US blockade of Cuba

[dann]

I don't judge "any news outlet by the standards of Fox News and Newsmax."
My point is that in addition to the very informative Cuban media, Cubans have had access to other sources of information and news than the country's own media for more at least 10 years – even before the US could no longer block access in Cuba to digitized information:

El Paquete: How Cuba's data pirates hand-feed an internet-starved nation (CBC, April 12, 2026)
Cubans call it "El Paquete Semanal," or the weekly package.
It comes in the form of a one-terabyte re-up of newly pirated information each Monday. Think international movies, newspapers, the latest Afro-Cuban hip-hop tracks, Korean and Australian soap operas, mobile apps, Wikipedia pages, PDFs of National Geographic magazine, the entire run of Netflix's House of Cards, even classified ads from Revolico, Cuba's take on Craigslist.

My impression is that el paquete is mainly used for entirely unpolitical and not very informative entertainment, but I don't know what Cuans are watching in their homes when I'm not there. If they want to read serious articles from PBS, CBC, BBC or Al-Jazeera, they have the option, but I don't think there's a high demand for that.

I don't know exactly who got the 20 used but fully functional laptops that the Danish-Cuban Friendship Association (DCF) had asked for and I got from my high school when they were replaced by new ones, but they tend to go to institutions. When I was in Cuba with DCF in late 2022, we brought (new) laptops donated to Cenesex and CNEURO. We had planned to visit the latter (and I had hoped to meet Mitchell Valdes-Sosa), but a hurricane put a stop to that.

As for my "contention Cuban media is essentially honest," it's based on actually reading Cuban media! For the most part, people in Western countries don't do that and dismiss anything from Cuban media out of hand because they accept whatever Western media tells them. I have referenced Cuban media extensively in the other Cuban thread (for instance about Cuba's participatory democracy, which NOBODY wants to know about!) and occasionally also in the 'syndrome' thread, e.g. posts 2,354, 2,355, 2,359 and 2,360.

Cubans are not the ones who live in an information bubble and their press isn't bought and sold by oligarchs, which seems to be the definiton of freedom of the press in Western countries.

 

[dann]

A comprehensive article about the polycrisis unfolding in Cuba and exacerbated by the constant threat of an invasion.

Cuba's Health Care Buckles Under Fuel Blockade (May 19, 2026)
A professor of Latin American public health details how the 2026 fuel blockade has affected every domain of Cuba's health system

The Polycrisis in Practice​

These breakdowns are entangled by the absence of a single input—fuel—and that entanglement defines both the structure of the crisis and what an adequate response should address.
This is what a polycrisis means in practice: one structural condition producing cascading harm across every health domain. The longer the convergence of fuel shortages, pharmaceutical inaccessibility, and technological deterioration persists, the less reversible the damage becomes—particularly for patients whose treatment windows close.
The Cuban people did not create this crisis. Opening a humanitarian pathway without delay is overdue.

It may be long overdue, but it also isn't happening. And the nearest powerful ally is 13,000 kilometers away.

 

[dann]

From the article I linked to in post 242:

Cuba's Health Care Buckles Under Fuel Blockade (ThinkGlobaHealth,org, May 19, 2026)
Then, on January 29, 2026, a U.S. executive order threatened tariffs against any country supplying oil to Cuba, closing off any remaining external sources. Although a Russian tanker delivered fuel in late March, its cargo only covered 9 to 10 days of national demand. By early January, Cuba's power grid was already failing repeatedly, leaving regions without electricity for 72 hours or more. Because 84% of the country's water-pumping systems depend on power, clean water and sanitation services have also been disrupted, and reliance on water tanker trucks, known locally as pipas, has doubled nationwide—from 500,000 people in December 2025 to approximately 1 million in March 2026.

Those damn Castros! Right? Right?
'With capitalism instead of socialism, there wouldn't be problems with the grid or a water crisis!'
Right?
Wrong!!!

Puerto Ricans salm gov't for prioritizing private interests during water crisis (Breakthrough News on YouTube, Aug 6, 2026 – 2:19 min.)
"Laws are passed here take away our rights and benefit a very small, wealthy sector.
"More than a quarter of Puerto Rico's population is living without reliable water access right now. The government blames a severe drought and has rolled out rationing, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without a drop to drink for days at a time on a rotating schedule.But residents say golf courses are still being watered without interruption, and Puerto Rico's government just approved a $2 billion luxury development — complete with two more courses and hundreds of private residences.

That's Trump's, Rubio's and MAGA's capitalism and imperialism for you – both in Cuba and Puerto 'Rico'.

 

[dann]

Belly of the Beast on X, Aug 6, 2026
UN human rights experts warn that Cuba is becoming a "silent Gaza."
In a statement released this morning, the experts say that the U.S. economic war on Cuba has created “a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development."

Rep. McGovern: Cubans “Screwed Over” by “Arrogant Politicians in Washington” (Belly of the Beast on YouTube, July 21, 2026 – 3:45 min.)
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) denounced U.S. sanctions on Cuba as decades-long “human rights violations.”

Cuba: Independent experts condemn new US sanctions as humanitarian crisis deepens (UN News, Aug 6, 2026)
Political, not security motives
The experts outlined that on 20 July, the US State Department released a report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st-Century Communism, describing the one-party State as a multifaceted threat to US national security and regional stability.
The experts said the report offers no concrete evidence that Cuba supports terrorism or subversion, and voiced concern that political and ideological motives – not security ones – appear to be driving the continued pressure.
The measures, they said, breach Article 2 of the UN Charter and form part of a broader regime-change strategy that also encompasses the decades-old US embargo on Cuba.
“The US Government must cease all threats and hostile acts against Cuba's sovereignty and revoke all measures it has imposed on the country that stand contrary to international law,” the independent experts said, calling on the UN Security Council and General Assembly to treat the situation as an urgent matter of international peace and security.

 

[Planigale]

If the US was a patient, I would conclude that the US had an obsessive verging on paranoid view of Cuba. No other country has sanctions on Cuba. Sanctions on Cuba were escalated for the fantasy of directed energy weapons (aka crickets) causing 'Havana Syndrome'. The US has almost certainly illegally intercepted tankers delivering oil to Cuba. One of the main reasons for US invasion of Venezuela (and its seizure of it's oil) was to block Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba.

 

[dann]

THE U.S. AID HAS ARRIVED AND EVERYBODY'S HAPPY!

Goodwill or Good Marketing? The Contradiction Of U.S. Aid To Cuba (Belly of the Beast on YouTube, Aug 13, 2026 – 12 min.)
The United States announced $100 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, some of which is now being distributed to vulnerable families through the Catholic Church.
So we went to Bejucal, one of the towns where the aid first arrived.
In a town of 22,000 people, the Church delivered 380 boxes of aid. Those who received it expressed their gratitude. But there is a stark contradiction at the heart of the U.S. aid effort: Washington is offering relief from a crisis its own policies have brought about.
0:00 The U.S. Sends Aid to Cuba
1:28 Inside the Aid Boxes
2:25 Who Gets the Aid?
4:38 Cuba’s Most Vulnerable
6:02 The Crisis Behind the Aid
8:04 How Humanitarian Aid Reaches Cuba
10:07 Cuba’s Empty Bodegas
11:30 The Contradiction of U.S. Aid

Not even the people who do get an aid package are in doubt that it's a publicity stunt.


I wonder what the people onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln will be thinking if they are told to invade Cuba on their way home from as Trump intended – especially if any of them are Puerto Ricans.

Food shortages, mental health concerns – Inside the disturbing reports aboard the USS Lincoln (MS NOW on YouTube, Aug 13, 2026 – 9:27 min.)
There are disturbing new reports about sailors’ mental health and food shortages aboard the USS Lincoln which is deployed in the Middle East. The Navy claims there is no uptick of suicidal ideation on the aircraft carrier. MS NOW Pentagon Reporter Priya Sridhar has more details on what she is hearing from family members of the sailors onboard.

 

[dann]

Two short YouTube videos:

How U.S. sanctions are crushing Cuba's economy (NBC News on YouTube, Aug 17, 2026 – 3:41min.)
U.S. sanctions have pushed Cuba's tourism industry to near zero, leaving hotels empty, 25,000 workers jobless and everyday Cubans struggling to afford food. NBC News' Ed Augustin reports from Havana.

Cuba’s Fuel Crisis Is Changing How Havana Collects Its Garbage (Belly of the Beast on YouTube, Aug 17, 2026 – 3:19 min.)
Havana has a garbage problem. El Rampeño has a solar-powered solution.
Meet the Cuban initiative using renewable energy to collect garbage with tricycles in the face of fuel shortages caused by the U.S. oil blockade.

This solves the problem for people with money, i.e. the rich neighborhoods, like, where U.S. spies and embassy staff live. I hope that it makes it possible for the state or the municipality to take care of the garbage problem in less affluent neighborhoods.

A few minutes ago, I got an email with a Facebook notification about a comment from a Cuban acquaintance of mine, a retired medical doctor:
"Recoger la basura costara 100 CUP al..."
Collecting the garbage will cost 100 CUP per...
It has been years since I logged on to Facebook, so I don't know the rest.

 

[dann]

US blockade of Cuba
Yes, Virginia, there actually is a blockade!

Report from Cuba: 'It's a Silent Genocide' (BreakThrough News, Aug 19, 2026 – 13:37 min.)
The US is waging a silent genocide on Cuba, and the rest of the world is too afraid of Trump and Rubio’s bullying to stop it. Zoe Alexandra, just back from Havana, breaks down what seven months of a US-imposed fuel blockade actually looks like on the ground: hospitals rationing chemotherapy, grandparents and newborns enduring 100-degree nights with no fans or power, and doctors biking to work to tell cancer patients' families there's no treatment left to give.
This all made possible not just by Washington, but by a kowtowed international community, with Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia virtually the only governments willing to defy the blockade. France and the UK could relieve the crisis overnight simply by delivering the goods Cuba has already purchased. This is a manufactured crisis, a siege enforced through blackmail and fear, on 10 million people whose only offense was demanding Cuba’s sovereignty be respected.

7:27–> A cancer institute where there's you know child uh oncology ward.
These institutes, thankfully, because the Cuban government has central planning. These institutes, in many cases, are able to, for example, maintain power because they have generators and the Cuban people and their government are so conscious and invested in the fact that they need to maintain some level of a health system that they make sure that all of the major hospitals do have fuel. But just because they have fuel does not mean they have medicine.

And so in many of these centers and many of the hospitals they have run out of essential treatments that they need. And one very concerning development that basically took place at the end of May is that the one of the executive orders and one of the sanctions that were passed by the US government was targeting shipping companies. And so since the beginning of June, many major shipping companies have refused to stop in Cuba because they're afraid they're going to face, you know, these secondary sanctions by the US government. And so there are 70,000 shipping containers all across the Caribbean full of goods that the Cuban government has purchased.
So imagine a government that's being strangled, a government that, you know, an island that is being kept in the dark but is still allocating resources to buy food, medicine, essential supplies, they can't even get those supplies because the shipping companies are too afraid to sail. And so there have been, essentially, what's getting to the island is on planes, it's through donations, but they, you know, things that they have bought are not getting through to the island. And so this means that, you know, going to the cancer hospital and speaking to doctors with tears in their eyes because they can't give chemotherapy, life-saving chemotherapy, life-saving radiation to thousands of patients, to children who have cancer. They can't receive the care that they need to survive.

And so, you know, again, I'm saying this now, we've said it before on the show, it was different seeing it in person because you see these doctors who are literally walking to work, biking to work in this heat, knowing that when they get home, they have no water, they have no electricity, they have no AC. They get to work, and they deal with this, you know, facing the families of young cancer patients and saying, 'We don't have the treatment for you.' And so, you know, speaking to them hearing these stories was really devastating. And again, I think this point is so important: The US is able to maintain this criminal policy through blackmail, through threats, and through, you know, this kind of over compliance of the international community. The Mexican government is one of the only governments in the entire world, besides obviously Russia in March, which has been brave enough to say, 'We are going to sail anyways.' And I think this week another ship is sailing from Mexico with essential goods. But essentially, this blockade works because everyone is terrified of the United States because it's a big bully, because it controls the international financial system, and because people need the US as a trading partner.

 

[dann]

Cuba Can’t Keep the Lights On. Rubio Says It’s a Superpower (Belly of the Beast, YouTube short, Aug 20, 2026 – 1:29 min.)
In an interview with Lara Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Cuba a “superpower” and a threat to the United States. Lara Trump said Cuba is trying to wipe the U.S. from the face of the earth.
So how does an island struggling with blackouts, fuel shortages and a deep economic crisis pose an existential threat to the world’s most powerful country?
Journalist Yohan Rodríguez breaks down the farcical claims by Trump and Rubio, which are used to justify current U.S. policy.

Lara Trump: "Cuba's goal, essentially, is to erase the United States from the Earth."

En serio? [Seriously?] The U.S. has 36 times Cuba's population. It military is ranked #1 in the world. Cuba #65.
The island's economy is 287 times smaller. And that's the country than can "ERASE" the United States from the Earth?

Marco Rubio: "Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system."

It's true that Cuba's intelligence services are formidable. But that doesn't make Cuba a threat to the United States. The Cuban Five, for example, were undercover operatives sent to Florida to infiltrate exile groups involved in terrorism against Cuba. Their mission was to prevent attacks on Cuba, not launch attacks on the United States. Cuba spies on the United States to defend itself. The United States spies on Cuba to lay the groundwork for regime change.
Cuba is no superpower. Right now, we are struggling just to keep the lights on. The United States has imposed an oil blockade and is waging economic war to bring our country to its knees.
Cuba isn't trying to wipe the United States off the face of the Earth.
The opposite is true.

Headlines shown in the clip:
US sends more intel assets to Cuba (Politico, Aug 4, 2026)
Trump has increased the number of spies in Cuba as US mulls a military invasion: report (Independent/AOL, Aug 4, 2026)

 

[dann]

Considering my search history, I'm surprised that this video didn't pop up until today:

EL CIRCO LOCO – Trump in Cuba (Fishnet Productions on YouTube, April 13, 2026 – 3:13 min.)
“Prepararse… El circo loco llega a tu ciudad.”
A surreal Cuban-inspired satire where a familiar cast of global figures arrives in Havana — not as leaders, but as part of a chaotic traveling circus.
Blending music, absurdity, and layered symbolism, El Circo Loco explores spectacle, power, and illusion in a world that increasingly feels like a show.

I doubt that the Cubans had anything to do with it even though the Iranians might have told them how to use AI to make videos mocking Trump and his entourage.

 

[dann]

Trump's Economic Vise Leaves Cubans Desperate for Food and Medicine (NYT, Sep 17, 2026)
The U.S. says its sanctions are not aimed at depriving Cubans of essential goods. Thousands of stranded shipping containers tell a different story

Trump’s economic vise leaves Cubans desperate for food and medicine (San Juan Star, Sep 18, 2026)
Thousands of containers filled with food, medicine and other goods bound for Cuba have been stranded throughout the Caribbean since two shipping giants stopped deliveries to avoid tough U.S. sanctions, according to diplomats, Cuban officials, merchants and others involved in the imports.
The containers stranded in various ports include humanitarian aid, from solar panels to medication to colostomy bags. Dozens of containers of aid purchased by different United Nations agencies are among them.
U.S. sanctions have also hobbled shipments by air, and forced the World Health Organization to scrap planned deliveries of cancer drugs.

Trump and Rubio allies are vying for control of Cuba's assets if regime fails (TheGuardian, Sep 17, 2026)
Washington and Florida insider are exploring lucrative deals for a post-communist Cuba crushed by ever increasing sanctions

Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister: U.S. Policy is Collective Punishment (Belly of the Beast on YouTube, Sep 19, 2026 – 2 min.)
In an interview with PBS, Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío reiterated there has been “no progress” in talks between the Trump administration and the Cuban government due to unrelenting U.S. hostility.
He said U.S. policy is “collective punishment” meant to inflict economic pain on the Cuban people.

Rep. Carlos Giménez: U.S. is “Trying to Starve” Cuba (Belly of the Best on YouTube, Sep 15, 2026 – 22 sec.)
That's how Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) describes U.S. policy toward Cuba.
During an interview on CNN’s Inside Politics, Giménez said the U.S. wants to “put the squeeze” on Cuba and compares the approach to the U.S. strategy against Iran — where the U.S. has carried out thousands of airstrikes since February.
“Eventually what I think we need to do is leave all options on the table,” he said.

 

[Planigale]

A good review of how US sanctions hitting the ordinary people of Cuba, effectively preventing delivery of food, medical goods and fuel.

Siege Warfare by Other Means: The U.S. Economic Measures Against Cuba

How the Trump Administration is using starvation and misery to achieve regime change in Cuba.

www.lawfaremedia.org

 

[grunion]

As always, Amy Goodman’s reportage on the deepening crisis is the best.