Comrade I say with with genuine respect, but I feel this is pessimistic beyond what the facts of the situation warrant, thus being unhelpful. Things are rough, but we are not even at Special Period levels of rough yet.

For what it’s worth, everything that’s happened to Cuba in recent years is still nothing compared to the Special Period, and they weathered that storm.

The SOS Cuba protests were very much small potatoes. There is not enough domestic unrest for the US to push a coup. And the US is already applying maximum pressure, there’s nothing more they can do other than threaten to torpedo any ship approaching the island.

I think Cuban leadership and to an extent the people of Cuba know what capitulation to the US means: a future more bleak than anything they are going through now. The islands assets will be stripped and handed to US corporations and gusanos. And there’s no way they will be allowed any sort of “democracy”, because they already have that. It would have to be some sort of US viceroyalty until the socialism is beaten out of them.

There’s no path to a better relationship with the US with Rubio, but not like a Harris administration would have offered any rapprochement either.

Trump has picked Elise Stefanik to be the UN Ambassador for the US.

While I maintain that functionally, Trump and Harris policies will be no different on the ground in Palestine, there is definitely worrying signs already that Trump will also be pretty horrible, in particular for the West Bank.

Stefanik is an uber-Zionist even by US Congress standards. She was the one grilling university presidents over not being tough enough on student protestors. There are rumors that Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to Trump’s campaign on the condition that he support Israel annexing the West Bank. And Israel has tapped a settlement expansion activist to be the next ambassador to the US, who is also very pro-annexation as well.

This might a small W but it’s a W nonetheless. The Libertarian Party is the most popular and best organized third party in the US, by a long shot. They have decades of work put in, not to mention ideologically they are very compatible with (white, middle/upper class) American superstructure. And Chase Oliver is objectively their best candidate they’ve fielded in maybe ever. He’s articulate and is good at emphasizing the least bad aspects of the ideology, like being anti-war and anti-MIC. For a Marxist-Leninist party that’s only gotten big recently and doesn’t even focus on electoralism, that’s honestly a great showing.

Technically she was on the Peace and Freedom Party, not the same org but they have ballot access in CA so they accepted de la Cruz as their candidate. Still, it should at least be PAF or something.

Jointly issued on Sunday by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce, the new negative list, which will take effect on Nov 1, reduces the number of restrictions from 31 to 29, achieving zero restrictions on the manufacturing sector.

I’m not sure I understand the details of the “negative list”, but it appears that 2 items from that list have been removed, and either one or both relate to the manufacturing sector? If so, unless each item has a tremendous amount of details, it would seem that not a lot will have changed from the status quo i.e. if there are only one or two items on a list that are restricting the sector, then there couldn’t have been much restrictions in the first place? These are questions, though, not statements.

Both parties are in a death spiral right now. The democrats, for the reasons you mentioned but also because what gets them donations from billionaires and what motives the base are entirely opposite and mutually exclusive as neoliberalism is eating itself alive. But for the GOP, whenever Trump dies that party is going to rip itself apart. A huge chunk of the base loves Trump and hates the party. They were about to destroy themselves in 2015 as the party was going to shove hated “RINOs” like Jeb! and Rubio down their throats.

It’s a race to the bottom right now.

Would he though? If the new justice isn’t as liberal-leaning, even if they are bit younger I imagine he would take that deal. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a liberal. If you could replace Clarence Thomas with a slightly more moderate republican, you would probably do that.

…it’s a cartoon.

“Oh no what will do without the famously horrible Israeli tourists?”

Western news media is pushing the angle of “anti-Semitic attacks” in Amsterdam, leaving out the actual truth.

This narrative in this situation is so dangerous for fomenting actual anti-semitism. Long before this match, soccer fans in Europe knew that one Tel Aviv club and their supporters are total fascists, they have an infamous reputation. Anyone with a phone can see the videos of them disrespecting the Spanish flood victims and all the violence they initiated. The fact that the Israeli fans are in no way “victims” is obvious to everyone, including those who haven’t really followed what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank over the last year.

So, what happens to your average European soccer fan who’s disinterested in politics and world events, when they see what happened last night and then see how the media in their country is covering it? They can see who the actual perpetrators are and who the actual victims are, and then see that their news media and governments are spinning it the other way. All it takes then is for these same people to get exposed to the actually anti-Semitic “Jews control the media and Western governments” ideas and down the neo-Nazi pipeline they go…

Trump’s whole thing is to never actually fulfill any commitments. He would insist that Cuba do all that and then afterward, he will lift the blockade. Only when the time comes he’ll find a reason not to do it.

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I have talked to a surprising number of conservatives and libertarians who, after I explain what would happen the US if we stopped running budget deficits, are just like “hell yeah bring the collapse on, we’ll be better off for it in the long run”. This sounds acceleration and maybe it is but I think it’s more they don’t understand / believe that things would be that bad for that long.

This is another point in favor of “yes China is actually socialist right now” to me. Honestly one of the things that drew me to socialism early on was precisely what you are describing: a dream of a society where concerns for the essentials in life are minimal, people have spaces (and time) to socialize, and overall you just have a more socially healthy society. Would love to have this in the US but it’s pretty great that the largest country in the world (and ascendant) has it.

I was there at the time (the 90s). It was a very common “joke” and no one ever made the connection that hey, that’s weird how we just destroyed the Soviet economy and now all these women from the former USSR are available to be purchased…

I was finally able to get a keffiyeh from Hirbawi the other day! I was hoping for a standard black and white one but that was sold out. But they did have one that was basically the same except some of the designs were red and green instead of black (like the Palestinian flag) which was pretty cool

Sure thing. Regarding the rate of profit, it’s something Roberts talks about a lot, so if you go to his website and search for “rate of profit”, you’ll find many articles (and graphs).

Regarding the extraction of surplus value, that one’s a little trickier. It’s a key part of what’s in volume 2 of Capital, specifically in chapter 6 (but the chapters before are important to comprehend as they build up to ch. 6). Long story short, it is only in the sphere of production (i.e. making things) where surplus value is created. So any costs that are not directly a part of production are “unproductive” and thus must be covered by surplus value. At the individual firm level this is often called “overhead” or “indirect costs”.

But at the economy level… what about the US? We don’t make anything anymore, so where is our surplus value coming from? Production in the global south! The value is created there but it is “imported” into the US. This is plainly obvious when you consider how much it costs to make a t-shirt in Bangladesh and what it ultimately sell for in the US. (I am admittedly mixing surplus value and profit a bit here but I think it’s appropriate).

How that surplus value makes it to workers indirectly is a bit abstract. But it can be done politically or through action. Meaning, you can pass a law that grants universal health care to pacify workers. Or the workers themselves can go on strike and earn more. Or even just through market forces this can happen. It’s a hard thing to empirically “prove” but it’s something you can see historically: when capital faces pressure, they have mechanisms to redistribute surplus value. In England, there was an increasingly militant labor movement that was eventually bought off by England ramping up imperialist plunder in the second half of the 19th century. In the US, up until the early 20th century you could always just steal more indigenous land and give it to workers (stealing capital and distributing it to workers isn’t the same and sharing surplus value per se but the effect is the same).

Politicizing the Fed - which is something Trump and the GOP are absolutely going to do - is great for the accelerationists. The Fed was always political to an extent but they’re a key cog in the imperialism machine. Force to make short-term politically based actions and they will hurt America’s imperialism in the long run.

Tbf housing (buying or renting) has gotten a lot more expensive since 2016-2020. I’ve been in the same line of work making steady increases and houses I was looking at buying in 2018-2019 are now out of my ability to pay (even by equalizing the interest rates). I looked up my old apartment from 2016-2017 and the rent increases since then are way more than my pay increases.

When it comes to consumer goods, I would agree that pay increases have gotten closer to inflation (but still not there), so I do think people will focus on the price increases without pay increases. But then again a lot of Trump supporters probably bought a house before 2016 so their griping is unwarranted.