Could Hurricane Irma take down the communist military dictatorship in Cuba?  Some amazing photos, several of them from the Babalu blog, show thousands of angry Cubans gathering and protesting on the hurricane-ravaged streets of Havana.

Cuba was slammed by Hurricane Irma, and Cubans have been protesting the failure of the government to give them any assistance after tens of thousands of them lost their shambling homes and all their meager possessions, whereupon they were thrown out on the streets of the already decayed, crumbling capital city.  It didn't take much to blow that shambling rat trap of a city over – and Irma was a monster.  What's more, news had to have spread through Havana and beyond that the Castroite princelings partied royally with "mojitos, caviar, squid, and salmon," in a church, no less, celebrating Our Lady of Charity of Cobre, Vírgen de la Caridad, while millions of Cubans suffered under the terrifying storm.

All of this was ignored by the mainstream media, which are under Castro's thumb, refusing to report anything but good news about the regime or else lose their visas.

It's too soon to say whether such protests really can bring down the hellish communist regime.  Protests over nearly 20 years have done nothing for Venezuela's beleaguered citizens under the socialist dictatorship there, and Venezuela is a Cuban satellite.

All the same, natural disasters have been known to be the beginning of regime change in many places – a relatively recent one was the advent of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake in 1972.  The Sandinista revolution didn't happen overnight, but it did happen.

The sense of there being nothing better coming and the despair of a slow response often do lead to revolutionary regime change.  Cubans as of now have been left to fend for themselves in the rubble.  What do they have to lose?

As Ziva Sahl over at Babalu puts it:

Imagine:

No local police to help
No government support
No building supplies
No electricity, some for over a year
No fresh water
No Mercy
No Freedom

What would you do?

Go see the photos and reports here.