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.
Today has seen even greater escalations on the border of Palestine and Lebanon.
I suspect thay sometime between July and September the US-israeli zionist forces in occupied Palestine will begin a massive operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
It will be a repeat of 2006. Before the July war, the Gaza resistance had captured IOF soldier Gilad Shalit. The IOF was unable to retrieve him despite a savage campaign against Gaza so they chose to invade Lebanon instead. Entire villages were destroyed and Beirut was bombed but the IOF was routed and took heavy damage. (Look into the story of Hezbollah leveling Heifa train station its really quite awe inspiring).
A ceasefire in Gaza will only accompany an escalation against Lebanon.
If I'm wrong about this I'll eat my shoe
Hopefully this will bring about a second shock that will finalize the unraveling of "Israeli" society.
God willing
everybody is wrong sometimes don't eat a shoe
Additionally something of note.
After the US-israeli child killing militaries used aid trucks to "rescue" 4 captured IOF and massacred over 200 Palestinians in Gaza a few days ago, Abu Obeida announced that the lives of the remaining captives would be made "very difficult". Pro-resistance Arab commentators agreed this means that those captives who had previously been allowed to stay above ground in apartments would all be transferred down below into the dark depths of the Gaza Metro.
There will be no more "rescues"
Israeli forces will take heavy, heavy casualties, damage and losses if they attempt another 2006. Hezbollah is the strongest force militarily in the resistance, and have only gotten stronger since 2006. Right now they've basically created a buffer zone in the North. It would be suicide for Israel, from a military perspective, to fight Hezbollah now in some sort of ground offensive. But we all know that Israel does not think from a military point of view, Israeli forces just want to terrorize innocents.
Just to add, this was all very true on October 6th. And since then consider just how much weaker the Israeli military has gotten and how much stronger Hezbollah has gotten (or at least, how much stronger Hezbollah will get very soon given the closer ties in recent months to Russia and the DPRK).
I have seen a couple people making similar predictions this week, they're definitely building up for something in Lebanon. Feels similar to Apartheid South Africa kicking off a bunch of conflicts they couldn't handle in their death throes. Hopefully the result is the same
It would be quite ironic if consistently overestimating the IOF's competency on the ground did them in
hopefully we'll get a repeat of hezbollah nuking a whole building of imperialist troops
or was that the 80s war
https://orinocotribune.com/years-after-washingtons-bloody-escape-from-lebanon-us-threatens-to-send-the-marines-ahla-bhal-talleh/
...
If the Zionist entity is stupid enough to invade Lebanon again, it'll literally be this but for the entire war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bint_Jbeil