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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
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It looks like Google removed the UpScrolled app from its Google Play store.
[edit] It is now back up
Lmao why?
I will say that this, unfortunately as it is, vindicates how relying on proprietary and centralised tech for social media is a dipshit approach for any kind of "alternative" platform.
Like, if Truth social were taken off app stores tomorrow, it could be accessible on (albeit outdated) mastodon clients by the end of the month! It's literally a fork of Mastodon and runs on activitypub, just with tweaks and no federation.
There's other shit that can go wrong for defederated and FOSS systems too, but I can't trust anything that isn't open to be sustainable in an environment that exploits centralism as a single point of failure.
Demonstrates we don't just need decentralised social media, we need phone OS' as well.
the kinda universal answer is progressive web apps, they are blocked only by website being fbi-ed
That's crazy, but was it even taking off that much? I heard a bit about it a couple weeks ago then nothing.
If anything they will just cause a Streisand effect, considering how people know that tiktok and meta are censoring them
It's still up on the Apple store, apparently. As a long time anti-Apple consumer, Apple's at least marginally greater dedication to privacy and seemingly lower willingness to do shit like this has had me seriously considering switching my phone to the Apple ecosystem.
Honestly Apple is up to awful bullshit too with controlling their users, it's just on a different strategy to Google. The one killer feature of Android despite Google BS is Firefox imo - being able to use adblock, tracking protection, and dark reader is SO good.
It's genuinely worth considering a Linux phone if you're willing to turn your whole phone ecosystem upside down in the name of privacy. Because that's the only option that isn't just a sidegrade on that front...
To this day, Apple still maintains a monopoly on application distribution for Apple phones and tablets. While Google was the first to censor the Upscrolled app, the impact of this action is much less severe than if Apple - bound by the same financial, legal, and political incentives - followed suit. On Android phones (for now), end users have the option of installing alternate app stores, or installing applications directly via
.apkfiles.On the other hand, the entire architecture of Apple's app distribution monopoly is deliberately designed to suffocate the proliferation of Free Software.
It is impossible to distribute software to iPhone/iPad applications to end-users with Freedom 1 intact (the second one, in case of Markdown rendering shenanigans). While they may receive the source code and study it, there is no way for them to modify it and run their modified versions. Each individual user must pay for and be granted a license from Apple to do this. Freedom 2+3 is likewise restricted, because receiving a copy of the application or its source code is not enough to actually make use of it - because it cannot be loaded onto the phone and run without Apple's blessing.
As a result, the ecosystem of Free Software applications available for Apple's mobile devices is severely stunted. The legality of distributing GPLv3 software on the platform at all is substantially questionable. This is a very bleak position to be left in, in this moment of accelerating tech company collaboration with the empire.
While Apple might have infinitely more poise than Google, it really is a "Mr. ~~Evart~~ Apple is helping me find my ~~gun~~ privacy" situation.
Apple's not the worst experience. It really depends on your needs. Some people will get absolutely fucked by having to pay for apps they were using free (or pirated) on Google, others won't notice a thing or will find improvements.
One thing I'll say for them is Apple TV has no ads on the homescreen (the banner at the top when you mouse over an app don't count because they come from the app creator) and runs buttery smooth even if presently it's more work to do yo-ho streaming on it but a much superior experience to pretty much any Google TV platform that doesn't cost much more.
Between stock Android and Apple, Apple wins hands down for privacy and probably security. On the other hand if you're doing Graphene with a Pixel then they win but it's more effort obviously and there's nothing saying Google won't take a hammer to the project. Though Graphene is supposedly in talks to make their own (I would also bet the CIA/NSA are in talks with that same company to introduce hardware backdoors into what they can't otherwise crack).
The problem with Linux phones is I don't think they'll be allowed to ever take off. You need permission from cellular network operators to operate a modem and indeed the connected device on their networks. Besides that hurdle (those companies have been in deep with the natsec state for decades) there's the optimization, apps, etc. Most likely Linux phones are going to end up a technical hobby piece, they'll allow phone calls, texting, maybe RCS if you're lucky with Google or your carrier's keys, web browsing but probably not banking, not e-commerce, not most gaming and will continue to have badly inferior battery life. Problem is there's just no impetus for even hostile countries to the US not to just fork Android like China's done and make their own off that basis. EU could maybe be the wild card to try and push this forward but even then I'm skeptical of it being practical for anyone outside the EU to use it and most likely they just fold after throwing a bunch of money at it haphazardly and failing to get anything working. Once Trump is out of office they'll act like the US is back to normal and respectable.
Are there any decent Linux phones on the market right now?
Do any of them come with an android VM or something?
Sailfish OS seemed to be the most promising on this front in terms of "it just works" android integration but I have no idea what phone would be the best to use with it these days. I also don't think its 100% open source?
Also obviously there is an extent to which running an android VM is just bringing a lot of the same privacy issues with you
Right but it contains those privacy issues, I want the option to use android apps (emulated or VM or whatever) while understanding the compromise is all I'm saying.