The Patriot Post® · Communism Has Turned Off Cuba's Lights
Cuba is proving once again that socialism — and communism, specifically — is a disastrous system that fails everywhere it is tried. As a result, any nation unfortunate enough to be taken over by this totalitarian system will produce great suffering for the populace.
The island nation has been suffering for weeks from rolling blackouts that last anywhere from 10 to 20 hours. Last week, Cuba’s power grid collapsed for the fourth time in 48 hours. To compound matters, the country was hit by a hurricane.
In response, Cuba’s communist government declared an “energy emergency” and “introduced measures to reduce power use across the country — state workers were told to stay at home, and schools and non-essential industries were closed,” NPR reported.
The problem, as Neal Freyman reports, is this: “To supply its electricity grid, Cuba depends on eight dilapidated power plants that are nearly a half-century old and have received no maintenance in as much as 15 years.” To compensate, “Cuba has also leased seven Turkish-owned vessels — literally floating power plants — that can supply 20% of Cuba’s electricity needs. … But all these plants are kept running by crude oil, and Cuba is increasingly lacking the stuff.”
Of course, Cuba’s communist government blames the lack of resources and fuel on the U.S. for its years-long embargo. Needless to say, Cuba has and does trade with much of the rest of the world, including purchasing oil primarily from Venezuela but also Mexico and Russia. Venezuela, another nation that has collapsed economically thanks to socialism, has slowed down its oil shipments to Cuba.
What is clear is that Cuba is in this mess due to its communist system. But evidently, that reality has not dawned on the folks over at NPR, who recently ran a story with the following headline: “Cuba’s power grid collapses again. Why does this keep happening?”
NPR noted that Cuba’s latest power grid collapse had left the island’s 10 million residents in the dark with no clear estimation as to when the power would be back up. But our nation’s foremost taxpayer-backed media outlet sought to take the communist government’s word for the cause — the U.S. embargo — and particularly pointed to Donald Trump. “Cuba’s economy initially began tanking during the pandemic, when international tourism plummeted and inflation soared,” the article states. “During that same period, former President Donald Trump imposed a range of sanctions on Cuba after re-designating the country a ‘state sponsor of terrorism.’”
Over the last three years, roughly 10% of Cuba’s population has fled, many trying to get into the U.S. As the article notes, “Some analysts say conditions are worse than the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a time known as the Special Period.”
Again, this is what socialism gets you. Yet NPR glaringly avoids that obvious causal connection. Furthermore, the Leftmedia outlet seems unwilling to acknowledge the reason for embargoes and sanctions: They are a diplomatic tool designed to pressure and weaken a rogue regime like that of Cuba.
Apparently, like so much of the Left, NPR views socialism positively and is loath to criticize it for the inherently unjust, destructive, and enslaving system that it is.