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.
“If Xi genuinely believes that the US actively seeks conflict with China over Taiwan, then concerns that Xi has created an information vacuum or is otherwise getting poor council from subordinates are, worryingly, true,” said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at CSIS, a think-tank.
lol
They really do believe their own bullshit. This is excellent news, they’ll be completely unprepared when WW3 inevitably starts
entirely depends whether these kinds of think tanks actually have any power in the American state or if they’re purely for creating propaganda.
luckily, America is fucked either way if they try and start shit with China, as Ansarallah has proven by beating the American navy
I genuinely think it’s the opposite: Ansarallah proves to the US how easy it is to disrupt global shipping routes, which is exactly the strategy the US would use in a war against China.
With so much of China’s economy being dependent on export via sea route, a hot war between US and China is going to cause significant economic damage to both sides. The difference here is that the US controls the global reserve currency, but China doesn’t, so that gives it a great leverage over the rest of the world that China doesn’t.
This is why I’ve been saying China can’t wait to turn their trade routes inland via Belt and Road, and why China has to pivot fully into a domestic consumption economy in order to survive this upcoming conflict with the US. And it needs to be done not tomorrow, not today, but yesterday.
This is somewhat reddit analysis since in the scenario of US-China conflict starting with a Chinese kinetic action or blockade of Taiwan any US initiated disruption or blockade of ship routes from and towards China serious enough to hurt China enough to “back off” will have already completely collapsed the economies and even societies of Japan, Worst Korea and Phillipines (allies whose assistance let alone normal function the US counts on to be able to do any kind of successull defense of Taiwan), those of most of the “non-aligned” SEA countries and of course Taiwan. Not in a “recession” or “inflation” sense. If the US is able to mount any such successfull sea route choking to have China in crisis within idk 1 month ,most of the countries i mentioned will be imploding within 1-2 weeks. There is no way of doing one without doing the other and at that point you have lost both Taiwan and the entire region.
There is a reason practicaly no US military think tank, war game or DoD analysis seriously considers SEA sea trade route blockading and disruption a strategy US is remotely likely to try. If it was a viable approach to “win the engagement” both sides would know it and it wouldnt be any kind of a secret, you would see it being seriously discussed and analyses by credible sources and people, not on YT videos and r/Noncredible defense
Of course China wants to expand its inland routes and of course it wants to maximize its degree self sufficiency in energy , calories etc. In part because of course sea routes will be disrupted in any Taiwan related US-China conflict even if the US takes no action on that front. But it being used as a strategy by the US and being credibly able to hurt China both enough and quickly enough to cause a defeat before other factors do and without it fucking up every single ally and non ally in the erea first to a degree that will mean the US loses the region anyways
If anything Ansarallah forcing the last line of missile and air defence used by US ships and managing at least a near hit or scare on USS Eisenhower with the 2nd tier Iranian missiles shows that in any hot conflict in SCS there would be 4 US carriers and 15 Destroyers in the bottom of the ocean by the time the first Chinese person goes hungry or without heating due to US initiated sea route disruption
China does also have one of (if not the) largest navies and airforces on the planet, though. I also think that blockading the Strait of Malacca in such a way that it doesn’t immediately crash the world economy, including the US’s, must be very difficult. Nordstream proves that Biden is capable of doing some sicko shit but that was also an explicit benefit to their own economy.
There’s also the Arctic route if China is willing to play the long game and wait for a few years, if they can sufficiently motivate Russia to go all-in there (Putin is committing to making more icebreakers and such AFAIK though)
I do agree though that global shipping routes are pretty fragile now though.
It’s going to be subs and non-state actors that do the job for the US. They’re going to be indefensible along the entire trade route, and your navy and airforce rendered useless against an unpredictable foe. At least that’s the lessons they’re learning from the Ansarallah strikes against shipping lanes. It is unlikely that the US navy (at least the surface fleet) will directly participate in it, they are simply too fragile and vulnerable in modern naval warfare.
The world economy will crash, and that’s the whole point! The US has run out of time and options to curb China’s growth, so it might as well leverage what is still has to reshuffle the board.
It’s ultimately going to come down to “can the US reorganize the global supply chain away from China fast enough?” vs “can China turn its economy inward towards domestic consumption fast enough?”
Here, the Belt and Road initiative is a double-edged sword for China: it is simultaneously its avenue to turn its trade route inland, and building up the industrial capacity of countries that will become its own direct competitors on the export sector. And because the BRI loans are dollar-denominated (at least 70% of it), the US will win on the front unless China cancels their debt immediately.
I am sounding like a broken record, but if China can manage to transition from an export-led economy into a net importing domestic consumption economy, it’s pretty much game over for the US. All signs point toward this as the end game (if we don’t nuke ourselves along the way).
What? The only advantage that Ansarallah has is that it is fighting from its own land and has a million places to hide missiles and that was enough for them to win. Blockading your own costal waters is the exact opposite of using a navy to block international trade routes.