this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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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 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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Are you fedjacketing me? Sounds a bit like it. Not everyone who delivers unpleasant truths to your echo chamber is a fed
There's a difference between buying and reselling, and just directly taking control and forcing sales to who the US wants, and the US controlling the proceeds in a Qatar account. It's full on colonialism. This cope needs to end, from that same source:
That "returns part of it to venezuela" part is especially important, because the US government has the veto right to withhold the funds. Venezuela is now directly held hostage with their entire budget and economy having to be approved by the US.
The US has sanctions on Venezuela, and for the companies it gives a license to which allows them to get around the sanctions, they require that money to go through an intermediary and they take a cut. It is a mob scheme, bullying a weaker party and taking a cut.
You are jumping to the idea that every drop of oil is dictated by the US and all money that Venezuela gets goes through the US controlled bank account in Qatar. Nothing has implied this but you are desperate to make that conclusion out of a different situation. The US was taking their oil tankers and not allowing any profit to get back to Venezuela, and now they are able to make revenue again. Venezuela has no means of keeping their tankers safe, attacking the US, or even defending their own territory from US drones and missiles. What do you expect them to do? It seems like this narrative only serves to try and demoralize the movement, and has set the standard of what success looks like as the communes trying to overthrow the government they elected.
I'm not fedjacketing you. Not even implying it.
I'm talking about Bloomberg.
I meant "here" as in "in this case", not as in "Hexbear".
And it turns out the Bloomberg article was basically correct. Venezuelan crude is being taken over by US intermediaries and then sold to Israel and India, with the proceeds being held in a Qatari account to be released by as the US sees fit. The US will take a cut and they will veto the money if Venezuela ever goes against the US. It's fully captured now.
In my echochamber, Maduro isn't the only socialist in Venezuela, and him being reversibly being taken out of the picture doesn't mean that the sky is falling.
Never suggested that was the case. But the leadership of the government are acting functionally as compradors and that's the material reality. You can't be a colony and a revolution at the same time
You're saying that the control of oil exports being seized by force by the US is identical to the defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution outright and that the US got everything it wanted out of their attack in January. You're claiming that the Venezuelan leadership has betrayed the revolution at home and in particular in regards to Cuba. All of this is wrong.
Yes, of course, the seizing of the Venezuelan oil industry is a defeat. It is a colonial theft of sovereignty over resources that strengthens the US position and weakens the Venezuelan and Cuban positions. This is not the same thing as the defeat of the revolution and it obviously falls short of what the US's maximalist goals were.
Regarding the latter point, the US has not removed the PSUV from power or placed in power a compliant compraror leadership. Rodriguez and the rest of the leadership have not handed over oil control - they have lost it militarily and for the time being have no means to do anything but accept the meater pittance they'll receive from oil revenue. But there are no major oil companies outside of Chevron willing to invest because they have absolutely no faith in the US's ability to retain and stabilize that control in a way that they can profit from. Only a total seizure of state power and a subjugation of the entire revolution would achieve that. So the current situation is not dramatically different from the previous status quo - only Chevron freely exports, and the US directs where that oil goes. Venezuela receives a much smaller stream of oil revolution than they should. This is not a massive change. The biggest change is the blocking of oil to Cuba, but that is not a betrayal by Venezuela - it's just a fact that they cannot penetrate the US naval blockade. The US has no meaningful control on the ground.
And that leads into the former point - that the revolution has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution was never about oil. Oil, as the supreme global commodity and Venezuela's key resource, played a critical role in financing the revolution in its first decade. But the revolution was not just a pipeline of oil money to the people - it was and remains a society-wide effort of socialist construction, and absolutely nothing indicates that's changing. The Bolivarian Revolution is not a top-down affair, but one of the working and oppressed masses building collective and communal economic power with the assistance of a revolutionary state. That remains the case. And the strangling of oil revenue didn't start in January 2026 but over a decade ago with the US's brutal blockade of the country, which cratered all oil revenue and crippled the capacity of the state to financially support the grassroots movement.
How did the revolution respond to the blockade? With the communal movement. Venezuela began to restructure its economy away from both private and state ownership to communal ownership. Following Chavez's literal dying wish, the Venezuelan people, with only limited state involvement, have achieved strides in socialist construction not yet seen in human history. They already weaned themselves of total dependency on oil and adapted to a long-existing reality of low and unreliable oil revenue. The economic crisis there has been successfully managed for years due to the communal movement.
When you say the revolution is dead and compradors are in charge, you're taking a single US military victory and extrapolating it to an entire political system change that simply isn't borne out by the evidence. Venezuela remains under siege. Perhaps they can maneuver in this situation to secure more oil revenue than they could under the prior phase.
Your take is completely undialectical because it a surface kevel reading of a single portion of the revolutionary process at a single point in time as indicative of the entire societal transformation that is already 25 years underway. The revolution is not dead until both the revolutionary state and the communal movement are defeated, and for now all we see is that the state has taken a painful but by no means fatal blow.
They've lost control indefinitely. There is no end date on this agreement. US now controls their oil revenue funds and can veto 50% of the state budget arbitrarily. I'm sorry, but this is total defeat. The oil was the whole ball game. This is now a colonial relationship.
No it fucking wasn't, that's my whole point. Your obstinance and ignorance about this is why everyone's disagreeing with you. You are reducing everything to a single commodity. The oil revenue was already gone! Venezuela already didn't have practical sovereignty over their oil exports. The specifics have changed and worsened, but this is not fundamentally new territory.
It was Venezuela, not me, that made a single commodity rule their entire economy. A foreign power controlling 50% of state budget and being able to veto it, forcing any future concessions, is the whole ball game. Everyone is disagreeing because they are coping, just like they did with Syria and Hezbollah on here.
The specifics have changed and worsened to such an extent that the relationship has fundamentally changed.
It's not 2015 anymore, but you've dug in your heels. You're not going to listen to anyone explaining the way Venezuelan socialism has already overcome dependence on oil revenue, and I don't even think it's political; you're just being a contrarian dick.
50% of state budget comes from oil. That is not something that you can just handwave away. The already struggling systems will enter total collapse if that revenue is ended. USA holds a sword of damacles over them. Now, infinite concessions ahead as America has got their wedge
I'm actually being quite reserved and polite considering the insults that are being hurled here at me, while I've not insulted anyone else other than saying generally this forum is full of cope
There is no colonizer to get rid of, they are being bullied from the outside and don't have the means to stand up for themselves against an openly genocidal fascist regime which will bomb them every day forever if they resist. Continuing to exist as a state and build socialism without being bombed every day is actually the preferable situation by the people who would be getting bombed, go figure.
Colonization doesn't require a physical occupation. Financial and trade agreements are sufficient. You should know this but you're acting like you don't know what neo-colonialism is for some reason.
They no longer have sovereignty over their budget, with oil revenues able to be withheld on a whim. They have no ability to pursue any socialist policies within these constraints, and no ability to act in an anti-imperialist manner.
You can keep making stuff up, every time our resident ultra disappears a new one appears like clockwork, so keep filling the void
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."
Only part of it. Colonialism needs a Colony to be established. The name comes from ancient times when greeks would leave the metropole (mothercity) and establish cities to trade with the metropole. Though unlike the general understanding of modern colonialism, the ancient greek colonialism never really resulted in an expansion of the metropole - the colonies acted as rival independent powers with only vague cultural kinship. Same with Crustumium which was an early roman colony and would also go to war with rome.
Its closer to just tribute or raiding.
Colonialism does not require a physical colony to exist, only a comprador class willing to give major concessions and sell out. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso were giving billions of dollars of gold to France for free up until extremely recently and the French "occupation" was minimal to non-existent for decades before that. One-sided extractive relationships are easily enforced via the global system of capital ownership, sanctions and implied threats. Resources can be stolen and looted for free via overt war and occupation, but also via hybrid warfare and sanctions and "deals" made under duress and debt, often by leadership whose interests are more aligned with the colonizers than the people of the nation in which they reside. If you want me to use "neo-colonialism" to separate it then say so, but enough of this nonsense that "taking resources isn't a colonial endeavor" (lmao)
I said only part of it. You know I would have loved to engage in your argument if you did not immediately created a strawman to tear down by yourself.
Just admit you are wrong and this is 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.
Controlling 50% of a nation's budget is total control, let's be real. A state cannot function at 50%. It has to comply with the demands of those who can veto those funds.
Many users of this forum are flat out in denial that any colonialism is occurring, or that this compromises the Venezuelan state to the point that it is functionally controlled by the US now. People are actually arguing that the US won nothing and nothing has changed. It's colonial denialism. Glad Liberals and Hexbear users can come together in agreement, nothing weird is happening in Venezuela, no colonialism is happening.
I agree with you that this is bad, I'm not trying to claim it's not a serious defeat for the revolution. The United States has got a serious victory here for sure, I'm just pushing back on the idea that this is total control or it's some kind of colonial relationship akin to the many that have existed throughout history. It is different, and the Venezuelan state has far more room to maneuver than you seem to be making it out to be.
Having complete control of all oil revenue and 50% of the state budget is worse than some historical forms of colonialism. Again, still in denial about this
State budget only matters insofar as imports are concerned; that's all they need oil revenue for. Otherwise, they're still sovereign and in control of their own currency. The state still functions how they will. Venezuela is self-sufficient in food (per here), vastly expanding their generic drug production (from ~75% imports in 2016 to less than 45% in 2025 (per here and here), and local communes still provided vast amounts of state services. Venezuela will be going through a tough period (as it has for the past decade) but it is not the end of the world, nor has the revolution been defeated, and nor does the United States exhibit anything close to "total control" tantamount to colonising Venezuela.
People just make up fake theory on here. It's getting worse.