What Is Going On in Cuba?

0:00Right now the world's attention is focused on the Middle East, especially in Iran, but there are other things happening, and there are momentous developments that are about to happen in Cuba. And this makes me very happy, I must say. I'm an anti-communist. I understand the dangers that are involved in particular operations, but also pressures exerted upon regimes. But yeah, if the Cuban communist regime falls, I'm going to be happy. Sorry, just no remorse, no hesitation, no reluctance. Yeah, I think I'll be happy. Right, so there are lots of things happening right now that exert pressure on the Cuban regime, the communist regime. And I must say that this is a very, in some respects, ideal syncratic regime, communist regime,

1:01because you could sort of see why some of the Cubans would be a bit more prone to support it, especially due to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Garcia, who left with all the gold and the US dollar reserves in January 1959, I think it was. And generally speaking, there was a really barrageem that was comparatively worse to other regimes before they fell to communist rule around in the world. But there has been a very annoying tradition of communists, especially glorifying Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and also Che Guevau. It's almost like the gateway. You're a dictator, it's just the one that you can get into, when you're young, well, a t-shirt, and then you can go into the more hardcore stuff. Yes. So it's especially annoying when the Che Guevau are the t-shirts.

2:03It's just, yeah. Yes. Right, so let us see what is happening right now in Cuba. And we should have a general geopolitical discussion about what may happen and when and why, in some respects, Trump may be taking, maybe a bit patient with it, maybe a smoother parator in this. Right, which is a bit ironic given the fact that he has started a blockade, no, a blockade on Cuba. So here he is on March 7th. He says about Cuba at the shield of the America's summit in Florida, Cuba's in its last moments of life as it was. It will have a great new life. That will be an easy one. I don't know how easy that's going to be. No, I doubt it will be quite. I mean, it wasn't easy just after the Soviet Union collapsed for the Russia. I mean, that was when they say it was the hardest for people to live between regimes, not during either.

3:04And also, people don't exactly know who the opposition is because there is an opposition, especially, you know, there are some people in jail, political opponents of the Castro regime, but some of them are being released right now as a result of Trump's moves. We'll see what happens. But people are asking just what's going to, what's the next day going to be like? There doesn't seem to be any sort of, any sort of opposition strong within Cuba. Anyway, let's move forward. Trump's move with Maduro, the extraction of Maduro. He was playing the flow machine where he took Maduro from Venezuela and took him to New York to having close to him to spend some time with him. He had a massive effect on Cuba. Cuba is historically the biggest exporter of oil for, no,

4:07importer, let me rephrase. Venezuela is historically the biggest oil supplier to Cuba. That changed lately in the last years because Mexico was until recently, until the blockade. So it was sending about 45% of Cuba's oil. 38% is domestic production. But now after Maduro and after the blockade, Cuba is strangulated as far as its energy sector is concerned. And this has sparked protests that happen at night because protests, they do tend to happen in some cases like there were protests in COVID-19, with COVID-19 in some other cases. But now lots of them are happening during the night. You can see here, we don't need sound, but you can see people burning things.

5:10Yeah, if we could mute it, that would be great. But it's okay, they're burning things. And they are out burning the headquarters of the Communist Party in some provinces of Cuba here. They say it's the moron, a province, or an area in Cuba. I hope I didn't get it horribly wrong. So people don't know to what extent this is organic or not. And this is always going to be a debate that is going to be raging. And I'm sure that at some point, if the regime falls, years down the line, there will be people, historians who will say, well, perhaps it wasn't supported, it was all CIA organized, or there will be people who are saying, no, people don't like communism. It makes them incredibly poor. And there is a sort of mythology surrounding Cuba. You hear lots of Cubans who have left Cuba telling you it's a lie.

6:15You hear this from lots of communists, affiliated people who go to Cuba to experience the myth and they go there. And they say, well, I'm a bit unhappy with the extent of prostitution. That's what I hear here from almost every communist. I know who went there and suddenly became an ex-communist. They say, well, maybe it's not the paradise that you hear when you hear tourist campaigns where Cuba is supposed to be this scenic 60s Florida with the old cars. Everyone's there happy. Everyone's there singing music, singing, what's the... John London's a mansion? No, no. Buenavista. No, Buenavista. Or the other song, what is it that I actually like it from Julien Glacias and the Guantanamera. Oh, yeah. That's a good song. We have to give it. We have to give it. That's a good song. Okay, we'll give it. So there are mass protests that are happening in Cuba.

7:18You can see they're fiery. I don't know if they're mostly peaceful. I suspect that it's not to go together. If it's fiery, it's not mostly peaceful. Well, let me just recall the other scene then. Let's own the scene then. Here, you can have footage showing this. Now, let us focus on what happened. The last trace latest from El País, the president of Cuba, Diaz Canal says that the Cuban government recently held conversations with representatives of the US government and they want to seek dialogue and a solution to existing bilateral differences. This is a sort of change in tone that you hear. You didn't hear this before, but Trump is the kind of person who elicits that from people. Will there Europeans or Cubans? Well, especially just because of the geographical proximity of the two nations as well. Yeah, here he is going on a rant about Cuba. He says, I think Cuba in its own way, tourism and everything else.

8:19It's a beautiful island, great weather. This is strategic and coherent and strategic rumbling for. I don't know if the strategy anymore. I feel like he's just throwing stuff out there. It says there are not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change. They won't be asking us for money for hurricanes every week. I do believe they'll have the honor of taking Cuba. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form, you know, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I can do anything I want with it if you want to know the truth. Right. So he is definitely exerting pressure and Cuba in his increasing that pressure. I've said before because, you know, I think when it comes to Trumpís speech, I tend to take it as the speech of someone who is engaging in negotiations at the time. It's much more an expression of resolution at the time than it is the take of a cold analyst talking about a region is in the game. Right. So Reuters says here, Russia says it supports Cuba.

9:23After Trump says he will take the communist republic, but it's kind of weird when you have a republic that you have, you know, you don't have that much of popular sovereignty, but that's me. They are sending a, let me see where they say here, they're sending a tanker already from here. So they are saying that it exited them a detouranian on the, there's a, there's a Russian tanker set to reach Cuba on March 23. We will see if they will stop it. And there was also a Chinese oil tanker that left from the mediterranean on February 13 that hasn't yet reached Cuba. So it looks like they are serious with the blockade. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Frontially via the pressure. Right. So, Russian oil tanker heading to Cuba made U.S. economic blockade. Yeah, that's, it wasn't a different article,

10:24that's why I couldn't find it. And here we have electricity failure. We have Cuba's power grid collapsing. And millions in Cuba have been left without power after the National Electric Grid collapsed on Monday. The country's power operator says. Match of the island, including the capital, Havana was plunged into darkness with streets only illuminated by headlamps and battery powered lights on Monday. And this is what is also taken advantage of by people who are protesting and burning. Of course. Headquarters and cities. But this has all kinds of practical effects. If you're in a hospital and the power dies, you might be as good as dead. If you're elderly and you need to sort of live a decent life and the power dies, that kind of sentences you to either misery or death. So what's happening here is that they're blockading something that is needed by pretty much every single civilian

11:25and starving them of power and using that as a power play to drive the regime out. It's a terrible regime, but this isn't coming without a human consequence, right? No, there are human consequences. And sadly, they're always are because we live in the real world and there is an element of tragedy that ideologues frequently tend to miss. Ideologues who want to say this, either this is absolute good or absolute evil. And but I will say that perhaps this is this isn't something that happens just right now. There are electricity failures across Cuba for years now. It's not that they are the best when it comes to electricity provision. So the question would be if that is the case, well, are they augmenting an actual problem that must be addressed? And possibly this is short term.

12:26Bad consequences, tragic indeed. There is always the element of tragedy in history that could yield very beneficial mid range and long range consequences. Right. So Cuba confirms negotiations with U.S. as a country faces effects of oil blockade. And let's see now what Greta Thonberg is saying. She seems to have to flip flopped a bit. Right. So let's look at this because suddenly forceful fuel is good. Let us watch this by the Atlas Society. It is what we decide now that we'll define the rest of humanity's future. And whether we choose to do that or not, if we don't, it will be a death sentence to countless of people. And it is already a death sentence

13:26to countless of people living on the front lines of the climate crisis today. We need to talk about what's happening in Cuba right now. As the Trump administration is waging illegitimate wars across the world killing countless of people, it is also strangling the Cuban people, deliberately, methodically and openly. The pedophile Trump himself bragged about it, saying there's an embargo, there's no oil, there's no money, there's no anything. He said it like it was something to be proud of. Oh, you see that? Well, to be honest, my biggest takeaway from that was just when she says the pedophile Trump, it's like, okay, so have all the stuff in the Epstein files Greta. That's what you're going to take away from it all, okay? But also, I mean, she hasn't necessarily linked, well, she, she kind of has, but she is mostly the poster girl for no oil. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. But all right, okay, Jeremy Corbin here is keeping it real. He says the United States is intentionally starving the people of Cuba with its illegal and barbaric blockade.

14:29I thought, you know, he has just a measurable goon. I thought communism was actually good and productive. Why can't they, why can't they have internal domestic production? I understand that you need trade, right? I understand this. But if it's that great, how is it that, you know, Cuba is so, so bad at doing this? Well, it's not because of Cuba, it's because of communism. Well, also just the total just doing away with the illusion of international law and the international audit. It's like, it's an illegal invasion. You know, they said this one Putin invaded the Ukraine. Like, oh, he can't do this. It's like, okay, stop him. You know, they're not going to do that. So without... Yeah, but if they throw being soup on a Salvador, daily painting, maybe putting it's going to stop. Maybe Trump's going to stop it now. That's the green mindset. Anyway, we have thousands of anti-fascists

15:32from different countries around the world continue to go to Cuba together with collected aid. Well, the interesting thing here is that they're actually doing this meme, which I wanted to show you here. It's Venezuelan socialism only failed because of US sanctions. And so the only way for a socialist country to succeed is free trade with a capitalist country. Yeah, so routinely people are doing this and it's a trick by communists. It's like, well, true communism has never been tried. Why, in this case, because communism faces embargo by the real, by the other world, the non-communist world. So let's see what happens. One thing I will say geopolitically and I would like to hear from both of you guys what you think is, I think Trump is moving fast here, but he will let it simmer a bit. He will wait to see what's going to happen in Iran, how long it will take.

16:33And I think that he may be keeping this for an extra thing to show next. Because Trump is very mindful of public image, is very media savvy, and he does want his audience to have a win in their mind. So I don't know how fast they're going to move in Iran. In terms of geopolitics, what he's thinking about is securing the Caribbean completely and making sure that all trade between the United States and Latin America doesn't have to go next to what could potentially be at Chinese or Russian base, which is understandable. There's the human element, which is that you're basically starving the civilian population to get them to rise up against their dictatorial rulers. So fair enough, he's a price that he's willing

17:33to make human people pay, whether or not it works out, the problem for Cuba was that it was being a bit too harshly exploited, shall we say, by previous capitalist regimes, which is why you get to this regime, which is both very nationalist in one sense, in the economic sense, socialist as well. And internationalist in that it wants to export the communist revolution, which, as we know, is a stupid idea. So national socialism, international communism. Kind of. Which is, if you look at North Korea, that's exactly what it is. If you look at what Stalinism was, when push came to shove, he turned to nationalism, right? Especially when he got invaded. And people were rallying for the internationalism. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. So this is what you're getting here. Do I hope they get rid of the dictatorship? Yes.

18:35The question always is, how do you manage the transition? Because the transition in Eastern Europe wasn't that bad. The transition in the Soviet Union was absolutely hideous. And the kind of oligarchic class that raped Russia for a decade is exactly what gave us Putin. So what alternative have you prepared? And if the answer is, well, you know, we're going to employ these people as surf farmers now and reopen the casinos and reopen the degeneracy that characterise Cuba in the fifties. Yeah, but let's say that degeneracy is still a part of Cuba. It became, so I'll just tell you, it's just... Absolutely. The Greek Communist Party is organizing excursions in Cuba. And, you know, they're the Pyongyang tours. They're taking them along one street. They say, hey, everything is great here. Exactly. They don't zoom out. I don't know.

19:36And I know... They're defending the Cuban regime. I know a lot of... Just like with the Iranian regime, just like... The only question is, are you going to end up unintentionally making it worse because you haven't thought this through? That's the only legitimate question here. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely on this. Yeah. All right.