Absurdities of the Week

Absurdities of the Week / Fernando Damaso
Posted on November 1, 2013

Two pieces of news attract my attention these days: Cuba's draft
resolution against imperialist politics to be presented to the UN
General Assembly today October 29, and that Cubans is among the top in
the world in gender equality.

The first is repeated every year, updating the supposed damages
inflicted by the blockade (the embargo) on Cuba. Now, after meticulous
mathematical calculations of the various agencies and institutions,
which have been published daily in the newspaper Granma, the figure rose
to $1,157,327,000. It is striking how well the government economists can
calculate the figures for the supposed damages of the blockade (the
embargo), and yet have never been capable of calculating the damages
from Cuban mis-governance, with the errors, improvisations, voluntarism
and failures, that they have inflicted on the country over the last 54
years.

This shifting of the blame to another and laying all the responsibility
for our misery entirely on their account is repeated every year. It's
beyond belief!

The second makes me laugh: that the World Economic Forum (WEF) makes
this claim, putting Cuba in fifteenth place in gender equality globally
among 136 countries evaluated because it has a high percentage of women
in its parliament, shows how superficial they are.

The Cuban Parliament is a parliament in name only: all that its male and
female deputies do — meeting twice a year for three days — is
unanimously approve government decisions that, as a rule, have already
been implemented before this formal approval. These deputies have
nothing to do with those of other countries and are completely useless,
simply members of the chorus.

It would be nice, before making this absurd claim, to ask our women
about gender equality. Gentlemen of the WEF, please, a little more
seriousness.

29 October 2013

Source: "Absurdities of the Week / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/absurdities-of-the-week-fernando-damaso/