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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news
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Lots of articles being posted on reddit right now claiming that apparently the UK/Sweden/France/Germany/the Netherlands have obtained evidence that Navalny was murdered with some sort of frog toxin.
Of course the "evidence" provided is the usual "trust us bro" lol
Joint statement here:
(https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-by-the-uk-sweden-france-germany-and-the-netherlands-on-alexei-navalnys-death)
The story is actually much more complex hence the real news here is being widely misunderstood. Alexei Navalny had developed a tulpa as a sort of coping strategy following his incarceration under isolating conditions amidst intense political persecution, this tulpa, which first emerged as a dialectic conflict between Alexei's ego and the collective unconscious slowly weaved an increasingly complex interconnected web around his mind culminating in the synthesis of a fully realized, independent and entirely dissociated personality. Where previously there had been just one Alexei Navalny, there were now two of them...Unfortunately, after news of a series Ukrainian defeats followed by a major press release from the Russian Diplomatic Office of emerging Russian military technologies, Navalny fully lapsed into this false identity known only as "the toad chode" wherein he huffed massive amounts of smuggled glue which ultimately led to his poisoning and death as indicated by the particular metabolic products found in his post-mortem toxicology report. While Navalny's circumstances may seem bizarre, comparable psychiatric disturbances among the confined have been reported previously with one remarkably similar case study occurring in a patient named Frank Reynolds who spent much of his youth in an adolescent mental institution in Philadelphia in the 1950s where, in the deepest recesses of madness he manifested his own anthropomorphized-amphibian-human-hybrid alternate personality known only as "the frog kid".....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/14/alexei-navalny-poisoning-death-russia-frog-toxin
Only Russia has access to this poison, that is only found in South America and explicitly cannot be produced anywhere else.
From Wikipedia:
And https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6359223/
So if it kills you, it kills you within 4 hours?
Also it is administered via injection and remember that Navalny went for a walk, returned complaining of stomach pain, and hours later died. He notably did not mention getting pricked with a needle.
Gen Z intern at the KGB, lacking creativity and flair: we could just, like, stab the guy?
Standing in a circle and chanting the mystic runes, the Evidence materializes before your party.
Roll for biology.
You now know without a doubt; Navalny was killed by frog toxins.
skill issue, dont pick up shiny frogs
ribbit
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a frog. Please report any suspicious behavior.
I’m not sure if it really matters what happened to him at this point seeing as even if God came down and said he died choking on beans euros would call him a Russian asset
Still, very enlightening that they care 1000x more about the death of some fascist parasite than the millions of murdered Palestinians
Yeah that's the thing, even if this is 100% true literally nothing will change
It's basically just a form of celebrity gossip, completely irrelevant to anyone who does not exclusively live for those sweet sweet updoots in r/worldnews
how tf did they get samples of bro
I dunno, magic maybe?
I mean, they do have Harry Potter on their team so yeah
Yet another series of releses totally omitting the fact he was a rancid fascist fuck who compared Muslims to cockroaches, and claiming he was the opposition leader while omittting the largest opposition party is the CPRF
his wife's nazi tradwife glow up always gives me a chuckle to, she used to look like such a rat, and now she's always in clinton esq power suits
She’s in the widows of dead fascists club along with Erika Kirk
The Russian version of this guy