cuba

Cuba Welcomes You, Yankee Imperialists!

Hamilton Nolan · 03/17/15 08:51AM

"Each person should feel happy at work. They should feel happy with their task as creators. They should instill all those around them with their revolutionary and creative enthusiasm." — Che Guevara.

U.S. Secretly Created 'Cuban Twitter' to Undermine Castro's Government

Taylor Berman · 04/03/14 06:37AM

For more than two years, the United States secretly funded and developed ZunZuneo, a text-based social media platform, in order to encourage an uprising against the Cuban government, according to a report in the Associated Press. USAID spent at least $1.6 million—money that was publicly earmarked for programs in Pakistan—on the the clandestine project, which, at its peak, reached 40,000 Cubans and involved front companies in Spain and the Cayman Islands.

Taylor Berman · 07/16/13 08:54PM

The Cuban Foreign Ministry released a statement Tuesday, admitting ownership of the weapons found aboard a North Korean ship in Panama on Monday. The "obsolete defensive weaponry," which included anti-aircraft guns and two MiG-21 aircraft, was on its way to North Korea for repair, according to the statement.

Senator Demands Probe into Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Cuban Anniversary

Max Read · 04/09/13 07:20AM

Excuse me, miss: did you really engage in cultural exchange with the Cuban people? Florida Senator Marco Rubio is ringing the alarm over Beyoncé and Jay-Z's fifth-anniversary trip to Cuba last week, which he claims was "seized on for propaganda purposes" by the Castro regime. The brief vacation was apparently given the green light by the Treasury Department, which licenses trips to Cuba for "educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction"; according to the New York Times, the crazy-in-love couple "visited the children's theater group La Colmenita, where Beyoncé danced with little girls dressed as bumblebees," and Beyoncé, apparently feelin' it, "half-danced" during a performance by the Cuban Contemporary Dance Company on Friday, which would seem to qualify (if she were a boy she might have, as her husband did, enjoy "a Cuban cigar on the balcony of their government-owned hotel, the Saratoga"). According to Academic Arrangements Abroad, which planned and arranged the trip, the officials that run this town (well really, who run the world of Cuba) had no foreknowledge of the vacation and "struggled to provide adequate security" (What? Who? we imagine them saying), but worked it out—and got Beyoncé bodies to protect her—in the end. "If interested in what life really like in #Cuba @S_C_," Rubio tweeted, "should have visited persecuted rapper #AngelYunierRemon #99problems&dictatorsareone." Listen, Marco: I know you have sweet dreams of showing Jay-Z and his naughty girl what you got, and I get that it's a hard knock life for politicians representing Cuban exiles—can't knock the hustle for Florida Senators—but surely you can work it out without resorting to bad puns based on Jay-Z and Beyoncé tracks? It's like you're making the songs cry. Move on to the next one. [Reuters | TPM | NYT]