Bulletins and News Discussion from June 10th to June 16th, 2024 - Havana Derangement Syndrome - COTW: Cuba
Bulletins and News Discussion from June 10th to June 16th, 2024 - Havana Derangement Syndrome - COTW: Cuba
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.
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US imperialists are learning, by ramping up financial warfare against Russia once again. The first time might have failed, but they are trying again:
The thought persists that sanctions against Moscow Exchange and National Clearing Center (NCC) are the Americans’ plan number two, after plan number one had no effect. Yes, sanctions don't work. But they may not work in the opposite direction. Will explain.
After the start of the SMO, under the conditions of the first restrictions, a strong trade balance surplus arose in the Russian Federation. There was too much currency coming into the country, and there was nothing to spend it on. As a result, the ruble strengthened significantly. Everyone remembers how much the dollar fell. Russian (especially raw materials) exports then approached the threshold of unprofitability; The government also recorded a sharp drop in revenue. At the end of 2022, the Ministry of Finance announced the need to lower the ruble exchange rate in order to help exporters survive and fulfill the federal budget themselves. This was done last summer.
Question: why didn’t the Americans impose sanctions against Moscow Exchange and NCC in 2022, but did it only now. I think that they studied the situation and realized that for the Russian economy it is not the dollar at 200 rubles that is scary, but rather the dollar at 50 rubles. It seems that this is the plan that will now be implemented. For example, how will the largest exporters now sell foreign currency earnings? This is one of the pillars of maintaining the course at the desired level. The currency received from Russian exports was sold on the Moscow Exchange by the so-called SZKO. On average from $800 million to $1 billion daily. The largest buyers of foreign currency were non-resident banks. This was convenient, since the Americans prohibit transactions with sanctioned Russian banks. Now the exchange is closed, and you cannot buy currency directly from SDN banks. I'm not a forecaster, but I want to highlight the risks. Sanctions against the Moscow Exchange may not weaken the ruble, but strengthen it. With the sole purpose of causing damage to exporters and reducing federal budget revenues. The Americans have been achieving this since 2022. Now they are on their second run.
This is once again a double-edged sword. The Russians could choose to submit to the rules set by the global hegemon as usual, or it could end up pushing them further away from neoliberalism.
The Americans are gambling that Russia wouldn’t dare to abandon neoliberalism, and they might turn out to be right once more.
here's how the USSR can still win
Devaluing your currency is trivial, what are you on about
Fascinating. I’m curious about the current makeup of Russian exports - I assume oil is a very component?
International currency economics is among the more complex aspects of economics IMO, so I don’t know I have any thoughts on the details. But zooming out on the situation… I can’t help but wonder if the American side has some ideological blinders on. We often say “it’s easier for some people to imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism”. It does seem to me that westerners - including our politicians, politicians, and economists - cannot imagine a world where nations voluntarily choose to back away from neoliberalism; even if they are “losers” in the periphery. This is a huge blind spot they have and I think it plays a part in what made the first round of sanctions ineffective. I don’t doubt the West fully believes Russia will not stray from the neoliberal path.
So it comes down to, what does Russia think? Before the SMO, I think the leadership in Russia (both political and financial) were on board with neoliberalism because they personally benefitted from it (even if the Russian people didn’t). So what have they learned in the last two years? Clearly, what they been doing has worked. They’ve had a peak behind the curtain of neoliberalism and they can now see it for what it is.
If I had to guess, I’d say Russia decides to take a stronger position against neoliberalism and they won’t let the ruble fall. Because right now the SMO is going great for them and there isn’t a path to victory outside of a collapse of Russia’s economy. What they are doing is working so no reason to deviate. Even if you are a high up, powerful person in Russia (political or financial) and you think neoliberalism is the future for Russia… a collapse of the economy and losing the war will be very bad for your bank account, if nothing else.
Russia is a very weird case. You have clearly two branches: the Ministers of Cabinet and the Central Bank running their separate policies on diverging ideological grounds.
For example, the Central Bank (the most neoliberal of all) has been keeping the interest rate high at 16% all this while, on the pretext of “curbing inflation”. At the same time, the Ministers of Cabinet counter-act the Central Bank monetary policy by giving out preferential loans (subsidizing the high interest rates) to stimulate the economy.
So, the end result is that the Central Bank has been trying to tighten the money supply (via high interest rate), but the government keeps lending at a low rate for prioritized development projects. This is why you see so much of the investment in Russia has gone into military spending, because it is one area that the government has near total control of.
Meanwhile private investments have held back due to the high interest rates, only choosing to take the cheap loans where the state has priorities in. In other words, the state has become the biggest customer and investor of the Russian economy.
It’s a very strange economy where both the state and the central bank (which is independent) are fighting against one another. So far, the liberal Central Bank’s strategy to cut back investment and spending is on the losing side, as evident by the increased wages and consumption and low unemployment. But this contradiction cannot end until the Central Bank has been fully absorbed into the government as a State Bank, just like it did during the times of the USSR.