Menu

Recent Items

Will the US Try to Pull a False Flag to Justify Escalating Its War on Cuba?

Posted on by

The Trump administration is capable of just about anything these days, especially when it comes to Cuba, Marco Rubio’s most coveted prize of all. 

This is very much a developing story with sharply conflicting accounts from both sides. On Wednesday, a US-registered speedboat carrying 10 passengers entered Cuban waters. The boat, apparently stolen from the Florida Keys, approached the El Pino channel north of Corralillo, a town in the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, according to an official statement by the Cuban government.

When a vessel belonging to the Cuban coastguard approached the boat seeking identification, the occupants opened fire on the Cuban personnel, wounding the Cuban vessel’s commander. The Cuban border guards returned fire, killing four crew members and injuring the other six.

Interestingly, or perhaps predictably, reports in the Western media have tended to downplay or completely ignore the fact that it was the “civilians” in the US-registered boat who opened fire first. In the following tweet, the Cuban journalist El Necio contrasts the way in which the Spanish news agency EFE reported an earlier US attack on a Venezuelan speedboat with how it reported the incident in Cuban waters:

  • If the US did it, the headline reads: “US attacks suspected drug traffickers…”
  • If Cuba does something similar in its own waters, the headline reads: “Police kill four crew members of civil vessel.”

The way the media frames these kinds incidents is, as always, fundamental. In this current clown world, random boats destroyed from the air by the US military in the complete absence of evidence are described as “narco boats” while a boat filled with armed gunmen that attacks the local coastguard is described as a “civilian vessel”.

NBC News buried the fact that the people on the US-registered vessel initiated the firefight so deep within its article that presumably nobody actually read it. Mission accomplished!

Here’s a video of two of the alleged “civilian” boatmen showing off their wares before the attack:

Here’s the official statement regarding the incident from Cuba’s US embassy:

On the morning of February 25, 2026, a violating speedboat was detected within Cuban territorial waters. The vessel, registered in Florida, United States, with registration number FL7726SH, approached up to 1 nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel, in Cayo Falcones, Corralillo municipality, Villa Clara province.

When a surface unit of the Border Guard Troops of the Ministry of the Interior, carrying five service members, approached the vessel for identification, the crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel.

As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured. The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.

In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.

Investigations by the competent authorities continue in order to fully clarify the events.

Interestingly, while many in the Western media were trying to paint the ten boatmen as civilians, Javier Díaz, a Cuban-American journalist working for Miami-based Univision, the most-watched Spanish-language media network in the US, offered a different story from his Facebook account. From Ciber Cuba (machine translated):

Versions offered by relatives of those involved in the maritime incident that occurred in front of Villa Clara indicate that the Cubans who traveled in the boat registered in Florida would have received prior training in Miami before leaving for the island.

According to Facebook posts by Univision journalist Javier Díaz, who cited testimonies from family members, the group had been preparing on a farm in South Florida after coming together through social networks such as TikTok.

The sources consulted by the reporter maintain that it was not a migratory departure, but a coordinated action with the intention of entering Cuba.

Relatives of some of the participants claim to have lost contact with them hours after they left between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning.

The Cuban government has already released the names of the six detained individuals as well as one of the deceased. Most of them allegedly have prior criminal criminal records involving activity, including for their “alleged involvement in the promotion, planning, organization, financing, support, or execution of terrorist acts in Cuba or abroad.”

US authorities say they are investigating the incident since Cuba’s communist government “cannot be trusted” and must be held “accountable”:

Unsurprisingly, senior members of Miami’s “Gusano Industrial Complex”, as Max Blumenthal likes to call it, are spitting blood. Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez has called for revenge, despite the fact that all reports indicate that the US boat attacked the Cuban vessel. There’s no one more senior in Miami’s GIC than US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said late Wednesday:

“We’re going to find out exactly what happened and who was involved. We’re not going to just take what somebody else tells us.”

Rubio also tried to sow doubts about the Cuban government’s version of events by saying: “it is highly unusual to see shootouts in the open sea like that… It’s something, frankly, that hasn’t happened with Cuba in a very long time.”

The Intercept was one of the few US media outlets that provided what seems to be a more balanced portrayal of what went down. The article, by Nick Turse, whom we have cross posted here many times, mentions that Cuban authorities provided medical treatment to the six injured gunmen, which already makes them way more civilised than their US counterparts:

The Cuban government said on Wednesday that the “injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.” The U.S. government, by contrast, has killed survivors clinging to wreckage or left boat strike victims to drown…

As the article notes, the US military has carried out dozen of attacks on supposed drug boats in the Caribbean, the most recent on Monday, killing three people — not that most people would know that since the Trump administration has gone very quiet on Venezuela’s drug gangs despite continuing to vaporise boats on the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific:

There have now been 44 such attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, killing at least 151 people since September…

The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on Cuba’s Communist government and extreme pain on its people, cutting off foreign oil shipments and other revenue sources that had kept Cuba’s rickety economy afloat. The pain has increased after oil shipments from Venezuela, its main supplier, were halted after the U.S. attacked the South American country, kidnapped its then-president Nicolás Maduro, and began running the country via a puppet regime. Mexico, another major petroleum supplier, also suspended oil shipments under U.S. pressure. This has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe of food, medicine, and fuel shortages, raging inflation, prolonged blackouts, and service cuts at hospitals.

The latest incident invites the obvious question: will the US try to use this incident, and other future incidents like it, to justify escalating its war on Cuba?

In any normal world, which we clearly no longer inhabit, the answer would be no — largely  because the US has already tried to topple Cuba’s communist government so many times and failed, often embarrassingly, each and every time that it would have learnt its lesson by now.  But this is a government that has already attacked eight countries in one year, and is clearly intent on toppling governments on the American continent that do not toe the US line.

Since early January, the Trump administration has imposed a de facto energy blockade of Cuba. It is now allowing Venezuela to sell some oil to Cuba as long as it is not for the benefit of public institutions, including hospitals and schools. It has also used its financial might to pressure dozens of countries around the world, mostly in the Global South, to cease using Cuba’s medical services. The ultimate goal of all these actions is regime change.

As Benjamin Norton notes, there are two possible explanations for what happened on Wednesday:

“Either these were far-right terrorist extremists from Florida who decided on their own to attack Cuba, or they were supported by the US government and are being used to try to justify more direct US intervention in Cuba.”

For the moment, there is no evidence to support the latter, and most reports in the Western media claim that the group was acting on its own initiative. However, when it comes to thinking up false flag attacks on Cuba, the US has over half a century of form. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Pentagon prepared top-secret plans to excuse an attack on the island, notes Turse:

 In the spring of 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a top-secret memorandum titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba.” It described numerous false-flag operations that could be employed to justify a U.S. invasion. These proposals included staging assassinations of Cubans living in the U.S.; developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area … and even in Washington”; a plot to “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)”; faking a Cuban air attack on a civilian jetliner filled with “college students”; and even staging a modern “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters — and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.

Will the Trump administration use this latest maritime incident to justify a military offensive against Cuba just as it used the confected drug cartel allegations against Venezuela’s government to justify kidnapping Maduro and his wife, who are now being denied the right to fund their own legal defence using Venezuelan funds?

In short, the current US government is capable of just about anything, especially when it comes to Cuba, Marco Rubio’s most coveted prize of all. If the Trump administration, with the help of the Western media, can persuade enough US voters that Maduro was a drug kingpin that needed to be toppled, it can surely persuade enough voters that the 10 people who launched the assault on Cuba on Wednesday were freedom fighters.

A propaganda effort to paint the 10 boatmen as democracy-loving activists is already under way, with the Washington Post, which is even more of a CIA mouthpiece since Jeff Bezos took over, leading the charge:

At least one of the dead crew members and one of the survivors were U.S. citizens, a U.S. official said Thursday. The men were not sophisticated mercenaries, relatives said, but poorly trained activists who wanted to send a message.

Some of the men’s families identified them as members of Autodefensa del Pueblo (People’s Self-Defense), a loosely coordinated organization known for asking people in Cuba to put up anti-government signs on walls there and send photos to be posted on social media.

Kiki Naranjo said he founded ADP with Sánchez González about five years ago with “clandestine” support from like-minded individuals on the island. The group has no financial backing or association with any government, Naranjo said…

Michel Ortega Casanova, the U.S. citizen who was killed, had lived in the United States for two decades, La Casa Cuba de Tampa President Angela Chaviano said. He was an active member of the group, which advocates for democratic freedoms on the island, and founded the Tampa chapter of a separate organization that pushes for an end to Cuba’s one-party system and free elections, she said.

Ortega Casanova, a truck driver, “spoke a lot about it being necessary to free Cuba,” Chaviano said, but he never advocated violence. “He was a hardworking family member,” she said. “What they’re saying about him being a terrorist is completely untrue.”

Oh, what a tangled web they weave…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Subscribe to Post Comments
15 comments

  1. mrsyk

    the group had been preparing on a farm in South Florida Sugar farm maybe? Paging Alfonso Fanjul!
    If there is a proper investigation this detail should be cleared up without difficulty. Mind you, I’m not holding my breath.

  2. The Rev Kev

    Gotta say kudos to the Cuban coastguard. Five of them in a patrol boat confronted these ten nutjobs in their speedboat. These guys opened fire first and wounded the commander of that patrol boat leaving only four coasties. Despite being outnumbered four to ten, they killed four of these guys and wounded the other six before taking them prisoners. Just goes to show you that no matter the nation, never underestimate a coastie. Seems that the US is now saying that that speedboat was “stolen” but perhaps those six prisoners would be able to confirm that. They might be able to confirm a lot of other things.

    1. leaf

      I think Col. Wilkerson had a video with Nima either yesterday or the day before where he mentioned that the Cuban coast guard is the most competent in Central America, ahead of Mexico.

  3. Tom Stone

    The program to assassinate Castro was called “ZR Rifle” and coordinated by Johnny Rosselli a made man in the Mafia.
    Where do I find the words?
    Depraved, evil, cruel and stupid to the point of Insanity and of course cheered on by the “Free and Fearless US Press”.
    Rubio is a piece of work…Will the US try to install Pahlavi if things don’t go according to plan in Iran?
    The Trump administrations “Foreign “Policy” is objectively insane and more and more people are noticing that fact.
    This year is gonna be lit, with a flamethrower.

    1. The Rev Kev

      There were hundreds of CIA attempts to kill Castro over the decades. One was to lace the inside of his diving suit with poison but my personal favourite was a plan to place explosives in one of his cigars. Straight out of a cartoon.

      1. xformbykr

        According to a friend who worked for US State Dept. and was stationed in Havana for a time, there is a museum dedicated to the numerous attempts on Castro’s life.

  5. Carolinian

    And yet there was a story yesterday that the Trumpies will allow some Venezuelan oil be sold to private parties in Cuba rather than to its government or military. Perhaps we shouldn’t conclude that a Cuban war is in the offing when the Pentagon seems to have its hands full at the moment with Iran not to mention toilets.

    In a park of our nearby sister city there has been, for decades, a mounted F-86 Saber jet as a monument to a pilot killed at the Bay of Pigs. At this point it seems as mustily retro as those Confederate soldiers standing on their stone columns–many now taken down or moved. Will it take another hundred years for the Cuban Lost Causers in Miami to get over it?

    3. David

      Common sense would dictate that when embroiled in various military escapades, don’t start another. However, Nazi Germany whej embroiled in a war that it could not find a way to end decided the best solution was to invade the Soviet Union. Common sense and nilitary eacapades often have no relation with one another.

  6. Hickory

    If it was a gov’t supported operation, Rubio would have had his story ready instantly and all the news media would be shouting in unison about Cuban tyranny or oppression. Profiles of the dead would be prominently displayed, including sobbing spouses or kids.

    After the MH-17 plane was downed, they blamed Russia instantly with no evidence presented – they were just ready with the accusation. The fact that they weren’t ready with the propaganda here suggests it wasn’t planned with gov’t support.

  7. willful knowledge

    “US authorities say they are investigating the incident since Cuba’s communist government “cannot be trusted” and must be held “accountable”:” I would be ROFLMAO if it was so damn predictable. trump doesn’t need a false flag. He’ll make up some flimsy ass excuse to justify his hunger for chaos.

Comments are closed.