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.

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.

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Not news I'm going to Cuba in a couple months and I'm very excited. Been learning Spanish for a while now and can understand shows and everyday speech. (Though uh, admittedly I have a hard time with Cuban accents lmao)

Any recommendations? Going to Havana for just 4/5 days.
- No recommendations, but please come back here and post about your experiences.
- Had a friend who went recently. He said cash tips in usd are always welcome, but physical goods are harder to come by due to the embargo. In particular, he got requests for the Hawaiian shirts he was wearing, and said he later saw high prices on them in shops.
- No recommendations, just pure jealousy. Bet it will be an awesome trip!
  
  Any recommendations for studying Spanish? That seems like a fast pace to get to that level of fluency.
  
  Sure. The method I use is called "Comprehensible Input". To start I used/use Dreaming Spanish.
  
  Basically you just kinda... Watch stuff in Spanish. That's it. No translation. To start you begin with really simple stuff with tons of hand gestures and visual aids, so you don't really need the words to understand.
  
  Then you move on to less and less visual aids. Then you can do podcasts and other audio only stuff. Then you can move on to just watching whatever you normally would but in Spanish. The beginning is a bit of a slog because the stuff you can understand really isn't very interesting but you'll get through it. Now I listen to audiobooks and watch dubbed TV series. It really works. I've been at it 9 or 10 months or so. I can get by with basic speaking and can get my point across (if in a very roundabout way sometimes) but I definitely need much more practice there. I have about 750 hours worth of watching/listening to stuff in Spanish. The method says English speakers need about 1500 hours to get to a practical fluency. (Plus a few dozen hours speaking practice, which you don't do until the later parts.)
  
  If you spend a lot of time watching or listening to random stuff online, you can totally just replace that with this and learn Spanish in 1-3 years. It's almost magic tbh.
  
  Here's a playlist that explains it (turn on English subtitles)
  
  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf
  
  That's awesome! I checked out dreaming spanish a while back and had some decent progress for a bit. Unfortunately broke the habit because of life stuff and kind of just forgot about it. I agree the beginning is definitely a slog, but you have to start somewhere
  
  Your progress is very encouraging to hear about, guess I'll get back to it. Thanks for the details.
  
  If you can, try to consume as much reading/watching material in the language you want to learn. I basically learned English as a teenager because all the cool parts of the internet were in English. Plus, anime had English subs.
  
  I'll definitely need to get back to that. I had tried that for a bit but didn't know enough of the language to do well with it, felt like I was getting there though.
  
  I did use a service called lingopie for a bit. It let's you slow down the shows it offers and directly translate captions as you go. Overall it was pretty slick, I just wasn't at a level that made the shows feel particularly worthwhile (found myself pausing to read translations more than I probably should have).
  
  This is what I've been doing for Chinese. It's definitely effective, but doesn't help for reading and writing in a non-latin script.
  
  I think it's more about the non-alphabetical nature of it. I've heard Korean script is quite easy to learn for example.
  
  But I've heard it's much easier once you have some level of fluency in the language. I mean children don't intensively study Chinese characters until they're already speaking at a level higher than most language learners get to.
  
  They say for Spanish you need like 1500+ hours of listening and watching to get to a decent level. Chinese, it's more like 3-4000+. Much respect. No cognates to fall back on.... Can't imagine!
  
  Yeah not being able to compose phonetics makes things hard.
  
  I'm nowhere near fluent, but I am definitely getting better at understanding speech rapidly.
  
  I need to find more material with Hanzi subtitles and preferably also pinyín while I'm still a noon. If anyone here has good media suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them. I can only watch so much drama before I'm exhausted.
- Very cool, just for travel? Are you going in through a different country or something?
  
  Pretty much for travel. I wanted to go to a Spanish speaking country, living in Florida makes Cuba one of the cheapest to get to and also very safe for foreigners (which helps get my GF on board). Plus being communist well... Kinda makes it top choice lol
  
  I'm just flying straight from Miami. There's definitely restrictions and rules but they are very easy to meet. Can't stay in pretty much any hotel. (Have to stay in a "Casa Particular" which is just like an AirBnB - quite literally most of them). Because the hotels are state run and the US wants you to not give them money. Then you need to eat at the private restaurants and have "meaningful interactions with the people" it's really not a big deal for Americans to go anymore. Of course all these rules on what I can and cannot do are the rules of the "land of the free" not Cuba's rules.
  
  But here straight from the US govt is an example of how to comply:
  
  Example 1 to § 515.574:
  
  An individual plans to travel to Cuba, stay in a room at a rented accommodation in a private Cuban residence (casa particular), eat at privately-owned Cuban restaurants (paladares), and shop at privately-owned stores run by self-employed Cubans (cuentapropista) during his or her four-day trip. While at the casa particular, the individual will have breakfast each morning with the Cuban host and engage with the Cuban host to learn about Cuban culture. The traveler will not lodge, or pay for lodging, at any property on the CPA List to the extent prohibited by § 515.210. In addition, the traveler will complete his or her full-time schedule by supporting Cuban entrepreneurs launching their privately-owned businesses. The traveler's activities promote independent activity intended to strengthen civil society in Cuba. Because the individual's qualifying activities are not limited to staying in a room at a rented accommodation in a private Cuban residence (casa particular), eating at privately-owned Cuban restaurants (paladares), and shopping at privately owned stores run by self-employed Cubans (cuentapropista) and the traveler maintains a full-time schedule that enhances contact with the Cuban people, supports civil society in Cuba, and promotes the Cuban people's independence from Cuban authorities, and that results in meaningful interaction between the traveler and Cuban individuals, the individual's travel qualifies for the general license.
  
  https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-515/subpart-E/section-515.574
  
  Of course, the one and only department that actually enforced this is the Treasury department. I've heard some formerly Cuban immigration agents in Miami get huffy about it on the way back but they literally can't do anything. The treasury has the right to request your receipts and records from the trip for 5 years. AFAIK they've never done this to individual travelers. So people can and have just flagrantly violated these rules with no consequences. Not that I would of course.
  
  and the traveler maintains a full-time schedule that enhances contact with the Cuban people, supports civil society in Cuba, and promotes the Cuban people's independence from Cuban authorities, and that results in meaningful interaction between the traveler and Cuban individuals, the individual's travel qualifies for the general license.
  
  Lmao they make it sound like you're supposed to be some missionary of capitalism.
  
  Hello Cuban people!!! Have you heard the good news about the Free Market??
  
  Wow lmao reading this is such Western copium. You can’t go unless you’re a good little capitalist mouthpiece
  
  hahaha what the fuck. YOu're allowed to go to cuba but onl yto engage in some derranged ayn rand fantasy. america
  
  Wow this is some top tier shit
- Visit the yacht and throw a rock at the guards at Guantanamo
- If you can make a stop in Viñales for a day or two. The sights are beautiful.

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