<a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-...</a><p>Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population.<p><a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112" rel="nofollow">https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112</a><p>US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.
Cuba has been going through a crazy major decline ever since COVID. It's pretty rare for a mostly developed country to collapse into poverty without a war.<p>Roughly 5% of the population is fleeing the island each year: <a href="https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article290249799.html" rel="nofollow">https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cub...</a>
Some further updates:<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cuba-power-grid-1.7356496" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cuba-power-grid-1.7356496</a><p>It appears power is being restored atleast in some parts.<p>Also airports and flight operations seems not to have been affected.
It’s unfortunate that Cuba is so reliant on inefficient oil fired plants. Solar power could easily cover their needs if it weren’t for the economic and sanctions situation. I feel like we will be seeing this bloom into a more political situation before too long.
stupid question: cuba is a hot country that supposedly receives plenty of sunlight throughout the year, why hasn't there been a solar initiative for every house or something along those lines?
It would be a really good opportunity for the US to go and offer to help. It would be huge for diplomacy between the two countries. Send sec. Pete over with his infrastructure expertise and let’s help modernize their grid and build better relations.<p>A crisis is a terrible thing to waste or something along those lines.
Hopefully there will be some sort of study released relating to the restart of the grid. From memory of the 2003 East Coast Blackout the restart mechanics are fairly complex.
I always thought that Ayn Rand was exaggerating when she prophesied that socialism will eventually result in total blackouts.<p>Hope Cubans will some day be free people again.
Commies bringing misery to people unfortunate enough to be subject to their governance: hardly shocking.
Commie apologists complaining about US sanctions: pathetic.
IMO Cuba has nothing going for it except geography and sugar.<p>- Sugar = historic / principle natural resource exports for FX to fund imports since island has not much else (except doctors)<p>- Geography before USSR = next to US, good for USSR military posture -> support + handouts during cold war<p>- Geography after USSR collapse = nice place to vacation, again FX to fund imports<p>IIRC Castro pivoted from sugar to tourism post USSR collapse... and it worked alright. Look up charts for decline in sugar displaced by more tourism increase post 90s. GDP growing pretty steady. Wasn't going to make Cuba high income, but can kind of see how tourism driven model might work. Problem is of course global drop in demand = bad for tourism. Cuba international arrivals precovid about ~4.5m, last year was ~1.5m = empty FX for imports.<p>The big long term problem with tourism strategy... 300m+ American's not travelling to Cuba.<p>The short/medium term fix is Canadians, who consistuted something stupid like 40% of inbound tourists (~4.5m = ~2m tourists/vistors + ~2.5m stopovers) to Cuba, ~1M+ per year. Canadian tourists down to 600k. Which is partly due to Canadian economy. But also... it's been 20+ years of cheap Canadian flights to Cuba... at some point every Canadian that wants to goto Cuba has gone to Cuba. And really we're talking about 60% of Canadians living ~4 hour flight from Cuba. There isn't another advanced economy in the region to pick up slack. Except US... with even less travel time. So it's true Cuba can trade with lots of countries, many like Canada who despite US alignment, don't agree with US sanctions. But Cuba's got nothing significant to trade (enough to fund FX that can cover imports) for except nice weather, which is constrained to the amount of people who want to pay for nice Cuban weather, which happens to be a lot of Canadians. Everyone else short flight away has nice weather of their own.<p>A Chinese isn't going to pay $1500+ to fly (more importantly) 30 hours to Havanna.<p>If Cuba wants to get anywhere, it needs to make nice with US, and US tourists. Compare to Dominican Repubic... basically Cuba population and ~2M+ extra tourists per year, but that 2M+ are US tourists, and DR per capita is upper middle income.<p>OR Cuba needs to convince PRC to be sugar daddy like USSR. Cuba in mid 2010s imported "only" a couple billion... i.e. it doesn't take much imports in $$$ for the country to not be total shitshow like now. But billion here and there is real money. It's to be blunt, military base the size of US in JP or SKR money (1-4B). PRC currently not interested in that, because that's how you get nukes deployed in SKR and JP, and past history suggest that's how you start WW3. And lets be honest, if this ever happens, US is going to lean HARD on Canada shutdown tourists, and west aligned bloc going to actually come aboard US sanction train.
Turns out a 330MW problem only costs about $300M to solve <a href="https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design" rel="nofollow">https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design</a><p>What a world we live in!