Brief Reflections on José A. Adrián Torres, "Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad [José A. Adrián Torres, "Comrade," The fictitious egalitarianism that leads to mediocrity]

 

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I recently read what turned out to be a fascinating opinion essay,   José A. Adrián Torres,  Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad:  En Cuba, la igualdad no se llevó solo por delante los privilegios del dinero, sino también los matices del trato humano," ["Comrade", The fictitious egalitarianism that leads to mediocrity: In Cuba, equality not only swept away the privileges of money, but also the nuances of human relations], 14Y Medio (30 August 2025). The essay's primary focus is irony--one built around that now ancient and to some extent cliched term "Comrade"-- the irony of which has become almost kitsch in liberal democracy since the first screening on Ninotchka in 1939. The problem is not so much with the use of the term to denote the end of class differences; it is merely that the use of the term to denote the end of old class differences  provided the veil behind which an egalitarian society could construct new hierarchies which ideologically, at least, did not have the same signification as the ones that were eradicated--at least in language and forms of address, by the flattening term, "Comrade." 

Nonetheless, one ought not to "walk away· from the essay with a sense of either superiority or relief that one lives in a state of human collectivity where the folly of the "Comrade" has been avoided,  It has not. And that, perhaps ought to be the much more potent moral of the essay.  What appears  humorous--in the style of the movies "Ninotchka" (1939) and "Death of Stalin" (2017)--is not the term itself but that curious state of the human collective condition that works so hard, at least since human collectives became more efficient in ridding themselves of leaders in the 17th century, to develop a language of equality at precisely the points of inflection where equality is incomprehensible.  While the masses are congratulating themselves for living in a new linguistic world order that had banished both the language and conditions of an older form of hierarchy (now normatively "bad"), they embraced in the language of social equality the inequality that those new linguistic imperatives commended. But that was perfectly positive precisely because new hierarchies were "good" (normatively and linguistically different from the old, and as such the signification of the language of hierarchy by definition could not be hierarchical.  The language of equality is manifested in a boss encouraging employees to call them by their first names; the flattening language of the team is another; beneath, or beyond, both are other hierarchies, or the way in which such hierarchies are expressed.  

Magic.

But them human society is at its best when it creates both linguistic magic and the conditions under which that magic can produce some sort of glamour, an enchantment which when cast on the masses produces a remarkable effect. Ferocious in their contempt for the language and practice of hierarchy, they are willing to accept both a language of hierarchy and the conviction that hierarchy (defined as something form the past) no longer troubles them because it can only exist in the ancient and not doubly enchanted old language of hierarchy. 

José Adrián Torres, however, has other fish to fry--and in the Cuban context not one to be dismissed lightly. 

 No se trata, por supuesto, de defender títulos ni rangos por sí mismos. Pero sí de recordar que una sociedad madura distingue funciones sin humillar, valora esfuerzos sin paternalismo y reconoce el saber sin avergonzarse de ello. En Cuba, lamentablemente, el igualitarismo ha derivado en una especie de liturgia de la mediocridad funcional, donde se aplaude más la obediencia y el discurso afín que la excelencia. [This isn't, of course, about defending titles or ranks for their own sake. But it is about remembering that a mature society distinguishes functions without humiliating, values ​​efforts without paternalism, and recognizes knowledge without shame. In Cuba, unfortunately, egalitarianism has led to a kind of liturgy of functional mediocrity, where obedience and consensual discourse are applauded more than excellence.] ( Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad)

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Here one encounters the opposite side of the irony of hierarchy and its linguistics: where a society is successful in flattening linguistic distinctions that reflect the differences in the signification of social role, then the society itself begins to resemble the flatness it has (apparently successfully) imposed--at least within that functional sector of the collective toward which the language of hierarchy is either elaborated or rejected. It does more than that, of course, and the essay does a marvelous job of describing how flattening  language and its norms  produces an energy that is then expressed in the flowering of a delicious counter language that layers the official norm-language with one if its own. That is, as well, an old game, and social collectives, especially its masses, are always willing to play.   TA the same time, the languae of flattening acquires its own subtext.  Adrián Torres suggests the complexity if the use of the word "comrade", grounded in context and intonation; he notes as well the use of other terms in, around, and in commentary of the term "comrade."

Pero la cosa no terminó ahí. Con el tiempo, incluso el “compañero” se fue devaluando como fórmula de trato. Surgió entonces el “amigo”, mucho más informal, más descomprometido, más desganado. Y así, del compañero que fregaba el piso, pero invocaba la igualdad de la revolución, pasamos al dependiente que no te mira a los ojos, al taxista que te llama “hermano” con desgana o al joven que no te saluda en el ascensor.  [But that was not the end of it. Over time, even the "comrade" became devalued as a form of communication. Then the "friend" emerged, much more informal, more uncommitted, more half-hearted. And so, from the comrade who scrubbed the floor but invoked the equality of the revolution, we move on to the shop assistant who doesn't look you in the eye, the taxi driver who reluctantly calls you "brother," or the young man who doesn't greet you in the elevator. ] (Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad).

But of course, hierarchy and flattening of hierarchy may be functionally differentiated, but they may occupy spaces within a larger platform of interaction in which both produce and consume each other. Cuban Caribbean Marxism is focused on class based leveling--social classes and labor market hierarchies and proletarian solidarity becomes the central element of a revolutionary flattening of equality around the terminology of the comrade. And so it was; but leveling proletarian masses leaves an awful lot of space for hierarchy--vanguard party, nomenklatura, their internal hierarchies and their status and authority (and exclusivity) relative to the proletarian masses provide the next frontier of hierarchy (all for a good cause), There is the semiotic trick--is one doesn't signify a hierarchy as hierarchic then it cannot be so. 

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This is not merely an idiosyncrasy of Marxist-Leninism, or it Cuban variaiton (now that the Soviets have transformed back into Russians). The leveling language of equality insinuates itself within liberal democracy as well, and perhaps with the same ironuc force. Adrián Torres notes, for example, the obvious: "In Spain, certain policies of current progressivism use the language of equality while promoting a fictitious diversity that only accepts difference when it ideologically coincides with its principles, nullifying or disregarding differences that challenge them" [En España, ciertas políticas del actual progresismo utilizan el lenguaje de la igualdad mientras promueven una diversidad ficticia que solo acepta lo distinto cuando coincide ideológicamente con sus principios, anulando o despreciando las diferencias que los cuestionan.] (Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad). It is more than that, certainly; and far more powerfully subterranean in its more "everyday" forms in its contemporary contextual form: Issy Jackson put it this way:

 My friends and I are unknowingly segmented into that same feed (is this modern-day friendship compatibility?). And so, we know the same pop culture news, buy into the same trends, talk about the same micro-influencers, and want to visit the same new restaurants, all fed to us on our TikTok ‘For You’ pages. (here)

The excellent essay Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad follows below in the original Spanish and in a crude English translation,  

 

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Announcing Publication the Sepetmber Issue of Current History--The Annual China and East Asia Issue

 

 

I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of the Annual China and East Asia Issue of Current History (Volume 124, Issue 863).

Current History publishes nine times per year. Each month’s issue focuses on a single region or topic—including annual issues on Africa, China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, South Asia, Europe, and Global Trends, plus special issues on topics such as Changing Faiths, Human–Nonhuman Relations, Learning from the Pandemic, and Climate Transformations.

 The Table of contents with brief summaries and links to the essays follow below.

Announcing Publication of of Issue 155 of Vol 34 of the Journal of Contemporary China (Sept. 2025)

 

I am delighted to pass along a message from Professor Suisheng Zhao (赵穗生), and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China (JCC) announcing the publication of Volume 34, Issue 155 (September 2025). The Issue may be viewed and the full text of the articles accessed online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjcc20/current.

The Table of Contents of the September 2025 issue of The Journal of Contemporary China follows below. There are quite interesting articles on China’s Green Transition: The State, Law, and Economy, China’s Evolving Position on the Russo-Ukrainian War and Partnership with Russia (I), and the Belt & Road Initiative Development and Global Peace.

James Henry Bergeron (editor), and Geoffrey Goodale, Raul Rangel Miguel, and Jonathan Meyer (authors): National Security Law, The Year in Review (Annual Publication of the ABA International Law Section 59::409-413 (2025)

 

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I am delighted to share a quite useful short essay,  James Henry Bergeron (editor), and Geoffrey Goodale, Raul Rangel Miguel, and Jonathan Meyer (authors): "National Security Law," The Year in Review (Annual Publication of the ABA International Law Section 59:409-413 (2025). It does an excellent job of examining the efforts of the late Biden Administration (Executive Order 14105, 88 Fed Reg 54867 (9 August 2023) to evolve rules protecting U.S. national security by outbound investments in sensitive technology sectors--the effect of which is to manage the flow and quality of tech transfer from out of the U.S. with national security at the center and with China as its focus (Provisions Pertaining to U.S. Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern, 89 Fed Reg  90398 (15 Nov 2024). The analysis is quite useful especially for those interested in the continuities in U.S. policy beneath the surface of political performance and that passes, in some form, from one administration to another.

Meta Oversight Board 2024 Report Made Available--The Thirst for Impact and the Metrics of Mattering

 

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Computers like to count; apparently so do humans.  Almost invariably they can count the wrong things, in the sense of counting objects that have little bearing on the conclusion or analysis they believe they are advancing.  The trick is to convince oneself that what one is counting is actually a plausible avatar, or more sadly a proxy, for something else--for example number of citations as a proxy for quality. In the case of Meta's Oversight Board, apparently it might be focused on the number of its recommendations that may have been implemented (the context of quality of the implementation remains mysterious but tat is common within large bureaucracies web to this sort of quantitative merits based reporting). That appears to be the gist of the Oversight Board's 2024 Annual Report, just distributed, which was meant to highlight the Board's "impact in fostering platform accountability, protecting free speech, and driving changes to Meta's policies and practices during the biggest election year in modern history."

This is wonderful; it is more wonderful the more completely one is a resident of the self-referencing universe that constitutes both Meta and the Meta Oversight Boards galaxy of knowledge, made significant by the premises and outlooks around which they can construct the cognitive universe within which it operates and into which it invites all of its users.  

Bravo. And really one can't fault them. The contemporary mania for "impact" is about the only thing that has survived the overthrowing of a global convergence based globalization.  The metrics of impact may vary but from business and human rights to international criminal law impacts is what matters most to people, especially people and their collectives that mean to matter more. Beyond that there is little more to be said but this: the object of all of this effort is not about the thing tat is the purpose of the organization; it is about the strategic engagement with those things in ways that make the collective matter.  What matters now is mattering. One is far more interested in impact in all its glory, , perhaps more than the bodies and actions and events on which the collective may have risen to whatever level of glory it means to describe. At some point, of course, the detachment of "impact" from the means to its realization might well become problematic--perhaps not to the impacts devouring collective, but to those in whose serve they are meant to act. In any case, and in equal measure for all other impacts feeding collectives--Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant--"meta"-phorically, of course.

But judge for yourselves.  The Press Release follows.The full report is available as a PDF here. The Report Website may be accessed HERE.

 

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CfP: Global Business and Human Rights Scholars Association & Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum Conference

 

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 Delighted to pass along this Call for Papers/Panels for the Global Business and Human Rights Scholars Association & Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum Conference to be held 21-22 May 2026 at Pontifica Universidade Católica do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil, which also marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of of GBHRSA and the 15th anniversary of the founding of the Teaching Forum.  

We invite contributions—both papers and panels—that reflect the interdisciplinary character of business and human rights, in both theory and in practice, from all disciplines. As described below, we are accepting both academic research submissions and teaching-focused submissions.

Details follow below. 

 

Animated Signification; Desecration; and Legalization--Brief Reflections on President Trump's Executive Order of 25 August 2025 "Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag"

Pix credit HERE; Postcard published by The Foundation Press, Inc., 1932. Reproduction of oil painting from series: Jean Leon Gerome Ferris  The Pageant of a Nation

 

The objects that tend to manifest social collectives--that serve as the physical incarnation of their collective solidarity--can sometimes acquire a life, and a dignity of their own. These objects manifesting in material form the solidarity of a collective are to be distinguished from idols.  Idols, images of the sacred or divine, tend to serve as representations of forces, powers, objects, and the like that are external to the human and the human collective, but around which both the human and their collectives might be organized, rationalized, and develop cognitive strictures of the reality in which they can find some sort of stability.  These are ikons--an image or semblance of a thing, object, force or entity external to humanity or the human but sometimes intimately related to it.  Objects that tend to represent the human collective itself (even if it is a manifestation under the leadership or sovereignty of some extra-human force) tend toward interiority. That this, these objects to reflect the collective itself. In that sense they may be constructed apart of the collective they represent, but they are intimated part of that collective. 

Often the two are conflated. I have argued, for example, that in the United States, the Declaration of independence might be said to have assumed an iconic status. In Reflections on President Trump's "Presidential Message on the 249th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Declaration of Independence" I suggested it this way:

[It] is not merely a relic enshrined both on paper and in the objects that can be venerated in original form and, reproduced, hung up on the wall of the family parlor (assuming people have parlors anymore). The Declaration of Independence is now an Ikon in the form of a reliquary of text on paper. It is a "likeness, image, portrait; image in a mirror; a semblance, phantom image" of something that is itself holy and unapproachable.

As we honor 249 glorious years of American independence, we celebrate these rights upon which our nation was built—and we pay tribute to the titans of freedom who risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to secure our sovereignty. (Presidential Message on the 249th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Declaration of Independence)

 I have also suggested that through a process like reverse osmosis, the iconic character of the collective can seep back into the bodies of people, who then assume the character of both icon and avatar. Avatars, Icons, and Adversaries--Full Text of Vice President's Harris's Remarks at the Democratic National Convention. I noted in a particular context, the process of what I then called reverse incarnation, in the process noting the difference between avatar and icon:

That is, a political candidate, running on the principle of democratic representation, must effectively undertake a process of reverse incarnation. That is the candidate must transform themselves from a carnate human being into a representative of something larger--of the polity that the candidate seeks to represent. The candidate, then, becomes not merely an avatar but also an icon. Where a divinity might take on human form--an incarnation from generalized representation to a specific human representation; the political candidate must seek to do this in reverse--to manifest themselves not as a single human but as a human whose humanity (or in the current parlance, whose "story") is representative of a larger, aggregated manifestation of the human condition, its aspirations, character and the like. (Ibid.).

This context, perhaps, may help guide an appreciation of a recent Executive Order issued by President Trump, Prosecuting Burning of The American Flag. In that Executive Order, President Trump might be thought to have attempted to accomplish three objectives: animated signification; desecration; and legalization. Flags are particularly potent semiotic objects whose cognitive transformation--its animation as the corpus of the collective itself, has a rich history. In Backer, L. C. (2021). Foreword: Bannermen and Heralds: The Identity of Flags; the Ensigns of Identity. Law and Visual Jurisprudence, 1, v-xxvi, I noted the potency of the flag as swaddling cloth, shield, badge, and shroud for and of the collective it also manifests (referencing Pi-Sunyer O (1995) Under Four Flags: The Politics of National Identity in the Barcelona Olympics. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 18(1):35-56). The notion was to suggest the relationship between the object (the flag) and all of the ideas, history, and abstractions that produce in the flag an avatar of something quite different--in this case the body politic organized within the cognitive cage of its political-economic model, which is, of course, dependent on the social-cultural model from which the animating premises of politics and economics emerge. 

The first, animated signification, might be understood as a project to reinforce the object-signification of the flag of the American Federal Republic. Here the President invoked the discourse and premises around the investing of objects with the signification of the collective. 

Our great American Flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and of American freedom, identity, and strength. Over nearly two-and-a-half centuries, many thousands of American patriots have fought, bled, and died to keep the Stars and Stripes waving proudly. The American Flag is a special symbol in our national life that should unite and represent all Americans of every background and walk of life. (Prosecuting Burning of The American Flag, §1)

That is, of the Republic's flag (an object of cloth made up of various colors and designs) as both the symbol of a human collective and as an object that is itself a physical manifestation of that collective--that is that the flag stands in for the collective as its physical representative. In this way it becomes not an icon or idol, but rather the avatar of the American collective. It is "the embodiment of the abstract, sometimes a divinity or divine essence (from the Sanskrit avatarana), sometimes of the soul or manifestation resident elsewhere. Since the 19th century in the West it has come to mean a ""concrete embodiment of something abstract." (Avatars, Icons, and Adversaries). But more than that, it invests the flag with iconic status--that is that more than the external representation of the American body politic, it becomes the physical manifestation of its divine character, the sacred Logos that the American polity itself represents, and then manifests through its symbols, including the flag of the Federal Republic. 

The second follows from the first. The flag, so heavily reconstituted as the abstractedly living flesh of the Republic which is itself a manifestation of the divine force (however one comes to that concept) becomes a holy object (touched by the divine (again as those terms are understood within the collective, and that can be quite messy). Such objects, such sacred objects must be protected against desecration. But what is desecration?  The etymology of desecrate suggests acts that strip the object of its sacred character--to profane the object, that is to make it unholy, and therefor to strip the flag of its fundamental significance as incarnation, avatar and icon. 

Desecrating it is uniquely offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation — the clearest possible expression of opposition to the political union that preserves our rights, liberty, and security. Burning this representation of America may incite violence and riot. American Flag burning is also used by groups of foreign nationals as a calculated act to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans because of their nationality and place of birth. (Prosecuting Burning of The American Flag, §1).

In this case President Trump's Executive Order calls on  ancient discursive and ritual tropes of the sacred--and primarily the powerful trope of blood sacrifice.  This is neither unusual nor unknown to political discourse and jurisprudence (for example Justice Holmes's opinion in Missouri v. Holland, 252 US 416 (1920) ("It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. ").

And the third follows from the second. If the flag is itself a physical manifestation of the polity--of the social collective organized as the American Federal Republic, then under certain circumstances physical interactions with that incarnation may be ascribed not just to ideas or ideals, but to the very polity itself.  One speaks here, potentially of virtual violence through symbolic interactions in the physical plane. At it is here, at the crossroads of object, symbol, signification, incarnation, and the collective, that it is possible to insert law--at least following the logic and within the cognitive cages of the Executive Order. Legality here has two elements.  The first is to remain true to the political-economic system that is deeply embedded in the social collective manifested by the flag. That is focused on the individual and individual autonomy, with a liberal democratic politics, and a markets driven transactional overlay. Not every engagement with the flag is a desecration; some, perhaps many, are equally representative of the interactions that themselves define the character of the Republic incarnated in its symbols, including the flag. One is protected in that sense when one engages in symbolic acts--even symbolic acts with physical manifestations in and through the flag--that touch on beliefs, politics and the like. But psychical manifestations of even the most robust engagement with ideas, and ideas around politics and its consequences (including the values from out of which politics can be rationalized within normative spheres). 

The Executive Order thus recognizes that "the Supreme Court’s rulings on First Amendment protections, the Court has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to “fighting words” is constitutionally protected.  See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 408-10 (1989)."(Prosecuting Burning of The American Flag, §1). And it is through the eye of that needle (Mark 10:25, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God") that the Executive Order builds its anti-desecration fortress. Section 2 of the Executive Order is divided into four parts. Section 2(a) invites the Attorney General to use content neutral law to guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to advance the cause of anti-desecrationalism ("This may include, but is not limited to, violent crimes; hate crimes, illegal discrimination against American citizens, or other violations of Americans’ civil rights; and crimes against property and the peace, as well as conspiracies and attempts to violate, and aiding and abetting others to violate, such laws"). Section 2(b) invites the spirit of anti-desecrationalism into the enforcement of state and local law ("such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction of property laws, the agency shall refer the matter to the appropriate State or local authority for potential action"). Section 2( c) invites a vigorous engagement with the contemporary construction of the "fighting words" doctrine before the courts, presumably through strategic litigation that brings issues up through the courts ("litigation to clarify the scope of the First Amendment exceptions in this area"). The last, §2(d) encourages the "Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting within their respective authorities, [to] deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residence permits, naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek removal from the United States."

To some, at least, the Trump Administration appears to believe that the eye of the desecration needle grounded in fighting words is quite large indeed. Perhaps the litigation project suggested in ¶ 2 of the Executive Order will prove him right, or perhaps it may travel elsewhere within the interpretive universe of American jurisprudence.  It is far too early to tell, but it certainly will be a quite interesting ride. The full text of Prosecuting Burning of The American Flag follows below.

The Israel Cases Continue to Evolve the Jurisprudence of the Norway Pension Fund Global: Norges Banks Excludes Caterpillar and a Number of Israeli Banks from the Investment Universe of the P

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Following recommendations submitted around the end of June by the Council on Ethics, Norges Bank announced its decision to exclude from the Fund’s investments a number of Israeli Banks and the global enterprise Caterpillar. The Banks were excluded on the basis of the risk that they will provide financial services to Israelis living and settling beyond the pre-1967 armistice lines, once reviled and now transformed into some sort of sacred international boundary, Caterpillar was excluded for failing to do enough to prevent its products from being used " to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law" through sales of its products to Israel. 



First International Bank of Israel / FIBI Holdings
Bank Hapoalim BM
Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM
Mizrahi Tafahot Bank Ltd

By providing financial services that are a necessary prerequisite for construction activity in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the excluded banks have, in the Council’s assessment, contributed to the maintenance of Israeli settlements. These settlements have been established in violation of international law, and their continued existence constitutes an ongoing breach of international law. The Council considers that there is an unacceptable risk that these banks will continue, through the provision of financial services, to contribute to the maintenance, expansion, and/or establishment of new Israeli settlements, which forms the basis for recommending the company’s exclusion from the GPFG.Links to the Ethics Council's recommendations to exclude the banks here:

First International Bank of Israel / FIBI Holdings: First International Bank Of Israel/ FIBI Holdnings Ltd – Council on Ethics (text of EC Recommendation here)
Bank Hapoalim BM: Bank Hapoalim BM – Council on Ethics
Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM: Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM – Council on Ethics
Mizrahi Tafahot Bank Ltd: Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd – Council on Ethics

Caterpillar, Inc.

Caterpillar Inc was recommended excluded due to an unacceptable risk that the company contributes to serious violations of individuals’ rights in situations of war or conflict. In the Council’s assessment, there is no doubt that Caterpillar’s products are being used to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law. The company has also not implemented any measures to prevent such use. As deliveries of the relevant machinery to Israel are now set to resume, the Council considers there to be an unacceptable risk that Caterpillar is contributing to serious violations of individuals’ rights in war or conflict situations, pursuant to section 4(b) of the Fund’s ethical guidelines. A link to the Ethics Council’s recommendation to exclude Caterpillar Inc may be found here: Caterpillar Inc – Council on Ethics.

The decisions are neither exceptional nor unexpected. They continue a longer term project of "de-risking" Norwegian economic activities from Israel specifically, and from companies that may be viewed as facilitating Israel within global financial and other activities.  This is bound up in Norwegian policy and in the way in which the Norwegian State apparatus has chosen to continue its mission as a sort of great router and enforcer of international law--wherever it may find and identify such law, and subject to its interpretation and choices for application. 

 Norway’s official position with respect to the settlements has always been that they constitute a violation of international law. This is rooted in the resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the opinions published by the ICJ. Norway’s statement to the ICJ in February 2024 reaffirmed this view.28 The Norwegian government further reiterated its position in a press release published in March 2024. In October 2024, the Norwegian government advised Norwegian businesses even more strongly not to engage in business activities that contribute to sustain Israel’s occupation of Palestine. (First International Bank of Israel)

This is an old project for Norway and one designed both to enhance the effect of the extraterritorial projection of Norwegian power (where Norway assumes the position of an agent of international legality--but with Norwegian characteristics (see here, here, and here). One would expect to see a greater attention to the problem of Israel by the organs of the Norwegian State in the coming year, including the Pension Fund Global.  It will be most interesting to see how the Israel cases drive the jurisprudence of exclusion elsewhere--but that is too early to tell. It is possible as well that Israel will remain the exception case--the ultimate outlier against which every other form of conduct is to be judged. That is of course out of the hands of the Norwegians who are instruments of something greater (or at least broader) than themselves.  Beyond that is politics, policy, and well. . . . the unmentionables of the human condition and their reflexes, some of which are quite ancient. For the latter there is no law or even politics as a driving force, there is something more elemental; law and politics provides the forms for the realization of primal cognitive premises and the phenomenology of its manifestation over a very long temporal arc. 

National Institutes of Health et al v. American Public Health Association

 

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 Now many years ago, as the American establishment elite were engaged in the first moments of hand wringing and disaster prognostications on the election of Donal Trump in 2016 I suggested that whatever the transitory political consequence of that election (to the chagrin, at the time, of large swaths of elites, or a large spectrum of political hues, who had collectively grown comfortable in what they viewed as their unassailable dominance in the guidance and leadership of the Republic), would occur at a fundamental level of operation.  What I called it then, "Let's Make a Deal" econo-politics ("Let's Make a Deal" as Economic Policy (2016)), had by 2025 morphed into an overall zeitgeist of the times--the foundational ordering principle of "transaction" and the sensibilities of the Merchant as the template of politics.

And nothing says "merchant" and "transaction" better that the disputes from out of which economic expectations and actions are defined and disciplined.  It would follow that a "Transactions"/Merchant presidency would also bring with it a taste for the displacement of politics of policy for a politics of transactions, and with it the displacement of the political branches as the primary site of politics by the judicial branches. That, in turn, would produce a set of substantial challenges for the courts.  Those challenges might include the need to reframe and develop  the jurisprudence of abuse of discretion (now built increasingly around notions of protecting the principle of "benefit of the bargain" in contract against arbitrary and capricious action (the old terminology)). It would also pose issues respecting the taxonomy of regulation. In context in which the State is both regulator and party to contract, the old expectations of the jurisdiction of courts and the constitution of cases  will be tested. That testing will become acute where, for example, jurisdiction is split between contract and policy claims--especially where, under regimes of merchant/transaction the issues of policy and contract are effectively indivisible (policy is contract and contract is policy).

All of these tensions are much on display in the continuing saga of the Trump Administration's battle against a cluster of policies, sensibilities, action expectations, and rules that the Trump Administration has gathered together in what if calls DEI policy. More specifically where the Trump Administration has sought to write policy guidance respecting the awarding and continuation of public grants and then use its own guidance in the administration of grants already awarded but not yet complete. In National Institutes of Health et al v. American Public Health Association (No 25A103) 606 U.S. -- (2025) a quite divided Supreme Court determined that where a grant recipients whose awards were terminated on the basis (at least in part) of the application of administrative guidance documents, the current state of the law required the plaintiffs to seek vindication of their claims touching on abuse of discretion respecting the guiding documents before the federal district courts, but that they must pursue their claims on the wrongful termination of their grants before the Court of Federal Claims (CFC).

Two-track litigation results from “[t]he jurisdictional scheme governing actions against the United States,” which “often requires . . . plaintiffs to file two actions in different courts to obtain complete relief in connection with one set of facts.” United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, 563 U. S. 307, 323 (2011) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment); see also ibid. (stating that a claim seeking “to set aside agency action must proceed in district court, but a claim that the same agency action constitutes a taking of property requiring just compensation must proceed in the CFC”). True, plaintiffs cannot necessarily sue the government in two forums simultaneously. As JUSTICE J ACKSON notes, 28 U. S. C. §1500 bars CFC jurisdiction over claims pending in other courts when those claims arise from “ ‘substantially the same operative facts.’ ” Post, at 15, n. 4. If the challenges to the guidance and grant terminations have the requisite factual overlap—and I am not sure that they do—the plaintiffs will have to proceed sequentially rather than simultaneously. But we have previously explained that the statutory scheme puts plaintiffs to precisely this choice, Tohono O’odham Nation, 563 U. S., at 316–317, and we have rejected the argument that it is unfair to require plaintiffs “to choose between partial remedies available in different courts,” id., at 316. Suits against the United States are “available by grace and not by right,” and the relief available is subject to the conditions Congress sets. Id., at 317. (Barrett, cincurring in the partial grant of the application for stay, p. 4-5). 

 Justice Barrett's "split the baby" view prevailed because, as sometimes happens, four of the justices would have granted the stay in whole, and four of the Justices would have denied the application in full. 

And all of this before the merits of the claim are litigated (though in fairness the merits serve as the underlying foundation for much of the text  of the opinions). Transactional politics, however, appear in need of courts better fitted to the resolution of political transactions. That, in turn, will eventually require the alignment of trajectories of development of disciplinary rules managing exercises of administrative discretion and the "benefit of the bargain"  baseline for elaborating legally remediable negative impacts on rights.   

The full text of the opinion follows. 

 

Curating History and its Lessons at the Smithsonian: Reflections on the Administration's Document "President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian"

 

 

There appears to be some sort of global convergence--at least within the smallish club of apex or near apex states (within the geo-political peeking order as commonly constituted among those interested or affected by such things)--around the idea that the political institutions of state might or ought to have a hand, not just in the overall management of official history, but also in its micro expressions in and through state and private organs. The United States has never been shy about the constitution of official history, especially in its aspirational elements and as manifested in official monument building and in the construction of those objects that manifest or convey a preferred way of approaching that accumulation of selected facts marshaled together in stories the arc of which pushes the nation on its temporal journey toward the union of facts and the national ideal. 

It is in that sense that political disorder is sometimes manifested in the popular relationship with national monuments.  In the United States the actions around monuments or other remembrances of the Confederate States of America in a peculiar way have provided a recent focal point. But the same is true in virtually any state that has invested time and effort (and which state has not) in the cultivation of its self-actualization particularly through the use of historical objects in crafting narratives with appropriate morals or which reinforce current national assumptions about itself, its character, and its trajectories forward. 

The Trump Administration has forcefully indicated a substantial discomfort with the project of U.S, official history for a long time. Its members advocate a distinct way of amalgamating facts and objects with a connection to the past, which to its mind might be usefully pointed in a certain way toward the future (discussed The Trump Administration and the (Re)booting of the Republic's History: Lindsey Halligan, Vince Haley, and Russell Vought, "Letter to the Smithsonian: Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials"). The actions and activities are not unique to this Administration, though its point of view and the cluster of foundational premises may differ in substantial respect from that of the Biden and predecessor Administrations that shared a quite different approach.  It is to the "cleansing" of the accretions of the older approach and the substitution of the cognitive landscapes of the present administration that officials have devoted some time. 

The focus, for the moment has been on museums and related institutions--that is on those institutions that collect, arrange, and present history and the imaginaries of the Republic to the masses. The Trump Administration, for the moment, has left intellectuals and influencers (however formed and recognized in contemporary times) to their own devices--except to the extent that their approaches encroach on the public project of national self-actualization. And it is in those spaces where the Administration (not unlike its predecessors) has put in a substantial amount of effort. A crown jewel of that apparatus for official history and mass education has been the museum complexes in the Capital--and principally the Smithsonian. 

On 21 August the Trump Administration appeared both to intensify and deepen its efforts at curating  the narratives of history from out of and through the ordering of the bricolage that are the collection of "facts" and "objects" from that past that can be used to constitute the present and better define the idealized future toward which the Republic ought to aspire.  The New York Times reported (Zachary Small, "White House Lists Smithsonian Exhibits It Finds Objectionable: The Trump administration highlighted material dealing with topics like sexuality, slavery and immigration", New York Times 21 August 2025): 

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The White House published a list of Smithsonian exhibits, programming and artwork it considered objectionable on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review. The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and promoted open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks “through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.” Other grievances were previously enumerated in an executive order that President Trump authorized in March, which criticized the National Museum of African American History and Culture for a 2020 worksheet that describes aspects of “whiteness” as “hard work,” “individualism" and “the nuclear family.” The worksheet was part of an online educational portal called Talking About Race; once it drew criticism, Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, had it removed.

The listing of objectionable works, at least the preliminary listing, was set out in President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian , posted to the White House website. The text of that descriptive document follows in full below, along with the article that the New York Times suggested was the source of a bit of borrowing: Smithsonian’s American History Museum Is Wall-To-Wall Anti-American Propaganda.

One might despise or laud the effort of the Trump Administration; certainly there was quite a bit of both around the efforts of the Biden Administration to insinuate its own reading of historically unavoidable "truth" or "principle" from the objects it assembled in furtherance of its own narrative history. One can hardly object to either on grounds of the project of historical weaving itself--though historians would be correct to get huffy about "crossing the line"--the fact objects themselves. With respect to the  rest--elites have been picking and choosing (valuing, foregrounding or marginalizing) the objects and actions that serve as the basis for whatever interpretive project suits for quite some time--even in the U.S. To fight over history, in this sense, or interpretation and deepening of grounding premises for its interpretation and ordering, is not to engage in battle over the "facticity" of the past, but rather as to the politics, morals, and premises that serve as the basis for analysis, interpretation and objective in bringing this past forward to the present, and the use of that present  as an instrument to guide action toward a desired future.  

In that sense, the Trump Administration's efforts are as open to debate as was the project of the Biden Administration, and so on. In liberal democracy that is perhaps healthy though it is disruptive--but at least for the moment its disruptions are stabilizing in comparison to the explosions in other systems when the official history is overturned. In that effort, one may derive form comfort (or intensify one's horror) from the way in which the current "debate" reinforces an inclination to understand history as another political front, and not just a political front, but the trenches of the continuous  war over the control of the cognitive framework within which social collectivity (and its solidarity) may be forged. And it ought to remind one that in turbulent times everything may prove useful. Whether there will be resolution or victory in the great revolutionary battle between, what for convenience one might refer to the Biden and the Trump Administration camps (though they are merely a convenient way of manifesting far more profound differences and ambitions for transformation), remains to be seen. But the ambitions of those seeking to lead the masses toward some sort of "new or renewed consciousness" are clear enough; whether the Republic will continue to cultivate a taste for this theater of cognitive oppositions, and whether the masses have been well enough prepared to be led into one or another of these transformative cages, remains to be seen.  

 

The Structural Economics of the Cuban State of Misery Within its Praetorian Marxist Structures: Reflections on Cuba Study Group's "CUBA REVIEW: Who Runs Cuba Today?"

 

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Who runs Cuba today? That is a question that continues to haunt those who follow the history of post 1959 revolutionary Cuba to this day.  That is a question posed by the Cuba Study Group, one made more immediate in the wake of the revelations of the extent of the wealth and economic power of the Cuban military. And it is question worth considering. The answer is tied, in a sense, to the underlying structures of Cuba's Praetorian Marxism, and it is from that perspective that these reflections on that question are based. 

The Cuban State of Misery has its own economy and its own praxis (to use a favored term of Marxist-Leninism in the West; essentially theory guiding practice and practice guiding theory, but not to be confused with the Chinese Mass Line principle). See, Announcing Publication of Article : "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline" [Cuba y la Constitución de un Estado Estable de Miseria: Ideología, Política Económica y Disciplina Popular] (2025) 13(2) Penn State J L Int'l Aff 1-84.

Less often remembered is that Cuba's Marxist-Leninist praxis is itself a product of its own "origin story" (here and here) within the constellation of successful Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movements of the middle third of the 20th century. In the case of Cuba, military victory of revolutionaries against the dictatorship then in control of the Cuban State apparatus came before the formal embrace of a political ideology to order that victory and to institutionalize it going forward ("The Military, Ideological Frameworks, and Familial Marxism: A Comment on Jung-Chul Lee, “A Lesson From Cuba’s Party-Military Relations and a Tale of “Two Front Lines” in North Korea" ). Cuba was administered through a revolutionary government  within the framework of the Cuban military (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias FAR), until the middle of the 1970s when Marxist-Leninism was formally installed as the guiding ideology of the State and a Soviet style apparatus was established under the aegis of a Communist Party, but one that provided a substantial space for autonomy for the FAR. Effective coordination, through the first two decades of the 21st century was maintained by the division of authority between the state and military apparatus between Fidel and Raúl Castro--family connections  appeared to be an effective central element of functional differentiation and autonomy (eg here in the popular press). That may be changing.  

That space for autonomy has been manifested in a number of ways, among the most interesting of which has been the economic activities of FAR both within and beyond Cuba. The FAR describes its economic activities this way on its website:

Es una organización empresarial compuesta por un conjunto de órganos y entidades de las FAR, agrupadas en uniones de empresas y unidades administrativas, de producción y servicios, destinadas a asegurar las producciones y servicios necesarios en interés de garantizar la vitalidad del armamento, la técnica militar, la disposición combativa, el acondicionamiento del teatro de operaciones militares y el mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida, alimentación y de trabajo en las tropas. Surge del propio desarrollo de las FAR y la necesidad de garantizar las producciones y servicios necesarios de la forma más económica posible, sobre la base del perfeccionamiento empresarial establecido en el país a partir de las exigencias de las FAR.  Este sistema empresarial contribuye a las FAR, ocupando sus capacidades productivas y de servicios libres en interés de la economía, así como en el desarrollo de producciones para la economía que se le autoriza acometer.

It is a business organization composed of a set of FAR bodies and entities, grouped into business associations and administrative, production, and service units, designed to ensure the necessary production and services to guarantee the vitality of the FAR's armament, military technology, combat readiness, the conditioning of the theater of military operations, and the improvement of the troops' living, nutritional, and working conditions. It arises from the development of the FAR itself and the need to guarantee the necessary production and services in the most economical way possible, based on the business improvement established in the country based on the FAR's demands. This business system contributes to the FAR, utilizing its free productive and service capacities in the interest of the economy, as well as in the development of production for the economy it is authorized to undertake.

What becomes clear from this description is the way in which it might be possible to understand FAR as a self supporting economic unit--the purpose of which is to generate the capital necessary to support its organization and mission. That mission, at least within the ideological complex of Cuba's Caribbean Marxism is to ensure the survival of the Cuban economic-political model. That mission is to be undertaken however much privation the diversion of military economic activity from the general economy managed by the civilian Cuban Nomenklatura (and supported to a large extent by whatever is generated in the smallish spaces left to the informal economy. The basis for this hierarchy of need has been built into the Cuban ideological model since the 1960s, back before the institution of a Leninist architecture over the revolutionary military government apparatus--the cultivation of the premise that govern a chance, the United State would secure regime change in Cuba. History and context, then, might at least provide some sort of coherent rationalization of the development of a praetorian Marxism in Cuba and its constitution as a self sustaining autonomous force--the predicate entity that makes the elaboration of whatever form of Marxist Leninist system is then to be constructed for the herding of society toward a communist ideal. 

At the same time, FAR, in its public facing descriptions also suggests that autonomy is linked to and serves the national mission to produce economic value; that is that autonomy not just serves the State sector but is also aligned with it. 

Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias poseen una estructura que permite, además, el empleo de sus integrantes en actividades de provecho para el desarrollo económico-social del país y para la protección del medio ambiente; están integradas por las categorías de tropas siguientes: Tropas Regulares y Milicias de Tropas Territoriales. Cumplen sus misiones durante la lucha armada en cooperación con los órganos y unidades del Ministerio del Interior y las Brigadas de Producción y Defensa. [The Revolutionary Armed Forces also have a structure that allows their members to be employed in activities that benefit the country's economic and social development and environmental protection. They are composed of the following troop categories: Regular Troops and Territorial Troop Militias. They carry out their missions during the armed struggle in cooperation with the bodies and units of the Ministry of the Interior and the Production and Defense Brigades.] (HERE)

 But like all things human, nothing tends to go quite to plan, and the chasms between ideal and reality can sometimes produce quite interesting issues that might well tear apart the system that it was designed to protect. And in this case, the question touches not just on the allocation of economic power to the military sector, but also of the nature and effectiveness of the transition from revolutionary military to a Marxist-Leninist civilian organization as the Cuban political-economic model after 1976. The basic story line is simple enough. 

One starts with the set up: First, while the civilian sector has been consumed by its own contradictions, producing an economic model suspicious of markets, even more suspicious of individual activity, and incapable of either producing income or goods and services to provide for the people whop are meant to be the engines of state directed production. Second, the economic activities under the control of FAR turned out to be the more valuable of the economic assets of the State. And third, FAR appeared more capable of running a business under the conditions of Cuba than the Nomenklatura, even under challenging circumstances. The situation in the non-Far State sector is bad enough to induce poor people in Vietnam to donate a few dollars to raise funds to feed the hungry in Cuba ("A new crowdfunding campaign for Cuba led by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Red Cross Society has raised more than $13 million in the first week — far more than organizers had expected for the entire two-month effort." Damien Cave, "Vietnamese are Helping Cuba with 38 Cent Donations; a Lot of Them,"  New York Times (19 August 2025) ). But the FAR remains aloof for the moment--art least with respect to its own economic resources. 

To grasp the significance of these consequences one might first consider the way in which management and control of economic production was parsed out in Cuba. First, the ruling ideology embeds a deep suspicion of the market. To the extent it is used at all, it is understood as complementary to the overwhelming architecture of the planned economy (still exhibiting mommy and daddy issues relating to its upbringing within the Soviet "household") that is meant to drive economic activity as a sort of rationalized and conscious market substitute construct that serves the ends of the State. Complementarity has several elements. The first is that markets are understood to be most useful at the local and retail sector. The second, retail and end use sector operations are understood to be especially useful if they remain small enough in operation to avoid posing a threat (actual, or conceptual under the ruling principle that all collective organizations are emanations of the singular political collective--the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). And the third is that markets can be useful in engagements by the State sector with outsiders where Cuban enterprises engage with markets beyond their borders and then carefully management their insertions into the national territory and its economic activity under close supervision of State organs. All of this is of course subject both to the whims of administrative discretion and the serendipity of corruption (something that frustrates even Cuba's Chinese and Russian friends, though par for the course with their Venezuelan and Nicaraguan friends to the extent they are still useful).  

It is within that environment that the economic activity of Cuba can be mapped (to the extent it pleases the State organs to map it--giving necessary space to the informal economy which serves to ensure that the state of misery is not sufficiently great to foment internal rebellion), and thus mapped, parsed out among the State sector organs (under the supervision of the PCC in the form of managers who are both officials and PCC members at a level that aligns State and Party hierarchies) and the FAR.  "A recent leak of internal documents from the military conglomerate GAESA (Business Management Group of the Armed Forces [El Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) (here)]) has disclosed in detail the business network controlled by the Cuban military, covering strategic sectors such as tourism, commerce, construction, transportation, banking, and real estate services, among others." (here). For a detailed analysis see Emilio Morales, Cuba: GAESA and the collapse of the regime (01/17/23). 

The size of FAR's portion of the State economy appears to have grown significantly as the economic sector as a whole has shrunk. 

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That trajectory may be a function of many factors, a few of which may merit savoring. The first may be  that FAR was allocated those portions of the economy least likely to be threatened by global and internal instability. The second might be that, as is commonly assumed, the civilian Nomenklatura is notorious inept at substituting itself for markets and markets based decisions. The fourth is that, indeed, these sorts of trajectories may be viewed as necessary sacrifices for the State sector and the population as Cuba lumbers toward its communist society goals.  The fifth may be the FAR is better able to manage enterprises and economic activity both internally and in dealing with foreigners whose technologies and know how can be exploited without polluting the national territory with their non-Marxist Leninist principles. And the last may be that, when all is said and done, that little has changed in the running of the revolutionary government from the 1959-76 era, other than its baseline structures are now easier to see- That is, that under conditions of Praetorian Marxism, the emphasis is on the Praetorian guardians. 

It is in this overall context that one might consider the organization and organizational cultures within FAR's economic sector. First that organizational construction is a function not just of business rationalization, but also as a response to U.S. sanctions in the sense that complex relationships among FAR economic activities grounded in control or contract relations are created to avoid application of sanctions where these describe specific companies.  One can do that all day--and indeed, one undertakes this disaggregation of business operations elsewhere (for example in the U.S. and E.U.) for similar reasons--both to avoid risk and to minimize exposure to adverse  impacts by trading partners or competitors--and especially to reduce the impacts of state regulation both within and across borders. Scond, aggregation requires a centralized coordination, since all operating units ultimately serve the interests of FAR, and in a larger sense the Cuban State under the leadership, formally, of the PCC. To that end, FAR has tended to operate significant portions of its "above the line" enterprises through (GAESA) (here). And third, FAR's portion of the Cuban economy, both internal and external is not subject to audit or control by the civilian Nomenklatura in Cuba ("A diferencia de otras entidades estatales, GAESA no es auditada por la Contraloría General de la República. Su control está bajo el Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (MINFAR), lo que significa que opera sin rendir cuentas ante ningún organismo independiente." ["in cointrast to other state enterprises, GAESA is not audited by the Comptroller General of the Republic. That function is assigned to the Ministry of FAR (MINFAR), which suggests that its operations are not subject to review by any independent body"])(here). 

And that brings one to the problem, one that touches on the manifestations of the ideology of Leninist States of Misery within Cuban Caribbean Marxism:  the balance between the sacrifice of the people and the accumulation of wealth in those institutions that both constituted the Cuban Marxist-Leninist State and that now serve as its protector against internal and external forces. The issue became something of a scandal--given the deprivations that have become the baseline for normality of economic existence for the ordinary Cuban people--when documents produced by and for GAESA were leaked abroad (and that usually means somewhere in the SE U.S.) producing stories in relevant legacy media. See especially Nora Gomez Torres, "Where is Cuba’s money? Secret records show the military has massive cash hoard," Miami Herald (6 August 2025); see also here, and here.

And yet, in the midst of the misery, the Cuban military is riding high: Its bank accounts are stuffed with cash, as much as $18 billion — an amount larger than the international reserves of nations like Costa Rica, Uruguay and Panama, an exclusive Miami Herald investigation shows. * * * The Herald reported in December on a rare leak of secret military documents revealing that Gaviota, a GAESA tourism subsidiary that handles 55% of all hotel rooms in the country, was sitting on a $4.3 billion stash. It was the first time financial data from GAESA’s secret account books were made public. Now, a larger trove of secret accounting documents obtained by the Herald, including several financial statements from 2023 and 2024, shows that the figure was just a fraction of the money in GAESA’s coffers. * * * The conglomerate generated $2.1 billion in net profits during the first quarter of 2024, according to the documents. Cimex, the group’s largest holding, which handles retail, banking, international trade and several other businesses, was responsible for over half of it, reporting $3.4 billion in revenue and $1.2 billion in earnings as of March last year. The records show that GAESA made significantly more in 2023. GAESA’s riches are so vast that, even excluding the assets held by Cimex, which accounts for an estimated 40% of the military conglomerate’s revenue, the remaining companies had a total of $18 billion in assets in March 2024 that could be quickly converted into cash. Of those, $14.5 billion was deposited in bank accounts or GAESA’s own financial institutions. (Nora Gomez Torres, "Where is Cuba’s money? Secret records show the military has massive cash hoard," Miami Herald (6 August 2025).)

The summary documents follow below. from the Miami Herald Story online.

The Cuba Study Group nicely summarized the problem: "Recent leaks about GAESA's finances have exposed a stark contradiction at the heart of Cuba's crisis: while the island endures its worst social and economic collapse in decades, the Cuban military's business conglomerate sits on billions of dollars in liquid reserves." From one perspective, the disclosures can suggest not just the state of corruption in Cuba, but also the alignment of that state of corruption with those common to Latin American governments of a certain sort and endemic in that region for a century or more. The power of that narrative, of course, is to strip Cuban Marxist-Leninism of any claim to superiority or to a project for the betterment of its people. The sacrifices of the Cuban population, in this sense, are no different that that of other people in other countries in the region--and perhaps made worse by the betrayal of those ideals of the Revolution in the reality that notion had changed over the course of the last several decades but the discourse under which corruption is undertaken.

Nonetheless, elements within Cuba might be tempted to advance arguments that could be made within Cuban Marxist-Leninism--arguments incompatible with some of the core premises of markets driven, individual rights based, liberal democracy . The first is that what appears to be scandalous is not, Rather, FAR might wish to argue, that retention of sources of economic power, that power to drive the economy through that control, and that control of the revenues derived from those operairtons for itself rather than for the general welfare of the population is a necessary element of its core charge--and the key operational principle--of the political economic system--to defend Cuban "socialism"! against outside and inside enemies. To those ends wealth is needed. And it is for FAR to determine the amount necessary. This argument, of course, might not sit well with the Cuban masses, and does not play well abroad. It is also possible to argue that the weakness of this position is precisely that it is for the PCC, not FAR, to make decisions about both the allocation of control of the economic sector, and the use of those revenues--that is the allocation of wealth between advancing the welfare of the population and preserving a robust capacity for military defense and the projection of power.

The second effort at argument might well be that the PCC itself has made those choices, and that those funds represent the calculus of privation of the population whose sacrifice is measured by the ability of the Cuban economic-political system to preserve itself against internal and external forces. That is, that the revolution remains victorious and on the Cuban "Socialist Path" as long as it can preserve itself. Tp that end no privation is too much, and no necessity great enough to touch the funds that are now in the hands of the FAR. Yet that argument itself contradicts FAR's own description of its economic mission and its alignment with the needs of Cuban modernization. It is an argument that rings hollow for other Marxist Leninist states except perhaps North Korea--but theirs in a monarchical Marxism.

The last is that, this state of privation, of misery, merely exposes the reality beneath the veneer of a civilian led Marxist-Leninist regime. That is, to the extent that Marxist-Leninist principles drive the construction and operation of the State and its vanguard leadership of the nation, it is one that remains revolutionary rather than institutional. Institutions may complement the fundamental military revolutionary organizational baseline, but cannot supersede it. In good times that suggests a greater appearance of civilian control (and military autonomy)--especially where the civilian operations are heavily subsidized by the fraternal kindness of other Marxist Leninist states and related friends. Nevertheless, it appears that, under conditions of stress, the reality that the vanguard of social forces in Cuban remains, as it has since 1959, both revolutionary and military, is not unavoidably visible. For that at least one may be grateful for the exposure that the GAESA papers provide.

So. . . .who runs Cuba today?; the answer has not changed since 1959--the military revolutionaries whose sensibilities, structures, organization serve as the foundational architecture of Cuban Marxist-Leninism. One here encounters a quite interesting vision not of Stalin, but of Trotsky, the Trotsky of the Civil War and the centrality of the military to the political enterprise of Leninist vanguardism. The rest is merely detail. 

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