Image is of thousands of Cubans gathering in 2026 to honor José Martí.
After the Soviet Union fell, in the 1990s, Cuba entered a period (known as the Special Period) of extreme economic pressure, losing almost all of its international trade and fuel imports. Caloric intake almost halved, and electricity was mostly unavailable for much of the day. In response, Cuba undertook Option Zero, in which the country prioritized distributing resources to the most vulnerable, and rationed what little was available as fairly as possible. During this time, the threat of total collapse led to experiments and innovations, and, paradoxically to those on the outside, Cuba’s population came together under pressure, rather than shattering. The collective understanding that their suffering resulted from abroad rather than from internal inefficiencies and corruption meant that Cuba’s government, and thus their sovereignty, survived.
As the American Empire contracts in the wake of multipolarity and can now no longer tolerate sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere, we are seeing a return to the time of the Special Period, with the illegal blockade being dramatically worsened - among other measures, the US is preventing all fuel from entering the island, a strategy made more viable with Venezuela’s fuel exports now restricted. Imperialist supporters are predicting an imminent collapse, after which American mining corporations would descend on Cuba’s massive nickel and cobalt reserves.
While it’s absolutely possible that this time Cuba’s government could collapse, it’s important to note four things: 1) as noted, Cuba has been in a situation like this before and survived; 2) the geopolitical situation is quite different to how it was in the 1990s, with China and other powers increasing in power and influence compared to the USSR’s incompetent final leaders leaving the lane wide open to American exploitation; 3) there has been a concerted effort to transition to renewable energy sources recently, with solar panels being imported from China and making up an increasing amount of the energy supply; and 4) Cuba’s government is taking this threat very seriously, and beginning rationing efforts immediately.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Venezuela isn’t getting invaded or annexed, there is no one for them to fight. All they can do is survive and continue to build their project. Comparing them to Cuba, China, DPRK etc doesn’t make sense, those were all in variously colonized positions and actively repelling occupiers. Venezuela is not in the same position at all and those comparisons don’t hold up.
Their president was openly kidnapped, their soldiers were attacked, American forces set foot on their soil. That under any classical definition meets belligerency and an act of war. If China did this to the US and Trump the US would respond violently because it is an act of war. Venezuela being too weak compared to the US and unable to offer any kind of challenge nor to mount an expeditionary force against the US that would stand a chance of doing anything doesn’t change what it was.
They were invaded, the invaders left with a prize in the elected president and tried to kill off other persons.
And that gave them an advantage, my point exactly. If there’s no one on the ground you can even fight, if its neo-colonialism via hybrid-warfare, blockade, lawfare, strikes from the skies you cannot repel, you’re still being pseudo-colonized and subjected to colonial type racist violence and steering of your affairs but you can’t pick up a gun and murder a local colonial official or policeman, all you have is the people buying peace with them through agreements who you may charitably assume are trying to act in your best interests. It’s a degrading, demeaning situation where you cannot even hit back at your oppressors as they operate freely against you delivering blows you must suffer in silence.
Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, remote warfare, drone-warfare doctrine. A shifting of warfare and imperialist strategy from failed open interventions like the Vietnam war and Korea to economic weapons coupled with precision assassinations, precision destruction, sometimes random terroristic, fear inspiring bombings, and special operations like kidnappings, assassinations, etc. You can only occupy so many countries at once, commit so many forces and when you do those forces are vulnerable to attack, to being killed, to revenge, this makes the domestic populace restless and they grow unsupportive of this death of their own. But you can terrorize dozens of countries with drones, special forces, hybrid-warfare, etc at once for a much lesser cost all without giving the people any foreign bodies to attack and blame, any way to fight back against a power with such technological advantage over you. Sure a rare regional power like Iran and its proxies in Yemen can field weapons advanced enough to lay some scratches on them and force them to act carefully. But Latin America has no Iran. Has no China, has no USSR. Without a supplier of advanced weapons nearby it’s hard to stand against the imperialist super-armada when they never make landfall. You imagine romantic jungle warfare of last century but the US may have gotten smart to that and refuses to be drawn into anything allowing its enemies a way to fight back.
It becomes hard to conceptualize struggle against such an enemy that kills you without ever seeing his face or that of any of his emissaries, a certain malaise risks setting in of hopelessness and anguish and resignation. Because what can you do? The humanity in oneself yearns to defend, to protect, to avenge but the means don’t exist. The technological barriers, the logistics barriers to inflicting so much as a cut on the enemy becomes too much.
they’ve been in a state of war with the US for decades, and this is escalation in that ongoing conflict. luckily this isn’t chess, maduro isn’t the king, and the socialist experiment continues through the masses who are seeming more unified than they have since Chavez was alive. the US tried to go big against Venezuela, realized that it wasn’t going to shake them, threw their own proxy under the bus and deescalated from maximally blocking all Venezuelan oil exports to the Venezuelan economy getting some amount of revenue again. They knew they couldn’t sustain an invasion, it would be like Vietnam 2. All they could do would be a quick shocking blow to force more concessions.
to the rest of it, my only position here is that it is not some great shift that has confirmed Chavismo is dead and the elected leadership in venezuela are all compradors who have sold out their people. with all the evidence we have right now, that kind of take is absolutely some ultra nonsense which literally only serves to feed into doomerism and reject solidarity. it is the goal of organizations as despicable as bloomberg, making false equivocations and half truths to create a narrative against revolutionaries for the interest of capital. venezuela is a sovereign nation under siege and they are getting squeezed which is why people should be including venezuela in their organizing and solidarity work, not shitting on them