No food, no fuel, no tourists: Under US pressure, life in Cuba grinds to a halt

2/18/2026 at 5:34:32 PM

What really is the point in maintaining a blockade after the end of the cold war?

by rlili

2/18/2026 at 5:36:53 PM

Provoking a regime change and installing a puppet regime instead.

by LunaSea

2/19/2026 at 2:01:11 AM

Hopefully the "puppet regime" will put a stop to the rampant "jineterismo," especially the exploitation of Cuba's children, that the current regime tacitly endorses and allows to flourish to the point where it ought to raise eyebrows when some foreign guy (especially older, uglier, and Canadian) simping for the regime also makes a big show of how often they've been to Cuba and how much they "enjoyed" it, just as it would raise eyebrows if they disclosed that they frequented (and loved) Thailand.

by anonnon

2/18/2026 at 5:45:46 PM

The cruelty is the point

by 46493168

2/18/2026 at 10:27:19 PM

To understand fully, consider the South-Florida Cuban, anti-Castro culture of which Rubio is a part, from which he surely feels social and electoral pressure, and to the other members of which he surely owes many favors.

by treetalker

2/18/2026 at 9:25:00 PM

Powerful people in USA (kids of gangsters) have rights to casinos and land there. Reason why revolution started.

by iberator

2/19/2026 at 2:13:06 AM

This is the same Cuba that sent forty thousand mercenaries to kill Ukrainians in the furtherance of Russia's war effort, is openly allied with both Russia and China, and has a well-documented history of willingly serving (in exchange for oil or other assistance) as a platform for hosting foreign military and intelligence assets hostile to the US, including just recently with Havana Syndrome--and it's a mere 90 miles from Florida. And you seriously don't understand why the US wants this regime gone, for good?

And that isn't even to speak about its rampant human rights abuses.

by anonnon

2/18/2026 at 7:21:43 PM

Because the only way America can claim that socialism is bad is by beating it to a pulp and saying "Look! See how weak and broken it is!"

by krunck

2/18/2026 at 7:51:37 PM

This is what any anti-intellectual perceives about the other side of the conflict: monstrous brute, having no other means to enforce his power except through force. In fact, this attitude reflects primarily his own psycho-epistemology.

by kalterdev

2/19/2026 at 1:35:47 AM

[dead]

by knowitnone3

2/18/2026 at 5:53:19 PM

Venezuela's leader-only regime change and tariff threats to Mexico are all about choking off oil to Cuba, in service of the ambitions of Marco Rubio and neocon-inspired Monroe Doctrine neocolonial imperialist aspirations of placing the entirety of the Americas under the boot of the USA... countries are free to hold elections so long as their leader's views and policies are aligned with Washington's or else the CIA coups, kidnappings, airstrikes, and/or tariffs happen.

by burnt-resistor

2/18/2026 at 9:25:37 PM

Neither Cuba or Venezuela held elections for a while and they put in jail or disappear anybody that says the minimum word about the ruling government, not even fighting just saying anything. (source born and raised in Cuba and all my family lives there, just this week one teacher got 10 years in prison for writing something about the president ). Cuba had oil from Venezuela and instead of using it for the actual people and electricity, they were selling it to third party countries to enrich GAESA the company of the Castro family that even the president of Cuba has no control over. So the people are no worse now with the US tensions, everybody there wants a little help to end the suffering caused by commies for years.

by codeadict

2/18/2026 at 9:35:12 PM

If they had food and fuel previously, and now don’t because of US tensions, then I think definitionally they are worse off.

by lovich

2/18/2026 at 10:58:17 PM

That's my point. Regardless of moralizing judgments about which country is more violent, corrupt, or morally "superior", they didn't follow the USA program and suffered the wrath of telling a fragile ego man being told "no thank you". America behaves like gangster and is no better, it merely follows might makes right while lecturing everyone else how everyone else "should" behave.

by burnt-resistor

2/18/2026 at 6:35:13 PM

[flagged]

by lazzlazzlazz