The Velatium

Most people in the West still misunderstand the Iranian regime. They think it survives because people genuinely love the system. That’s not how modern authoritarian regimes survive. The Islamic Republic survived because it systematically destroyed every rival movement that helped create the revolution in 1979. Liberals. Leftists. Student groups. Women’s organizations. Ethnic minorities. Dissidents inside the clergy itself. Many of them believed they were building a freer Iran. Instead, they helped build the machine that would eventually imprison, execute, purge, and erase them. That is the part of the story most headlines never explain. The regime was not consolidated through consensus. It was consolidated through fear, war, ideological control, and the elimination of alternatives. Once you understand that history, everything happening today suddenly makes sense: — the crackdowns — the censorship — the IRGC — the prison system — the internet blackouts — the paranoia — the endless anti-Western rhetoric It’s not random. It’s structural. And millions of Iranians have spent decades trapped inside the consequences. That realization is what led me to write Before the Veil Came Down. #Iran #IranProtests #MiddleEast #Geopolitics #IRGC #History #Politics #IranianPeople a.co/d/0e7A6Gno

El bloqueo criminal contra #Cuba es el principal obstáculo para nuestro desarrollo económico y social. Nadie honesto puede negarlo. El cerco energético nos impide adquirir los combustibles imprescindibles para garantizar la vitalidad de la nación. #TumbaElBloqueo

This is the best possible news hook for The Velatium right now. Here’s the post: Washington está ensayando escenarios militares para un colapso cubano “tan pronto como este verano.” Nadie está hablando de lo que eso significa para los 11 millones de personas adentro. La estrategia tiene nombre: aceleracionismo. Asfixiar económicamente al régimen hasta que colapse. Sanciones contra GAESA, acusaciones contra Raúl Castro, bloqueo energético. Un funcionario lo resumió así: “El régimen no tiene tiempo. Nosotros sí.” Puede que tengan razón sobre el régimen. Pero los apagones de 22 horas no los sufre el régimen. Los sufren las familias que cocinan con leña en La Habana esta noche. Los sufren los hospitales que operan sin electricidad. Los sufren los niños que van a la escuela mañana en la oscuridad. Esto ya ocurrió antes. En los años 90, la estrategia también fue la presión económica. El régimen sobrevivió. Los cubanos pagaron la deuda — con hambre, con éxodo, con años perdidos que ningún organismo internacional documentó con honestidad. Cuando el régimen caiga — si cae — la pregunta no será qué hizo Washington. La pregunta será qué le pasó a la gente adentro mientras el mundo debatía geopolítica. Esa pregunta es la que nadie quiere responder. Es la que nosotros documentamos.

The internet blackout is only one layer. The regime also deploys the Basij — a neighborhood surveillance militia with an estimated 300,000 active members whose job is to monitor, report, and when necessary, fight demonstrators street by street. The blackout controls the signal. The Basij controls the ground.

🇮🇷 Iran blocked the internet during the January uprising to bury the evidence. It didn't work. The videos of the protests are out now since the internet has been restored.

Cuban children are going to school tomorrow in cities that have had no electricity for 20+ hours a day. Nobody in this debate is talking about them. The current argument: the U.S. says the blockade pressures the regime. The regime says it’s collective punishment. International organizations call it a humanitarian crisis. All three are talking about policy. None of them are talking about what it feels like to be 8 years old in Havana right now — your food rotting, your hospital running on fumes, your family cooking with firewood in the dark. Here is what every official narrative erases: this isn’t new. Cuban children went hungry to school throughout the 1990s. Parents skipped meals so their kids could eat. The regime called it the Special Period. International organizations called it “foundational metrics battling contemporary challenges.” The language changes. The children don’t. Cuba’s electricity grid runs on eight power plants, some over 40 years old. The regime had 65 years to build something better. It didn’t. It built monuments, military capability, and an international PR operation. The infrastructure debt is paid by civilians. It always has been. People are in the streets of Havana right now. Not because of U.S. foreign policy. Because their food is rotting and their children are sitting in the dark. That’s the story. Not the geopolitics. The people. We document what populations actually live inside these systems — not what governments say, not what institutions sanitize. If that matters to you, follow. 📖 The Island That Swallowed Its Children — available now at thevelatium.com

The Pentagon is positioning assets around Cuba. The USS Nimitz strike group is in the Caribbean. 2,500 Marines are prepping off Virginia. Here is what that conversation is missing. The Cuban regime has survived every external pressure for 65 years by doing one thing consistently: making the population pay the cost. Sanctions tightened in the 90s. The regime didn’t collapse. Cuban children went hungry to school. Parents skipped meals so their kids could eat. The state called it the Special Period and presented it to the world as temporary hardship. It wasn’t hardship. It was a population used as a buffer. Whatever happens next — military, diplomatic, or nothing — the people inside that island are not a strategic variable. They are the people this regime has been consuming for six decades. That distinction matters. It always gets lost. The Island That Swallowed Its Children — available now. thevelatium.com

La tan cacareada "ayuda" de EEUU a Cuba de los 100 millones, para qué? que representa? cuando me perjudica anualmente su bloqueo impuesto en más de 7 mil millones! Solo necesitamos que levanten el Bloqueo que ya dura más de 60 años! #CeseBloqueoGenocida

The embargo is a legitimate debate. What isn’t debatable is this: the Cuban government’s primary obligation is to its own people, not to winning a geopolitical standoff with Washington. Every government that uses an external enemy to justify internal repression is making a choice. The CDRs, the ration cards, the exit permits, the one-party state — none of that is the embargo.

The truth is both governments have oppressed cuba for 60+ years, the cuban government and the US government. Knowing that the people in power in cuba keep and steal the money and goods from cubans, oppressing the cuban government doesn't oppress the cuban government as much as it oppresses the cuban people. Both governments, the Cuban and the American have oppressed the cuban people for over 60 years.

"When I see the people in the US thinking that Cuba is great, I see a result of the propaganda. Don't fall for it. It's taken us 67 years, and we're knocking on the door of the United States saying, 'help us.'" Cubans who escaped communism firsthand are watching the same propaganda that destroyed their country work its way through America. This conversation is a warning. The Cuban Roundtable. Today, 11 AM ET on Rumble.

The regime threatening the Strait is the same regime that has spent forty-five years controlling every Iranian woman’s body, executing political prisoners by the thousands, and building a theocratic system its own population has been trying to dismantle. The Strait is the part the world notices. Iranians have been living the rest of it since 1979.

🚨 JUST IN: The US military has STRUCK Iranian drones and destroyed a drone-launching unit, after Iran FIRED at a US commercial ship — Axios Iran had reported EXPLOSIONS in Bandar Abbas, along the Strait These are SELF DEFENSE strikes again, and an official told Reuters that they were to protect US forces and maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. A military site was targeted that posed a threat. Good, we have EVERY right to defend our interests during the ceasefire! 🇺🇸

La desconexión que describes no es accidental. Es estructural. El régimen siempre tuvo dos capas: los que pedían sacrificio y los que nunca lo vivieron. Esa brecha entre el discurso oficial y la realidad cotidiana es exactamente lo que hace que el argumento del bloqueo funcione — distrae de lo que viene desde adentro.

“El bloqueo hoy está más presente que nunca”. Estas son las declaraciones de Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, sobrino nieto de Fidel y Raúl Castro, que han vuelto a encender el debate sobre la realidad que vive Cuba. El verdadero “bloqueo” se percibe en las limitaciones cotidianas que enfrentan los ciudadanos dentro del propio sistema. A esto se suma la polémica en torno a su figura, ya que mientras se insiste en la necesidad de sacrificio y resistencia, tiene familiares viviendo en Estados Unidos. Este contraste ha alimentado críticas y cuestionamientos sobre el discurso oficial y la desconexión entre quienes toman decisiones y la realidad diaria de la población. REDACCIÓN

@MagJorgeCastro @MarioJPenton El problema no es solo que Cuba sea un estado fallido. Es que fue diseñado para funcionar así — extraer hacia arriba, distribuir lo mínimo, y sobrevivir a cualquier presión externa culpando al enemigo de afuera. Esa arquitectura no cambia con declaraciones.

⚠️⚠️#Ahora. Marco Rubio ante Trump sobre Cuba: "Así que estaremos hablando de eso y trabajando en ello... sabes, queremos algo bueno para el pueblo cubano." "Y con suerte habrá un buen resultado allí para ellos. Tiene que haberlo. Está a 90 millas de nuestras costas." "Y tener un estado fallido, a 90 millas de nuestras costas, es una amenaza para la seguridad nacional de Estados Unidos."

GAESA is the part that rarely gets explained. It’s not just a company — it’s the mechanism by which the military controls tourism, imports, exports, and remittances while the population operates on ration cards. The incompetence Rubio describes is real. The extraction is deliberate.

@StateDept @ReyAnthonyFL GAESA controlling 70% of the economy while Cubans ration food isn’t incompetence. It’s the architecture. The regime was never built to serve the population — it was built to survive at the population’s expense.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Cuba is in a lot of trouble because unfortunately for them it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. We want something good for the Cuban people. Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.

@EricLDaugh @ElenaOteroChav2 What Rubio is describing isn’t mismanagement. It’s a system working exactly as designed — concentrate resources at the top, distribute just enough to prevent collapse, blame external enemies for the gap. Cuba didn’t fail. It was built this way.

🚨 NOW: Secretary Rubio just MIC DROPPED Cuba's failed Communist regime "Cuba's in a LOT OF TROUBLE. Unfortunately, for them, it's run by a bunch of INCOMPETENT communists. Being communist is bad. Being an incompetent communist is the WORST." 🔥 "The country's been taken over by this company called GAESA that basically controls 70% of the economy. None of the money in that company goes to help the Cuban people, none of it." "So we'll be talking to that and we'll be working on it. You know, we want something good for the Cuban people." "And hopefully there'll be a good outcome there for them. There needs to be. It's 90 miles from our shores." "And having a failed state, 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States."

@DerechaDiarioUS Para el régimen, solo tiene derecho a opinar sobre Cuba quien acepta la narrativa oficial. Es el mismo mecanismo de control que aplican adentro — pero en versión diplomática.

🚨🇺🇸🇨🇺 | El canciller de la dictadura cubana, Bruno Rodríguez, ahora alega que el secretario de Estado de Trump, Marco Rubio: "no sabe nada de Cuba, no nació allí". El secretario Marco Rubio es hijo de exiliados cubanos en Florida y es mucho más patriota que los criminales que se robaron la isla para entregarla a la Unión Soviética.

@laderechadiario Mientras la élite militar cubana acumulaba acceso, divisas y poder a través de GAESA, el cubano de a pie sobrevivía con una libreta de racionamiento. Esa brecha no es nueva. Lleva décadas documentada y décadas ignorada.

🚨🇺🇸🇨🇺 | SE VIENE EN CUBA: El ICE de Trump detuvo a Alina Rosales Aguirreurreta, hija del general cubano Ulises Rosales del Toro, uno de los hombres más poderosos del régimen castrista, marcando el segundo arresto dentro de la élite cubana tras la detención de la hermana del presidente de GAESA.

@laderechadiario GAESA no es solo una empresa — es el mecanismo por el que el ejército cubano controla la economía mientras la población no tiene luz ni comida. Lo que está colapsando no es solo un régimen político. Es un sistema de extracción que siempre funcionó hacia adentro primero.

@MarioNawfal The power vacuum framing misses something. Cuba’s collapse isn’t new — it’s the endpoint of a system that was always built to extract from its population, not serve it. The lights going out is the latest symptom. The architecture that caused it has been in place for sixty years.

🇨🇺🇺🇸 Cuba is just 90 miles from Florida and sits astride key shipping lanes for U.S. Gulf trade. Right now, the island is in a free-fall economy, collapsing, with lights literally going out for hours every day after Venezuelan subsidies dried up. A failing state with a power vacuum that is close to the U.S., on top of critical trade routes, is a national security problem waiting to explode. Trump talks tough on the hemisphere; Cuba could test whether it’s real. Source: Chiragmakani-x5x YT

El bloqueo lleva décadas siendo la explicación oficial para todo. Lo que no explica es por qué el control sobre la vida cotidiana del cubano viene desde adentro, no desde afuera. La pregunta que el canciller nunca responde es por qué las familias cubanas pasan necesidad mientras el Estado financia exportaciones de revolución a otros países. “Nuestro pueblo.”dice! El mismo pueblo al que el régimen le exige permiso para salir de la isla, le asigna raciones, le prohíbe empresa privada, y le encarcela si protesta. El canciller habla en nombre de un pueblo que no puede hablar por sí mismo.

Ofrecí entrevista a @FoxNews, donde reiteré que #Cuba no es una amenaza para #EEUU. Es el gobierno de ese país quien amenaza permanentemente a nuestro pueblo con una agresión militar y el que, mediante castigo colectivo, provoca severos daños a las familias cubanas con un bloqueo recrudecido al extremo, medidas adicionales, sanciones secundarias y un cerco energético. Denunciamos la infame y arbitraria instrucción de cargos penales contra el líder de la Revolución cubana, General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz. Es un acto moralmente infame, que abusa de la jurisdicción de las Cortes estadounidenses, manipula el lugar del derribo de los aviones ocurrido en el espacio aéreo y marítimo del territorio cubano; obvia las misiones terroristas e ilegales que cumplieron estos frecuentemente, en violación de leyes estadounidenses, y desconoce el derecho a la legítima defensa de los Estados. youtube.com/watch?v=qvwMg_…

@_TereFelipe_ El régimen siempre tiene una respuesta para la prensa. Lo que no tiene respuesta es por qué los cubanos se siguen yendo

Periodista de Fox New: Rubio me dijo que el régimen cubano representa una amenaza para la seguridad nacional. Mencionó drones militares... 🇨🇺 Canciller cubano, Bruno Rodríguez: Cuba es una isla pequeña. 10 millones de habitantes. ¿Con base en qué lógica? ¿Cuál sería el sentido común detrás de la idea de que Cuba podría amenazar a una superpotencia nuclear? En segundo lugar, tendremos que preguntarle al secretario de Estado si tiene alguna evidencia. Lo he escuchado mentir una y otra vez sobre estos temas.

@Acyn a.co/d/0i8RABAK

FOX: Rubio told me that the Cuban regime poses a national security threat. He mentioned military drones…. Cuban FM: Cuba is a small island. 10 million inhabitants. Based on what logic? What would be the common sense behind the idea that Cuba could threaten a nuclear superpower? Second, we will have to ask the secretary of state if he has any evidence. I have heard him lie on and on regarding these issues.