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.
US Supreme Court Lifts Ban on Bump Stocks
The killings shall continue until morale improves.
some real Strategy of Tension shit. Bleak.
I'm no court expert, but to me this sounds like they're setting precedent to overturn the machine gun ban eventually. Not great!
Overturning the mg ban would ruin a lot rich people's speculative hoarding. Machine guns aren't really banned. The ones already in civilian hands are still legal and transferable, they just sell for tens of thousands of dollars per gun.
I think it's just a product of how the law is written, the trigger is being depressed once per shot it's just that your finger is staying still.
Your ak-47 delivery has been confirmed
Not a whole lot stopping anyone determined from manufacturing a forced reset trigger, which were only banned recently.
Am I reading correctly that all it does is push the trigger with your finger on it forward until it resets? And presumably because you're most likely maintaining enough pressure on the trigger to activate the mechanism the forced reset trigger after it resets let's the user quickly fire again without necessary releasing pressure off your trigger finger?
If so, only lazy dipshits that can't shoot worth a damn would use this. A well-practiced shooter doesn't need fancy doohickies to turn their firearm into a bullet hose.
Yes, you are reading correctly.
Why didn't they just restrict things by rate of fire/rounds per minute in the first place? It's like the whole "assault weapon" deal where it seems like they were just super vague on classifying stuff for no good reason and now it's finally coming home to roost
It’s because guns are machines and honestly, pretty simple ones at that once you understand how they work. You don’t need this stock to make it automatic, you can make any semi auto do that with different shooting techniques. Ultimately it’s not that they won’t, it’s that you really can’t.
To be fair, the criteria are very precise, they’re just only vaguely related to reality.
My favorite is the double-barreled 1911 pistol. It has two triggers, because if it only had one trigger it would be a machine gun (it would fire multiple bullets with one pull of the trigger). But physically it would never work if it didn’t always fire both barrels at exactly the same time, so it only has one slide and both hammers are connected to each other. But because you have to drop two sears with two triggers before it will fire apparently it’s totally legal.
How would that practically work lol
guns that can fire over a certain rpm get the treatment that automatic weapons currently do. guns that fire under a certain rpm get the treatment that manual weapons currently do. the in between gets the treatment that semi-auto weapons currently do.
if the justification behind legislation for these weapons is "firing fast makes it too dangerous", then why not just cut to the chase and legislate based on how fast they fire?
Bump stocks amount to fully automatic but with way less control. To make them function you must maintain a less secure grip. Then the gun jiggles around in your hand, otherwise it doesn't do the rapid fire. If you try to handle it more securely, it resumes semi-automatic behavior.
I have used a gun only once. I got to shoot the 81 type of gun one time and it is very hard to control with automatic fire. I am weak 😭
Bump stock sound very hard to use.
Yeah guns are already hard enough to securely handle and this makes it even worse.
People using bump stocks usually try to start the rapid firing gingerly because they trying to hit just the right balance between "out of control" and "actually holding the gun", since that is what makes the stock do it's thing. It's actually a very simple device, it just let's the rest of the gun move forward and back within the stock. When the gun fires, it is pushed back into the stock. When it bounces forward again off your shoulder (within the stock itself, as if the stock is a sheath), it will come back into contact with your finger on the trigger and fire again.
You can actually do this without a bump stock with the right technique (even more dangerous than with a bump stock).
Makes sense, that particular mass shooting was memory holed almost instantly so I'm not surprised that the response to it was rolled back eventually
Was it ever revealed why the shooter did that?
Not that I'm aware of, as far as I'm aware it was one of them that the authorities essentially shrugged at and said "it's just one of those things"