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”.
When Cuba’s national grid collapses, as it did for the third time in 10 days on Tuesday, a collective groan spreads across its cities and people wonder, again, whether the island’s antiquated electricity system may soon become unrecoverable.
The 777-mile Caribbean island of 9.5 million people has been sweltering under a six-month-long oil blockade imposed by the US, part of a pressure campaign to bring down its communist government. But the parlous state of Cuba’s infrastructure goes far further back.
“The backbone of the system is still the big power plants,’ said Jorge Piñon, a senior energy researcher at the University of Texas. “And they’re old, broken and tired.”
Every time I write one of these “Cuba Falling” articles, I feel like I need to end the “Cuba Falling” part with a question mark. I’m getting frustrated with the lack of movement, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re spread a little too thin with Iran. It’s time to finish that job and quit playing around with those animals. Cuba is becoming an even bigger hellhole than it already was. The people are starving. They have no power. It’s also clear at this point that the regime is a threat to our national security. It apparently has high-capability Iranian and/or Russian drones, and it is colluding with everyone on the radical left, from Democrat members of Congress to Code Pink, and I’d call all of that a very serious problem for the United States.
I was just reading an essay on social media in which a Cuban woman calls the island nation a “concentration camp,” and she has a point. The humanitarian situation there is worse than it has ever been. Earlier this week, the country experienced yet another nationwide blackout. Food and potable water are becoming more and more scarce, as is medical care. Hundreds of political prisoners remain in detention centers. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are ready to fix these results of systematic oppression — that has lasted nearly seven decades — but the regime refuses to allow it. Instead, it does a lot of blaming and chest thumping, and promises major reforms in name only.
Cuba on Monday suffered its third nationwide power outage since the start of the year, the state electricity company said.
The impoverished island was already struggling to keep the lights on before the US president, Donald Trump, imposed an oil blockade in January, which has depleted the already dwindling supply of fuel for Cuba’s power plants.
“There has been a total disconnection from the national electricity generation system,” the UNE power utility wrote on X, adding that it was investigating the causes.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a warning to Cuba during a visit to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday.
“It would be unwise of the government of Cuba to try to procure or get access to the types of weapons that could reach this base or the American homeland,” Hegseth said, without offering details on such weaponry.
“They would be inviting the kind of confrontation not only do they not want but they could not stand,” he said, claiming that “no country on Earth can match the capabilities of the United States of America.”
Trump has said that he can “take Cuba anytime.” But if he expects a walkover like Venezuela, he should think again. While Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. and collapsed economy should make it an easier target, its totalitarian system better resembles that of Iran, whose resistance to U.S. military and economic pressures may be inspiring Cuba’s besieged communists to do the same and possibly coordinate their moves with the IRGC.
The doctor called from the darkness, a shadowy figure sitting on the stoop of his apartment building. “I want to tell you we’ve been four days without light,” he said. “And without electricity, water is also a problem. And there are mosquitoes everywhere.”
From the buildings around came a cacophony, as beyond dark windows people smashed pots against pans. It was a cacerolazo, a traditional form of protest which has now become commonplace in Cuba amid seemingly endless rolling blackouts.
