Image by Maksym Kaharlytskyi.

The U.S. president issued an executive order on January 29, “declaring a national emergency and establishing a process to impose tariffs on goods from countries that sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba.” The order mentioned “confronting the Cuban regime” and “countering Cuba’s malign influence.” “I think we would like to see the regime there change,” declared Secretary of State Rubio, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the day before.

Cuba faces catastrophe. At work now are the cumulative effects of six decades of the U.S. economic blockade, a tightened blockade during the two Trump administrations, increasingly desperate living conditions, worsening oil shortages, serious electrical power shortages, and the cut-off of oil from Venezuela after the U.S. invasion there on January 3.

Mounting humanitarian danger and U.S. assault on Cuba’s sovereign independence are moving the international and U.S. Cuba solidarity movements into action.

The matter is urgent. In a statement, the U.K Cuba Solidarity Campaign declares that, “This Latest Escalation … will cripple the electricity system and devastate every aspect of daily life …[T]his means. Hospitals without power. Incubators and life-support machines unable to function. Emergency surgeries carried out without light. Schools and workplaces forced to close. Bakeries unable to operate. Fuel shortages are preventing the transport of food and medical supplies. Food spoiling in fridges and freezers. Hunger, illness and suffering will spread. This is a deliberate attack on an entire civilian population, intended to inflict pain, deprivation and desperation. It is cruel, calculated, and it will cost lives.”

U.S. victory over Cuba’s socialist Revolution would have dire implications. A European analyst explains that, “Cuba remains the only living example of a country that continues to attempt socialist construction on the basis of social ownership, planning, and working-class power, rather than market dominance and capitalist........

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