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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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The State Department released a report on the ties between radical leftism and Cuba

It seems to consist of already public information, well documented in books like Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough. An excellent and humorous review can be found here.

Cuba doesn't seem to be such a big deal nowadays. Most of the documented influence ops are from decades ago, where they assisted semi serious militant groups like the Black Panthers and Weatherman. They do cooperate with aforementioned leftist front orgs like the Natoinal Lawyers Guild, but it's not exactly a secret, they aren't even trying to hide it. And there isn't evidence that these groups would wither and die without Havana's support. It seems surprisingly easy to convince young Americans that their country needs to be burned to the roots.

Anyways, Cuba is definitely getting invaded within the next year or so.

The State Department released a report on the ties between radical leftism and Cuba

Not news. Cuba is total shithole in just about any relevant metric, excepting secret squirrel stuff.

Among professionals, Cuban secret services and intelligence operations are very highly prized and considered world class.

If/when US gets access to the archives, expect lots of surprises.

edit: typos, links

Also relevant to this: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio: The greatest terror threat facing the world now comes from the far left (July 16).

Very, very abridged:

For 25 years, the term “counter-terrorism,” at least in the West, has meant first and foremost the fight against radical Islamist extremism.

For far too long, however, our counter-terrorism doctrine has had a blind spot. A blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left.

Left-wing violence was not just excused. It was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.

You are here because this is real, and it is getting worse. And it can no longer be denied, and it can no longer be ignored, because it is time to crush this evil forever.

Today’s far-left terrorists can raise money in one country. They can host their communications in a second country. They can receive training in a third country. They can recruit militants in a fourth country, and then together strike a target in a fifth country. And so we have no choice but to confront this menace together.

Yawn.

So the Sunni Jihadists had to do 9/11 to claim their title of top terrorist threat. If I were OBL watching from hell, I would be very upset. After all, he killed thousands to earn his spot, and now Antifa is getting the focus after shooting a few Feds and (very allegedly) sabotaging the Reflecting Pool?

"Left wing terrorism" is roughly like "right-wing hate groups". To the degree that they are widespread (e.g. celebrating the death of Kirk, or perhaps Floyd), they are covered by 1A. To the degree that they go beyond what is protected by 1A, they are not actually widespread.

Today’s far-left terrorists can raise money in one country. They can host their communications in a second country. They can receive training in a third country.

Translation:

(1) You should not be able to raise money for causes we do not like. More debanking.
(2) You should not have access to untapped communications.
(3) You should not be able to go to other countries to meet with people for a political cause we do not like.

Sounds like a pile of horseshit to me.

There was a time and place where Communists genuinely believed that central planning and the socialist economy were genuinely superior to the capitalist mode of production, and their victory would come about through increased productivity and a greater standard of living. That did not come to pass, and nowadays the only people who flog that are ivory-tower intellectuals that retreat into decades old data and tortured misinterpretation while ignoring the mountainous piles of lived, subjective experience.

Cuba was always poor, relatively speaking. Communism has made it even poorer. Today's communists don't even try and sell you on the idea of a centrally planned economy anymore, instead degenerating into standard Maoist and third-worldist fare on how American is the originator of all imperialist evil. Even their fellow communists in China have criticized them for their lack of reforms. Defenders of Cuba now mostly do it out of habit, and not out of any genuine belief in a imminent revolution by materialist praxis.

Even their fellow communists in China have criticized them for their lack of reforms

It's very funny that China is generally trying to lead fellow communists into the sin of market socialism, and failing. Lee Kuan Yew, in One man's view of the world, 2013:

Q: How much influence does China still have over North Korea?

A: The survival of North Korea depends heavily on China. From time to time North Koreans were almost starving because of the way they run the economy, and China gave them food and succour.

Q: Do you see this status quo prevailing even over 20, 30 years? Is there a risk of North Korea imploding?

A: No, I don’t think so. Why should it implode? It reached near starvation at one time, the Chinese provided the food, the world also helped.

Q: Is it in the interest of China to encourage North Korea to open up its economy as Deng Xiaoping did to China?

A: Well, they took Kim Jong-il around to Shanghai and so on to show him how he could improve his economy without losing control, but nothing came out of it. There is some speculation that the regime may carry out economic reforms under its new leadership, but it is too early to tell if young Kim will be bold enough to take that route.

Seeing reports from Russian tourists in North Korea today, though, I guess young Kim did eventually grow willing or capable of some liberalization.

Hard to really know what the situation is like in North Korea. There is a very developed black market that is in many cases broadly tolerated, but the same has also been true in similarly unrepentant Cuba since the early 1990s and they also resisted most liberalization (seemingly until at least this year).

From what I've read, selling their ammunition stockpile to Russia gave DPRK a massive economic boost. They have to pay double to import advanced technology, but since Russia paid double as well, it wasn't a problem this time.

Most of my knowledge of pre-revolutionary Cuba is various forms of 'wah they took our casinos' punditry. How affluent was it relative to Caribbean norms? I'm assuming it didn't have the oil riches that help the richest states in the nation, but I also assume it wasn't Haiti.

Seems that pre revolution it had 1/3 of USA gdp per capita. That is quite nice starting point and Cuba was destined to be rich. It had all the potential of Mexico without any of the problems.

How did Cuba have the potential of Mexico? The latter has had a large amount of industrialization and drug money. Did Cuba have something ability to more than a tourist economy or basically Florida? I also would assume some of their main cash crops that kept them at 1/3 US income pre-Revolution would be less true going forward.

Cuba being right next to the USA brings in lots of investment, they’re mineral rich, and they were probably destined to have at least some shipping income.

Cuba has an estimated 5.5 million tons of nickel deposits (for reference, Indonesia has the most in the world, at 21 million), but produces less than 50,000 tons a year. They have the third largest deposits of cobalt in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if they have more minerals I don't see on a cursory google, since the Caribbean is a mineral-rich region. They also have chrome, copper, gold, zinc, etc. and possibly offshore oil. Not enough to fully bootstrap your economy off (Jamaica might get >80% of export value from bauxite, but you want to do better than Jamaica), but a good start for developing domestic industry in a non-Communist context.

They would have always struggled with high fructose corn syrup undercutting sugar and the globalized economy undercutting everything else, but Cuba was the jewel of the Spanish Empire and their primary administrative center in the New World for centuries. That, combined with its close relationship with the US upon independence, should have set it up for success in the 20th Century. Modern Cuba (both pre and post revolution) had A LOT of European and American infrastructure and investment but pissed it all away.

I could easily imagine Cuba becoming one of those wealthy tax shelter/tourism islands, but large enough to have something of a real economy as well, if only a handful of things had gone differently.

HFCS didn't undercut cane sugar at world market prices until Chinese sugar demand picked up in the 21st century. HFCS replaced cane sugar in the US because massive sugar tariffs and subsidised corn created an artificial market. If that policy had involved crippling tariffs on the main export of a client state with a powerful lobby, it is not clear that the US would have done it.

If you remember the period when bringing back allegedly better-tasting Coca-Cola from Mexico was a thing, the reason for the difference was that Mexican coke used cane sugar and American coke used HFCS. In both cases, the Coca-Cola company unsurprisingly used the cheapest sweetener available.

One does not ‘bring back’ mexican coke, one pays a price premium for it in any store. It doesn’t make enough of a difference to really be worth it, but for those who would like to, you can simply pay more from normal mainstream retailers.

So you're telling me that in an alternate timeline with capitalist Cuba, all coke would taste like Mexican Coke? Yet another reason to hate communism.

Fixed the link: radical leftism and Cuba.

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