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.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
This actually isn’t colonialism. It’s theft, it’s might makes right imperialism and coercion, but it’s not colonialism. Taking another country’s resources by gunpoint is not a colonial endeavor.
It’s closer to Venezuela being forced into an unequal treaty than any genuine colonial relationship. Qing China, despite suffering numerous unequal treaties from multiple imperialists, giving up far more than what Venezuela has given up, and being led by a thoroughly incompetent government, was merely semi-colonized. Qing China had to give up entire provinces (Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan) on top of cities (Hong Kong, Macau, Qingdao) as concessions.
The conflation between signing unequal treaties and colonization is even worse when you consider Japan, which also signed unequal treaties starting with the Convention of Kanagawa where the Tokugawa Shogunate was forced at gunpoint to open ships to US merchant ships (this is euphemistically described within US curriculum as Japan “opening up”). Yet, we also know that Japan would quickly become an imperialist power themselves starting with Luuchuu and Korea. It doesn’t make sense for Japan to go from colonized to colonizer without decolonization. But Japan underwent no such decolonization where imperialists were booted from Japan. The way to make sense of it is to say that despite the unequal treaties, Japan was never colonized, which meant it didn’t need undergo decolonization before becoming a colonizer themselves.
Japan was never colonized despite the unequal treaties.
China was only semi-colonized because despite having its territories be slowly annexed, it still had a government of limited sovereignty with a population that constantly waged war to expel the imperialists.
Korea was colonized, but it was colonized through Japanese invasion of Korea. The unequal treaties it had with Japan paved the way towards Japanese colonization, but the treaties in and of themselves weren’t colonization.
Yeah, unequal treaty is a great way to frame it. Just classic Great Power politics. “The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must” hours. Been the same since Thucydides wrote that 2500 years ago. Not every tributary relationship is colonial.
Colonialism is theft via force.
All theft is via force, whether that be implicit or explicit. Colonialism is more nuanced and historically contingent than just theft, else basically every relationship between states throughout all history could in some form be described as “colonial,” in which case the word loses all meaning. There’s an aspect of control (whether that is over land, people, etc) and theories of racial superiority that make colonialism different. There’s also usually the idea of some kind of civilising mission, which in this case is entirely absent. I don’t think it’s accurate to describe colonialism as just “theft via force.”
And that’s what this is. Venezuela’s resources and sovereignty being stolen by force. It’s colonialism.
???
This is so fundamentally incorrect I don’t even know where to begin
The United States has no “guys” on the ground, they don’t control Venezuela’s policies, they’re not shaping Venezuela as a colony of a metropole, they have no mechanism by which to determine the administrative decisions of the Venezuelan government other than naked force. It’s more like an imperial relationship, where the oil is tribute. Calling it colonialism is like saying the Liao made the Song into a “colony” because the Song agreed to pay the Liao thousands of silk bolts every year not to raid them. Venezuela is giving oil as tribute to an imperial overlord, and that overlord is then selling that oil to Israel, and Venezuela is doing this so that imperial overlord doesn’t fuck them up further. That’s not a colonial relationship.
Colonization doesn’t require “guys” on the ground. It can be done through financial instruments and institutional control and trade imbalances. This is colonialism 101.
You’re right that it doesn’t need guys on the ground, but just stealing somebody’s resources isn’t enough to mean it’s colonialism. What “institutional control” are the Americans demostrating here? There’s no “trade imbalances” or even “financial instruments” other than sanctions, and sanctions does not a colonialism make, unless you wanna claim that Russia and Iran and Cuba are also “colonised” by the United States because they’re under US sanction. The EU stole Russia’s central bank deposits by force. Does that mean Russia is a European colony?
The Americans are demonstrating total control over the Venezuelan government, getting them to capitulate to all their demands in terms of releasing political prisoners and cutting off trade to Cuba. The state itself is playing the role of the comprador
I think you and I have very different ideas of “total control.” Releasing some political prisoners isn’t so big a concession given the alternative, and stopping all trade to Cuba is more of a recognition of reality (the US fleet stationed off their coast would just sieze any boats) than some massive concession. Yes it’s not good and a defeat, but it does not mean the United States has “total control” over Venezuela. As long as the comunes are not being dismantled and the operations of the Venezuela state continue to benefit the people of Venezuela, I don’t see how this is total defeat with total control. You’re essentially agreeing with Trump and co when they announced that they now have total control over Venezeula after kidnapping Maduro, which is mostly just kayfabe.
How about 100% of Venezuela’s oil revenue being held in a US controlled Qatari fund. Is that enough “total control” for you? If the government continues playing the comprador, then yes this is the beginning of the end of the revolution in Venezuela and those things will be snuffed out as Venezuela is brought into alignment with the IMF playbook
Venezuela giving up it’s oil revenues to US control is indeed giving up financial and institutional control and a form of colonialism.
Oil revenues are not the entirety of the Venezuela state budget (per here, roughly 50% which is obviously still insanely high) so can’t be “total control.” Again, it’s obviously not good, but if somebody steals your shit and you lack the ability to get it back, does trying to work within the bounds of that reality rather than just being delusion and fighting to get your shit back, even though you know you can’t, mean you’re being a “comprador” with the thief? Venezuela isn’t “giving up” anything. The United States has stolen their oil, and will continue to steal their oil. Might as well try to work within those bounds than just throw your hands up and get nothing.
People just make up fake theory on here. It’s getting worse.