Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about something that is wildly under-discussed in the news right now, which is that Cuba is about to collapse. And when I say about to collapse, you may think that I am exaggerating. They have literally at this point, 14 to 19 days of oil left. They have had no tanker arrivals since January 9th. The, the tankers that were being sent from Venezuela have been cut off and their last lifeline, which was Mexico, has also been cut off. Why than that? Trump negotiations. So, NAFT is about to, is about to be renegotiated and oh Trump put a lot of pressure on Mexico to cut off. Also, it’s costing Mexico a lot. They spent 3 billion basically in free oil for Venezuela. Over the past just few years I think. Since Why started this person’s administration? Well, Cuba was giving them their slave [00:01:00] doctors for people who don’t know Google. Oh yeah. UBA basically enslaves their, their doctors and was giving them to Mexico as like an exchange. But they did the Venezuela was an also interesting situation ‘cause we’re seeing more and more, venezuela had given Cuba in terms of like loans that Cuba would never pay back, very obviously and stuff like that. $18 billion. And if we look at the elite guard that was killed during the raid, we know that 32 of them, so almost all of the people who died were actually Cubans. So it appeared that Cuba basically controlled like the. The, the, the accusations that Cuba had basically subjugated Venezuela and was just extracting resources from it were accurate. They basically controlled the entire elite guard of the country and most of the major military petitions. Oh. And this is being systemically reversed right now. Mm-hmm. And I note here that another thing you’re not seeing if you’re watching mainstream news right now is that Venezuela has actually made pretty. Big changes. Not only have they stopped sending [00:02:00] money and oil to Cuba but they have started releasing hundreds. I think now we’re at 300, but it shows no signs of slowing down political prisoners. So we are actually seeing change in Venezuela. It’s just Simone Collins: alright, Malcolm Collins: Trump can. Dunk on it too much. Mm-hmm. Or it would look bad for the woman who’s in power now. Right. You know, we have to be very nice about all of our political wins that we’re making in Venezuela and very graceful about it because Yeah. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: You don’t want too many people asking. Did she cooperate with you guys to get rid of Maduro? Simone Collins: Yeah, like sad. You wanna look a little matchy matchy? That would not be good. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know, you don’t wanna look too matchy. Matchy. So she constantly complains. But in terms of what we actually wanna see happen in Venezuela, that’s what we’re seeing right now. Simone Collins: Wow. Malcolm Collins: And I note here that how bad things have gotten in Cuba is, is not a, like this is happening completely out of nowhere scenario. So, Simone Collins: well I have to ask. Do they not have oil reserves? We have oil reserves. By the way, if you’re [00:03:00] wondering if Cuba has oil deposit somewhere, , they do. But, , in 20 12, 3 deep water, more than 300 meters of water exploration wells were drilled by Italian platform Scarborough nine. , And, , none of the three found commercial quality of oil or gas, which jeopardized Cuba’s hopes to find hydrocarbons to boost its economy. So basically they, they technically have some around the island, , but , none of the commercial explorations have ever found a way to reach them in a cash positive manner. Malcolm Collins: Cuba is a little island. Simone? No. Cuba Simone Collins: doesn’t have one. Can have some kind of, I don’t know, tank. This is my out of touch. I I have to ask the out of touch questions that everyone else is asking. ‘cause I’m not the only out of touch person here. Malcolm Collins: No, they’re completely out. So their economy last year, 20% was the tourism industry. And this is despite the fact that tourism has been crashing for them. So things have been getting much, much worse for them. Simone Collins: Oh, so the world. Top destination for male sex workers is going out of faith. Oh, [00:04:00] this is because the younger people aren’t having sex anymore. Malcolm Collins: That’s a, Simone Collins: so what kind of woman wants to go to Cuba anymore? Malcolm Collins: There’s been a combinations of factors that hit their tourism industry. One was Trump reinstated distinctions that Obama had lifted. Two Simone Collins: was, now we actually know this, when, when we ran our travel agency, we used to have a decent amount of traffic to Cuba. Yeah. And then after a while flights got kind of weird. And it was harder to get people there. The visa situation got very complicated and then we started having banking problems like, oh, do you do any business with Cuba? And then like we, we got shut out of various things. Like we as a travel agency were strongly disincentivized from. Facilitating travel to Cuba, even if we’re talking like a student trip. At one point we helped to facilitate a student trip, like a tour to Cuba for, you know, cultural reasons and stuff. So I can totally see why tourism is down, not just because of sanctions and stuff, but because the very operators and companies [00:05:00] facilitating that travel were really. There were a lot of friction was added to the process. Well, Malcolm Collins: it’s not just that. There was basically to give a bit of history of what happened is Obama opened everything. And much like when apartheid in it in South Africa, a bunch of people went in thinking, oh my God, look at this opportunity. Look at these green fields. Simone Collins: Oh, but you go, and the only thing that’s. Cool is the male sex workers and everything else is crappy. Malcolm Collins: We’ll get to that. But, so a lot of travel started happening to Cuba and a lot of people said, oh, we’ll invest in it. So it was all subsidized and sort of over the top of what the economy could actually handle. Oh, even before the new sanctions came in, many of the travel providers that we were operating with that had been set up during that boom period were already about to go bankrupt or had already gone bankrupt before Trump sanctions. It’s just not that many people actually wanted to go to Cuba. Is, is what we really learned. And really the only reason people reliably went to Cuba, which as Simone said, was male sex workers. That was the core thing. So it was mostly older, like [00:06:00] middle-aged women and gay men. That’s, that’s who was going for male Cuban sex workers. Simone Collins: This one is down in my head. Malcolm Collins: Right. And but to give you an idea of how bad things have been in Cuba since 2021, did you know that around 10%, this is only since 2021, we’re talking five years, 10% of the Cuban population has immigrated out of the country. Simone Collins: Okay. So they haven’t made it impossible to escape. I thought it was mostly a get on a raft and hope for the best kind of situation. So it’s not Malcolm Collins: well, having 10% of your population leave. And keep in mind the population that leaves has almost been entirely under 40. So what is their working population? Cuba has a worse TFR than the United States. They’re around 1.5 to 1.3 from what I’ve seen in various studies. They are extremely effed on that point. But you were saying like, do they have reserves of oil? The reason I was emphasizing the importance of their tourism industry is that even with the urist industry being like their lifeline right now, sure. The hotels regularly go with blackouts. Yeah. So no [00:07:00] power. They go, we Simone Collins: had issues with that. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Without running water. Mm-hmm. They go without, so, so even like their key industry, and you’ve gotta understand if you’re like, what does it mean to run out of oil in a matter of days at this point? What this means is you have. No factories operate almost all of Cuba’s energy is made with gas. Mm-hmm. So you have no light, no electricity. Your farming equipment doesn’t work. Simone Collins: So, wait, they, they’re electrical grid you think is based on, Malcolm Collins: it is based like 70% oil gas? Yeah. Simone Collins: No. Okay. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And the reason they built it that way is ‘cause they were getting free gas from Venezuela. Simone Collins: That helps. Malcolm Collins: So they, they have no electricity, no farming equipment, no way to get from one place to another like this. God. Simone Collins: And those old cars aren’t exactly fuel efficient. Oh, no. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: The scale of the badness is very, very, very bad. Simone Collins: This is not good. Okay. Malcolm Collins: And so we’ve Simone Collins: gotta No, no. [00:08:00] And then let’s say that this happens and then a bunch of people. In, in pretty dire straits actually hop on more rafts and float over to Miami, and then ICE just takes them, I don’t know, flies them to Somalia. This is not gonna be good. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It is, it is not, well, it could be good depending on the outcome. So I really think we have never seen a president so well positioned to end this. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: And we see that from the way that he’s done. Bo is he gonna Simone Collins: port to Rico, Malcolm Collins: With Greenland, which has been really, really impressive. No. As well as the, what he did was Venezuela and the subsequent deal afterwards. So, what, what, I’ll get to this. So what we, is Simone Collins: he gonna be throwing toilet paper rolls at them next? Malcolm Collins: Did he throw toilet paper rolls at Simone Collins: somebody in Puerto Rico? Don’t you remember when he was like Puerto Rico