Quite literally a huge mistake on my part. I was looking for advice on how to attend medical school in Cuba, any age limits for self financed students, what requirements I need grade wise, etc.

Instead, when I clicked on the Reddit link, I got people talking about how people needed to bring their own gauze for surgery, the doctors there are incompetent, and the hospitals lack resources. The lack of resources was blamed on the healthcare system and the country rather than the embargo.

Next time I just need to email CubaHeal because that was so disheartening to read.

Video explaining China's democratic system, including: elections, accountability, consultations, and responsiveness.

It was September 24, 1960. Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro, newly arrived in New York for the 15th UN General Assembly, couldn't find a hotel to stay in. The United States government had pressured all establishments in Manhattan to deny lodging to the Cuban delegation.

It was then that Malcolm X, the leader of the Nation of Islam, invited him to Harlem , to the African American-owned Hotel Theresa, where the Black community welcomed him like a hero. "In Harlem, we're not addicted to all the propaganda the U.S. government puts out," Malcolm X said. "As long as Uncle Sam is against you, you know you're a good man and you're on the right track."

Thousands of African Americans gathered in front of the hotel, twenty-four hours a day, to support Fidel, and therefore, the Cuban people.

That scene, which today seems like something from another era, summarizes better than any treaty what the UN should be: a space where sovereign nations, regardless of their size or military power, can meet, dialogue, and challenge imperialist powers. Sixty-six years later, that promise lies shattered in the very building where Fidel once held court with his speeches.

This 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, still underway in September 2026, has been a stage where hypocrisy has reached levels that not even the most cynical screenwriters could have imagined. From the podium once occupied by Fidel Castro to denounce the blockade and demand justice for the Global South, two war criminals paraded, flaunting their impunity without the slightest shame.

Benjamin Netanyahu, with his hands stained with the blood of more than 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, dared to declare that "accusing Israel of genocide is the biggest lie of the century" and that "Israel's army is the most moral in the world."

Not content with such obscenity, the Israeli prime minister insulted the representatives of the countries who, in a gesture of dignity, left the room before hearing his speech: "If there are any other moral cowards who haven't left this room, please do so now." His contempt for the international community could not have been more blatant. And yet, there was the UN, granting him the platform, allowing him to laugh in the face of the victims and their families.

Days earlier, Donald Trump, the same one who ordered the kidnapping of a sovereign president, the same one who launched a war of aggression against Iran, the same one who turned hunger into an instrument of blackmail against Cuba , took to the podium to threaten to "quickly annihilate Iran, plunge it into hell with no possibility of survival or hope for future generations."

Not even Hitler dared to go that far. And to leave no doubt about his intentions, the tycoon boasted that "with Venezuela, we have more than 60% of the world's oil," adding that "the riches of the losing country belong to the victor of the war." In other words, he declared the Monroe Doctrine before the entire planet, without any anesthesia or shame.

How did the Assembly react? Half the delegates left the room during Netanyahu's speech. It was a symbolic gesture, certainly, but insufficient. Because what was truly revealing was not the exodus of those who left, but the passivity of those who remained.

The same countries that year after year vote in the General Assembly to demand an end to the blockade against Cuba—187 votes in favor, barely two against—were unable to stand up and tell Netanyahu to his face: “You are a genocidal maniac.” They left, yes, but they didn’t confront him. They left the stage clear for the criminal to continue his monologue.

And as for Trump, there was no stampede. There was no protest. There was, at best, an uncomfortable murmur, a few subsequent statements of "concern," a few condemnations that were lost in the sea of ​​diplomatic bureaucracy. Because no one dares to challenge the empire when it holds all the cards. And that is precisely the tragedy of the UN, since it is not a space of equals, but a mirror of the world as it is, with its hierarchies, its fears, and its complicity.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 with the promise to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." But that promise has been systematically violated by the very powers that drafted it. The Security Council, with its five permanent members and its veto power, is the clearest example of how the postwar international order remains a club of victors.

The United States has vetoed more than 80 resolutions condemning Israel. Russia and China have vetoed those condemning their allies. And the Global South—Africa, Latin America, Asia—continues to wait for some of those resolutions to be implemented.

The UN, as it is currently designed, cannot respond to the interests of the peoples of the Global South because it was not created for that purpose. It was created to manage the order imposed by Western powers after World War II. And within that order, the countries of the Global South are suppliers of raw materials, captive markets, and, when they rebel, targets of intervention.

The UN Charter itself enshrines the sovereignty of states, but practice has shown that this sovereignty is a privilege of the powerful. Cuba has been blockaded for 67 years. Venezuela has been invaded. Iraq was destroyed with lies. Libya was dismembered. And the UN, the great guardian of peace, has been unable to prevent it.

What remains is a space for moral posturing and empty rhetoric. The same leaders who order bombings gather annually in New York to deliver speeches about human rights, democracy, and peace.

Netanyahu calls those who leave the room "moral cowards" while his soldiers abduct more than a thousand Palestinian children each year in the West Bank. Trump threatens to "annihilate" a country while his administration blocks 65% of the humanitarian aid entering Gaza. It's an absurd charade where the main actors are the executioners, and the audience, the victims, has no right to respond.

The contrast between words and deeds is so grotesque it borders on the surreal. While Netanyahu proclaimed that Israel is "the most moral army in the world," his forces were destroying more than 90% of Gaza's wells and desalination plants, leaving two million people without access to clean water.

While Trump promised "peace and prosperity" for the Western Hemisphere, his agents were kidnapping the president of Venezuela and stifling the development of the Cuban people. While both spoke of "security" and "freedom," their armies were killing children in Gaza and the Sahel, training terrorists in Ukraine, and financing coups in Africa.

And amidst all this, the UN—the same UN that in 1960 was unable to secure a hotel for Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro—continues to function as a machine for producing resolutions that no one heeds. The General Assembly votes time and again against the blockade of Cuba, and the blockade continues. The General Assembly condemns the occupation of Palestine, and the occupation expands. The General Assembly demands a cessation of hostilities, and the hostilities escalate.

It is a cycle of good intentions without consequences, a mechanism designed to give the illusion that the world governs itself, when in reality it is governed by the powers that control oil, finance and weapons.

This is not about demonizing the idea of ​​a supranational body. Humanity desperately needs a space where differences can be addressed without resorting to war, where people can develop common strategies to overcome centuries of underdevelopment and dependency, where multilateralism is a reality and not just a facade. The problem is not the UN as a concept, but the UN as a concrete structure, captured by the very powers that created it to manage their hegemony.

A UN that responds to the interests of the Global South should have a Security Council without veto power, a General Assembly with binding authority, an International Criminal Court that tries everyone equally—Netanyahu, Trump, Ben Gvir, those responsible for the blockade against Cuba—and a funding mechanism that does not depend on voluntary contributions from wealthy countries. But none of that will happen as long as the world order remains unipolar or, at best, multipolar with hierarchies.

Sixty-six years after Fidel was received in Harlem as a liberation hero, the lesson remains relevant. Solidarity among oppressed peoples is stronger than imperialist propaganda. The UN can be a hostile space, but it can also be a platform for denouncing injustice, for highlighting struggles, for building alliances. Fidel did so in 1960, and he did it again every time he took to that podium.

Today, as war criminals take the podium and representatives of the Global South silently leave the room, the question is not whether the UN is useful or not. The question is what we, the people, do with that space.

Because as long as empires dictate the rules, the UN will remain a club for the rich where the poor have the right to speak, but not to be heard. And as long as that continues, peace, justice, and dignity will remain empty words in the vocabulary of the powerful.

it seems that he was just trying to clean the name of his family spying those evil capitalist pigs in america to restore the family honor, maybe he's a double agent for communism infiltrated on muskrat ranks

The recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodríguez took place during a gala on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This event represents a milestone in the geopolitical reconfiguration of the Western Hemisphere. After years of sanctions, diplomatic ruptures, and maximum-pressure confrontation, this rapprochement demonstrates a transition from open hostility to a new ground in the relationship between the two countries.

The context and the images that derive from it disrupt the entire political tradition, common sense, slogans and ideological totems for each side.

However, beyond the formalities, the substance prevails. The meeting between Delcy Rodríguez and Donald Trump operates at the midpoint where the asymmetrical coercion exerted by Washington and the strategic adaptation deployed by Chavismo converge.

The geometry of intertwined interests, the management of narrative dissonance (this meeting after January 3), back-channel diplomacy, and the inevitability of open interaction between both governments are components of an analysis that leads to one premise: the rapprochement responds to a need for operational stabilization where both parties reduce political costs by sacrificing ideological orthodoxy.

FROM PRESSURE TO SURVIVAL PRAGMATISM

Diplomacy between adversarial states rarely arises from normative alignment; rather, it usually emerges when unilateral strategies of coercion or resistance reach a point of diminishing returns. This was the case in Venezuela.

Bilateral contact between Washington and Caracas at the highest level unfolds against a backdrop of marked structural power asymmetry. However, international relations have demonstrated that strict asymmetry does not eliminate the agency of the quantitatively weaker actor, but rather alters its tactics, shifting it from open confrontation toward strategic adaptation. Chavismo's position is precisely that, especially since the turning point of January 3rd, when asymmetric coercion erupted into armed conflict.

In a broader context, for the US administration, the model of absolute isolation and incentives for the internal collapse of Chavismo demonstrated operational limitations in achieving regional stability and the profitability they seek in strategic assets. Completely setting Venezuela ablaze while simultaneously extracting oil from it was not an option.

In the long run, and with the US drift toward Iran, the issue of hydrocarbons and their prices has become a major headache for the Trump Administration. This year, it has led them to emphasize their "achievements" in Venezuela as a prized milestone in US foreign policy.

This is where American “flexible realism” comes into play. It is one of the guiding principles introduced in the Trump era into the National Security Strategy (NSS) and consolidated in the National Defense Strategy (NDS) of the United States. This approach marks a drastic shift from the idealism or liberal internationalism of past decades, replacing the objective of maintaining absolute global dominance and promoting democracy with a highly pragmatic, selective stance focused strictly on national interest. According to this perspective, Washington can engage with Caracas regardless of whether the Chavista structure that underpinned President Nicolás Maduro remains intact. Values ​​and ideology do not prevail; interests do.

For the Chavista leadership in Venezuela, global financial isolation and the partial operational paralysis of the oil industry forced a recalibration of anti-imperialist rhetoric toward a transactional negotiation model. This is evident.

It is in this geopolitical space that the bilateral meeting takes place; a gray area where economic coercion and operational agreement coexist.

THE GEOMETRY OF INTERESTS AND TRANSACTIONAL DYNAMICS

The first pillar of this analysis is based on the intrinsic complexity of the incentives that guide both actors. Far from adhering to a maximalist view, the approach is based on a non-zero-sum calculation in very specific areas.

Washington's equation is: access to Venezuelan energy and mineral resources, control of migration flows, and guaranteeing its regional influence through the differentiated use of force. A pure and simple exercise in hegemony.

Caracas' equation is: easing of sanctions (end of the naval blockade and other measures), operational-diplomatic recognition of the government, return to the international financial system, attracting investments, stabilizing the economy and sustaining the operational resistance and institutional resilience of the State in a complex context.

Given the evident transactional logic of the Trump Administration, it is necessary to examine where the Venezuelan government's logic operates. This demonstrates a capacity for tactical malleability. Faced with structural barriers to the commercialization of its resources, the state leadership offers operational guarantees to foreign energy corporations in exchange for exploitation licenses and direct tax revenues.

Furthermore, this “strategic adaptation” preserves the basic architecture of internal political power while ceding ground in the management of natural resources to guarantee cash flow and de facto legitimacy. In this way, it aims to break the siege and weaken the inertia of sanctions, which has been one of Chavismo's most cherished objectives in recent years.

For Chavismo, dismantling the isolationist sanctions inertia has been a crucial point. It's a matter of either dismantling it or plunging into a structural, perpetual, intergenerational loop that causes immense pain and profound impoverishment for the population. The size and characteristics of the Venezuelan population give the blockade devastating power.

After 12 years of sanctions, Venezuela, which failed to join BRICS to escape Western suffocation, which, due to its physical characteristics, could not tolerate an extended naval blockade in the Caribbean, and which also failed to overcome the military asymmetry favorable to the United States, necessarily had to negotiate within the framework of possibilities and limitations that govern the moment.

NARRATIVE DISSONANCE AND THE WEIGHT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS

The image of the two presidents, together and smiling, is a stark portrait of the current political moment, not only in Venezuela, but also in the region and the context of international relations today. It is the point where certain narratives founder and where the compasses governed by ideological systems cease to function.

The most opaque component—and one often labeled “incomprehensible” from the public's perspective—is the very possibility of a coexistence of natural antagonisms through a fluid technical relationship. Here, labels like “a ward of the state” don't prevail, nor do they apply to Trump as “an ally of a narco-terrorist tyrant.” What emerges is realpolitik at its most extreme.

From the perspective of both governments, both (albeit in different ways) grapple with political costs. In both Washington's domestic politics and Caracas's, the reputational cost of ideological softening is considerably high.

For the US administration, this visible rapprochement risks being interpreted by sectors of the electorate as a concession to an “authoritarian regime,” which is no small matter in the lead-up to the midterm elections . Democrats and even Republicans in Miami are reacting strongly. And beyond party politics, some see the meeting as the lifeline Washington is giving its biggest adversary in the Americas, given the lack of a straightforward regime change that could backfire and undo the gains of Trump's brand of flexible realism in Venezuela.

For the Venezuelan leadership, an explicit understanding with the North American power that bombed Caracas on January 3 and kidnapped President Maduro undermines the historical narrative of anti-imperialist sovereignty that serves as a unifying identity for its operational base. Furthermore, Chavismo has already been, de facto, expelled from the international club of certain left-wing groups. Various digital media operators, commentators, and influencers from the international left are haranguing Chavismo and Delcy Rodríguez with a superficial analysis, governed by rather simplistic coordinates such as "betrayal" or "capitulation." Among these groups, there is zero recognition of the practice of politics as the difficult art of navigating the gray areas.

To resolve this dilemma and manage costs, the parties have resorted to backchannel diplomacy. These channels operated in a secretive space, away from media scrutiny, using special envoys, private sector intermediaries, or low-profile meetings (“side calls” at multilateral summits).

This separation between external rhetoric and private negotiations allowed both sides to minimize domestic political losses while making substantive concessions. What from the outside appears as dissonance or incoherence is, in strategic analysis, the indispensable condition for diplomacy to be viable. But now the meeting has become public, photos have been taken and disseminated, and there is an open effort to legitimize the relationship.

Regarding the situation of the more radical sectors of the Venezuelan opposition in this context, there is little to analyze. Their strategic irrelevance and negligible reach in the dynamics of real power have excluded them from this equation.

THE INEVITABLE POINT OF DIPLOMACY

Finally, any analysis of the leaders' meeting must acknowledge the binding nature of international relations. Diplomacy is not merely a diplomatic reward bestowed upon allies; it is also the primary tool for managing conflicts with adversaries.

Total isolation as a foreign policy strategy tends to create a deadlock that paralyzes the capacity for strategic action.

When unilateral pressure exhausts its margins of effectiveness without substantially altering the adversary's power structure, direct interaction ceases to be optional. This applies to Trump. At this point, diplomacy becomes a geopolitical necessity imposed by geography, the natural resource market, and the stability of the hemisphere, especially when a gallon of diesel costs $7 in the United States and Trump needs to send the message to his voters that everything is under control.

The meeting does not symbolize a lasting alliance or a shared set of values, but rather a balancing act. It marks the establishment of a minimal framework of rules where asymmetric coercion and strategic adaptation converge to avoid scenarios of uncontrolled chaos. The particularities and context governing the meeting between the leadership of Venezuela and the United States demonstrate that contemporary international relations operate in a terrain where ideological labels give way to transactional dynamics.

It is a terrain that confirms that diplomacy cannot be ignored indefinitely; faced with the paralysis of maximalist approaches, transactional dialogue emerges as the only channel for loss management and strategic survival, which applies to the ruling Chavismo.

Ultimately, the event reflects a constant of geopolitics; at the intersection of pressure and resistance, material incentives and operational stability will always end up imposing their own diplomacy.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

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Ansarollah ("Houthi") leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi says his forces are acting defensively in the latest round of conflict in Yemen, accusing Saudi Arabia of initiating the escalation.

In an address, al-Houthi said Ansarollah ("Houthi") forces are targeting Saudi military sites and oil infrastructure while acting according to what he described as Islamic and ethical principles.

He accused Saudi-led forces of carrying out indiscriminate attacks in Yemen during the more than decade-long conflict, including strikes on homes and marketplaces. Al-Houthi also condemned what he called a “siege” restricting the import of food and medicine into Yemen.

He rejected claims that Ansarollah ("Houthi") forces targeted Mecca, describing the allegation as false, and said his people were defending themselves.

"Guizhou, China was one of the poorest places on the planet until local party leaders decided to rein in corrupt capitalists. Now it has the highest bridges on planet earth linking together thousands of miles of highway and high speed rail.

Guizhou honestly looks just like West Virginia in terms of lush greenery, rolling hills, and an abundance of mineral deposits. However, thank goodness Joe Manchin isn't the guy in charge here.

We traveled to the Pingtang Bridge (the third highest in the world; tallest concrete bridge in world), the beautiful city of Tongren, the FAST telescope, and Longli village [...].

I think this might be the fastest economic development in human history all things considered."

what too much digital circus, slopaganda, and warhammer 40k memes makes to your brain. at first you go "for the emperor!" when you notice, you are making part of jehova's witness for nerds

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12803813

Syria is witnessing its widest wave of protests since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Are Syrians beginning to turn against Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani?

A sharp increase in fuel prices has triggered demonstrations, burning tires and road blockades across multiple Syrian governorates, including areas in Idlib and Aleppo that once formed the heartland of the anti-Assad rebellion.

Diesel prices jumped by 40%, while petrol prices also rose sharply, placing even greater pressure on Syrians already struggling with transportation costs, food prices, electricity shortages and a devastated economy.

Protesters have blocked major roads, including sections of the Damascus-Aleppo highway, while demonstrations have spread through areas including Maarat al-Numan, Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah.

The immediate demand is economic. But the bigger question is political:

Is the honeymoon between Syrians and the post-Assad government beginning to end?

In this Monday Geopolitics livestream, Kevork Almassian examines what the protests tell us about Ahmed al-Sharaa's government, Syria's worsening economic situation and the growing gap between the promises of “liberation” and the reality Syrians are living today.

synthesis

Welcome again to everybody. Thank you for joining us for the time-honored tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread. Oh and by the way, please mind the rail crossing.

• Matrix homeserver and space
• Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
• Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive