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Caribbean-Latin America

Cuba Falling: A Lot Happened Last Week. Let's Talk About It.

2026-07-31

[PJMedia] There's been a lot going on with Cuba over the last week, and I promise you that every single day last week, I sat down to write about it, but my mind wandered onto the next shiny object — to Venezuela

...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...
or El Salvador or Costa Rica or Nicaragua or the Georgia governor's race. I've admitted in the past that I'm a little bored with all of it, and I feel like the way Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
has played out has distracted the Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
administration from working toward liberating the Caribbean nation from the Castro regime and 67 years of communism.

The truth is it's a complicated process. This isn't Venezuela. We likely won't have a clean and tidy(-ish) ending to the regime. You can't just take out one guy, neutralize his cronies, cut off their revenue stream, and start over with Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
in charge. The Cuban regime is older, more decentralized, and designed to withstand such moves. The power lies within the Communist Party, the military’s economic empire (GAESA), and a deep security apparatus.

There's also the media problem. The number of MSM fake news stories from anonymous sources about Cuba is exhausting, and it drives me insane how many prominent people report on them or share them as if they are fact. For example, for a while, there was this idea that the Trump administration's goal for liberating Cuba was the end of this year. It was fun to buy into, and I didn't find it all that outlandish pre-Iran, but Rubio put a stop to that kind of talk last week when speaking to the press.

"No, look, guys, global affairs are not like — we’re not a miniseries, like, you get in three episodes and it’s over," he said. "I mean, global affairs are difficult. You’re talking about a system that’s been in place since 1959. You talk about a country that’s suffered tremendously because of poor leadership and a bad economic model. You’re talking about a regime that’s survived all these years because they had a foreign sponsor, be it the Soviet Union or Hugo Chavez. They don’t have that anymore. So it’s — these are complex things that take time, and obviously we’re prepared to do what we can do to effectuate a positive change in Cuba because it directly impacts our national security."

He added: "It’s a failed state. But I’ve never laid out any timeline as to what change would look like or when it would happen. I wish it was tomorrow because they deserve it; the people of Cuba deserve a better future."

One thing Rubio did confirm — and Trump has hinted at this in the past — is that this is his project. "I work on this issue more than anybody else," he said, and I think that's fairly obvious.

That said, let's get to the news. The actual, factual, verifiable news.

THE BIG STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT
The biggest Cuba-related news from last week was the 100-page report from the State Department called "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism." I haven't reported on it yet for two reasons. One, I wanted to read it myself. Two, I'd already reported on some of it over the last year, so I felt like it wasn't quite the bombshell the State Department wanted it to be. However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk...
I've come around to realizing that it's a good report because it centralizes the information in one location, it helps build a case against the regime for whatever comes next from Trump and Rubio, and it supports the administration's current anti-far-left terrorism stance and actions it plans to take against it.

So I'm going to hit some highlights here. You can skim them or check out the entire report yourself.

The report paints Cuba as what it is. Rather than calling it a failed dictatorship, it's an ideological threat to the United States, as well as a threat to our national security.

Rather than relying on military action against the U.S., it has used irregular warfare to infiltrate, including espionage, infiltration of U.S. institutions, recruitment of American activists, providing a safe haven for terrorists, and creating or supporting ideological networks designed to turn segments of American society against the U.S. government and system.

And not just in the United States, but in other Latin American countries as well — it's trained groups that helped lead to the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979; supported Puerto Rican terror groups like FALN and Macheteros; and created alliances with Hugo Chavez. I've written about this in the past, but before he got into politics, Nicolás Maduro barely had a high school education. His only formal schooling was a year in Havana at Fidel Castro's commie training camp.

Cuba essentially had spies within the U.S. government, like Ana Belén Montes, a senior Pentagon analyst, or Victor Manuel Rocha, a U.S. diplomat who was arrested in 2023 after working as an agent for Cuba for over 40 years.

The regime especially liked to push black holy warriors, supported groups like the Black Panthers, and granted asylum to many black criminals, like Assata Shakur.

It highlights the Venceremos Brigade, which has brought at least 10,000 U.S. citizens to Cuba since 1969 to identify potential activists, build relationships, and strengthen radical organizations.

It also highlights the Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples (ICAP), which has a presence in 150 countries and direct ties to Cuban intelligence, as well as the National Network on Cuba, which is connected to groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA, Code Pink
... a U.S. anti-war group. The group describes itself as a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities. It was founded in 2002 by Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin and of the other usual antiwar suspects. Its website lists hysterical allegations of US war crimes, and states that thousands of civilians were killed in Fallujah in 2004. Maybe it was millions. Benjamin was a 2000 candidate for the U.S. Senate on the Green Party ticket. She lost...
, and the National Lawyers Guild.

It also says that Cuba is a meeting point for countries and groups hostile to the U.S., like Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Paleostinian Marxist organizations, Hamas
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
and Hezbollah-linked networks, and members of Iran's Axis of Resistance®.

There's more, but hopefully, that gives you an idea, and I think most of us sort of already had an inkling that all of this was true, but maybe we didn't know how deep. Now we have it in writing. This will be an essential tool for the Trump administration going forward.

THE REGIME RESPONSE
Of course, the Cuban regime came out swinging in response to all of this. The face of the regime, "President" Miguel Díaz-Canel, posted a long thread on X, basically calling Rubio a thief (the regime hates our dear Secretary of State with a passion), claiming the U.S. is just using all this information to start a war, and he accused our country of being the genocidal aggressors or something like that.

SANCTIONING THE MEDICAL BRIGADES
Just when I think there's nothing left to sanction in Cuba, Rubio surprises me. Last week, he came out and designated "nine entities and two individuals whose activities perpetuate the regime’s control over Cuba’s energy, financial, and exploitative overseas medical labor sectors."

"Those sanctioned today have also tried to evade our prior sanctions on the Cuban regime and its enablers," he added. "These designations include four entities associated with sanctions evasion efforts linked to U.S.-designated Grupo De Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), three entities operating in Cuba’s energy sector, and two entities and two individuals responsible for the exploitation and forced labor of Cuban medical workers through the regime’s overseas medical brigades."

What I find most interesting about this is the sanctioning of the medical brigades. Just to recap, they're essentially a forced labor program that sends doctors and other medical professionals overseas to work in countries that don't have access to that kind of labor. On the surface, it sounds like a smart humanitarian gesture, but the reality is that the regime gets rich on the backs of these people and treats them incredibly inhumanely. It's been compared to slavery or human trafficking in the past. Earlier this year, several countries, like Jamaica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Guyana, removed themselves from the program under U.S. pressure.

After losing access to cheap Venezuelan oil that it would mostly resell, the medical brigades are one of the last reliable foreign currency streams for the regime. I sort of suspect we might see more sanctions related to the program in the future.

PROTESTS CONTINUE
Cuba's crumbling energy grid has suffered multiple nationwide collapses this month, and people are fed up. When the power is on, rolling blackouts can last from 20 to 70 hours. The regime blames the U.S. "blockade," which isn't really the problem. And the people know better. They're taking to the streets chanting "turn on the lights," "freedom," and "down with the dictatorship." They're banging pots and pans, they're blocking streets, and they're setting the trash that piles up on the roadsides on fire. In some areas, there has been an increase in regime "security," which seems to have plenty of fuel for its vehicles, but overall, people are continuing to lose their fear. Heck, they're even protesting during the daytime now. Previously, it was all at night.

U.S. HUMANITARIAN AID
It's hard not to feel bad for the Cuban people who are caught up in all of this through no fault of their own. It's also important that while the United States is applying this maximum pressure, we stay on top of the humanitarian situation caused by the regime. Total collapse could become a huge problem for our country.

Rubio has promised $100 million in aid to the people of Cuba, in the form of food, hygiene kits, and medical supplies, but he would only do it if it didn't go through the regime first. Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum made a big deal of sending similar supplies earlier this year, and they ended up in military-controlled stores sold at ridiculous prices and only for people who could pay with U.S. dollars.

The regime claimed Rubio was lying about the aid, and it stood in the way of allowing it into the country, but last week, it finally began to flow through Catholic Relief Services and will benefit approximately 700 families. It will be distributed through local parishes so that the regime can't get its hands on it.

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Caribbean-Latin America

State Department: Cuba Is Aiding Iran, Hamas, Other Jihadis in the West

2026-07-22

[Breitbart] The State Department on Monday released a report that charged communist Cuba with helping America’s enemies spread their influence through the Western Hemisphere, including Iran, Hamas, and other jihadi groups.

The report, titled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, indicted Cuba for covertly supporting just about every threat to American stability it could find, including domestic terrorists and left-wing extremists – every group or individual that might help to “turn America against itself.”

The Cuban regime also helped malevolent foreign powers spread their influence across Latin America, and not just Communists or ideological fellow travelers. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba expanded its horizons from helping Marxist revolutionary groups to form alliances with a range of hostile nation-states and terrorist groups.

“Rather than spying on America on behalf of the Soviet bloc, modern Cuba funnels the information and intelligence its agents collect in the United States to adversarial states such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” the report said.

Cuba might be small and impoverished, and it lost a great deal of its financial and material support when the Soviet Union collapsed, but it remained highly skilled at spycraft, it retained well-established espionage networks on American soil, and it had a prime location off the U.S. coast. Cuban intelligence was much more effective at recruiting ideologically sympathetic agents and subverting student groups than any jihadi group after 9/11.

“The regime continues to act as a force multiplier for a much broader anti-American coalition, positioning itself as a staging ground for a wide range of foreign adversaries to conduct operations against the United States,” the report said.

“At the same time, Cuba operates as a kind of concierge service for anti-American actors, providing them with access to domestic influence and intelligence within the United States and facilitating contacts with American groups and movements. Cuba’s hemispheric networks offer a similar value proposition — serving as a vector for Iran, Russia, and numerous other regimes to project influence across the region,” it added.

The hundred-page report devotes a chapter to Cuba’s partnerships with Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” — Iran’s network of terrorist proxies across the Middle East, including “non-state actors” such as Hamas.

The report noted that Cuba developed enduring ties with Palestinian terrorist organizations as far back as the 1960s and offered military training to their fighters in the 70s and 80s. Groups like the PLO in turn used Cuba as a gateway to develop partnerships with Latin American militants.

The State Department pointed out that some of these terrorist groups have Marxist-Leninist ideologies in addition to their Islamic fundamentalism, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), both of which participated in the October 7, 2023, atrocities against Israeli civilians. Some of the fighters in those groups were trained by Cuban operatives. The PFLP has an office in Havana to this day.

With Cuba’s help, groups like Hamas and the PFLP have built an influence network that spans over 86 countries around the world, including the United States, according to the resport. A grim synergy is at work, as these networks sometimes use antisemitism as the lure to draw young people into radical leftism, while other times they use radical leftism as the lure to indoctrinate students into jihadi ideology.

“Western governments should not underestimate the convergence of Cuba’s revolutionary solidarity networks and Islamist radicals,” the State Department report warned. “Over the years, Cuban ambassadors have frequently met with delegations from Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including a highly visible meeting between Hamas officials and the Cuban ambassador to Lebanon just eight months before the October 7th attacks.”

“Even as its economy teeters on the brink of collapse in the wake of decades of corrupt communist rule, the Cuban regime’s fundamental objective remains the same as it was when Castro first marched into Havana in 1959: a hemispheric Marxist revolution that erases the United States from the earth,” the report concluded.

The report can be downloaded from the State Department here.

One of the many explosive revelations in this new State Department report is that the Venceremos Brigade—which has brought 10,000+ American left-wing activists to Cuba, including high-profile Democratic politicians like LA Mayor Karen Bass—was built and run by actual Cuban spies. https://t.co/6X7evXNifT pic.twitter.com/piW0lK2w6b
— Nate Hochman (@njhochman) July 20, 2026

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Home Front: Politix

UC Berkeley slammed for promoting radical communist leaders at taxpayer expense: Report

2026-05-13

[NYP] A University of California, Berkeley-linked teacher training program funded with taxpayer dollars is under fire after a watchdog group claimed it promotes activist-oriented ethnic studies that cast controversial revolutionary figures as heroes.

Defending Education released a report Monday examining UC Berkeley’s high school ethnic studies training initiatives, including a 2024 session titled "Teaching Histories of Anti-Imperialistic Solidarity."

The group alleges the program encourages educators to present figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the Black Panther Party in a positive light tied to race, power and political struggles.

Rhyen Staley, the organization’s director of research, said the training blurs the line between education and activism.

"It’s not just talking about individuals like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, groups like Black Panther Party, but it is promoting them as heroes of a far-left socialist movement," Staley told The Center Square. "That’s really the issue with ethnic studies on the whole... it is a far-left political programming meant to train young children to become street activists."

The report also highlights references to the Venceremos Brigade, an organization that arranges trips to Cuba and is described as a fiscal project of The People’s Forum.

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Fifth Column

University of South Florida protester, 39, who brought a gun to Palestinian is charged along with nine others

2024-05-03

Atah Kheir Othman. He doesn't look like a student, does he? But he does look like an Arab.

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Photos of the other miscreants can be seen at the link.

Several older, possibly non-student protestors were arrested Tuesday at USF

Among them was Atah Othman, a 39-year-old who brought a weapon

The school instructed anti-Israel demonstrators to disperse by 5pm

Police broke up the encampment when they failed to obey the order

Atah Othman is charged with trespassing on property, unlawful assembly, resisting an officer, and possession of a firearm on school property.

It's unclear what his connection to the school is, or exactly what type of weapon he brought with him.

The campus anti-Israel protest was organized by the Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society group. It attracted some 100 protestors, some of whom were not enrolled at the university.

Others arrested and released, who may not be students but have now been slapped with felony charges include: Emmanuel Atmosfera, 25, and Leonardo Tilelli, 23. Among the others apprehended were Daniel Powell, 32, Jake Geffon, 23, and 27-year-old Cameron Pressey.

It is not clear what older, in some cases armed, non-student protestors were doing at the student-organized demonstration.

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Government Corruption

Who Is Somah Haaland, The Activist Daughter Of Biden's Interior Secretary?

2023-10-16

[Federalist] Radical activism has come to define the Biden administration, and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland could be the poster child. For instance, just last week, the former congresswoman participated in a bizarre video with a drag queen to promote the false narrative that "queer rights are more under attack than ever." Meanwhile, the connections of Haaland’s activist 29-year-old daughter, Somah, have become a major cause for concern, leading to multiple ethics complaints against the secretary over fears of undue influence.

In September, the bilingual Hispanic website ADN America documented Somah Haaland’s relationship with a Cuban solidarity group linked to the communist regime’s intelligence apparatus. The connection stems from Somah’s work for the Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA), a far-left, Albuquerque-based climate group that often advocates issues on behalf of the Laguna Pueblo. As a member of the federally recognized tribe, Secretary Haaland became the first American Indian to lead the agency responsible for U.S.-tribal relations.

The PAA, ADN reported last month, "openly associates with the Venceremos Brigade (VB), a U.S.-based organization that facilitates trips for young Americans to visit Cuba, where they are reportedly greeted and groomed by Cuban intelligence agents." ADN continued:

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-Short Attention Span Theater-

Kamala Harris Gets The VP Nod

2020-08-11

[Twitchy] That is all; odds for her as President are dropping as we speak...

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Home Front: Politix

Plugs’ running mate may be KGB/Cuban-Intelligence Founded Venceremos Brigade agent

2020-08-04

[Townhall] "In the mid-1970s, California Congresswoman Karen Bass, who is now under consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate, was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade... An event blurb in an October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper describes Bass, then 22, as "leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California....As a ’brigadista’ and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months." (Tablet magazine, 7/28.)

In that heady Age of Aquarius hundreds of starry-eyed college kids were volunteering to "help build Cuban Socialism" and "fight U.S. Imperialism," mostly by joyfully cutting Cuban sugar cane and raptly imbibing communist propaganda lectures while seated in front of large pics of Che Guevara and "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh.

In fact, the terrorist offshoot from the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) known as The Weathermen and staffed most famously by Barack Obama’s future "neighbors" Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn served as the DGI’s (Cuban Intelligence) U.S. recruitment officers at the time, which proved easy. Castro’s DGI and their KGB masters had other goals in mind, as we’ll see in a minute.

Okay, that Karen Bass was a very enthusiastic and active Venceremos Brigadista, we’ve already established. But was there more to these Venceremos Brigades? Perhaps a declassified FBI report (from well before the bureau was run by people by Comey, I might add) might help:

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Why the left loves Castro--from a distance.

2006-08-05

Wall Street Journal house editorial

Fidel Castro's health has been declared a national secret. His brother Raul, to whom Fidel apparently ceded power at the beginning of the week, is nowhere to be seen. American journalists are being turned away at the airport. So one thing for certain hasn't changed on the island: It's still hard to know much about the internal life of the dictatorship that has oppressed Cuba for 47 years. But it seems likely that the era of Fidel Castro is finally winding down toward the dictator's final bravura performance.

But even should this prove true, Fidel can rest assured that his legacy will be honored for a long time. Across virtually his entire career, Fidel has offered himself as the perfect anti-capitalist revolutionary. Though the revolution ended decades ago with Cuba's economy in ruins and its dissident voices in dungeons, the international left then and now has kept the flame of romance burning beneath Castro's carefully nurtured reputation. . . .

Fidel has cultivated his status as a left-wing icon since taking power in 1959. Remarkably, the fact that he has extracted from his impoverished and oppressed people a personal fortune--Forbes magazine estimated it last year at over half a billion dollars for its World's Richest People list--has done little to dent his image as a man of the people. The standard apologetics for the sorry state of the Cuban economy begin from the premise that America, not socialism, is responsible for Cuba's travails. But Castro's personal financial success suggests that in fact substantial revenue is sluicing through the island. Even with the U.S. embargo in place, there's plenty of money to be made in Cuba. It's just that nearly all of it the income from exports of seafood, tobacco, sugar and nickel, not to mention Fidel's real-estate and pharmaceutical operations, goes to the ruling clique or to the military, bypassing the population. There are good reasons to question the embargo, but the notion that it is the source of all of Cuba's ills isn't one of them. . . .

For a while in the 1990s, it seemed that the passing of the Soviet Union would take Castro down in its wake, but in recent years Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has stepped into the support role, lavishing Cuba with oil and other subsidies.

Mr. Chavez, in fact, appears ready to graduate from his role as a Castro protege to fill Fidel's shoes as the hemisphere's anti-U.S. gadfly. He used his recent tour through Europe and Asia not only to hobnob with despots in Belarus and Iran, but also to stock up on Russian weaponry. It seems Mr. Chavez has absorbed the most salient lesson of Fidel's success--the international left will overlook oppression and economic mismanagement at home if you market yourself as David to the American Goliath. The thousands killed by Castro over the years, the tens of thousands more who have died desperately seeking freedom in the U.S., the political prisoners, the torture--all can be forgiven so long as you pose as the alternative to the American hegemon.

Of course it may be no coincidence that most of the admiration all these years has been from afar. The idea of "Fidel" allows his leftish admirers from the comforts of free, mostly capitalist societies to imagine that someone out there is struggling to build a better, more egalitarian way of life--without any of them having to live amid the daily Cuban reality of grinding poverty and political intimidation.

Fidel may die, but his offshore Venceremos Brigade will live on.

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Fifth Column

"Cuba shows us what is possible"

2006-08-02

THEY are perhaps one of the largest groups of young people from the United States to visit Cuba this year. They are Chicano, Mexican, Puerto Rican, African-American, Asian, and white, many from working-class families. Coming from nine U.S. states, the 48 members of the Venceremos Brigade traveled to Toronto, Canada to fly together to Cuba, publicly stating their intention of violating the U.S. ban on travel to the island, a component of the imperialist blockade that has been intensified by the Bush administration. I feel very strongly about the right to come here, because its such an amazing place, said brigadista Priscilla Bassett, a 15-year-old high school student from New York. I think its despicable that we call ourselves a democracy and have this blockade.

... coming here would be a very strong act of civil disobedience against the U.S. government, which I do not believe in at all...

Steven Gustavo Emmons, 26, a waiter and radio journalist from New Mexico, commented, I knew that this was the only way for me to understand Cubas reality, to see it with my own eyes, and that coming here would be a very strong act of civil disobedience against the U.S. government, which I do not believe in at all.

The Venceremos (We shall Overcome) Brigade was created in 1969 when radical students in the United States decided to support Cubas Revolution and travel to Cuba, explains Kathe Karlson, 57. A social worker at a New York City public high school, Karlson herself has been on the brigade nine times, one of 9,000 people most of them young who have gone to the island with the group. In the early years it was more about coming to see Cuba; now its about openly and publicly defying the blockade, Karlson explained. Now, even though the government has taken away 90 percent of legal travel, there is increased opposition to the ban, she affirmed.

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