in L.A. )
Why is the private sector the main supplier of vegetables and the state farms are a total disaster?
Try reading a little about the former USSR and will find out about the same kind of problems that occured there with the same system where a nation that was an huge exporter of wheat to Western Europe prior to the Revolution of 1917 turn into a net importer of wheat from Canada, Australia and Argentina until the day it imploded from within because of the state farms and collective farms mistake.
Is the system, sir, is the system, sir, not that your huge ideological blinders will ever let you see what is so evident to everyone else.
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