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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    63·
    10 days ago

    My dad has some fabulous brainworms and talking to him is like staring into a maelstrom of western nastiness interspersed with a few inexplicably sane ideas that does not fit into any of the rest.

    • Large parts of Sweden is ruled by cartoonishly brutal Muslim gangs
    • Muslims and Africans should be ethnically cleansed from the west
    • Muslims and Africans who can not be deported should be worked to death in camps
    • However, Nazis are ridiculous morons, and the rise of the AfD is concerning
    • The GDR was brutally looted in the 1990’s
    • People are voting AfD because the established politicians have not solved the real problems. The real problem is the existence of non-white people
    • Meloni and le Pen are okay though because they’re not fascists
    • It was a mistake to create “Israel”, they should have given the Jews Schleswig-Holstein instead
    • “Israel” is a democracy which means they’re good
    • “Israel” is incredibly racist
    • Palestinians should “negotiate” instead of doing armed resistance. They should “make themselves useful” for America and maybe offer them access to natural resources.
    • If Khamas wins it will be much worse for Palestinians than today because then they will live under “a Muslim dictatorship like in Iran” which is worse than getting bombed
    • Wokeness has gone too far
    • Conservative catholics are nasty, their theatrical forms of worship is off-putting and they’re driving people away from the church
    • The Donbas should never have been part of Ukraine
    • However, “we can not allow” Russia to win in Ukraine
    • Ukraine is going to win the war once the west decides to take it seriously and gives them all the good gear they have been holding back until now.
    • China is more scary than Russia because the Russians are primitive
    • China is doing imperialism by offering countries material benefits. This is worse than the western way of forcing themselves on the global south.
    • Western democracy is precious and shows how civilised we are, however all western politicians he can think of are corrupt arseholes.

    I believe him to be a completely ideologically representative sample of the average westerner.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      17·
      10 days ago

      this is entirely incoherent obviously but there are a lot worse people out there even if you don’t count the outright fascists (or alt-right or whatever the Nazis are branding themselves as nowadays). well, maybe not “worse”, but even less informed

      like, if a westerner even has opinions on geopolitics and isn’t just in a hedonically depressed treat-addled stupor then that’s what counts as “informed”. to a certain extent I understand the desire to just stay out of shit and try and survive and grill but that position of not caring is only made possible by their position as a member of the golden billion, supported by the exploitation of 7 billion below them, so I still have a lingering dislike of it. they don’t have to care all the time - and I think deliberately and constantly exposing yourself to footage of atrocities (usually for the sake of “staying informed” or “bearing witness to suffering” inevitably in some culturally Christian sense) is counterproductive if it makes you into a doomer who is incapable of reasoned analysis and most importantly, action. Once you’ve decided you’ve seen enough that you know Israel should be destroyed and Zionism purged, there’s no need to watch the videos of hundreds of people dying in an airstrike. But like, they should care at least a little, hopefully enough to overcome their alienation and make connections to any decent groups in their communities.

    • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      10 days ago

      IDK the actual ethnic cleansing parts are pretty out there and fringe. I don’t think I’d go so far as to call them ideologically representative. Sure, the political policies people tolerate will go so far, but if actually confronted about whether they’d be okay with it, most people would at least reject that end result, and might even start to confront the conditions that would lead to it…ideologically even if not motivated enough to get out there and throw their bodies in the way.

      Anyway, I feel ya on having close relations with these kinds of brainworms. It’s…trying at best, even if the contradictions and shear cartoonishness can be amusing at times.