Cuba: An American History – Ada Ferrer

This definitive history of Cuba from pre-Colombus to Donald Trump is an incredible resource. Cuban history is an incredible theater for a range of historical dramas, and it’s a prime example for learning about everything from colonialism and slavery to the cold war and communism.

Consider buying it with my Amazon link for the same price, and I’ll get a commission! Thank you.

Hong Kong’s Extradition Law and the Protests from China’s Perspective (2024)

This video series put things into perspective very easily. Every story has two sides, and the western narrative so easily supports treason and terrorism against the Chinese government as normal. They see the government of China as an illegitimate regime and would rather see destruction and chaos against it than stability and progress.

China’s extradition law would be normal and even lax in the grand scheme of things. Every western state has the capacity to persecute people who make themselves enemies of the state by colluding with foreign nations or other serious crimes.

We were also not told the whole story of how destructive and violent the protestors were.

Donetsk Demands a Referendum – Vice News (2014)

This is a video from 2014. This entire series on YouTube contains a deluge of evidence on the true nature of the war in Ukraine. This video shows the massive pro-Russia sentiment in the independent state of The People’s Republic of Donetsk.

They wanted democracy to show the world it was not “Russian imperialism” that made them leave Ukraine but Ukrainian oppression.

North Koreans in Japan – Channel 4 (2023)

This video is a great place to start to gain some nuance on the situation in North Korea. After all, the underdevelopment and repressive state North Korea has today are a result of the Korean War, waged by the US.

The Korean war killed almost 1 in 5 North Koreans and destroyed every building more than 1 story tall. The indiscriminate bombing was truly horrific, and the war that split Korea gave both sides a horrible place to start from.

And for 35 years before that, Korea was badly exploited and brutalized as a Japanese colony. That’s what makes this video so insightful. It looks beyond the west’s perspective to show the everyday effects of the US intervention in Korea.

George Lucas Admiring Soviet Filmmakers’ Freedom in the USSR (2017)

George Lucas, the renown creator of Star Wars, explains so cogently how filmmakers with something to say have to mask their work under a premise that appears highly profitable. The big studios won’t green light a film for artistic merit or to tell an important story. They became big because they sell a product. All that money is tangled up in the capitalistic entertainment industry, and most true artistic visionaries never get to see it.

This reminds me of how many children’s movies make more off toy sales than ticket sales. So many major movies are merely commercials for secondary products these days. Marketing has been rapidly merging with the movie industry, and you see that more than ever these days when studios figure they can save on marketing by remaking something people are already familiar with.

And what we the public are left with is derivative and praises capital.