#Cuban military

[minnesotafollower]

Cuban Priest Voices Harsh Criticism of Cuban Regime 

A Cuban Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Camaguey, Alberto Reyes,  said in a visit to the U.S. that Cuba is experiencing one of the hardest times in recent years. “It would seem, and it is my hope, that this is a terminal moment, because it is very difficult (…) Civil society in Cuba feels very vulnerable and defenseless . Every time the Cuban people have tried to do something –we…

[troythecatfish]

The JFK files reveal tactics used by the CIA to influence regime change in Cuba Recently released documents indicate that the CIA conspired to cause crop failure in Cuba, with the intention of collectively punishing the civilian population to pressure the socialist government of Fidel Castro at the time.

Source: MintPress

[miiilowo]

slightly over-engineered red leader tord design because i really really reaaaaallly like military uniforms & i thin k he deserves better than a hoodie under a blue trenchcoat. he doesnt tbh but i maybe deserve to see it. anyway

[chronal-anomaly]

Woke up thinking about Lena smoking,,,

[masonjarhead]

[finejewelryandblog]

Get Veterans Day Jewelry from William Barthman Jeweler

William Barthman Jeweler presents a special jewelry line for veterans featuring bold Cuban Chain Necklaces and Men's Military Jewelry that shows respect for service members' bravery and dedication.

[millionmovieproject]

In this episode, Nicolette and Jared have a great conversation about the growing protest movement in support of the Palestinian people, university ties to the military industrial complex, how the US is losing its status as a global power by lacking investment in its own people, and how according to history, the US is on the cusp of a proletariat revolution.

[lightdancer1]

The Cold War phases of the Angolan, Namibian, and Mozambican Civil Wars are all unified with the term South African Border War:

One must keep in mind that in Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia the Cold War parts of the wars each fought were all in the eyes of contemporaries one war, now called as a unified term the South African Border War. These were the biggest African wars of the Cold War, fought by the Apartheid regime to strengthen white supremacy, and fought by the USSR via Cubans to weaken it. The Apartheid regime lost, and lost decisively against the Cubans at Cuito Cavanale, which was one of the first steps leading to the ultimate dismantling of Apartheid and to the slow realization that in Angola and Mozambique and Namibia that the wars that started during the Cold War did not automatically end when the Cold War did.

[zingaplanet]

Is the girls' version of the Roman empire the Cuban Missile Crisis? Cause I sure think bout it every day

[minnesotafollower]

Analysis of Cuba’s Current Economic Crisis 

“Cuba is going through the worst crisis it has experienced in decades, with widespread shortages of food and medicines, rolling blackouts and a sky-high 400% annual inflation rate. The calls on the communist leadership to open up the economy to the market are getting loud, even from close political allies.”[1] “But deep divisions at the top of the regime regarding how much freedom to give the new…

[read-marx-and-lenin]

It's a good pamphlet and clearly the DDR needed to defend itself. But it doesn't explain why they had to shoot civilians trying to leave the East

I'm not going to say I support the "shoot to kill" orders. I don't. I think they were the wrong move on the part of the GDR and led to unnecessary and tragic deaths. But I also think you have to look at it objectively and in the context of the wall itself.

In 1959, the GDR announced the discovery of classified NATO documents outlining a potential invasion of East Germany using West Berlin as a staging ground, dubbed "Operation DECO II". Neither NATO nor the FRG have ever confirmed or denied the authenticity of these documents, but they align with Western refusal to agree to any plans for reunification that did not involve a NATO-aligned Germany.

In 1960, the Sino-Soviet Split occurs, France becomes a nuclear power, and NATO deploys nuclear missiles in Italy. In June 1961, two months before construction of the Wall, NATO deploys nuclear missiles in Turkey. In October 1961, the USSR detonates the largest nuclear bomb ever created. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurs. And in 1963, Kennedy makes his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, proclaiming his opposition to communism and the defensive actions of the GDR.

From 1957 to 1961, the head of the West German military was Adolf Heusinger, a former high-ranking Wehrmacht general who helped to plan the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. From 1961 to 1964, Heusinger was Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. After Konrad Adenauer had ended denazification in West Germany early, many such instances of former Nazis and Nazi collaborators coming to power and prominence within West Germany had occurred, which is part of the reason why the GDR dubbed the Wall the "Anti-Fascist Protection Wall".

This period marked the highest point in tensions between East and West during the Cold War. Around the world, revolutionary movements were growing, and the capitalists and imperialists were becoming more belligerent in turn. The GDR was dealing with saboteurs and spies and Western agents bribing skilled workers to encourage defection. It is no surprise then that according to a 2011 study into the 136 deaths attributed by the authors to the Wall (and not all of these deaths were of civilians), more than half occurred from 1961 to 1966. However, over 50,000 arrests were made due to border crossing attempts that did not result in death, and by the 1980s there were millions of legal crossings from East to West Berlin approved by the GDR, the vast majority of which later returned to the GDR.

Every death that happened due to the Wall is a death that should not have happened. But the Wall is not some totalitarian construct the evil communists created to trap people and prevent their escape. It was a means of defense against the aggression of the capitalist world towards a vulnerable socialist state forced to host a capitalist enclave. In a just world, West Berlin would never have existed in the first place. In a just world, NATO would have accepted the Soviet proposal for a neutral and unified Germany and Germany would not have been separated for decades. The Anti-Fascist Protection Wall served its purpose and prevented what could have been a major escalation in the Cold War.

When the Wall fell and capitalism was forced upon East Germany, immediately there were major increases in poverty, unemployment, and homelessness, something that occurred across Eastern Europe during the period of neoliberal "shock therapy" as labor protections and welfare systems were removed and state enterprises were privatized. To this day, East Germany remains poorer than West Germany despite over thirty years of glorious free market capitalism to mend the divide. I do not have any concrete numbers, but I would not be surprised if the total number of deaths relating to post-reunification poverty exceeded the number of deaths attributed to the Wall.

Recommended reading:

What You Should Know About the Wall (1962 GDR pamphlet regarding the Wall) Behind the Berlin Wall - Challenge Magazine A Marxist-Leninist Approach to the Berlin Wall - /r/communism The Triumph of Evil - Austin Murphy Stasi State or Workers’ Paradise - Bruni de la Motte & John Green

[mariacallous]

There are situations in which tariffs are a useful tool to address a trade deficit, or to protect key sectors of a country’s economy. Then there are situations where you accuse a bunch of penguins on an uninhabited island of currency manipulation. Guess which one we’re living in?

This is the takeaway of the manifold tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon. In addition to the penguin-occupied Heard and McDonald Islands, the tariffs target the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose sole occupants live on a joint US-UK military base on Diego Garcia island. Yes, the United States is levying reciprocal tariffs against its own troops.

And then there are the tariffs against countries that have actual goods and services on which US consumers depend. China: 54 percent. Vietnam: 46 percent. Cambodia: 49 percent. South Korea: 25 percent. No corner of the US consumer economy will go untouched. Prices will rise. The stock market is spiraling. A recession looms. The tech industry will be turned upside down. Mark Cuban, noted billionaire, is encouraging people to stockpile consumables before it’s too late.

It’s reckless, it’s absurd, and it’s also everything Donald Trump said plainly he would do on the campaign trail. True, he didn’t telegraph how misguided the methodology would be—you can read about it more here, but suffice to say it’s thoroughly detached from the realities of international trade—but he loudly, repeatedly promised to tariff his way to glory.

The stated goal is to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, which is a bit like resurrecting the dodo. The US still manufactures plenty of goods; it’s second only to China in annual output, according to the World Bank. But many of the industry’s jobs have been replaced by automation, a bottle you can’t re-cork. And higher domestic labor costs mean US-made products will inherently be more expensive, a trade-off American consumers have consistently rejected. All of this was already true in Trump’s first term. It’s even more so now.

And let’s say a plurality of companies did decide to reshore or set up factories in the United States. The timeline for those decisions and implementation is measured in years, if not decades, and follow-through can be spotty. (Just ask Foxconn.) So what happens in the meantime?

The rationale has all the weight of a soap bubble. There isn’t a world where the US suddenly manufactures all the items the country has decided to target. There’s a 47 percent tariff on Madagascar now. Do you know why the US has a trade deficit with Madagascar? They produce vanilla; we don’t. Unless we’re suddenly setting up vanilla assembly lines in Ohio, that’s not changing.

But maybe Trump’s so-called Liberation Day is all just a master negotiating ploy. “Everybody sit back, take a deep breath. Don’t immediately retaliate. Let’s see where this goes,” said Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on CNN Wednesday. “Because if you retaliate, that’s how we get escalation.”

It’s an interesting tactic, to start a bar brawl and ask everyone not to punch back in case someone gets hurt. It’s not working. China has already vowed to retaliate; the EU suggested that it could as well. (New Zealand is officially chill.)

Set the economics of this aside for a moment, though. The insult on top of that looming injury is how sloppy this all is. It’s the same blunt-force destruction that DOGE has implemented within the US government, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has imposed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now projected on a global scale. Yes, Elon Musk and DOGE have taken a blowtorch to federal agencies. But the tariffs are a helpful reminder that it's Trump who's fiddling while it all burns.

It’s the instinct to measure wins in units of pain and suffering. It’s an assumption that the only way to help yourself is to hurt other people. This is just what America is now.

The optimist’s case is that this is all a feint, that other countries will capitulate or at least make enough of a show of it that things will go back to normal. Seems unlikely. First of all, they’re already doing the opposite, all apologies to Bessent. But even if they weren’t, even if this is just posturing from the US, that posturing has consequences. Whatever equity the US has built up over the last century as a reputable trade partner has been largely wiped out by a businessman-president best known for his bankruptcies.

And then there’s the pessimist’s case, which also seems increasingly like the realist’s. The US is barreling toward a recession for no good reason, and dragging the world—and a few thousand penguins on remote Antarctic islands—down with it.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Cubans march for peace in solidarity with Palestine

Thousands of Cubans of all ages marched in Havana Oct. 14 demanding an end to the genocide committed by the Zionist Government of Israel against the Palestinian people and its attacks on other nations in the Middle East.

Participants in the march, led by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other top leaders, denounced the complicity of the United States in the Zionist military onslaught that has killed more than 42,000 people in the Gaza Strip, including many women and children, and more than 2,000 in Lebanon.

[the-great-kraken]

why arthur christmas is the best christmas movie of all time:

- treating christmas as a military operation undertaken by battalions of elves risking their lives

- it nails the family dynamic: a vaguely offensive grandpa constantly talking about the good old days, an older man determined he's still young and a brilliant father, the coolest woman you've ever met brushed off as "Wife", an eldest child desperate for respect and acknowledgement, and a younger child beginning to notice the family's intense dysfunction. what could be more christmassy.

- a lot of dark humour for a kids movie and completely unafraid to drop references to the cuban missile crisis or vietnam war

- "is it true children aren't real and they're just antimatter?"

- at one point they hypnotise lions with a pair of novelty slippers and singing silent night

- moving on from the old ways but recognising that the technological age brings with it intense depersonalisation and in order to welcome it in we need to make changes to the way we view consumption to prevent everything falling to a corporate mindset

- the homoerotic energy between Steve and his elf and the blatant lesbianism of bryoney

- grandsanta says "at least finish us off with a rock" and arthur literally stops to consider it

- arthur's autistic swag

- "all around the streets, children on new bicycles pointing "THAT'S THE GIRL SANTA HATES!" she runs away, alcoholic by the age of nine, DEAD BEFORE SHE'S EVEN-"

- the US military shoots down santa after mistaking him for a ufo

- arthur running solely on weaponised anxiety for a good chunk of the movie

arthur christmas suffered from a terrible marketing campaign and i won't let it keep going on without the recognition it deserves

[lightdancer1]

One of the most important events for Cold War Black history happened in Cuba:

One of the key events in Cold War Black history was the overthrow of Afro-Cuban descended Fulgencio Batista by Spaniard aristocrat's son Fidel Castro. It is a measure of the weakness of the Batista regime that a very small force was able to overthrow it in spite of Batista's regime having multiple major advantages, more than a few of which should on paper have rendered it invincible. Overthrown the regime indeed was, establishing a proudly (and inevitably) anti-American regime that would embrace the USSR fervently and be its hatchet men in particular on African battlefields. It was this Cuban role that played a key part in deciding the outcome of Cold War African wars as in almost all cases a victory for the Soviet bloc.

[redarmyscreaming]

The Hawker Sea Fury is a British fighter aircraft designed and manufactured by Hawker Aircraft. It was the last propeller-driven fighter to serve with the Royal Navy. Developed during the Second World War, the Sea Fury entered service two years after the war ended. It proved to be a popular aircraft with a number of overseas militaries and was used during the Korean War in the early 1950s, and by the Cuban air force during the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion.