Thanks to the Biden Administration’s apparently lack of policy towards Latin America as well as the Administration’s policy of appeasement towards Iran’s Islamist regime, the ruling mullahs have been freely violating sanctions and increasing their influence in America’s backyard without facing any consequences.
China, according to “fragmentary” U.S. intelligence reports, is about to establish a “joint military training facility” with Cuba on that island.
Chinese military personnel are already listening in on American communications from the Lourdes base near Havana and three other Cuban locations. Two of those locations have been known for some time: Bejucal and Santiago de Cuba. These facilities, it appears, have been in operation for all or most of this century.
Beijing is set to build an electronic eavesdropping facility on Cuba, just 100 miles from the coast of Florida, that will be able to gather US military secrets.
Citing officials ‘with highly classified intelligence’, The Wall Street Journal said China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement to establish the base.
The newspaper reported its sources as saying Beijing had agreed to pay cash-strapped Havana several billions of dollars to allow it to build the facility, and that at this stage an agreement had been reached ‘in principle’.
Thirteen Montrealers say they’ve been targeted by a campaign of harassment launched by the Cuban government to keep them from protesting against one-party rule on the island.
A social media account which — according to a Cuban defector — is being run by Cuba’s state security has been spreading detailed allegations against the 13 men accusing them of trafficking cocaine from Colombia to Canada.
Carlos Andrades said he’s one of them. On March 21, he arrived in his native Havana for a visit with his 95-year-old mother. Travelling with him were his Canadian-born daughters and grandson.
The USSR went from having the breadbasket of the world to going into debt to buy wheat from America. Venezuela used to export gasoline, now it’s having to pay others to refine its crude. Cuba used to be the hub for sugar, now it’s rationing it. Socialism works. Sometimes it works so well there’s nothing left.
Ana Montes – among the best-known Cold War spies caught by the US – has been released from prison after more than 20 years in custody.
The 65-year-old spent almost two decades spying for Cuba while employed as an analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency.
After her arrest in 2001, officials said she had almost entirely exposed US intelligence operations on the island.
One official said she was among “the most damaging spies” caught by the US.
The pandemic and tougher U.S. sanctions have decimated Cuba’s economy, prompting the biggest migration since Fidel Castro rose to power.
BARACOA, Cuba — Roger García Ordaz makes no secret of his many attempts to flee.
He has tried to leave Cuba 11 times on boats made of wood, Styrofoam and resin, and has a tattoo for each failed attempt, including three boat mishaps and eight times picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard and sent home.
Hundreds of homemade, rickety boats have left this year from the shores of Baracoa, a fishing village west of Havana where Mr. García, 34, lives — so many that locals call the town “Terminal Three.”
A Cuban-Canadian rights group is formally requesting that Ottawa slap sanctions on officials in Cuba for Havana’s repression of demonstrators at a July, 2021, protest.
Democratic Spaces, founded and directed by Michael Lima, a Cuban-Canadian, is filing a request with the Department of Global Affairs’ sanctions policy and operations co-ordination division on Monday morning. Mr. Lima is a human-rights activist and researcher.
“Levels of repression in Cuba today are the highest in two decades,” Mr. Lima said.
Countrywide blackout after Hurricane Ian was the latest disaster straining Cuba’s already disintegrating infrastructure
Yamile Sánchez leaned from her colonial-era window into the street in central Havana, a large pile of avocados visible behind her. “The damage used to be sorted out much faster,” she said. “Even when the storms were worse.”
The avocados, dusty green in contrast to Sanchez’s worn blue shutters, each had a bruise on one side. They had fallen during the passage of Hurricane Ian last week, as had Cuba’s entire electricity grid.
She was selling the windfall, avocados being the only thing cheap and available on the Caribbean island right now.
Is Biden going to rescue the Castro dictatorship from the enraged people of Cuba?
Hurricane Ian is bringing extraordinary events to the open-air prison that is the island of Cuba. The people are rising up, and the tyrannical government is begging for help from Biden.
A massive protest movement broke out in Cuba on July 11, 2021. Food, medicine, and electricity shortages exacerbated by the COVID pandemic were pushing an already desperate, oppressed, and impoverished nation to the brink of rebellion.
Demonstrators used the internet—which has only been legally available in the country since 2018—to coordinate action in large and small cities across the island.
“Freedom…I felt free. I have never experienced in my life something so spectacular and wonderful. You had to have lived it to understand,” one Cuban citizen, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the Cuban government, told Reason.
In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western civilization, but as of this writing, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so. According to Maru Public Opinion, “two-thirds (66%) of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bringing in the Emergencies Act … A majority (56%) of Canadians do not support the truckers who are protesting in any way, shape, or form … This is a majority view held in every province/region across the country.”
You just can’t make this up. The timing is exquisite. https://t.co/QZiq0SiOXf
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) February 18, 2022
One Sunday last summer, 18-year-old Eloy Cardoso left his mother’s house on the outskirts of Havana to collect an Atari game console from a friend.
He’d stayed at home the previous day, while the largest anti-government demonstrations since the revolution had ripped through Cuba.
The authorities had managed to quell the protests in most of the country overnight, but not in La Güinera: unrest was still raging in the humble and normally calm neighbourhood, and Eloy walked out into a bloody brawl.
Cuban authorities have snuffed out protests planned by activists to call for nationwide demonstrations for democracy and more freedom of expression.
After being caught off guard by unprecedented protests in July, the government acted in advance to ban the demonstrations planned for Monday, ran a media campaign arguing it was a US attempt at regime change, and placed protest leaders under house arrest.
Edel Pérez, 35, a television actor arrested in the July protests, was prevented from leaving his house by two plain-clothed state security agents. “I feel impotent and angry,” he said. “They are violating my constitutional rights.”
