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.
Al Jazeera - UK decision to ban Palestine Action as ‘terror group’ unlawful, court says
Resisting ethnofacism is terrorism.UK terrorism ban on Palestine Action group unlawful, court rules after appeal - Reuters
Britain’s ban on pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was ruled unlawful by London’s High Court on Friday, though the ban will temporarily remain in place and the government said it would appeal the decision.
US smuggled Starlinks into Iran amid riots – WSJ
Not really news to most here but here they’re admitting it and saying it was about 6000 units: https://www.rt.com/news/632389-smuggled-starlink-iran-riot/
Interestingly they claim they did this AFTER the internet was cut and I was under the impression that almost immediately there were terminals operating. So is that a deception? Or did they really rush more in there to provide cover for the zionist supplied units already smuggled in which Iran was using to pinpoint spies? By handing out 6000 of them they’d give their spies and valuable assets some cover among a sea of civilians foolish enough to use these things as I doubt they had 6000 agents who needed uplinks so some of that had to be either for a later use or to provide cover.
Israelis charged with using Iran war secrets to place bets
Looks like they found who those polymarket betters who predicted the Iran strikes were: https://www.rt.com/news/632400-israel-charges-bets-iran-war/
The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford and its escort ships deployed to the Caribbean will be sent to the Middle East and are not expected to return to their home ports until late April or early May. The ship’s crew was informed of the decision on Thursday, according to four U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the decision.
Per NYTimes https://archive.is/yuN8Q
So looks like they’re not rushing the Bush out of port and are instead turning the eye of Sauron from Venezuela and Cuba. I assume Rubio is pissed about this, because the Caribbean will be without a carrier strike group with which to raid Venezuelan oil and won’t be able to prevent Russian oil from reaching Cuba. The empire has to make decisions about where to spend its resources; perhaps they feel they’ve gotten all they can get fron Venezuela for now? Or it’s overconfidence?
Regardless, to rush the Ford over there rather than the Bush shows they must be serious about Iran, and all plans pointed to a) they need more firepower to make any real dent in Iran’s war machine and b) they couldn’t wait for the Bush to be ready and need to strike sooner. The question being for b, why? What are the Iranians cooking up? Related to the Netanyahu meeting yesterday around “intelligence sharing”? Maybe, but what intelligence could the Israelis share that the Americans don’t already have?
I’m just spitballing here, we don’t really know anything, but it’s an interesting turn of events unfolding. At the very least, this is probably the most telegraphed move yet that a strike is coming. One carrier group is something, but two? Whilst all the rest are home at port? Basically going all in. Would be a real uh interesting time for some Event in the South China Sea to kick off…
This week, Mexico’s congress approved a gradual 8-hour reduction of the work week.
Argentina legalized 12-hour workdays.
Props for the picture choice!
EDIT: wow terrible timing on my part lmao
https://hexbear.net/comment/6913221
Original comment: WSJ: Pentagon Prepares Second Aircraft Carrier to Deploy to the Middle East
The Pentagon has told a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare to deploy to the Middle East as the U.S. military readies for a potential attack on Iran, according to three U.S. officials.
President Trump said Tuesday that he was weighing sending a second carrier to the Middle East to prepare for military action if negotiations with Iran failed. The order to deploy could be issued in a matter of hours, one of the officials said. The officials cautioned that Trump hadn’t yet given an official order to deploy the second carrier, and that plans could change. The carrier would join aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln that is already in the region.
One of the officials said the Pentagon was readying a carrier to deploy in two weeks, likely from the U.S. East Coast. The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush is completing a series of training exercises off the coast of Virginia, and it could potentially expedite those exercises, officials say.
@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net I assume you saw this, but in case you haven’t, it looks like US is going to go the route of rushing the Bush out of port.
A little oil news…
Russia remains India’s largest supplier:
“Despite Western opposition and a temporary decline in volumes to 1.2 million barrels per day in December-January, we remain India’s largest oil supplier,” Alipov said.
Russia is planning to send oil to Cuba and is already helping develop its domestic oil reserves:
The embassy said it is planning to send oil and petroleum products to Cuba in the near future as “humanitarian aid,” though without specifying the timeframe or volumes.
In addition, Russian officials reported that Moscow is assisting Cuba in developing its domestic oil reserves. While the island’s proven crude oil reserves are officially around 120 million barrels, the offshore zone of the North Cuba Basin is estimated to hold up to 20 billion barrels.
https://xcancel.com/deaidua/status/2022002290501333359
As the German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius has just announced, Germany will deliver 5 PAC-3 missiles to Ukraine if other countries jointly gather and deliver a further 30 PAC-3 missiles for the Ukrainian MIM-104 Patriot air defence systems.
FIVE MISSILES
Since people seem to be complaining about the small number (5+30), here is an explanation. For many months now, the German MoD has been saying, that Bundeswehr stocks have already been depleted and drained very much, which is why they basically can’t really send anything anymore to Ukraine from army stocks. Germany has already delivered hundreds of missiles, easily worth €1 billion+ when newly procured from Bundeswehr stocks to Ukraine and these PAC-3 missiles are much rarer than PAC-2 missiles. When we now hear that Germany is willing to part with another five (5!) missiles, it just proves his prior statements, that there is basically rarely anything left which Germany could part with.
Okay, Modern Warfare 3 (the original one) was apparently right, all of Europe could just get rolled up in a couple of days. You probably wouldn’t even need to do the terrorist attacks with chemical weapons, what would there even be to bomb?
And at this point, does anyone actually have functional air defense, outside of Russia, China (hopefully, it hasn’t really been tested), and the US? I guess maybe Israel, although it’s kind of hard to judge them independently since the US tend to come in and support them when things get rough. The “bomber will always get through” guys from the interwar period were just ahead of their time, give it another 80-90 years and a decent amount of deindustrialization, replace bombers with missiles and drones, and, well…
Sir Chris Wormald forced out as head of Civil Service https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3wlqy6695do Sir Wormtongue is the latest victim of the woke witch-hunt
Russia to send crude oil and fuel to Cuba soon, Izvestia reports - Reuters
Article
MOSCOW, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Russia is preparing to send crude oil and fuel cargoes to Cuba in the near future, Izvestia newspaper said on Thursday, citing the Russian embassy in Cuba. Cuba is grappling with fuel shortages after the U.S. moved to choke off its oil supplies. The communist-run island has warned international airlines that jet fuel will no longer be available, the latest sign of fast-worsening conditions.
The country has long relied on Venezuela for much of its jet fuel, but it has not received crude or refined products from its closest ally since mid-December, when Washington moved to block Venezuelan exports.
“Supply of crude and oil products is expected from Russia to Cuba in the near future as humanitarian aid,” a Russian embassy diplomat told the newspaper.
Izvestia said Russia last sent oil to Cuba in February 2025, delivering 100,000 metric tons. The Kremlin declined to comment directly on the reported plan but said it was in contact with Havana to discuss possible support.
“We are in close contact with our Cuban friends, and we are discussing options for providing them with assistance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Asked whether Washington might escalate tariffs on Russian goods if Moscow helps Cuba, Peskov said: “We wouldn’t want any escalation, but on the other hand, we don’t have much trade with the United States right now. We’d probably count on constructive dialogue and a solution to existing problems through dialogue.”
Russia has said Cuba’s fuel situation is critical and accused the U.S. of trying to “suffocate” the island’s economy. Moscow has pledge to oppose any form of military intervention and voiced solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela.
Russia also said on Wednesday it would suspend flights to Cuba once Russian tourists leave the island.
Russia Rules Out New UN Sanctions on North Korea - Telesur English
Article
Sanctions are having less and less impact on the country’s economic performance, FM Lavrov says. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his country will not allow any further resolutions containing sanctions against North Korea in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
The Russian top diplomat also mentioned that it is unrealistic to expect the adoption of a resolution lifting sanctions already imposed. “Expecting that we would introduce a resolution to lift the sanctions and that it would be adopted is simply not serious,” Lavrov said. According to the Russian foreign affairs minister, sanctions against North Korea are having less and less impact on the country’s economic performance.
“Pyongyang, in the past three or four years that I have been going there, has been improving. New neighborhoods are being built, everything is clean and beautiful,” Lavrov said, praising North Korea’s new Wonsan beach resort.
Earlier, authorities in the Asian country said Russian tourists would receive “maximum priority at that wonderful complex.”
The Moscow-Pyongyang alliance has strengthened significantly since the signing of a military cooperation treaty between the two countries in June 2024, which provides for bilateral military support in the event of external aggression, as well as after the participation of North Korean troops in the liberation of the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces.
China Reaffirms Cuba Support Amid Power Outages - Telesur English
Article
Beijing backs Havana against U.S. blockade, pledging aid within its capacities. On Wednesday, China reiterated its political support for Cuba amid widespread power outages on the island and ongoing U.S. oil blockade.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Beijing “firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security” and “resolutely opposes inhumane actions and behaviors that deprive the Cuban people of their right to subsistence and development.” Lin added that China “will provide support and assistance to Cuba within its capacities.”
When asked about possible concrete aid, including fuel supplies or financial support, Lin avoided detailing specific measures, noting that the content of any cooperation must be discussed with “the competent authorities” and handled “through bilateral channels.”
The remarks come as Cuba experiences generalized power outages linked to difficulties in its electricity system, and as Beijing renews calls for Washington to lift its 60-year blockade.
China has publicly urged the United States to “immediately end the blockade, sanctions and any form of coercive measures against Cuba.”
In recent weeks, the Chinese government announced shipments of food assistance, including a cargo of 90,000 tons of rice, along with an “emergency financial assistance” line worth US$80 million. In 2024, Beijing had already granted Cuba an additional US$100 million in aid.
Support was also reiterated at the diplomatic level during recent high-level meetings. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi voiced opposition to the “interference of external forces” during talks in Beijing with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
Rodriguez’s visit to the Chinese capital formed part of a broader tour aimed at securing backing from Havana’s traditional allies, as Cuba confronts economic and energy challenges intensified by the U.S. blockade.
I did not know Georgia has such warm relations with Iran:
https://xcancel.com/FormulaGe/status/2021825924161761352
