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.
China and US is a two way relationship. China gives US things (cars, solar panels, electronics etc) in return for Dollars which previously they could use to import but is getting less and less useful since they have accumulated trillions of it and with sanctions on Russia and Iran but they still have gulf states.
If US were to escalate the trade war, US loses access to the Chinese goods (which will lead to a decline in American standard of living if Government doesn’t increase domestic production). Given that American government is incompetent I don’t think there will be much central planning so it has to be less goods.
But it’ll also hurt China because they will have to find some place else to sell goods to or increase domestic consumption. It can increase spending and sell to its own people (which it has been doing more since 2010s) but it can’t do it instantly because that would push the economy beyond capacity (atleast in some sectors).
That’s why I think it’ll be a slow decline of the dollar. Or, US could do something stupid, ban all trade with China which would be a disaster and people would revolt.
The US doesn’t lose access to Chinese goods, they simply get to the US through a longer route via third party countries.
This was what everyone thought would happen to Russia if the US and EU sanction them, but in the end Western goods still end up in Russia.
It is true that inflation will be worse in the US, and Chinese manufacturers will also lose their profit. So the damage is still there.
However, the US can print an infinite amount of money, while China cannot. So in a full fledged financial war against China, a hot war is still the path of least resistance because all the heightened contradictions have to be resolved somehow.
Yeah this is definitely true for US imports from China but I would bet the reverse wont be true for American exports to China when it is now able to manufacture their own competitive alternatives.
I always thought and I still believe part of the US caution towards China is the fact big tech still have a significant share of their profits in China, for Apple it is like 20% of their entire bottom line is from China. This share can’t be recovered anywhere else since overall global poverty is increasing. Even if Marx wasn’t correct about the falling rate of profit, US tech megacorps can’t afford to lose access to the CN market.
It is all happening as we watch, Huawei sales are growing massively while Apple is stagnating. How many Pelosis are heavily invested in Apple stocks right now? Which is why this is among other reasons they are attempting to isolate China from chip production and create a permanent dependency.
I think the important question is how can a wittle proletariat like ourselves increase the overall suffering of Americans?
Americans are already being squeezed by their own bourgeoisie. They are not getting any real benefits from US imperialism - the cheap Chinese goods they are getting also means the destruction of their domestic industrial base (which necessarily includes the loss of labor bargaining power), stagnating real wages and increasing reliance on debt simply to survive in the richest country in the world.
It is the bourgeois ruling class who benefits from all this.
Dollars for gold is an obvious outlet, no?