Foreign Affairs Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster Sanctions and embargoes have immiserated Cubans without bringing regime change. Credit: Jan Willem von Hoffwagen/Shutterstock On January 25, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a U.S. naval “quarantine” of Cuba. “If they are hungry,” the president fumed, “they will throw Castro out.” His ambassador to Cuba, Philip W. Bonsal, chided him with a moral reminder: “We should not punish the whole Cuban people for the acts of one abnormal man.” If it was hard for the U.S. to hear that restraint then, it has become deaf to it now. For over 65 years, U.S. policy has been to employ an embargo to pressure Cuba until the regime collapses. By 2018, that embargo had cost Cuba $130 billion, according to the UN. According to Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the “act of economic warfare” had caused more than $4.8 billion in losses to Cuba between March of 2022 and February pf 2023. “If we calculate the damage caused by the blockade in these 60 years, based on the value of gold,” he added, “it amounts to $1.337 trillion.” It may be impossible to know how many Cubans have died as a consequence of the embargo, but a landmark study by Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot that was recently published in The Lancet Global Health found that unilateral U.S. sanctions caused death tolls similar to armed conflict. The unilateral sanctions on Cuba may be the longest and deepest of U.S. sanctions. Despite the decades of economic and personal suffering, the policy has failed. The embargo has brought Cuba misery but not regime change. And yet, in the absence of a more promising plan, the Trump administration seems intent on simply intensifying the current plan. The result will not be regime change but more suffering. The Trump administration has set an end-of-year deadline for regime change in Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. But, according to the Journal, the White House lacks “a concrete plan” to achieve that goal. Bloated on Venezuelan success, they are considering using that operation as a “blueprint.” But Cuba is not Venezuela. The Journal reports that the Trump administration is “searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime.” But, unlike in Venezuela, there is no such person. In a recent webinar hosted by the Quincy Institute, the retired U.S. diplomat Vicki Huddleston said that there is “probably no one in the Cuban government the U.S. knows of who could be an insider.” William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at American University and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, added that the U.S. knows of no person inside Cuba “who could command the loyalty of the party, the military, and the people.” There will also be no bottom-up regime change in Cuba, because there is no large, strong, organized opposition. The Cuban opposition is in Miami. “There is,” LeoGrande says, “no chance of a popular uprising.” If Venezuela cannot be a blueprint for Cuba, neither can Iran with its mass protests. President Donald Trump has recently suggested, without details, that the U.S. is “starting to talk to Cuba.” But talk about what? What does the U.S. want Cuba to do in exchange for ending the embargo? If it is regime change, the regime is not going to agree to that. “There is no chance for a deal with the current government,” Huddleston says, “if the U.S. goal is regime change.” That seems to leave only an intelligence or military operation to take out President Miguel Díaz-Canel. But such an operation would bear no fruit. A decapitation operation likely would have one of two results: Either a replacement figure unchosen by the U.S. would step in, or the military would fill the power vacuum. The former may be a smoother transition for Cuba than the chaos the latter could bring, but neither brings about the result the U.S. desires. That leaves only a military operation. But that would require occupying Cuba and lots of boots on the ground, something that, presumably, neither Trump nor his base desires. As LeoGrande says, bombing Cuba would not achieve America’s goals. It would lead only to a succession of leaders or a costly invasion and prolonged occupation. With all other options retired, the U.S. is, so far, repeating the same failed strategy. Trump has reinvested in the embargo: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” Venezuela provided 34 percent of Cuba’s oil in the last year. Cuba has been cut off from that lifeline. Mexico provided Cuba with 44 percent of its oil last year. Washington is pressuring Mexico to complete the strangulation of Cuba by cutting off its oil too. Mexico has already cancelled one shipment of oil, though Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum later said that Mexico will continue sending oil to Cuba as humanitarian aid and that Mexico will send other humanitarian aid, including food. Mexico recently confirmed that it had sent 814 tons of food and hygiene products. Some in the Trump administration are pushing for “a total blockade on oil imports” to Cuba to collapse the economy and push out the government. On January 29, Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba. The U.S. charge d’affaires in Havana told his staff the same day that “now there is going to be a real blockade. Nothing is getting in. No more oil is coming.” Trump has justified the reinforced embargo and the cutting off of Cuba from the oil that keeps the lights on and the country running by declaring a “national emergency” over the “unusual and extraordinary threat” caused by “the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba,” including harming and threatening the United States by hosting Russians who spy on the United States, building intelligence and defense cooperation with China, welcoming Hezbollah and Hamas, and supporting terrorism. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded by asserting that Cuba “rejects the characterization that it is a threat to the security of the United States.” It stated that “Cuba does not host foreign military or intelligence bases” and that it “does not harbor, support, finance, or permit terrorist or extremist organizations.” The intensified embargo on Cuba, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said, could cause “a large-scale humanitarian crisis.” In the absence of any other “concrete plan,” that seems to be the U.S. strategy. Over half a century of hoping an embargo will trigger regime change has been a failure. Tightening it will only lead to starvation and a humanitarian crisis for the Cuban people. This is not a foreign policy with conscience, and it is not a foreign policy that will help the Cuban people, as Trump has claimed is the goal. The post Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster appeared first on The American Conservative.

Culture The Future Is Bad Bunny Conservatives must offer something better. BUDAPEST—I was on a plane to Europe Sunday night as the Seahawks defeated the Patriots in what apparently was a very boring Super Bowl. Upon landing, I scrolled X and discovered that the halftime show, performed in Spanish by a Puerto Rican rapper named “Bad Bunny,” had drawn more attention than the game itself, and much outrage on the right. That was not an altogether surprising discovery. This September, Bad Bunny’s selection as halftime star had irked many conservatives because of his tendency to wear dresses and complain about America’s enforcement of immigration law. Springing into action, the conservative Turning Point USA whipped up some counterprogramming: a halftime-show alternative starring the country-rock-rap artist Kid Rock. Which way, Western man? A Latino gyrating through a stage of sugar cane, liquor stands, and bodegas that advertise they accept food stamps—the Bad Bunny option. Or a washed-up vulgarian in a baseball cap whose vocal styles alternate between gravelly ’90s post-grunge and cringy spoken word—that would be Kid Rock. Points in favor of the former option: production value and cultural prestige. The right may now claim the White House, but the left still controls the culture, its ideology still guides the masses, and it’s damn good at culture (however depraved) and ideology (however stupid). As Bad Bunny bounced around, a Jumbotron behind him proclaimed, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Who can argue with that? Most Western men will take the blue pill of Bad Bunny, if only because nearly all Western women will. But there was a small problem with Bad Bunny’s song-and-dance routine: It wasn’t so much a musical performance as a celebration, and enactment, of America’s erasure. Near the end of the big show, he yelled “God bless America” and then proceeded to list all the countries that, in his view, constitute America, which included all the countries of Latin America. (Mr. Bunny yells and mumbles more than he sings, and a good thing too, as his crooning inexplicably sounds like the grunting Velociraptor in the kitchen scene of Jurassic Park.) From a conservative perspective, or at least from the perspective of this conservative columnist, you should go the way of Kid Rock, not Bad Bunny. But the choice should be made without illusions: Siding with Kid Rock means joining the losers in America’s culture war, and not just because the Hispanic population will continue to grow in coming decades. Bad Bunny and others like him offer a kind of idealism, and I’ve read enough Nietzsche to sniff out the nihilism and ressentiment in Kid Rock’s empty negation of the left. In a battle between idealism and nihilism, the former will always, eventually, win. Judging by my timeline on X, many conservatives were pleased with Bad Bunny or at least didn’t understand all the fuss. They somehow still haven’t grasped that “inclusion” is the wrong frame for understanding the mass influx of Hispanics across our southern border and the intensifying, negative cultural effects of that influx on our country. After all, there weren’t any non-Hispanic whites “included” in the choreographed gyrations this Sunday. (The hip hop legend Jay-Z, who has produced each Super Bowl halftime show since 2020, hasn’t once selected a white musician to headline the event, except for the racially confused rapper Eminem, who performed alongside four black Americans in 2022.) The correct frame for understanding Bad Bunny’s performance is “Reconquista,” an ongoing, decadeslong cultural and linguistic submersion of America by Hispanics, their revenge for our victory in the Mexican–American War and domination of the Western Hemisphere. The Hispanics are taking back the southwestern United States, and more than that if they can get it. And you better not object—that would be hateful, not loving. “Reconquista” originally denoted the reconquest by European Christians of the Iberian Peninsula, which Muslims had seized in the 700s. That hard-won recapture of old territory concluded in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer funded by Spanish monarchs, sailed the ocean blue. The New World he discovered swiftly became an object of conquest and exploitation by Europeans, who back then still had blood flowing through their veins. In North America, Europeans replaced the natives, rather than lording over them as in Central and South America, and the seeds of a magnificent republic were sown. Like the U.S., Europe today is seeing its territorial conquests reversed through mass migration from the Global South. In some ways, their situation is more dire than ours. Hispanic immigrants, by and large, are Christians and hard workers, and after arriving in America they tend to be socialized in some of our reddest states. (Some downsides: playing loud Mariachi music, undercutting Americans’ wages, and slowly turning our red states blue.) Europe’s most energetic newcomers, by contrast, flock to liberal cities and do things like chop off heads, gang-rape schoolgirls, and drive SUVs into crowds at Christmas markets. It’s pretty bad. And the Europeans don’t even have a Kid Rock, much less a Donald Trump. They do have a Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, and other nationalist politicians in the “postliberal” style. Here in Hungary, where I am attending the annual Budapest Global Dialogue, I’ve gotten to hear from some of them, including Hungary’s foreign minister. They point out that Orban’s rejection of mass migration is plainly working, as Budapest remains a rare specimen of a dying breed: a European capital where women can walk alone at night. Still, my experience at the two-day conference hasn’t filled me with newfound optimism. In years past, this well-organized and surprisingly glamorous event provided a platform to critics of the liberal world order. But what’s the point of such critics now? In the second year of Trump’s second term, the liberal world order, everyone agrees, is gone, and now’s the time to build something new. But the nationalist internationale so far seems about as promising a substitute for global liberalism as Kid Rock was for Bad Bunny.  Some speakers at the Budapest forum referred to the present crisis as an “interregnum,” but that implies a regnum to follow, which seems presumptuous. I see little reason to believe that a “new mode and order,” to use Machiavelli’s phrase, is being born. And if we do get a global system comprising petits nationalismes competing one against another, there’s a fair chance it’ll feature great-power wars, a resurgence of suppressed ethnic hatreds, and the demise of both dollar hegemony and stable trade regimes. In other words, our children could be less safe and much poorer than we were under liberal hegemony.  One European political scientist suggested to me that Trump himself has the spirit of a Machiavellian founder, as his White House renovations and plans to build an Arc de Triomphe reveal. And he displays an almost preternatural ability to find the weaknesses of liberalism and exploit them for political gain. But Trump increasingly appears sui generis, and one begins to ask how much of the death of liberalism has resulted from his uniquely combative and charismatic persona rather than structural factors. The White House will be bigger and golder after he leaves it, but will America be great again? If post-liberalism fails, or fails to arise, one obvious possibility is reversion to liberalism, perhaps of a more formidable, albeit subtler, kind. Just as Bad Bunny jettisoned explicit wokeness and instead subliminally insinuated anti-white, anti-American ideas, liberal technocrats have learned that overt hostility to white majorities and to basic common sense plays poorly in the political realm. Over time, the liberals will find chances to resume their frontal assault. If you want a picture of the future, imagine Bad Bunny in a dress waving some Latin American flag in your face—forever. The post The Future Is Bad Bunny appeared first on The American Conservative.

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Just as Seattle’s Mother Love Bone looked like the next big thing, lead singer Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin. Stone Gossard (guitar) and Jeff Ament (bass) decided to keep going. They added Mike McCready (guitar) and Dave Krusen (drums). In an inspired move, they linked with vocalist Eddie Vedder who was in San Diego. Vedder was told to write lyrics and lay them over pre-recorded music. Obviously, he passed this unusual long-distance audition and Pearl Jam was on its way. Even Flow Their ’91 debut “Ten” took most of the year before it connected. The title was a reference to basketball point guard Mookie Blaylock’s jersey number. He had inadvertently crossed the band’s path and became one of those inside jokes. The combination of “Even Flow” and an appearance in the movie “Singles” shot Pearl Jam to the forefront. Dave Abbruzzese replaced Krusen following the release of “Ten” with Jack Irons picking up the sticks in ’94. “Jeremy” and “Daughter,” led the successful sophomore release “Vs.” Pearl Jam was huge. That was when they took on Ticketmaster. Pearl Jam cancelled their ’94 summer tour claiming Ticketmaster was jacking up the prices. Daughter They even took their case to the Justice Department, which they eventually lost. Better Man Still, “Vitalogy,” arriving in late ’94, was another Pearl Jam commercial success. “I remember thinking, ‘This is so different. Is anyone going to like this,” noted McCrerady.” “It had a more Punk feel to it. Simple songs recorded really quickly.” The set included “Better Man.” “No Code” represented a change. It featured styles and influences not present on other recordings. Due to their hassles with Ticketmaster and a growing reluctance to spending months on the road supporting the album, “No Code” did well initially but quickly disappeared. “Yield,” seeing the light of day in ’98, was more focused but it suffered a similar fate. It still sold over a million copies. “”Yield ‘ was a superfun record to make,” offered Ament. “Everybody really got a little bit of their say on the record… because of that, everybody feels like they’re an integral part of the band.”[ Ten Vs, Vitalogy No Code Yield To remind fans of what the group sounded like on stage, Pearl Jam also put out “Live On Two Legs.” They continued to record studio albums with “Binaural” and “Riot Act” released in ’00 and ’02, respectively. Pearl Jam came roaring back three years later with a self-titled effort (with the avocado cover), that was among their best. Work began on Pearl Jam’s ninth studio album, “Backspacer,” in early ’08. The album marked the return of producer Brendan O’Brien, his first album with the band since “Yield.” “It was all based on this brand-new idea to us of ‘let’s write the songs before we record them,” said Vedder who was on to something. First week out, “Backspacer” sold 189,000 copies to land at #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It was the group’s first chart topper in 13 years – since “No Code” in ’96. Mind Your Manners ’13’s “Lightning Bolt” was Pearl Jam’s 10th studio album. Produced by the returning O’Brien, the set held the track “Mind Your Manners.” “It’s a really cool record and I’m very excited about it,” enthused McCready. The public shared McCready’s opinion. “Lightning Bolt” debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. Gigaton,” the band’s first studio set in six and half years was scheduled to coincide with a North American tour which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it was eventually rescheduled for ’22. Debuting at #5 on the Billboard chart the effort was the band’s twelfth Top 10 album.  Containing the title track and “Wreckage,” both #1 Mainstream Rock hits, “Dark Matter,” dropped in ’24.  As a result, the band had now logged five career Mainstream Rock #1s. In addition to “Wreckage” and “Dark Matter,” they had “Daughter” (’93), “Better Man” (”95) and “Given To Fly” (’98). Wreckage The set received three Grammy nominations: Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song (the title track) and Best Rock Performance (“Dark Matter”). Unfortunately, they did not win any category. ### The post Pearl Jam appeared first on RockinTown.

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by Martin Jay, Strategic Culture: The latest episode of the Epstein revelations which has impacted the UK might well be a trigger for the entire British establishment to come crashing down. Emails which show both the former Prince Andrew and Britain’s US ambassador Peter Mandelson were selling inside information about British government policies and future […]

by Michael Brenner, The Unz Review: The Epstein affair is the greatest scandal of modern times. In its dimension, in the scope of participants representing a cross-section of elites here and abroad, in the intersection of multiple criminal and crassly unethical activities: sex trafficking and rape of minors, blackmail, financial duplicity, espionage, treason, abuse of […]