Without energy and without a strategic partner, Cuba is currently fighting for its survival. While the population is literally sitting in the dark, the Trump administration is trying to definitively break the socialist project through economic blackmail. What lies ahead for the island, asks MARC VANDEPITTE
THE postman was late. My dog pooped in the street. Local schools face budget cuts. The Windrush generation have their citizenship rights threatened and terrorists are everywhere. And the link? It’s all the fault of the Russians.
Such is the state of meltdown in national politics that paranoia and misinformation form the principal “avoidance” weapons the Tories now have for deflecting attention from the mess they are in.
As Judgement Day approaches in the Brexit debacle, government deflections will become all the more bizarre.
History shows from Iraq to Libya, and now Iran, that regime-change fantasies rarely deliver stability — but they always deliver human and economic cost, says MARYAM ESLAMDOUST
VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
GUILLERMO THOMAS enjoys a survey of the current state of the CIA (aka Langley) from an expert and insider of sorts
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES



