CUBA CRAZINESS - September 18, 2026

Cuba's top diplomat recently took to a public podium to make it clear there are no talks underway with the United States.

He was speaking, he said, against the background of what he called a genocidal U.S. blockade.

To be more specific, Reuters news agency reported the foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez Paria, as saying verbatim that now, quote, there are no negotiations, although a willingness to stay in contact remains, despite the lack of progress.

He meant, of course, there remains a willingness on Cuba's part.

The same can barely be said of the other side.

On the same day as Rodriguez-Perrier spoke, Trump's social media feed gave us an illustration of his typically sloppily imperialistic fantasy world.

It published a map showing the upper region of the Americas, over which the US flag was expansively draped, naturally including all of Canada, which seemed at the time to be the main ridiculous point.

Our media in general have commented less on the grandiose image's greedy reach into the Caribbean than they've dwelt on the offence taken by our Canadian neighbours.

Some in the West Indies region may have merely responded with the thought, oh, there he goes again.

But of course for Cuba...

It is actually a matter of life and death.

There is much, much more than an insulting propaganda graphic to be considered.

The United Nations Office for Human Rights issued this condemnation.

The US executive order imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba is a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.

In particular, according to the UN team, Washington's unilateral fuel restrictions have led to severe energy shortages on the island.

These have crippled hospitals with their intensified blackouts and doubled infant mortality rates that have resulted from the accompanying breakages in medical supply lines.

To use UN terminology again, America's sanctions effectively amount to illegal coercive measures which deny Cuba's civilian population its basic human rights such as food, health, water and sanitation.

Cuba's foreign minister felt that his public statement about no talks was necessary because the Trump administration's approach to Cuba has been, no surprise here, somewhat confusing, perhaps in itself confused.

The actual fact is, as that well-informed publication Latin America Reports has reminded us this week, talks between the two nations actually began, quietly, back in March of this year.

So this cessation of dialogue now is in fact quite a recent development.

And it's inevitably been accompanied by today's Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, responding to the Stars and Stripes flag arrogantly covering his island with the retort that, quote, Cuba will never again be an imperial colony.