Image is of Cuba’s National People’s Power Assembly.
The most recent geopolitical news around Cuba is the arrival this week of four Russian vessels, including a nuclear submarine - not carrying any nukes, (un)fortunately - to Havana. This will, in Putin’s words, merely be a visit celebrating historical ties and no laws are being broken. Nonetheless, it’s not hard to imagine how American politicians and analysts are taking the news, especially as it comes shortly after Russia promised an “asymmetrical” response to further NATO involvement in Ukraine (notably, officially allowing the use of US weapons such as missiles in Russia, albeit in a small part of Russian territory, near the border).
Meanwhile, China has been increasingly co-operating with Cuba to overcome the economic hardship created by American sanctions. China has recently re-allowed direct flights to Cuba and has recently donated some small photovoltaic plants as part of an initiative to eventually boost the Cuban energy grid by 1000 MW - and any electrical expansion helps as Cuba is plagued by blackouts which last most of the day. Additionally, the EU has made meaningful contributions to Cuba’s energy situation too, with large solar installations. Hopefully, the Belt and Road Initiative will help preserve the Cuban revolution against reactionary forces as the power of US sanctions wanes. The proximity of Cuba to the United States makes this much more challenging than it would be for countries elsewhere, however. Similarly to the situation in Mexico, it seems unlikely that the US’s influence over Cuba will massively diminish for decades to come unless there is a catastrophic internal collapse in the American authoritarian regime.
The Havana Syndrome will continue until American morale declines.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Cuba! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Did anyone else have the idea drilled into their head during school that Communism created mass poverty and a failed state? I’ve noticed that a lot of European countries that view Communism as a failed relic to leave behind are okay with the failed ideology of fascism.
I think a part of it has to do with fascism not having the same “failed state” stereotype given to it. I remember hearing implications that Nazi Germany was an evil place but had a strong economy. Something you won’t hear being said about the USSR. At least at the basic public school levels.
Wouldn’t surprise me if intellectually incurious people just assume that fascism will create a strong economy that will wipe out undesirables while Communism will make everybody equally poor.
I think basically everyone is, hence the “communism is when no food” meme. That’s what they told me in school.
From the UK, and that is definitely the image we’re given of it. Austere concrete blocks in Eastern Europe, empty shelves in supermarkets, boxy cars that are twenty years behind the times. If we’re taught anything specific about USSR’s economy in general education, it’s that central planning resulted in famines and shortages, partly because planners could not have enough information about the market, and partly because of corruption from the producers who had no market incentive to exceed quota or become more efficient.
At the same time, in the first year of my economics degree, I was taught that the USSR kept pace with, and at times, even exceeded US GDP until around the seventies. There were lots of graphs.
Classic commie inefficiency
the seventies is when a lot of the fake GDP financialization stuff took off in the USA, too…
True anecdote from the Khrushchev years: they had so much cornbread, that people fed fresh cornbread to the pigs, they didn’t know what to do with it. It actually tasted good, it was just too much.
What USSR did not have was a plethora of consumer goods: like a 100 different brands of headphones, or 500 different types of soft drinks.
Obviously China nowadays doesn’t have this problem, as they have consumer goods by the shitload, unlike anything seen in history before.
China achieved this at the cost of rising income inequality, though. Entirely part of Deng Xiaoping’s plan (“some regions get rich quicker than others”), but if left unchecked it would’ve been pretty disastrous. Fortunately, recent years have seen a reversal in this policy and it’s the less rich regions that are growing more quickly now.
Western stereotype of communism: you have a small apartment to live in instead of a McMansion and the stores only stock 3 types of pasta, 2 types of toilet paper, and 1 type of tomato
Reality of communism: you now have a small apartment to live in instead of a mud hut with a thatched roof and instead of living on oat mash you now have 3 types of pasta and tomatoes, and you have a flushing toilet instead of a communal bucket also you went to university and have free health care even though your grandparents grew potatoes
It is telling that lots of people use “nazi” as a colloquial term for being perfectionist and highly attentive to detail. It might be derogatory but it still a perpetuation of the myth of Nazi Germany being efficient and the trains running on time.
It’s very common to conflate post-communism 90’s chaos with communism in general.
Hakim has been making videos about some of the countries, very informative.
When I went to school, with the single exception of learning a bit about the French Revolution, the teaching of history and social studies was extremely myopic and limited to the national level. We didn’t learn anything, good or bad, about communism.
This doesn’t mean people here doesn’t know about it, it just means that they get their knowledge from such fine sources as Hollywood movies, internet memes and fear-mongering reactionary pundits.
reporting from
, one of the teachings i remember from high school social studies was: “Cuba was communist and they’re poor but they read good and have lots of doctors so kudos to them i guess?”
Also important to remember that the soviets came to the US and pleaded to slow down the arms race because they had no smoke with the West (think this was post WWII) but the goal of the US was to have them spend themselves into oblivion. So the west kept ratcheting up its arms posture knowing it would be difficult for the soviets to keep pace and provide goods/food for its people.
This is all covered in Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds