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.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    South Africa election results update: ANC-DA coalition is official, both parties have signed the "Government of National Unity (GNU) document. The ANC is the largest party from the liberation movement against apartheid South Africa, was the party of Nelson Mandela, and has ruled with a majority since 1994. However, they only got 40.2% of the votes in the recent elections two weeks ago. The DA is a majority white liberal political party, and fairly right wing. They got 21.8% of the vote in the national elections. The DA and the ANC are the two biggest political parties in South Africa, and have formed a coalition.

    The coalition document can be viewed here

    Important, Section 19:

    Sufficient consensus exists when;

    • 19.1 All parties have had the opportunity to express their views;
    • 19.2 Despite reasonable attempts to resolve disagreements, and find common ground, there is no general consensus;
    • 19.3 Parties to the GNU representing 60% of seats in the National Assembly agree; and
    • 19.4 Any party that disagrees has been able to formally record their objections.

    This means that for consensus to exist mathematicaly, the the DA and ANC have to agree on policy. There is no other way for consensus to be achieved. In essence, this makes it a full blown coalition, and not just a supply and confidence agreement, and also not a government of national unity as claimed.

    As a reminder for everyone, the DA has been working on going into coalition with the ANC since 2019.

    article snippets and my opinions on it

    This week [October 2021] a leaked audio from 2019 was circulated on social media in which Zille was heard saying the DA must consolidate its support at 20% and work with the ANC.

    In the audio, Zille said the DA would consider going into a coalition with the ANC under President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership.

    “I’d rather make tough demands on Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC and force to unite under them, and go into coalition with them and make strict conditions for them, than go into coalition with anyone else. That I think should be our aim in the next election.

    “We want 20% of South Africans and remember there’s only 8% of white voters. Between 15% and 20% gives us a strong, strong consolidated block in coalitions,” Zille can be heard saying in the audio...

    This is literally exactly how it has played out now in 2024.

    However, speaking on CapeTalk on Tuesday, Zille claimed the audio was edited and taken out of context...

    Quite unknown to me, I was being recorded. They have carefully edited out the context of that discussion, taken a short clip, waited for two years now that the context was entirely changed, and a week before the election release it as if it means something that it does not mean at all,” Zille alleged.

    So it wasn't taken out of context then?

    She said the DA was aiming to win a majority of 50% plus one so it doesn’t have to go into a coalition.

    Politicians and lying, what an iconic combination

    “People hate coalitions. They’ve seen what coalitions have done with their complete instability and the jumping of smaller parties from one side to the other,” she said.

    Lmao 🤣 And guess who's signature is on this coalition document? Helen Zille's. I rest my case.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Bonus: A reminder of why you should not take anything you see on Reddit seriously, even on leftist subreddits. Here is what users on the true anon and the deprogram were saying a week ago, even though an ANC - DA coalition has been in the works for years and there is no evidence of election fraud:

      There’s a 0% chance they [the ANC] get into a coalition with the DA. Like you said it would threaten the basis of their power. I expect that they’ll give the concessions to MK before they coalition with the EFF, since ultimately the differences between MK and ANC are negligible, more about personal issues than anything else. I’ve been trying to research South African politics leading up to this, I watched some footage of the EFF grilling the ANC from a few years ago. They are entertaining as fuck. They got whole highlight reals for Melama. Dude is fucking great. Really cool to see that the EFF is not socially conservative either. I am sure that America would intervene to keep them anywhere close to power, and I’ve seen talk that they played a part in the alleged fraud.

    • plinky [he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      How is the electrical stuff going in your neck of the woods? meow-floppy

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        7 months ago

        There hasn't been any load shedding (rolling electricity blackouts) for over 70 days nationally, and aside from one 8 hour power outage due to cable theft, I've had no power outages over the past 70 days. Though I don't think it will last, I'm expecting load shedding to come back as soon as electrical demand from industry increases.