US sanctions are blocking life-saving relief to Cuba

A fire in a Cuban oil storage facility has killed, injured, and displaced Cubans and exacerbated the country’s energy crisis. Crucial aid efforts have been impeded by US sanctions

Natalia Marques

People’s Dispatch | August 08, 2022

A firefighter near the ongoing Matanzas fire (Photo via David Ramírez Álvarez on Twitter)

On August 5, a major oil storage facility was struck by lightning in the Cuban province of Matanzas, injuring 121, killing one, and leaving 17 firefighters missing. 5,000 people have been evacuated from the surrounding region.

The fire in Matanzas, still blazing as of August 8, is the largest in Cuban history. This fire will only exacerbate the energy crisis in Cuba, which has been racked with high fuel costs and aging infrastructure. Yet US anti-blockade organizations claim that existing US policies make providing humanitarian aid extremely difficult.

Despite the US Embassy in Cuba claiming that “US law authorizes US entities and organizations to provide disaster relief and response in Cuba,” activists say that existing US policy severely restricts any aid to Cuba.

Has Pedro Castillo been the only one to have it impossible to govern Peru?

A fragmented Congress is a factor that limits the presidential power of Castillo, and of those who preceded him and of those who will succeed him.

Milagros Pichardo Pérez

Granma | August 05, 2022

Castillo is president of a country where the ten previous presidents have been convicted or face trials with the justice system. Photo: EFE

Early elections, vacancy motion or dissolution of the Congress are some of the possible solutions to the political crisis in Peru, none of them flattering for Pedro Castillo, who recently arrived to his first year in power.

However, these options do not represent an escape from the deep and profound instability this nation has been experiencing for a long time; only that the 52-year-old rural teacher is now the one on the spotlight.

Castillo’s first year in office has been stormy, characterized by multiple and continuous obstacles to the point several experts have agreed he would not be able to serve the five years for which he was elected. Apparently, in that country, each new appointment seems like deja vu, as the same thing has happened with the few last heads of state.

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CBS deletes report that said only 30% of weapon delivered to Ukraine reached the final destination

2/4 George Orwell could have told us who orders such things in a "democracy"? I had a similar bizarre experience with Foreign Policy magazine when I returned to a piece by a German editor Peter Kuras that I read 3 months ago on Nazi past of EU leader Ursula von der Leyen's family

— M. K. Bhadrakumar (@BhadraPunchline) August 9, 2022

4/4 Now I find those paragraphs have been simply removed! Evidently, Ursula's legacy is being recreated as the Saviour of Ukraine, which is how Americans want to project her now! What Babi Yar? (The Aristocratic Ineptitude of Ursula Von Der Leyen, April 30, 2021, Foreign Policy)

— M. K. Bhadrakumar (@BhadraPunchline) August 9, 2022