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.
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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.
Well, Saudi riyal is still pegged (
) to the dollar just like it before.
I believe that US Dollar decline will be much slower happening over next 1-2 decades instead of years.
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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.
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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?
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Dollars for gold is an obvious outlet, no?
Europe isn't joining that. And the US isn't doing it if Europe isn't joining it.
All signs point to Europe turning to China as a means of escaping US vassalisation. The whole landmass is going to grow closer together and there's shit all the US can do about it other than run their war games and cry about how they all come out as a big fat loss for themselves then do nothing.
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a genocidal nuclear war would be a way to end dollar hegemony, unless the evolved octopi in 30 million years discover dollars once again
If China figures out the scaling challenges with renewables (storage, etc.), it's pretty easy to see a path where Europe flips entirely.
Europe's energy transition is the story that's being overlooked because of their sudden loss of cheap gas.
this is my take too.
if you look at graphs of the GBP vs the dollar in terms of global debt, it took essentially the entire period of the 1914-1945 crisis for the dollar to supplant the sterling. If WW2 hadn't broken out it's not even clear if the dollar would have been in charge today, it was only WW2 which guaranteed it. That 30 years featured two of the largest wars humanity has ever fought with tens of millions dead, multiple empires collapsing or clearly on the road to collapse, and one of the greatest depressions and then booms in American history - that is what it took for the dollar to supplant the sterling. we aren't gonna dethrone the dollar because of a conflict in Ukraine and like, some treasury bills business.
if anybody is thinking "oh god, I hope the dollar can be dethroned before the next major crisis in the developing world..." then you are shit out of luck. in fact, we probably have at least 2-3 more major crises in the developing world before the dollar is gone. BRICS is gonna take at least a decade to rev up dedollarization plans and if we're lucky, perhaps only a few tens of millions of people will die in massive (hopefully non-nuclear) wars over the next couple decades, though with climate change in the mix it might well be hundreds of millions. I expect to be firmly in middle age before I see the multilateral currency system overtake the dollar, it's not happening by 2027 or whatever. whatever epic financial plans that Biden is coming up with are the early stages of the US attempting to maintain its dominance; the Operation Barbarossa of the coming war of hegemony.
God damn, does it suck having empathy.