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Category: Socialism

  • Tens of Thousands Rally in Havana Against US Aggression as Cuba Prepares Citizens for War

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    Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Cubans hold photos of revolutionary hero and former President Raúl Castro outside the US Embassy in Havana on May 22, 2026 amid threats of attack by the United States. (Photo by Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Here we are prepared to fight imperialism,” said Cuban lawmaker Mariela Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro. “Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism.”

    Tens of thousands of Cubans rallied Friday in Havana to denounce the Trump administration’s indictment of former President Raúl Castro and threats to attack the island nation, whose socialist government has been preparing its citizens to defend their homeland and revolution against US aggression.

    “No disrespect is shown to the heroes of the homeland!” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said as people flooded the streets outside the US Embassy in Havana. “History and traditions are not insulted without a response! That does not happen in Cuba!”

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    The massive rally followed Wednesday’s US Department of Justice indictment of revolutionary hero Raúl Castro, who served as president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008. The DOJ indicted Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by the counterrevolutionary group Brothers to the Rescue after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.

    Rallying under the slogan “Raúl is Raúl”—originally popularized during the transitional period of rule between the Castros to highlight the younger brother’s reforms—Cubans vowed to defend their revolution in the face of the latest US threats.

    “This new aggression has united us more and elevated the honor, dignity, and anti-imperialist spirit of a people already recognized around the world for their brave resistance to any form of subordination to the empire,” Díaz-Canel said.

    Cuban legislator Mariela Castro, Raúl’s granddaughter, told rallygoers that “we are prepared for combat.”

    “No one is going to kidnap him. I can assure you of that,” she said, alluding to the US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on dubious narco-terrorism charges earlier this year. “Neither him nor anyone else.”

    “My father is very calm, watching and smiling,” Castro added. “Here, we are prepared to fight imperialism. Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism. We know that as long as there is an anti-imperialist revolution, there will be a gigantic and ruthless enemy.”

    Critics noted the hypocrisy of the Castro indictment, given the ongoing illegal US bombing of boats that the Trump administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

    “Washington has no moral authority to judge anyone,” Gerardo Hernández, coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, said, referring to the boat-bombing campaign, which has killed nearly 200 people in close to 60 reported attacks. “Cuba is a people of peace and reaffirms its legitimate right to self-defense.”

    “Cuba does not constitute a threat to US security,” he continued. “On the contrary, Cuba is a state under attack by the United States.”

    Observers have pointed to the decadeslong US-backed campaign of anti-Castro terrorism against the Cuban people, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, a commercial airliner with 73 people aboard, including 11 Guyanese nationals and 24 teenage members of Cuba’s junior Olympic fencing team. Perpetrators of the attack enjoyed safe haven in the United States, mainly in Miami, where the city celebrated a day in honor of one of the bombing’s alleged masterminds.

    “The Cuban people reaffirm the unwavering decision to defend their homeland and revolution,” Hernández added. “With the greatest determination, they reaffirm their absolute and firm support for Army General Raúl Castro.”

    Mariela Castro said that “my family, like all Cuban families, is waiting for instructions to know where we need to go” in the event of a US attack.

    As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba during the US-backed dictatorship that preceded the Castro-led revolution—said Thursday that the chances of a “negotiated and peaceful agreement” with Havana are “not high,” Deputy Cuban Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío acknowledged that his country is preparing for war, asserting that “we would be naive not to.”

    Cuban officials have been circulating a pamphlet titled a “Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression.” The publication warns that the US is preparing “to launch a military assault and destroy our society with the aim of perpetuating capitalism… and annihilating the dream of our Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro.”

    The pamphlet instructs Cubans to pack survival kits and seek shelter in the event of air-raid alerts. It also contains life-saving first aid instructions.

    “Should the enemy attack, our Revolution will defend itself until victory is achieved and the aggressor is expelled,” the pamphlet states.

    US President Donald Trump recently tightened the internationally condemned 65-year US economic embargo on Cuba, imposing a fuel blockade that has exacerbated an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.

    Last month, Trump said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished” with the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran. The president has also stated he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th-century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.

    “Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.

    BreakThrough News interviewed Havana residents earlier this week about the specter of US attack.

    “We Cubans have to protect ourselves,” elderly Havana resident Juan Hernández said. “We’re not going to hand any Cuban over to a foreigner, because that would be immoral. It would be treason.”

    Hernández accused the US of “provocation” in order to “justify invading the country,” adding “that would only lead to bloodshed on both sides.”

    “Besides,” he added, “Cuba isn’t a threat to them at all. What does Cuba have? Do we have atomic bombs? Do we have anything? We have nothing.”

    Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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  • Morning Star Editorial: US threats to Cuba and Raul Castro must meet global defiance

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/us-threats-cuba-and-raul-castro-must-meet-global-defiance

     A marcher holds a framed composite image of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel, during the May Day parade at Revolution Square in Havana, May 1, 2025

    US THREATS to Cuban revolutionary leader Raul Castro reek of the extraterritorial arrogance of a thuggish imperial power.

    They indicate too that the extreme economic war Washington is waging to break the Cuban people could escalate to a direct military attack very soon.

    The charges levelled at the 94-year-old former president of Cuba — a veteran of the 1959 revolution and a communist even before his great brother Fidel — are a sick joke.

    Claiming the Cuban military shooting down a plane belonging to the terrorist, Miami exile-based Brothers to the Rescue outfit that had violated Cuban airspace back in the 1990s amounts to murder is to deny Havana the basic rights of a sovereign state — to protect its borders and its people.

    But then, Washington has denied Cuba those basic rights for over 60 years.

    …

    The United States hates Cuba because it demonstrates that another world is possible — that a country can export doctors not bombs, stand for peace not war, socialism and equality not capitalist exploitation.

    Those are exactly the reasons Cuba must survive. Every pressure must be brought to bear on our government to call out Trump’s lawless aggression and maximum solidarity and practical assistance to the island mobilised via the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

    Article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/us-threats-cuba-and-raul-castro-must-meet-global-defiance

  • Trump Admin Claims of Cuban Plans for Drone Attacks Denounced as ‘Ludicrous Pretext’ for War

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    Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as US President Donald Trump meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression,” said the Cuban embassy. “It is called self-defense, and it is protected by International Law and the UN Charter.”

    Cuban officials said the Trump administration is making “increasingly implausible accusations” against the country as it pushes to justify, “without any excuse, a military attack against Cuba,” after an unnamed White House official told the news outlet Axios that the Cubans have been “discussing plans” to launch drones against the US.

    “Cuba is the country under attack,” said the Cuban embassy in a statement, months into a ramped-up oil blockade by the US that has left the island’s electric grid in a “critical state” and forced frequent rolling blackouts as well as causing a healthcare crisis, with tens of thousands of people waiting for surgeries.

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    But in Axios’ article, the Trump administration official took pains to push the notion that the US, with its nearly $1 trillion-per-year military, could face attacks from the tiny Caribbean nation 90 miles south of Florida because officials there have been preparing defensive capabilities.

    Axios reported that, according to classified intelligence it viewed, Cuba has acquired more than 300 drones and has been considering plans to attack the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, various US military vessels, and Key West, Florida.

    The country has been acquiring drones from Russia and Iran since 2023 and has sought more aid from Russia in recent months, according to the report. Intelligence intercepts have also shown Cuba is “trying to learn about how Iran has resisted us,” the official said, referring to Iran’s use of unmanned aircraft, its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and its attacks on US military outposts in the Middle East in response to the US-Israel war on the country that began in February.

    The Cuban embassy further responded with a reminder that “like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression.”

    “Those from the US who seek the submission and, in fact, the destruction of the Cuban nation through military aggression and war, do not waste a single moment fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods, and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression,” said the embassy.

    Journalist José Luis Granados Ceja, who is based in Mexico City and covers Latin America for Drop Site News, emphasized that “Cuba has the right to self-defense.”

    “It would be arguably be wise for Cuba to incorporate a tool that has proven to be an extraordinary effective weapon and a powerful tool of dissuasion as part of its self-defense strategy,” said Granados Ceja.

    Axios said the classified intelligence “could become a pretext for US military action” that President Donald Trump has expressed an interest in taking numerous times, before acknowledging toward the end of the article that “US officials don’t believe Cuba is an imminent threat, or actively planning to attack American interests.”

    Rather, the intelligence showed that Cuban officials “have been discussing drone warfare plans in case hostilities erupt as relations with the US continue to deteriorate”—suggesting they could use drones in self-defense if attacked by the US.

    The reporting carried echoes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s rationale for attacking Iran in February. He stunned legal experts days after the war began by explaining that the US had decided to wage war on the Middle Eastern country because it feared Iran would retaliate after Israel began attacking it.

    “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us,” Rubio said.

    The claim that Cuba’s reported preparations make the island a threat to US security “is a lie—with purpose,” said David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International.

    “Marco Rubio and his stenographers at Axios are manufacturing consent for the invasion of Cuba,” said Adler. “To fall for this flimsy propaganda is to fail the most basic test of civic literacy. And the stakes are millions of Cuban lives off our coast.”

    Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long sought regime change in the socialist country.

    Axios’ reporting came days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba to pressure officials into complying with US demands, likely including political and economic reforms, heightening fears that the US could be planning a military attack unless the country complies.

    White House officials also told CBS News Friday that the Department of Justice is preparing to criminally indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro for shooting down planes that belonged to a US group that had flown into Cuba’s airspace in the 1990s. In January, US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro, bringing him to the US where he was charged with drug trafficking, and pleaded not guilty.

    Former Obama administration staffer and Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor said Sunday that “lots of signals pointing towards an imminent US regime change operation against Cuba.”

    “The latest,” he said of the Axios article, “is this blatant effort to launder a pretext for war through the media.”

    Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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  • Morning Star Editorial: Defy Trump, resist imperialism and stand with socialist Cuba

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/defy-trump-resist-imperialism-and-stand-socialist-cuba

     Soldiers attend an event marking International Workers’ Day at Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Square in Havana, Cuba, May 1, 2026

    THE international peace conference in solidarity with socialist Cuba over the May Day weekend spoke important truths.

    It linked the “multidimensional economic, financial, political, security and environmental crises” engulfing the planet — and noted that the “aggressive escalation of American imperialism” is intensifying them all.

    It identified the United States as “the primary threat to global peace and security,” not so much a world policeman, as it has often thought of itself, but a global gangster that bullies, steals and destroys.

    It connected US aggression against Cuba and Venezuela in the western hemisphere with its violence in the Middle East, and the genocide perpetrated by its ally Israel against the Palestinians.

    And it brought together grassroots organisations, trade unions, peace campaigns and youth groups on an international basis to plan co-ordinated resistance.

    No festival is so international as May Day, the workers’ day, with marches in Havana and Chicago, London and Rome, Baghdad and Beijing.

    Rallies took up the message of defiance everywhere. Over 100 US unions took up the call “no work, no school, no shopping” for May Day, with specific marches like New York’s highlighting the connection between corporate power and state brutality under the slogan “Amazon delivers Ice.”

    The Israeli police raided youth club premises to snatch Palestinian flags ahead of the demos, fearing any show of solidarity with the victims of their state’s relentless terror. In Cuba, electricity and energy workers took centre stage, as a whole nation saluted those trying to keep the lights on and the power flowing in the face of a brutal US siege.

    So it was fitting that the International Meeting of Solidarity with Anti-Imperialism, dubbed 100 Years With Fidel, called on the world to stand with Cuba just as Cuba — exporter of medical care and education, valiant ally of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, beacon of socialism on the doorstep of the world’s most aggressive capitalist power — has so often stood with the world.

    It made important commitments. One, to keep promoting convoys to breach the blockade and deliver essential supplies to Cuba. This is practical solidarity, like that organised in Britain by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign through its Cuba Vive appeal.

    Two, to build links between left media organisations to counter the labyrinth of lies built up by the news and opinion monopolies that dominate global communications.

    Three, international mobilisation and protest. The ceasefire in Gaza — hugely inadequate and regularly violated as it is — was brought about by the global scale of protest for Palestine. Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu, “you can’t fight the world.” The US should be made to feel, through protests at embassies and pressure on governments, that to attack Cuba is to fight the world.

    The US threat to Cuba is urgent — Donald Trump reiterated military threats on May Day itself. It is not something we can’t do anything about.

    The US needs to know it will pay a heavy price for attacking Cuba, and that means pressure on our own government to grow a backbone. Britain votes against the illegal US blockade of Cuba every year — why can’t it stick up for its own sovereignty and protect British companies that trade with Cuba from extraterritorial US punishment, as China has just done for its companies sanctioned for trading with Iran?

    As we saw in Havana, building ties across borders provides the surest defence against the world war Trump threatens, which our own rulers seem willing to join.

    The international peace conference in London on June 20, following one in Paris and preceding one in Madrid, is key to confronting the militarists, averting war and charting a more rational future.

    As they say in Cuba, another world is possible.

    With the most reactionary racist, climate-denialist, violence-worshipping zealots taking US imperialism on a global rampage, winning that world is not just an existential question for Cubans, but for us all.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/defy-trump-resist-imperialism-and-stand-socialist-cuba

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  • Citing Bogus ‘Threats’ to US, Trump Expands Already Devastating Sanctions on Cuba

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    Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Cubans hold a banner reading, “Knock Down the Blockade” during an International Workers’ Day rally near the US Embassy in Havana on May 1, 2026. (Photo by Magdalena Chodownik/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    The president’s latest aggression toward Cuba comes amid his repeated threats to “take” the island.

    Citing Cuba’s ties with its ally Iran, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order expanding the already crippling US sanctions regime against Cuban officials, as the US administration has the island in its crosshairs after ousting Venezuela’s socialist leader.

    Trump’s executive order cites highly dubious “national security threats posed by the communist Cuban regime,” including Havana’s alignment “with countries and malign actors hostile to the United States.”

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    The directive “imposes new sanctions on entities, persons, or affiliates that support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus, are complicit in government corruption or serious human rights violations, or are agents, officials, or material supporters of the Cuban government,” without identifying any of the affected groups or individuals.

    For 65 years, the US has imposed an economic embargo on Cuba that has adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island’s economy and severely limited Cubans’ access to basic necessities including food, fuel, healthcare, and medicines—with disastrous results. The Cuban government claims the blockade cost the country’s economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. United Nations member states have perennially—and overwhelmingly—condemned the embargo.

    The Trump administration also imposed a fuel blockade and reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the revolutionary government of longtime leader Fidel Castro.

    Cuba says US-backed terrorism has killed or wounded more than 5,000 Cubans and cost its economy billions of dollars.

    The Cuban government—which was celebrating International Workers’ Day on Friday—did not immediately respond to the expanded sanctions.

    Experts warned that the new sanctions are worryingly broad, with Georgetown Law visiting scholar Peter Harrell writing on X that “basically any non-US person or company doing any business in/with Cuba could be sanctioned.”

    Harrell noted that the edict “gives the Trump administration a fair amount of easy-to-deploy firepower to drive remaining international businesses out of Cuba.”

    “The questions will be in implementation,” he added. “For example, will Trump sanction a Chinese firm installing renewable energy in Cuba?”

    Trump’s edict comes months after the president ordered the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of socialist President Nicolás Maduro and amid the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, the 10th country bombed during the course of Trump’s two terms in office.

    Trump last month declared that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to war on Iran that’s left thousands of people dead or wounded, including hundreds of children. The president has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.

    “Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.

    Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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