BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2026 – 12:50 PM
Authored by Natasha Bannan via Common Dreams,
Yves here. I wish I had the time to research and unpack more clearly is the set of legal theories the US is abusing to prosecute Nicholas Maduro and his wife and now to justify the arrest of Raul Castro and the conquest of Cuba. The US seriously takes the position that we can impose strained invocations of US rules against terrorism and engage in extrajudicial seizures, as in kidnapping.
The article below describes how we are now putting a lot of weight on the thin reed of enforcing Batista-era property rights.
These days, most of Havana’s streets are fairly empty of cars, but full of people walking or riding bicycles, electric bikes, electric "tricycles," or scooters. Trash has piled up on most corners where regular pick-up has become impossible given that the garbage trucks have no gasoline. The average conversation starts off with comparing who’s gone the longest without electricity.
The sympathy flows, as you exchange stories of what else you are going without: water, gas, food, medicine, transportation. People list the family members they haven’t been able to see and the medical appointments they’ve missed. Inevitably, someone will say better days are coming – "because they have to" – and to keep moving forward.
This week alone, the US Department of Justice indicted Raul Castro, the former head of state, who’s now 94 years old and largely out of public life. In addition, the Supreme Court gave a green light to Cuban-American-owned companies with property claims in Cuba from 67 years ago to sue tourist industry actors who "profited" from that land.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to grow more and more publicly agitated with Cuba’s refusal to bow to his demands, and Trump’s consistent incoherence shows an absolute lack of any clear policy position towards Cuba, aside from one that may economically benefit him and/or his family.
The indictment of Castro is a page taken from Trump’s playbook on Venezuela from earlier this year.There, the administration indicted a sitting head of state, Nicolas Maduro, as a legal pretext for a military intervention, which was labelled an "emergency" and thus not an act of war that would require Congressional approval.
The administration staged a geopolitical coup d’etat involving international kidnapping, acts of war in plain violation of international law and the U.N. Charter, and then imprisoned that leader as a message to the world of what happens to those who defy US interests. Such indictments serve as purportedly fixed legal fictions for shifting political pretexts.
In Venezuela it was supposedly the state’s support for criminal enterprises and gangs, which was the justification for the Trump administration’s stated reason for the extrajudicial killing of nearly 200 civilians in piracy actions in the Caribbean. Once Maduro was kidnapped and jailed, the administration has stopped talking gangs and narcotrafficking rings.
In Cuba, the Justice Department’s indictment of Raul Castro is a clear response to the political forces that commanded it. As the island nation is not complying rapidly enough to the changes demanded by Washington, the administration has escalated its threats, military preparations, and legal actions, albeit largely symbolic in nature.
Rubio’s Escalation Of Threats As Campaign Messaging
For decades, Marco Rubio has pushed for privately what the Cuban-American community in south Florida has not achieved in nearly 70 years: to run Cuba’s political and economic system remotely from Miami and Washington.
These remote "owners" of Cuba have driven and financed Rubio’s political career, leading to this moment where he is adamantly though unsuccessfully trying to sell the American public that Cuba is a national security threat while simultaneously telling Cubans that their government is too weak to protect them.
Source:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/manufacturing-consent-trumps-invasion-cuba