Well, that was fast.

Seems the Biden administration canard that COVID mismanagement from Cuban authorities is behind the massive protests engulfing all of Cuba didn't go over very well.

Everyone saw the pictures of thousands of starving-thin Cubans clad in rags crying "libertad!" and waving the American flag — a flag they had been taught from birth was evil incarnate.  What we saw was effectively a slave revolt, given that these people have absolutely no freedoms, and the uprising was leaderless and spontaneous.  It could easily devolve into Ceaușescu stuff, given that nothing will change communists otherwise.

So Joe Biden, or whoever writes his press releases, released a semi-choate statement about the protests in Cuba that tried to recognize reality, but still failed to grasp the problem:

We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba's authoritarian regime. The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.

Biden's still sticking to his story on COVID, but now he's got "freedom" in there somewhere.  He's now calling the protests a "universal" right rather than a Cuban right because Cubans generally go to jail after protests — just ask the Ladies in White.

Though it was an improvement over previous statements, his claim that Cuba is an "authoritarian" rather than "totalitarian" dictatorship remained disgusting.  If 62 years of iron-grip one-party power with total control over every aspect of human life isn't textbook "totalitarian," nothing is. 

Biden also writes in a right for Cubans to "freely determine their future" as if any communist totalitarian state would ever allow that — their dungeons are full of political prisoners, the latest crop being artistic community people, such as artists and rappers, who've seen numerous arrests in recent weeks for committing...art.

Worse still, Biden seems to think the Cubans need "services" for their "needs" rather than just chucking the whole evil dictatorship out, which is what they want.  Apparently, Biden thinks that throwing money at the problem works as well in Cuba as it does here.  His "enriching themselves" line, in an implicit reference to the Castroite oligarchy's wealth, is a good one, but coming from him, it sounds funny: guess he would know about "enriching," what with his junkie son selling his paintings for $500,000.

Over at the State Department, assistant secretary Julie Chung, who earlier blamed the whole crisis on COVID and apparently praised Cuba's white-coat slavery program of sending doctors abroad, has backtracked a little, too.  I wrote about her yesterday here.

It goes to show that COVID seems to be fading a bit as the official Biden party line on Cuba, and now the empty statements of "support" are coming out.

But the Bidenites still can't bring themselves to utter the "c" word — communism — as being at the root of the uprising, which would require calling for an end to the hellish, hateful regime that has left the country a sump of poverty, oppression, and unusually cruel inequality.

Out on the left, it's worth noting that Biden's leftist base is heavily pressuring him to give Cuba's communist oppressors the things they want, which is to say blaming the U.S. embargo for the protests, and calling on him to end it.  The problem isn't communism, you see; it's the embargo, an argument the Castroites have been making since the 1960s.

The nonsense started at the top from the catbird seat of the socialist hellhole itself.

Here's what Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba's frontman for the ruling communist oligarchy, says he thinks he's entitled to, now that millions of Cubans are marching in the streets against his government, waving the U.S. flag, burning portraits of Fidel Castro, and calling for his ouster.

According to the Miami Herald:

"All this discontent, these feelings of dissatisfaction, what is the ultimate cause of all that? It's the blockade," Díaz-Canel said during a press conference that was broadcast live on Cuban TV and live-streamed on YouTube on Monday. "This is part of the U.S. playbook to destabilize us, to generate chaos, to break our will and spirit." He said social media has allowed the U.S. to amplify its "genocidal" campaign against Cuba.

This is pretty comical, coming from a guy who can shut down the Internet at the flip of a dictator's baton, and already has.

The embargo, the embargo, the embargo — it's always the embargo.  And Jen Psaki, in a rare stopped-clock moment, did speak the truth about what that U.S. embargo actually amounts to in her presser yesterday:

Q    You hinted at this, but the President of Cuba did directly accuse the United States of basically fomenting these protests because of the embargo and that leading to a lack of medicine and the other things.  Do you have a specific response to him?

MS. PSAKI:  Well, I'd first say that the U.S. embargo allows humanitarian goods to reach Cuba.  We exidite [sic] — expedite any request to export humanitarian or med- — medical supplies to Cuba.  That continues to be the case.  

And the United States regularly authorizes the export of agricultural products, medicine, medical equipment, and humanitarian goods to Cuba — and, since 1992, has authorized the export of billions of dollars of those goods to Cuba.  

So that's simply inaccurate in terms of the facts that are stated.

Biden's leftist base, which loves Castro, though is aping the call.

Ben Burgis, a radical left-wing professor on the far-left Jacobin website, writes:

If the US government truly wanted to help the Cuban people, there's an easy and obvious way: end the sanctions. Every single one of the shortages that protesters are talking about has at least been worsened by the US embargo. The answer isn't more intervention. It's less.

Memo to Burgis: Embargos are about trade.  You can have trade only with companies.  Who owns the companies in Cuba?  Bingo: the Cuban oligarchs.  Lifting the embargo lets them steal from and exploit Cuba's workers just a little longer.

Biden's own Twitter feed, where he released his statement, is brimming with comments from radical leftists blaming the U.S. embargo for the protests and calling on Biden to end what little is left of it, same as the tyrants the Cubans are protesting want, too. 

We stand with the Cuban people as they bravely assert their fundamental and universal rights, and as they all call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering. https://t.co/KGY3MFfsw0

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 12, 2021

It's not communism, you see — it's the embargo.

Ben Rhodes, crafter of the Obama opening to Cuba several years ago, where Obama did "the wave" for the cameras at some ball game in Havana with now-retired communist dictator Raúl Castro, clearly promulgates this Castroite line, too, having a stake in seeing the U.S. continue its Democrat love-fest with the dictatorship.

Rhodes told Politico:

The administration should "figure out ways to engage the Cuban people, which necessitate taking off some sanctions both to improve their lives and [deal with] things like Covid," Rhodes said. "I think ultimately that engaging Cubans is more empowering than thinking you can keep them in this pressure cooker."

Pay no attention to the fact that the Cuban military owns all the companies, the better to spy on and beat up freedom-loving Cubans, and more money would help with that mission.

Meanwhile, Jen Psaki let the cat of the bag on the Biden administration's inability to pin the problem on communism, as the Cubans are trying to tell them, deciding to outdo COVID-obsessed Chung on the stupidity front:

Q Thank you.  And then on Cuba: You're talking today about how some of these protests are inspired by people exhausted with the government.  Why is it that yesterday the State Department was saying that this was all happening out of concern about rising COVID cases?

MS. PSAKI:  Well, I would say first that the protests were just happening yesterday.  We're still assessing what is motivating and, of course, is driving all of the individuals who came to the streets.  

But we know that when I — we say "exhaustion," the — the manner by which the people of Cuba are governed, that can cover a range of issues, whether it's economic suppression; media suppression; lack of access to health and medical supplies, including vaccines.  There are a range of reasons and voices we're hearing from people on the ground who are protesting.

Q    So when these protesters are yelling "freedom" and "enough," there are people within the administration who think they're saying, "freedom from rising COVID cases"?

MS. PSAKI:  Again, I would say that when people are out there in the streets protesting and complaining about the lack of access — to economic prosperity, to the medical supplies they need, to a life they deserve to live — that can take on a range of meanings.  

There's a global pandemic right now.  Most people in that country don't have access to vaccines.  That certainly is something we'd love to help with.

 They're still trying to assess "the motive" behind the protests.

And shipping Cuba some COVID vaccines should fix the problem.  Ship 'em some free COVID vaccines, and everyone will go away happy.

Sound like an administration that knows what it's doing?  Like the Obamatons, who were unable to mouth the words "Islamist" or "terrorists," these Bidenites can't say the word "communism."  The Cubans themselves are trying to tell them and they can't listen.  What's more, the problem will never be resolved until the problem is identified and called by its rightful name.  They can't do that, and that's the root of their pathetic response.  Maybe that's all because they have too many lefties in their camp who are still in love with the Castroite dream. 

Image: Twitter screen shot.

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