Progressive Politics

And I was watching an interview with a representative of the Cuban Foreign Ministry the other day, and they looked into the camera and said something that has made me think. They invited the reporter to go out into the streets of Havana. ‘Look around’, he said. ‘See for yourself. Does this look like a country on the verge of collapse?’ The reporter agreed. It didn’t. And yet, for three months, Cuba received no oil. Not one singular drop. Since January, when the United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from his home, the pipeline that kept Cuba running was severed. The US then threatened tariffs on any country that dared to sell fuel to the island. Mexico, which had been sending oil in solidarity, stopped. The message from Washington was clear: starve them, break them, make them beg. And then this week saw a Russian tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin docking at the port of Matanzas, carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil. The White House says it ‘allowed’ this shipment through. The word ‘allowed’ is doing some truly Olympic-level heavy lifting there. The United States, which has two Coast Guard cutters in the region that could have intercepted the tanker, chose not to, and not because it wanted to be kind, but because it was in no position to start a fight with Russia while its fleet is already stretched thin bombing Iran.

#Graphic - here is a #tshirt I came up with for #NoKings.I'll be wearing it before, during, and after since the slogans are relevant for this point in time.

whilst the US kidnaps presidents, arms genocides and bombs countries indiscriminately, why is it that only its enemies face sanctions?

The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.