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
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.
dumb finance question: why do people even become landlords, or invest in real estate at all? everything i read about it says that the stock market always outperforms the housing market
In some countries it is also much easier to cheat taxes on rent than on dividends.
And people instinctually know that real estate has use value as well, while stocks only have exchange value.
Anyway, if you inherit some money stock/bonds are slightly better, because being a landlord is the worst. But that's just ethics, not business.
A lot of countries also don't have very developed, sophisticated, or liquid equities markets. A lot of such countries, such as China, tend to have a culture of individuals investors using real estate as a form of savings/investment.
i may or may not have had dark thoughts like 'i could exploit all of the racist genocide-supporters in my area for profit and they would love me for it' due to recent unplanned emergency expenses, but i'm probably better off materially and spiritually just being broke for a while and leaving any stocks i may or may not have alone since theres no way i will survive old age otherwise as a chronically unemployed failgremlin
It’s not actually a well-founded belief that stocks outperform real estate.
The value of real estate rises slower than stocks but you also benefit from rental income and it’s easier / cheaper to leverage real estate since it’s value is much more consistent, which amplifies returns. These factors, its consistency and low risk profile, mean you can leverage and own twice as much for more than half the rate of return.
Also while stocks do well over 50-100 year timeframes, there are frequently 10-20 year periods of flat or negative returns. Evidently the big money see us entering one of those periods and is fleeing stocks for real estate.
REALLY?
https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-houses-investment-firms-real-estate.html
for my understanding, stocks are considered more liquid because there are either 1. less steps involved in turning them into cash, 2. faster to sell and get cash, and 3. less general regulatory insight in considerably large transactions (like +100 mil) when compared to real estate in say g20 countries (or richer countries or global north or w/e it's called)
i feel im missing something like there's a third category or other bigger picture point
Landlords don’t only receive money from housing price increases, they also extract rent from tenants. They are double dipping
stocks also pay dividends though
Death to America
Not all, and those that do generally have lower returns from price increases. It’s built into the value of the stock (a company that pays out regular dividends to its holders will make less net profit, and thus will not grow in value as rapidly. A company that instead uses that money towards expansion into new markets, or in PR advertising hype around themselves, will rocket up in price faster. See: Amazon or Tesla vs. a stable dividend stock like Johnson & Johnson)
High risk-high return venture capital stuff also doesn’t entail dividends usually once they go public. It’s more a pump and dump short term shuffle that gets done with startups.
Short term profits and everyone needs a place to live. You dont need to read a 100 page report and consult the economics high priests to evaluate risk, you just run a credit report on a potential buyer and see he has a high credit score, decent stable job, and you can guarantee to make money as long as they’re under your contract. At least in America, there’s also “american dream” brain. You can pretend you’re a small business owner and entrepreneur even though all you do is hassle people for money. Owning a second property is probably the easiest way to get into this delusion because you kind of just need money
IIRC, REITs have outperformed the S&P 500 by 2-4% for the past decade on an annualized basis. A big part of the reason is leverage and the ability to borrow against real estate assets. Regular investors are highly unlikely to be able to buy a stock on margin with just 20% or less of the total asset value.
Let's say you buy a rental $1M rental property with 20% down ($200K) and then turn around and rent it out. In theory, that $200k is all the investor should end up paying themsevles, and the other $800K will be paid by the tenants. In 15 years, the investor owns a $1M asset (not accounting for asset appreciation) that also generates regular income that they only paid $200K for. They quadrupled their investment over the life of the mortgage.
Or suppose you just buy the place outright, then 60-80% of the rent depending on how stingy you are and tax rate is just profit, you need not make any gains on the real estate at all, you're in the black the whole time on paper should you ever need to secure a loan, and in a 10-20 years you have a property plus the initial cash you invested. Probably the least efficient but also least risky way to go about it, you can always midway between the two strategies depending on risk tolerance, landlording is good business!
Others points are good but I would also add that housing is low risk compared to stocks, and also low effort. You can buy any property and it will go up in value unless there's a housing market crash (then everyone's fucked). You can't do that with any stock. One requires constant effort too while the other does not, it just provides passive income.
Oo is it cuz there are also incentives like mortgages where banks lend out a home it's paid off (owned by the bank and bourgeois at the end of the day anyways) which also made real estate available?
People become landlords so they can pay their own mortgage with other people's money. It's a pretty reliable way to turn money into more money with no work. Even easier than owning the means of production. Just grift off of rent. There are also big tax incentives for buying a second or third home. You can definitely do better than the stock market being a petty landlord.
Free money