This really illustrates how important it is to switch to renewable energy. I know it's not an easy task for impoverished communities to get the startup capital to install solar+batteries, especially one in such a politically tumultuous position, but that really is a path to stability for so many people around the world.
A YouTuber known for talking about dishwashers and Christmas lights recently put out a long rant about how ridiculous it is that humanity still leans so much on single use fuels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
A fascinating takeaway from that video for me... If you take the US land that is dedicated to growing corn for ethanol that is put in gasoline, and replace all the corn on that land with solar panels, how much energy would it produce? Twice today's total electrical generation in the US, from all sources. And that's in the corn belt, which is far from ideal for solar. It would be billions of panels, but it's a pretty interesting perspective on the questions about the land use requirements of solar.
Another genuine question: I wonder how that would change the climate in those areas. I live in Iowa and "corn sweat" is a thing that never fails to make several weeks of summer completely unbearable.
There was a book about renewable energy in Britain about 17 years ago, "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air" that tried to make the argument that renewables could not power Britain, there wasn't enough land. But if you drilled down, this conclusion was due to use of biofuels.
The significant problem with that book is that it commits the primary energy fallacy. It sees that we need X GWh of chemical energy from fuels and says we have to replace it with X GWh of electricity. Which is of course completely wrong since it ignores the efficiencies of the processes and conflates two different things simply because they are measured in the same units.
Germany uses less land for energy crops and is further north, but still could satisfy most of its electricity needs if it replaced the plants with solar panels.
Genuine question: How much energy, minerals, transportation, manufacturing, etc, etc. goes into making the panels. How much are the panels going to make back percentage wise in it's lifetime vs. the cost to make and transport, install?
Corn kind of reproduces itself every year (If you don't get the GMO kind), so you only need natural resources to continue to grow it right? Water, sunlight and labor?
> Corn kind of reproduces itself every year (If you don't get the GMO kind), so you only need natural resources to continue to grow it right? Water, sunlight and labor?
At industrial scale, it has a huge petro-chemical fertiliser input.
Total energy input to agriculture in the US is less than 2% of total energy consumption. So "huge" there has to be taken in context.
All the energy inputs to agriculture could be replaced with non-fossil inputs. Fertilizer in particular needs hydrogen to make ammonia, but that can be produced from non-fossil sources.
Extensive deployment of renewables and battery storage is perhaps the best thing that can be done anywhere (even in developed countries) for making the grid more robust. Not only is there no fuel supply to be cut off, targets become too diffuse and decentralized to take out quickly, especially if you can manage to cover 30-40% of cities with rooftop solar.
Honestly I'm not sure if it would take a week in most cases, just took this long in this case. Its really not worth going after the panels with a conventional missile. Maybe something that explodes well above it and litters it with ball bearings would be far more effective.
If you know it’s coming, you can command the panels on single axis trackers to avoid damage. This is done today for hail and hurricane risk. Panels are also rated to withstand all but the most aggressive hail.
It also illustrates the importance of not getting caught on the wrong side of the global hegemon right next door who can choke you out and prevent you from importing energy and integrating with the global economy.
It also illustrates the importance of not wrecking your own economy through pursuing socialist policies and driving the most productive people out of the country.
Or, a prolonged embargo, threats of invasion, actual attempts at invasion, diplomatic pressure to isolate, etc all by the most powerful empire in history on your doorstep destroyed everything.
It is not hard, because you can look at other examples besides Cuba.
Once upon a time, there was COMECON, a huge bloc of socialist countries trading with one another, whose intent was precisely to limit Western pressures. It included some fairly developed countries like Czechoslovakia and GDR. 500 million people in total, similar to the US and Western Europe together back then. A huge market in total, from Leipzig to Vladivostok to Saigon (after it fell).
(BTW Cuba was a member of COMECON and it was a very non-productive member, being heavily subsidised by the Soviet Union all the time. I still remember the Cuban oranges sold in Czechoslovak shops, which were so full of stones/seeds that they were barely edible. No one would voluntarily buy them unless there was no alternative available, but there usually wasn't one. A good metafor for what was going on.)
They still ran their economies into the ground because Marxist-Leninist economy doesn't work in practice. Marxism as a theory is catnip for intellectuals, but neither Marx nor Lenin ever tried to run a corner shop, much less an actual factory. The resulting misalignment of interests throws off almost everybody and a country practicing Marxist-Leninist approaches to economy will end up with just two really functional institutions: the secret police, to keep the comrades in power, and the (very non-Marxist) black market, which is tolerated because otherwise the population would starve. If it is not tolerated, the population will starve, but only a few countries like North Korea were crazy enough to go down that road.
The same happened all over again pretty much everywhere where it has been tried. China only started to economically grow after ditching Marxist economy for market reforms in 1979. India was never totalitarian, but toyed with Marxist approaches until 1991, when the "License Raj" was reformed; since then, it has been following Chinese economic growth along a very similar line.
Heck, even very early idealistic Israel ran into somewhat similar problems, although all the kibbutzniks were there voluntarily and eschewed use of state violence to build their utopias.
Communism doesn't work because its originator (Marx) used Hegel's dialectical method, which was only ever meant to be used in conjunction with an idealist (=reality is derived from the mind) philosophy, and misappropriated it into dialectical materialism. The dialectical method is acceptable when the contradictions are between concepts during the process of gaining knowledge which if completed results in "the truth being the whole".
In materialist philosophy, the real world exists entirely outside the mind and the mind only interprets it. Having dialectical materialism would imply that material reality has a final destination (=communism) that it is striving to achieve and that rather than concepts such as life and death contradicting each other, it's people that are contradicting each other (capitalists vs proletariat). Because forward progress is guaranteed, there is no need to have knowledge/discussions about how to arrive at the final destination. The best way to accelerate the process is to simply destroy the existing order no matter what it is. Reformists (people who demand incremental improvements) are slowing down progress toward utopia while supporting the status quo and should be held in contempt.
What this ultimately means is that Marxist socialism has never been about building a good society for people to live in, but to dismantle the status quo, no matter what it is. This makes Marxist socialism an extremely attractive ideology for ruthless, violent or narcissistic individuals, while simultaneously luring in unsuspecting people who just want a better life and have reasonable grievances with the status quo. These subtractive ideologies fail because they're biting the hand that feeds them.
There is this socialist streamer (Vaush) that summarized all of this in a single sentence. "I don't care about principles, I only care about winning."
Is it? It's more like "you can't succeed with any political system if your powerful bullies dislike it". What do you think about Vietnam? Everything destroyed as well?
The way things are going it looks like late capitalism is on a way to eventually catch up. And all 2.5 "productive" people left would own the world and the rest will be cattle, potentially culled to keep things in check
That's definitely part of the equation, but the blockade has been over for a long while. They have suffered not only the brutal effect of US colonization/hegemony but also the brutal effect of the legacy of Castro's brand of economics. If they were just suffering one or the other, they'd be significantly better off.
Edit since I am throttled on posts and cannot reply below: The US briefly blockaded Cuba in the 60s, but they have only embargoed them since then. They are not blocked from international trade by the US, except with the US. There is no meaningful block from Cuba engaging in the greater international non-US "global economy" such as EU,Asia, etc.
For instance, I can buy Malibu rum, no matter that Pernod Ricard does business with Cuba. Or flights in USA with Air France, no matter that they also do business in Havana. Or ZTE phones which are imported into both USA and Cuba from China (carrier limitations but only because USA government won't do business with ZTE associated businesses, not because they can't be sold in USA). Or Sinopec (oil) which does business in USA including a large investment of presence in Texas but also does business with Cuba.
Yes your blanket any is a lot more applicable if you said the truth which is any business that wants to do business with USA federal government which is much closer to the truth (but even then, Sinopec for instance has through its subsidiaries been allowed to bid on strategic oil reserve transactions no matter their ownership is a major trader with Cuba).
Cuba is actively trading with EU, Asian, etc companies that are also trading with USA.
That's not enough to keep people fed. I think the primary reason why Cuba remained socialist is that all the "capitalists" (perceived as boogieman for social ills) are voluntarily fleeing Cuba rather than opposing the government.
Interestingly you don't want to be near the equator for the best solar resource, due to something called the "Intertropical Convergence Zone". This creates persistent storms and cloudiness in a band that waves up and down across the equator.
Cuba is dying and collapsing, with this kind of issue being just a part of a broader systemic set of causes. It is a serious tragedy and humanitarian crisis. If people aren't aware of how bad it is: they haven't had reliable food and electricity for a while now, even parts of Havana and other cities look eerily like a ghost town, and it seems as if almost anyone that is able to has been fleeing.
"Compared to the peak of 11.2 million inhabitants reached in 2012 – the year of the last census – Cuba has lost 13% of its population. [...] A quarter of the island's population is aged 60 and over, and it is the only demographic category that has grown in recent years"
It is the result of crippling economic sanctions and an ongoing trade embargo by USA for 60 years now. The tragedy has a perpetrator. The humanitarian crisis is the result of actions of people who are very pleased with themselves for constructing it. Please don't use passive tone when describing humans inflicting intentional harm to other humans. Many countries in the rest of the world have shown themselves to be extremely willing to both help and trade with Cuba, but USA keeps tightening the noose and scaring them away.
The fact that percentage of older population increased is a dead giveaway that most young people are migrating (to US most likely) and more akin to exodus.
A very similar pattern to Venezuela which saw a similar exodus.
I have a coworker from Cuba, her grandmother still lives there, this has been going on for about 2 years. She had sent her grandmother a power generator thinking she could just buy gas, but when it became apparent that they have gas shortages, she bought her grandmother a solar based one, this was several months ago if I remember correctly.
The fossil fuel industry has stolen the bulk of Cuba’s income. Need to switch to solar and batteries to onshore your energy production. China could help here and get a big diplomatic win if they were to give Cuba subsidized access to their clean energy assets.
No, the shitty regime has stolen, squandered, and prevented the vast majority of Cuba's (potential) income.
They've received free oil from Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia for decades. This whole crisis is because the country is horribly mismanaged and the free ride is over.
Most countries have to purchase their oil at market prices. Cuba has been spared that burden yet is still worse off than the average country.
IIRC both Russia and China have demanded economic reforms which are not forthcoming. The Chinese aren't stupid and they don't seem too interested in pissing their money away indefinitely on a 'partner' who ignores them.
The entire crisis is because the US has been abusing Cuba since Batista fell, don't get confused. The idea that Cuba is being coddled because it isn't paying market prices when the US has been excluding it from the market for your entire life and most of your parents' lives is sadistic and cynical.
You don't get to criticize the quality of someone's system until you take your foot off their neck.
Reducing the root cause to the US is ludicrous. Cuba had agency and their government made some horrific choices for their citizens.
I was there about 20 years ago and it was the most depressing place I've ever visited: the authoritarianism and corruption and tragedy was so visibly prevalent . . . even to a tourist. It was frightening because problems are usually better hidden from foreigners.
Summarising a complex situation as though it has one simple cause is a human sign of ignoring complexity or systems.
Yes, the impact of US political choices was deeply hideous. That doesn't excuse the Cuban government from their choices about how to deal with that.
But the current crisis is most certainly due to the United States - double confirmed by the U.S. administration. The U.S. President and his Secretary of State have BOTH boasted about stopping oil delivery to Cuba and tightening the screws on them. They want easy regime change.
"THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE." The Cuban government is "ready to fall" or "failing pretty soon" due to this cutoff!
Rubio has in slightly less pompous fashion confirmed that the U.S. has now successfully weakened Cuba.
Personally, I despise the current U.S. administration's glee at causing suffering. "Might Makes Absolute Right" & "Vae Victis" are the current American mottos. No old-fashioned velvet glove over the steel fist - it is barbed with titanium and doused with hellfire now.
If Cuba's government had created prosperity when they had the chance then they wouldn't be experiencing this crisis right now. They had a decade plus of no economic blockade from the U.S., and still they squandered the opportunity. They had 6+ decades of subsidies from their friends (minus a brief period following the fall of the USSR), and still they squandered that. This is because Cuba's government does not want prosperity for its citizens (subjects) for whatever reason (probably because they would be harder to keep down), and instead preferred to live off the largesse of the USSR (later Russia), Venezuela, and Mexico.
> They had a decade plus of no economic blockade from the U.S., and still they squandered the opportunity.
Err when was this decade plus of zero economic blockade ? I think you have confused less than two tiny years from 2015-2017. Nothing can be done in 2 years. By the time you setup trade, you are blockaded by the big bully who wants to make you suffer pain and you can do nothing. There is also a big bully base at home to ensure complete compliance to pain.
Blaming a victim for being abused is a really terrific argument.
A friend of mine works at SAP, the major German software company. Because they do business with American firms, he had to complete required corporate training on U.S. government restrictions regarding certain countries. The restrictions had different tiers, with only two nations placed in the most severe category: Iran and the peaceful island of Cuba.
Your "friend" wasn't paying much attention because there are more than those two countries on the list, and you should ask the residents of Cuba exactly how peaceful their government is.
It would help the discussion if more historical context can be provided about the island, economy, history, business partners, before forming an opinion since most opinions tend to be a little biased:
https://historical-cuba-info.pagedrop.io or https://archive.ph/YnWK0
I recall visiting Cuba during the second term of Obama (shortly after his visit) and seeing the various reforms that were taking place and feeling very optimistic about the island's future. We saw a lot of highly political art on display, ate at some of the first private restaurants, watched a helicopter explode overt the ocean as they were filming a Fast and Furious film, and went to a nightclub/art show event that rivaled anything I've been to in NYC.
In a sane world, we would be Cuba's largest trading partner and largest source of tourists. In that hypothetical world, the ongoing economic and cultural exchange would have propelled the island towards a different political system. Instead, we doubled down on an approach that has failed for 70+ years.
In that same world we have Puerto Rico with a fragile power grid. I'm not sure what the best course of action is for Puerto Rico, I am from the Island, and there's just way too many issues on the island, the biggest thing I do know is that the old tax incentives made the island thrive drastically. There was a point in time where Puerto Rico was as high up in terms of production quality as Japan, above the US itself. A lot of pharmaceuticals come from Puerto Rico, so much so that hospitals in Florida have shortages if the Island loses power due to a major hurricane.
The power grid problems islands have is a really interesting topic. Just the other day I read an interview discussing Taiwan's energy situation[0] and even though I am familiar with the various factions and the surface level debate, it prompted me to think a bit deeper on the unique challenges islands have as marginalized geographic entities. I didn't grow up on an island so I'm not sure if people who do are more conscious of the precarity, but you'd think if they did then they would place even more emphasis on getting energy independence. It's one of those things that would be cool to study if I could go back in time and choose a different specialization...
Some public schools in Puerto Rico started putting solar panels on their roofs after Maria which imho makes sense for all public schools all over the US / world. You have kids at school during the day, rarely during night. When schools not even open you could either put that extra power into the grid or store it for rainy seasons.
Alternatives include generating power from wind as well.
I live on an island and my first priority after getting a full time job again is to buy solar and storage good for a few days of my homes usage. The cost of energy is increasing here and I don’t see it ever going down since we’re still using oil for the most part. I plan to build a little wood workshop shed in my yard and cover it with solar panels and put some batteries in it. I should only need about 30 kWh of storage to cover three days use, and maybe 2 or 3 kW of panels for daily use and recharging the batteries; except for the EV, which I normally charge once a week but I can just start plugging in during the day instead. With that setup I can keep connected to the grid and eventually see if I can go off grid after a few years, or possibly add more solar and storage later if I find the first phase wasn’t enough.
However, that’s only possible because I have money and knowledge; most people don’t have that and so as a whole we’re kind of screwed here. Costs will continue to rise while not enough renewables are installed, usually on individual homes which only helps those individuals.
I have a friend in the Bahamas who had setup his entire home up for solar and even to reclaim water from the roof. The builders messed up the reclaim water system I forgot the reason but he mentioned he cannot drink the water whatsoever because of the screw up, so he has to eventually rework all of that, but in terms of power he is better off than most since he is setup for it with batteries and everything.
> the ongoing economic and cultural exchange would have propelled the island towards a different political system
The blocker to this has always been the government refusing to reform. I don't see how increased exchange changes this. If anything, the Cuban government would've blocked any integration that threatens their control.
Sanctions are warcrimes and the US has been punishing civilians and causing their death and suffering since the 60s.
"...every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
This really illustrates how important it is to switch to renewable energy. I know it's not an easy task for impoverished communities to get the startup capital to install solar+batteries, especially one in such a politically tumultuous position, but that really is a path to stability for so many people around the world.
A YouTuber known for talking about dishwashers and Christmas lights recently put out a long rant about how ridiculous it is that humanity still leans so much on single use fuels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
A fascinating takeaway from that video for me... If you take the US land that is dedicated to growing corn for ethanol that is put in gasoline, and replace all the corn on that land with solar panels, how much energy would it produce? Twice today's total electrical generation in the US, from all sources. And that's in the corn belt, which is far from ideal for solar. It would be billions of panels, but it's a pretty interesting perspective on the questions about the land use requirements of solar.
Another genuine question: I wonder how that would change the climate in those areas. I live in Iowa and "corn sweat" is a thing that never fails to make several weeks of summer completely unbearable.
It shows that bioenergy is very land inefficient.
There was a book about renewable energy in Britain about 17 years ago, "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air" that tried to make the argument that renewables could not power Britain, there wasn't enough land. But if you drilled down, this conclusion was due to use of biofuels.
The significant problem with that book is that it commits the primary energy fallacy. It sees that we need X GWh of chemical energy from fuels and says we have to replace it with X GWh of electricity. Which is of course completely wrong since it ignores the efficiencies of the processes and conflates two different things simply because they are measured in the same units.
Germany uses less land for energy crops and is further north, but still could satisfy most of its electricity needs if it replaced the plants with solar panels.
Genuine question: How much energy, minerals, transportation, manufacturing, etc, etc. goes into making the panels. How much are the panels going to make back percentage wise in it's lifetime vs. the cost to make and transport, install?
Corn kind of reproduces itself every year (If you don't get the GMO kind), so you only need natural resources to continue to grow it right? Water, sunlight and labor?
He goes over that in the video. It's long, but very much worth watching.
> Corn kind of reproduces itself every year (If you don't get the GMO kind), so you only need natural resources to continue to grow it right? Water, sunlight and labor?
At industrial scale, it has a huge petro-chemical fertiliser input.
Total energy input to agriculture in the US is less than 2% of total energy consumption. So "huge" there has to be taken in context.
All the energy inputs to agriculture could be replaced with non-fossil inputs. Fertilizer in particular needs hydrogen to make ammonia, but that can be produced from non-fossil sources.
Extensive deployment of renewables and battery storage is perhaps the best thing that can be done anywhere (even in developed countries) for making the grid more robust. Not only is there no fuel supply to be cut off, targets become too diffuse and decentralized to take out quickly, especially if you can manage to cover 30-40% of cities with rooftop solar.
You can hit a solar plant with a missile, and it can be back in operation with a reduced capacity within a week:
https://www.wanhossolars.com/news/ukrainian-solar-power-plan...
Honestly I'm not sure if it would take a week in most cases, just took this long in this case. Its really not worth going after the panels with a conventional missile. Maybe something that explodes well above it and litters it with ball bearings would be far more effective.
If you know it’s coming, you can command the panels on single axis trackers to avoid damage. This is done today for hail and hurricane risk. Panels are also rated to withstand all but the most aggressive hail.
I think of him as known for his thoughts on the “color” brown.
It also illustrates the importance of not getting caught on the wrong side of the global hegemon right next door who can choke you out and prevent you from importing energy and integrating with the global economy.
A lot of food for thought all around.
It also illustrates the importance of not wrecking your own economy through pursuing socialist policies and driving the most productive people out of the country.
Is that your summary of the causes, goals and impacts of the Cuban revolution?
Causes and goals, no. Impacts, yes. Regardless of intent, socialism inevitably destroys everything it touches.
Or, a prolonged embargo, threats of invasion, actual attempts at invasion, diplomatic pressure to isolate, etc all by the most powerful empire in history on your doorstep destroyed everything.
It’s pretty hard to sort out after the fact.
It is not hard, because you can look at other examples besides Cuba.
Once upon a time, there was COMECON, a huge bloc of socialist countries trading with one another, whose intent was precisely to limit Western pressures. It included some fairly developed countries like Czechoslovakia and GDR. 500 million people in total, similar to the US and Western Europe together back then. A huge market in total, from Leipzig to Vladivostok to Saigon (after it fell).
(BTW Cuba was a member of COMECON and it was a very non-productive member, being heavily subsidised by the Soviet Union all the time. I still remember the Cuban oranges sold in Czechoslovak shops, which were so full of stones/seeds that they were barely edible. No one would voluntarily buy them unless there was no alternative available, but there usually wasn't one. A good metafor for what was going on.)
They still ran their economies into the ground because Marxist-Leninist economy doesn't work in practice. Marxism as a theory is catnip for intellectuals, but neither Marx nor Lenin ever tried to run a corner shop, much less an actual factory. The resulting misalignment of interests throws off almost everybody and a country practicing Marxist-Leninist approaches to economy will end up with just two really functional institutions: the secret police, to keep the comrades in power, and the (very non-Marxist) black market, which is tolerated because otherwise the population would starve. If it is not tolerated, the population will starve, but only a few countries like North Korea were crazy enough to go down that road.
The same happened all over again pretty much everywhere where it has been tried. China only started to economically grow after ditching Marxist economy for market reforms in 1979. India was never totalitarian, but toyed with Marxist approaches until 1991, when the "License Raj" was reformed; since then, it has been following Chinese economic growth along a very similar line.
Heck, even very early idealistic Israel ran into somewhat similar problems, although all the kibbutzniks were there voluntarily and eschewed use of state violence to build their utopias.
Communism doesn't work because its originator (Marx) used Hegel's dialectical method, which was only ever meant to be used in conjunction with an idealist (=reality is derived from the mind) philosophy, and misappropriated it into dialectical materialism. The dialectical method is acceptable when the contradictions are between concepts during the process of gaining knowledge which if completed results in "the truth being the whole".
In materialist philosophy, the real world exists entirely outside the mind and the mind only interprets it. Having dialectical materialism would imply that material reality has a final destination (=communism) that it is striving to achieve and that rather than concepts such as life and death contradicting each other, it's people that are contradicting each other (capitalists vs proletariat). Because forward progress is guaranteed, there is no need to have knowledge/discussions about how to arrive at the final destination. The best way to accelerate the process is to simply destroy the existing order no matter what it is. Reformists (people who demand incremental improvements) are slowing down progress toward utopia while supporting the status quo and should be held in contempt.
What this ultimately means is that Marxist socialism has never been about building a good society for people to live in, but to dismantle the status quo, no matter what it is. This makes Marxist socialism an extremely attractive ideology for ruthless, violent or narcissistic individuals, while simultaneously luring in unsuspecting people who just want a better life and have reasonable grievances with the status quo. These subtractive ideologies fail because they're biting the hand that feeds them.
There is this socialist streamer (Vaush) that summarized all of this in a single sentence. "I don't care about principles, I only care about winning."
That's just a longer way of saying socialism inevitably destroys everything it touches.
Is it? It's more like "you can't succeed with any political system if your powerful bullies dislike it". What do you think about Vietnam? Everything destroyed as well?
I don't think anything about Vietnam, I was just making a joke.
The way things are going it looks like late capitalism is on a way to eventually catch up. And all 2.5 "productive" people left would own the world and the rest will be cattle, potentially culled to keep things in check
That's definitely part of the equation, but the blockade has been over for a long while. They have suffered not only the brutal effect of US colonization/hegemony but also the brutal effect of the legacy of Castro's brand of economics. If they were just suffering one or the other, they'd be significantly better off.
Edit since I am throttled on posts and cannot reply below: The US briefly blockaded Cuba in the 60s, but they have only embargoed them since then. They are not blocked from international trade by the US, except with the US. There is no meaningful block from Cuba engaging in the greater international non-US "global economy" such as EU,Asia, etc.
You are wrong. Any company that wants to do business with USA must also join the embargo.
> You are wrong. Any company that wants to do business with USA must also join the embargo.
Air Canada flies to the US and flies to Cuba:
* https://www.aircanada.com/en-ca/flights-to-cuba
This is a bald-faced lie.
For instance, I can buy Malibu rum, no matter that Pernod Ricard does business with Cuba. Or flights in USA with Air France, no matter that they also do business in Havana. Or ZTE phones which are imported into both USA and Cuba from China (carrier limitations but only because USA government won't do business with ZTE associated businesses, not because they can't be sold in USA). Or Sinopec (oil) which does business in USA including a large investment of presence in Texas but also does business with Cuba.
Yes your blanket any is a lot more applicable if you said the truth which is any business that wants to do business with USA federal government which is much closer to the truth (but even then, Sinopec for instance has through its subsidiaries been allowed to bid on strategic oil reserve transactions no matter their ownership is a major trader with Cuba).
Cuba is actively trading with EU, Asian, etc companies that are also trading with USA.
Do you mean Batista?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
> the blockade has been over for a long while.
What are you talking about?
The embargo was partially lifted in 2015. The article is about the effects of the re-tightening in 2025.
> The embargo was partially lifted in 2015
And then reinstated in 2017. How has that been "over for a long while"?
Put down Motorcycle Diaries long enough to learn the difference between an embargo and a blockade. And then note, blockade was the word I used.
That's not enough to keep people fed. I think the primary reason why Cuba remained socialist is that all the "capitalists" (perceived as boogieman for social ills) are voluntarily fleeing Cuba rather than opposing the government.
> At length I remembered the last resort of a great princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: "Then let them eat brioches."
Much of the developing world is close enough to the equator that solar and batteries just have to last a few days.
In most developed countries solar is seasonal.
Solar is one type of renewable. The Nordics have done all right
https://www.nordicstatistics.org/news/the-5-large-nordic-cou...
They have small populations and so many places to install dams they have their own words for it.
Nobody else can do that.
Yet their neighbor Denmark has similar penetration of renewables.
So what's the final destination of these goalposts then so we can just skip to the end?
Interestingly you don't want to be near the equator for the best solar resource, due to something called the "Intertropical Convergence Zone". This creates persistent storms and cloudiness in a band that waves up and down across the equator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone
Peak efficiency is seasonal. Much of North America is perfectly suited for solar year round, at reduced efficiency.
Cuba is dying and collapsing, with this kind of issue being just a part of a broader systemic set of causes. It is a serious tragedy and humanitarian crisis. If people aren't aware of how bad it is: they haven't had reliable food and electricity for a while now, even parts of Havana and other cities look eerily like a ghost town, and it seems as if almost anyone that is able to has been fleeing.
"Compared to the peak of 11.2 million inhabitants reached in 2012 – the year of the last census – Cuba has lost 13% of its population. [...] A quarter of the island's population is aged 60 and over, and it is the only demographic category that has grown in recent years"
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/04/30/c...
> It is a serious tragedy and humanitarian crisis
It is the result of crippling economic sanctions and an ongoing trade embargo by USA for 60 years now. The tragedy has a perpetrator. The humanitarian crisis is the result of actions of people who are very pleased with themselves for constructing it. Please don't use passive tone when describing humans inflicting intentional harm to other humans. Many countries in the rest of the world have shown themselves to be extremely willing to both help and trade with Cuba, but USA keeps tightening the noose and scaring them away.
The fact that percentage of older population increased is a dead giveaway that most young people are migrating (to US most likely) and more akin to exodus.
A very similar pattern to Venezuela which saw a similar exodus.
I have a coworker from Cuba, her grandmother still lives there, this has been going on for about 2 years. She had sent her grandmother a power generator thinking she could just buy gas, but when it became apparent that they have gas shortages, she bought her grandmother a solar based one, this was several months ago if I remember correctly.
The fossil fuel industry has stolen the bulk of Cuba’s income. Need to switch to solar and batteries to onshore your energy production. China could help here and get a big diplomatic win if they were to give Cuba subsidized access to their clean energy assets.
No, the shitty regime has stolen, squandered, and prevented the vast majority of Cuba's (potential) income.
They've received free oil from Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia for decades. This whole crisis is because the country is horribly mismanaged and the free ride is over.
Most countries have to purchase their oil at market prices. Cuba has been spared that burden yet is still worse off than the average country.
IIRC both Russia and China have demanded economic reforms which are not forthcoming. The Chinese aren't stupid and they don't seem too interested in pissing their money away indefinitely on a 'partner' who ignores them.
The entire crisis is because the US has been abusing Cuba since Batista fell, don't get confused. The idea that Cuba is being coddled because it isn't paying market prices when the US has been excluding it from the market for your entire life and most of your parents' lives is sadistic and cynical.
You don't get to criticize the quality of someone's system until you take your foot off their neck.
> because the US
Reducing the root cause to the US is ludicrous. Cuba had agency and their government made some horrific choices for their citizens.
I was there about 20 years ago and it was the most depressing place I've ever visited: the authoritarianism and corruption and tragedy was so visibly prevalent . . . even to a tourist. It was frightening because problems are usually better hidden from foreigners.
Summarising a complex situation as though it has one simple cause is a human sign of ignoring complexity or systems.
Yes, the impact of US political choices was deeply hideous. That doesn't excuse the Cuban government from their choices about how to deal with that.
But the current crisis is most certainly due to the United States - double confirmed by the U.S. administration. The U.S. President and his Secretary of State have BOTH boasted about stopping oil delivery to Cuba and tightening the screws on them. They want easy regime change.
"THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE." The Cuban government is "ready to fall" or "failing pretty soon" due to this cutoff!
Rubio has in slightly less pompous fashion confirmed that the U.S. has now successfully weakened Cuba.
Personally, I despise the current U.S. administration's glee at causing suffering. "Might Makes Absolute Right" & "Vae Victis" are the current American mottos. No old-fashioned velvet glove over the steel fist - it is barbed with titanium and doused with hellfire now.
If Cuba's government had created prosperity when they had the chance then they wouldn't be experiencing this crisis right now. They had a decade plus of no economic blockade from the U.S., and still they squandered the opportunity. They had 6+ decades of subsidies from their friends (minus a brief period following the fall of the USSR), and still they squandered that. This is because Cuba's government does not want prosperity for its citizens (subjects) for whatever reason (probably because they would be harder to keep down), and instead preferred to live off the largesse of the USSR (later Russia), Venezuela, and Mexico.
There is no world in which that is OK!
> They had a decade plus of no economic blockade from the U.S., and still they squandered the opportunity.
Err when was this decade plus of zero economic blockade ? I think you have confused less than two tiny years from 2015-2017. Nothing can be done in 2 years. By the time you setup trade, you are blockaded by the big bully who wants to make you suffer pain and you can do nothing. There is also a big bully base at home to ensure complete compliance to pain.
Blaming a victim for being abused is a really terrific argument.
yeah where is China when you need them?... something doesn't add up here, worried about how orangetan might react?
A friend of mine works at SAP, the major German software company. Because they do business with American firms, he had to complete required corporate training on U.S. government restrictions regarding certain countries. The restrictions had different tiers, with only two nations placed in the most severe category: Iran and the peaceful island of Cuba.
Your "friend" wasn't paying much attention because there are more than those two countries on the list, and you should ask the residents of Cuba exactly how peaceful their government is.
More of less peaceful than Batista? To whom? And for whose benefit?
If you actually want a response, you probably should form questions as full sentences.
It would help the discussion if more historical context can be provided about the island, economy, history, business partners, before forming an opinion since most opinions tend to be a little biased: https://historical-cuba-info.pagedrop.io or https://archive.ph/YnWK0
The American empire is in its 1939 moment.
I recall visiting Cuba during the second term of Obama (shortly after his visit) and seeing the various reforms that were taking place and feeling very optimistic about the island's future. We saw a lot of highly political art on display, ate at some of the first private restaurants, watched a helicopter explode overt the ocean as they were filming a Fast and Furious film, and went to a nightclub/art show event that rivaled anything I've been to in NYC.
In a sane world, we would be Cuba's largest trading partner and largest source of tourists. In that hypothetical world, the ongoing economic and cultural exchange would have propelled the island towards a different political system. Instead, we doubled down on an approach that has failed for 70+ years.
In that same world we have Puerto Rico with a fragile power grid. I'm not sure what the best course of action is for Puerto Rico, I am from the Island, and there's just way too many issues on the island, the biggest thing I do know is that the old tax incentives made the island thrive drastically. There was a point in time where Puerto Rico was as high up in terms of production quality as Japan, above the US itself. A lot of pharmaceuticals come from Puerto Rico, so much so that hospitals in Florida have shortages if the Island loses power due to a major hurricane.
The power grid problems islands have is a really interesting topic. Just the other day I read an interview discussing Taiwan's energy situation[0] and even though I am familiar with the various factions and the surface level debate, it prompted me to think a bit deeper on the unique challenges islands have as marginalized geographic entities. I didn't grow up on an island so I'm not sure if people who do are more conscious of the precarity, but you'd think if they did then they would place even more emphasis on getting energy independence. It's one of those things that would be cool to study if I could go back in time and choose a different specialization...
[0] https://www.volts.wtf/p/taiwans-energy-dilemma
Some public schools in Puerto Rico started putting solar panels on their roofs after Maria which imho makes sense for all public schools all over the US / world. You have kids at school during the day, rarely during night. When schools not even open you could either put that extra power into the grid or store it for rainy seasons.
Alternatives include generating power from wind as well.
I live on an island and my first priority after getting a full time job again is to buy solar and storage good for a few days of my homes usage. The cost of energy is increasing here and I don’t see it ever going down since we’re still using oil for the most part. I plan to build a little wood workshop shed in my yard and cover it with solar panels and put some batteries in it. I should only need about 30 kWh of storage to cover three days use, and maybe 2 or 3 kW of panels for daily use and recharging the batteries; except for the EV, which I normally charge once a week but I can just start plugging in during the day instead. With that setup I can keep connected to the grid and eventually see if I can go off grid after a few years, or possibly add more solar and storage later if I find the first phase wasn’t enough.
However, that’s only possible because I have money and knowledge; most people don’t have that and so as a whole we’re kind of screwed here. Costs will continue to rise while not enough renewables are installed, usually on individual homes which only helps those individuals.
I have a friend in the Bahamas who had setup his entire home up for solar and even to reclaim water from the roof. The builders messed up the reclaim water system I forgot the reason but he mentioned he cannot drink the water whatsoever because of the screw up, so he has to eventually rework all of that, but in terms of power he is better off than most since he is setup for it with batteries and everything.
You might be interested in Joey Hess' setup: https://joeyh.name/blog/solar/
> the ongoing economic and cultural exchange would have propelled the island towards a different political system
The blocker to this has always been the government refusing to reform. I don't see how increased exchange changes this. If anything, the Cuban government would've blocked any integration that threatens their control.
They want the tourist dollars. They happily allow Americans to visit.
> we doubled down on an approach that has failed for 70+ years.
I assume by "we", you mean the Cuban leaders who have clung to power and their repressive ways against the best interests of the population?
I think GP means the US sanctions. On that note, what bad thing would happen if the US simply lifted them?
We'd run the risk that they'd be successful.
A regime that has antagonized the US and mistreated its subjects for decades would obtain more resources.
So... you punish a regime for mistreating its subjects - by mistreating its subjects even more?
It's the less bad option, because it should lead to the end of the regime.
The alternative is giving the regime more resources to continue or even expand its policies.
This has been part of US plans for decades.
Sanctions are warcrimes and the US has been punishing civilians and causing their death and suffering since the 60s.
"...every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
Secretary of State, USA, 1960.
Source: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06...
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