by Michael Martinez
CPI MIAMI
As the month of November starts, Cubans on the island brace themselves for continued worsening conditions under Trump’s brutal regime of sanctions. More food shortages, power outages, school and hospital closures, and an increase in the death tolls of the most vulnerable sectors of the population; including newborns, women, children, the elderly, and the special needs public like dialysis and cancer patients will suffer as well.
In the meantime, a stepped-up campaign driven by AI bots, as well as both old and new influencers bashing Cuba has flooded all of the popular social networking sites calling for even crueler sanctions and even US military intervention. In this latest organized attempt to skew public opinion.
This escalation is happening during the bitter aftermath of Cuba’s big win in the U.N. on October 28th when Cuba’s foreign diplomatic team shut down Donald Trump’s Halloween Horror show at the General Assembly. The newly appointed US Ambassador, Mike Waltz, made a fool of himself when he attempted to mock the Cuban delegation, breaking the General Assembly’s rules, with a show of enlarged pictures that he used to make claims accusing Cuba’s communist leaders of living in luxury while the rest of the population suffered crushing poverty.
Waltz held up a large photograph of Fidel Castro in 1960 wearing Rolex watches given to him by European heads of state and pictures of supposed secret vacation houses shared by Cuba’s top communist elite, without any evidence or proof other than a blown up post cards and denied that the US embargo of almost 70 years now has had any effect on the populations well-being, blaming the Cuban government of mis-management instead.
Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba’s foreign minister called for a point of order, denouncing the illegal use of props by the US Ambassador and approached the podium, when Mike Waltz began yelling for him to “back off”. Ambassador Waltz violated decorum not only by bringing those stupid photo props on the G.A.’s stage, but also by proclaiming that he would not be “silenced or intimidated in his own country” by the Cuban delegation whom he accused of silencing dissenting voices in the “communist country”. This led the rest of the Cuban delegation to stand up beside their foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez, chanting “Liar” at Waltz.
Later that evening, the UN General Assembly approved—for the 34th time—a resolution calling for an end to the United States' economic, commercial, and financial embargo against Cuba.
Voting results
• In favor: 130 countries
• Against: 17 countries (including the United States and Israel, as well as Costa Rica, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Hungary, and Ukraine)
• Abstentions: 25 countries (including Germany and Italy)
The UN vote was held as Cubans faced the worst crisis in Living conditions on the island since the US economic war kicked off in February of 1962, with residents enduring regular rolling blackouts and chronic food and fuel shortages on a daily basis. Earlier this year, Cuba presented a report, submitted alongside the draft U.N. resolution, on the impacts of U.S. sanctions on the country’s economy, claiming over $8 billion in losses and damages as a result of the increased pressure that U.S. sanctions have had under the Trump administration. Hurting women, children, sick, and the elderly that depend on the lights being on in Cuban hospitals.
It is an insult to everyone’s intelligence to claim that Fidel Castro could have sold the gift Rolex Watches shown in the pictures Waltz held up, which he took the liberty of appraising at $40,000 each in his rant, and argued that those funds could have been used to develop cuba in the face billion dollar damages every year caused by the US economic war on the island.
Despite the state department’s stepped up campaign against Cuba, the Trump regime was only able to pressure 16 other countries to vote for maintaining the sanctions against Cuba. 130 countries voted to lift the US embargo against the island.