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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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.
Decades-Long Conspiracy Unveiled: Sabotage of Yemen's Agriculture
Yemen has the highest rate of food insecurity of any country in the world. And the US and UK have been using biological weapons to sabotage their agricultural industry under the guise of "Aid."
One should assume every remotely leftist nation has been sabotaged in this manner for the last hundred years.
Every Communist nation had its food stocks ravaged, and they still accomplished so much.
I'd like to see some corroboration of this from a source that isn't an unnamed spy confessing to Yemeni security forces.
Documents were corroborated by al-Mayadeen journalists: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/yemen-uncovers-large-israeli-us-spy-network
Official Yemeni Security Statement: https://www.ansarollah.com.ye/archives/683605
Includes a short recording of a spy communicating with his handlers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLTgbBSeSzo
Details of some of the spies and agents (translated by RNN): https://t.me/PalestineResist/44128
More details from al-Masirah: https://english.almasirah.net.ye/post/40530/
Also reported on by The Cradle and PressTV
Now, I tie the other end of this red string to my pushpin labeled "US DoD biowarfare research facilities in Ukraine researching crop-destroying pests"
(not that I'm discounting this, just how I feel about myself making these connections)
Unrelated but a similar level of utterly horrifying conspiracy connections.
Last December I read a book called Revolution's End by Brad Schreiber about how the CIA developed its brainwashing techniques by experimenting on African-American prisoners with all sorts of torture techniques and psychedelic drugs to "rewrite their personalities" during the 50's 60's and 70's. Nightmare stuff.
I pieced together that the descriptions of their test subjects fit extremely similarly with the descriptions I have read from survivors of MEK and Daesh terrorists. "Zombies" "Shell people" or "robotic" is how a lot of literature and interviews describes the people who came out of US torture centers in Iraq and then created ISIS. Same thing with MEK, all the people who escaped their cult (Mek leaders of course trained by the CIA) discuss being turned into a "drone" through their methods of personality rewriting.
It got me thinking about how imperialism has an army of psychiatrists and psychologists constantly waging mind war on the planet all the time and I ended up spiraling out for a few weeks. The depravity of the US empire knows no limits...
From that book
This makes a lot of sense. You can truly see the depravity of the US by reading their covert operations and how they pretty much are just a continuation of Nazi scientists. The really depraved ones are stuff like Operation Sea-Spray. If the US is willing to experiment on their own (white) citizens and kill some of them in the process, imagine what they're willing to do with everyone else.
Satanic