Cuba

Cuba running on fumes as fellow travelers in Canada consider sending relief to repressive communist regime

Cuba a Communist Shithole serves as a role model for the Liberal Party of Canada

The government of Canada says it is still thinking about whether to send humanitarian aid to Cuba, as the island confronts a looming disaster under an American oil embargo that is, in practice, a full blockade.

“Canada is monitoring the situation carefully and is concerned about the increasing risk of a humanitarian crisis on the island,” said Global Affairs Canada’s Charlotte MacLeod in a written statement shared with CBC News.

“As the situation continues to evolve, Canada is evaluating options to support Cuba’s most vulnerable people. Canada has a long-standing record of providing life-saving humanitarian assistance to Cuba in response to acute crises.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government, Cuba, WTF?

Inside the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Cuba’s communist regime out

The Trump administration has escalated its pressure against Cuba’s communist government, curbing oil supplies and threatening tariffs on countries that continue to ship fuel to the island as part of an effort to force regime change.

Since the United States captured former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in January, the Trump administration has turned its focus on Cuba.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA

Carney faces calls to send fuel to Cuba as U.S. widens blockade

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney is facing mounting calls to speak out against the United States for widening its restrictions on fuel reaching Cuba, or to send aid to the country.

For more than a year, Global Affairs Canada has warned travellers of “shortages of basic necessities, including food, medicine and fuel” across most of Cuba. In January, the island lost its main source of fuel when the U.S. took control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

Who’s making these calls? Justin and his brother?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government, Cuba, USA

Let’s Liberate Cuba and Gut America’s Left

Time to cure that communist chancre sore that’s been suppurating off America’s coast for over 60 years since that sissy JFK failed to send in the Air Force, the Navy, and the 82nd Airborne to back up the Cuban freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs. Fidel Castro should have been swinging from a telephone pole in 1961; maybe, then Kennedy would not have been murked by some Marxist malcontent from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA

No fuel, no tourists, no cash – this was the week the Cuban crisis got real

Among the verdant gardens of Havana’s diplomatic quarter, Siboney, ambassadors from countries traditionally allied to the United States are expressing increasing frustration with Washington’s attempt to unseat Cuba’s government, while simultaneously drawing up plans to draw down their missions.

Cuba is in crisis. Already reeling from a four-year economic slump, worsened by hyper-inflation and the migration of nearly 20% of the population, the 67-year-old communist government is at its weakest. After Washington’s successful military operation against Cuba’s ally Venezuela at the beginning of January, the US administration is actively seeking regime change.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA

The Coming Revolution Down South

Will Cuba be Libre soon, and if so what happens next? And after that?

Cuba is coming apart at the seams. I know, I know — it’s been falling apart for literally decades, and one of the sad demonstrations of the past few years is just how long a country whose leaders don’t care about their people’s welfare, because they don’t have to, can be held more or less static. (See also Venezuela, Iran, North Korea). But, you now, “gradually, then suddenly.” There’s some reason to believe that Cuba is approaching the “suddenly” part of that equation. That’s bad news in the near term, but I have some thoughts on the longer term, too, and they’re much more positive.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba

Cuba says airlines can no longer refuel on the island as US blockade deepens energy crisis

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban aviation officials have warned airlines that there isn’t enough fuel for airplanes to refuel on the island, the latest step in its moves to ration energy as the Trump administration cuts the Caribbean nation off from its fuel resources.

The government of Cuba published the notices to airlines and pilots on Sunday night, warning that jet fuel won’t be available at nine airports across the island, including José Martí International Airport in Havana, starting Tuesday and continuing until March 11.

Political pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump on Latin America has effectively severed Cuba’s access to its primary petroleum sources in Venezuela and Mexico.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba

Cuba on the brink as Trump turns up the pressure: ‘There is going to be a real blockade’

It’s just gone midday on Linea, one of the main roads through Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood, and Javier Peña and Ysil Ribas have been waiting since 6am outside a petrol station. They’re passing the time fixing a leak on Ribas’s 1955 gold and white Mercury.

A tanker has pulled up on the forecourt in front of them, and so the queue behind is growing fast. Although this station only takes US dollars, at a cost far out of reach of most Cubans, Peña says it’s their only choice. “There is no gas in the national pesos,” he says, shrugging.

Soon, even buying petrol in dollars may be impossible. The United States has said it will ensure there will be no more fuel shipments to the beleaguered island.

Beleaguered communist dictatorship you mean.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA

Mexico’s president says cancellation of oil shipment to Cuba is ‘sovereign’ decision

Mexico has cancelled a shipment of oil to Cuba, the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, appeared to confirm on Tuesday, but she insisted the decision was “sovereign” and not a response to pressure from the US.

Fuel shortages are causing increasingly severe blackouts in Cuba, and Mexico has been the island’s biggest oil supplier since the US blocked shipments from Venezuela last month.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, had “backtracked” on plans to send a much-needed delivery to Cuba this month.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, Mexico, USA

The US is actively seeking regime change in Cuba by the end of the year

Emboldened by the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.

The Trump administration has assessed Cuba’s economy as being close to collapse and that the government has never been this fragile after losing a vital benefactor in Maduro, these people said. Officials don’t have a concrete plan to end the Communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for almost seven decades, but they see Maduro’s capture and subsequent concessions from his allies left behind as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba, senior U.S. officials said.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA

Trump suggests Marco Rubio could soon get another job — president of Cuba … as Venezuela Oil shipments to Cuba are ended

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who just keeps racking up job titles, could have another one soon, President Trump hinted.

The commander-in-chief mused that Rubio, who once held four big administration jobs simultaneously and has been floated for more, could become president of Cuba, where his parents fled in the 1950s during the brutal Batista regime.

With Cuban ally Maduro ousted, Trump warns Havana to make a ‘deal’ before it’s too late

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday fired off another warning to the government of Cuba as the close ally of Venezuela braces for potential widespread unrest after Nicolás Maduro was deposed as Venezuela’s leader.

Cuba, a major beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, has now been cut off from those shipments as U.S. forces continue to seize tankers in an effort to control the production, refining and global distribution of the country’s oil products.

h/t Mauser

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba, USA, Venezuela

‘History will tell’: as US pressure grows, Cuba edges closer to collapse amid mass exodus

Disillusioned with the revolution after 68 years of US sanctions and a shattered economy, one in four Cubans have left in four years. Can the regime, and country, survive the engulfing ‘polycrisis’?

Hatri Echazabal Orta lives in Madrid, Spain. Maykel Fernández is in Charlotte, in the US, while Cristian Cuadra remains in Havana, Cuba – for now. All Cubans, all raised on revolutionary ideals and educated in good state-run schools, they have become disillusioned with the cherished national narrative that Cuba is a country of revolution and resistance. Facing a lack of political openness and poor economic prospects, each of them made the same decision: to leave.

They are not alone. After 68 years of partial sanctions and nearly 64 years of total economic embargo by the US, independent demographic studies suggest that Cuba is going through the world’s fastest population decline and is probably already below 8 million – a 25% drop in just four years, suggesting its population has shrunk by an average of about 820,000 people a year.

There are a number of root causes for this exodus, but most experts agree that the blockade, decades of economic crisis, crumbling public services, political repression and widespread disillusionment with the revolution have merged to become a “polycrisis”.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba

Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse.

Cubans are speculating about whether their government will be the next to fall, with crucial Venezuelan oil imports now in jeopardy

Elderly Cubans are digging through garbage for scraps of food in Havana. In the country’s second city, Santiago, crowds have gathered, blaring music by Cuban exiles such as Gloria Estefan and Willy Chirino, who sings “Our day is coming soon.”

The U.S. ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has jolted this country of fewer than 10 million people, which has long relied on Venezuela for oil imports that have barely kept its tiny economy from collapsing.

It opens a new and perilous chapter for the island’s Communist regime during an economic implosion that already rivals the crisis suffered by Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCuba

Cuba’s Security-State Colonization in Americas, Proven by Deaths of 32 Intelligence Agents Surrounding Maduro: Lima

Cuba complains about the CBC, imagine that.

For years, the Cuban regime has insisted that its presence in Venezuela was benign—limited to doctors, nurses, and sports trainers offering humanitarian solidarity. The deaths of 32 Cuban military and intelligence personnel while defending Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro have now shattered that fiction.

As early as March 2019, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, Josefina Vidal, appeared on CBC News to denounce Canadian reporting on Cuba’s security intervention in Venezuela. She dismissed the claims outright: “The assertion that thousands of Cubans would allegedly be inserted into the structures of the armed and security forces of Venezuela, supporting the government of (legitimate) President Nicolás Maduro, is a scandalous slander,” she said, demanding proof.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Cuba, USA, Venezuela, WTF?