His name was Diosbel Véliz Marín. Diosbel made a living driving a bicycle taxi through the streets of Havana. A longtime opposition activist who had endured detentions, fines, and police restrictions for his political activities, he was reported stabbed to death this past August 26. The circumstances remain unresolved, and his killing has not been conclusively linked to the Cuban government.
For reasons obvious to most readers of this column, I’m currently doing lots of podcast and radio interviews about Cuba. It’s been a timely subject for most of this year, though right at the moment there isn’t a lot happening which would augur a major transformation of that “imprisoned island,” as President Kennedy called it.
It’s timely, because everybody understands that the status quo in Cuba can’t endure for much longer. The current regime in Cuba is running out of time.
The US Coast Guard has announced that it intercepted a large cargo ship carrying fuel bound for Cuba, as the Trump administration’s crippling oil embargo against the island nation continued.
The vessel named Grace was stopped on 5 September in the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Mexico while using tactics to evade authorities, the Coast Guard said. The New York Times reported that the ship was 91 metres (300ft) long.
“Grace was transiting to Cuba, carrying fuel, and was believed to be employing tactics common amongst the dark fleet,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.
Parliamentarians need to independently investigate whether Russia used sonic weaponry against Canadian diplomats in Cuba, where they were allegedly helping U.S. intelligence agencies, and how the diplomats were subsequently treated by Ottawa, former Canadian spies and high-level security officials say.
The Globe and Mail reported Saturday that, according to a source, a Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana. Canadians were also using satellite equipment brought into Cuba under diplomatic cover by the U.S. between 2016 and 2018, a second source said.
A Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana and Canadians were using satellite equipment brought into Cuba by the United States when officials from both countries began experiencing debilitating symptoms caused by alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia, The Globe and Mail has learned.
Two sources tell The Globe that Canada and the United States were working closely together between 2016 and 2018 when diplomats and American intelligence operatives began reporting symptoms including nosebleeds, dizziness, headaches, blurred vision and memory loss.
The United States military is reportedly looking at moves that could signal potential military movement regarding Cuba, according to a CBS News report on Friday morning.
The report said that a message in the U.S. Army Reserve discusses Southern Command’s resources in the coming months, and the outlet said official sources told them it had to do with Cuba preparedness.
When I was six years old in Cuba, our parents gave my younger brother George and me identical costumes. I remember being puzzled by this. I hadn’t asked for a new costume. My Superman one still fit me fine, and went with my attitude. And wearing the same costume as my kid brother was grounds for mockery in the neighborhood — a rich Havana suburb suitable for our mom’s Cuban royalty family, the Mestres. And this costume was drab — an olive shirt and pants, an ugly cap of the same color, and a stupid string black beard. I smelled a rat. And, boy, did history prove me right.
The UN is outraged over events in Cuba. Not at the political repression by the Communist regime, the detention of over 1,200 political prisoners, the arrests of protesters, and the government-backed prostitution of children to foreign tourists, but at the U.S. sanctions which have kept foreign tourists from coming by to molest little kids and spend money in Cuba.
This guys travelogue is often interesting
The world knows all about Iran’s proxies; Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas, and other groups which conduct terrorism and other military operations throughout the Middle East for the IRGC. But there is less awareness of an even more vast and sophisticated proxy network managed by Iran’s ally and possible mentor which lies far closer to U.S. shores.
Havana has been gearing up for the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth on August 13, 2026. Fidel Castro died in 2016 after handing power over to his brother Raúl in 2006. Communists the world over claim him as one of their own, and international visitors are being hosted by the dictatorship to celebrate this anniversary. In 2006, Forbes magazine reported that Fidel Castro’s net worth was $900 million (€780 million). One of his bodyguards, Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, who defected, wrote a tell-all book, The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo, detailing Fidel’s 29 luxury homes, four yachts and private island (Cayo Piedra), not to mention other luxuries. This in a country where 89 per cent of the population lives in extreme poverty.
In the dark before dawn, Juan Victor Hernández Campo was cheerleading a 5,000-strong crowd in the outskirts of the Cuban provincial capital of Pinar del Rio. “Aquí, quien no salte es yanqui!” he roared. “If you don’t jump, you’re a Yankee!”
Those in front of him, in T-shirts commemorating Fidel and Raúl Castro’s 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks, roared back and – as much as their age allowed – leapt to their feet.
When Hernández asked them for more, one woman pointed out he would struggle for lift-off himself given the size of his belly. He responded by pulling his T-shirt tight and proudly rotating like a courting turkey. “¡Abajo el bloqueo!” He shouted. “Down with the blockade!” The crowd laughed and waved small Cuban flags.
Last week, the State Department released a report detailing decades of Cuban espionage and its collaboration with far-left radical organizations in America. The report, which implicated dozens of groups and individuals, is just the latest in a push by the department to counteract Cuban influence.
The Cold War did not end in Cuba so much as change patrons, technologies, and uniforms. The enormous Soviet listening station at Lourdes was closed more than two decades ago, but the infrastructure, trained personnel, intelligence culture, and geographic advantages that made the island valuable to Moscow survived under the control of a communist dictatorship that has now placed Cuban territory and technical capabilities at the service of the People’s Republic of China.
MIAMI—Scattered across South Florida and tucked inside bank vaults, safes and family desk drawers are the yellowing deeds to sugar mills, oil refineries and family homes seized by Cuba’s Communist government more than six decades ago.
For generations, these documents were little more than family heirlooms that served as painful reminders of fortunes lost after the revolution led by Fidel Castro’s bearded guerrillas.
Now they suddenly have potential monetary value, as the Trump administration intensifies its squeeze on Cuba’s government.
As part of the Trump administration’s continuing attack on left-leaning groups, the US state department has listed several activists and organizations as “front groups and fellow travelers” for Cuba, including Hasan Piker and the Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls.
In a 100-page report released on Monday, the state department denounces Cuba as the “capital of 21st-century communism”, accusing the Cuban government of carrying out a “campaign of subversion” that has “infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of leftwing terrorism on American soil”.
