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.
https://xcancel.com/deaidua/status/2022002290501333359
FIVE MISSILES
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...
I think what's complicating this is that usually Europe would just buy more PAC-3 MSE interceptors from the USA under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) programme and send it direct to Ukraine. The USA manufactured over 600 PAC-3 MSE last year, and plans to up that to over 2000 per year within the next four years. However, with the USA sending PATRIOT battalions and ammunition to the Middle East now, they've probably reserved stocks for a potential war with Iran. So the USA can't sell Europe PAC 3 MSE now, or for the next few months.
As for domestic production, Germany only does domestic production of PAC-2, not PAC-3. These are very different missiles. While PAC-2 can intercept ballistic missiles, it's maximum intercept altitude, and thus defended area, is a lot lower than PAC-3. This is because, to engage a ballistic target at greater range, you are required to engage it at greater altitude. At at increased altitudes, the air gets thinner. This is a problem as the PAC-2 missile/interceptor relies primarily on four aerodynamic fins at the rear to maneuver. This means as altitude increases, it rapidly loses control authority as the air gets thinner. PAC-3 solves this issue by putting a mini rocket thruster powered altitude control system in the body of the missile, I think over 120 small rockets if I recall correctly. This allows it to maneuver sharply at high altitudes without needing to rely on aerodynamic fins, greatly extending it's maximum engagement altitude and thus defended area against ballistic missiles. PAC-3 MSE further improves on this by adding a larger dual pulse rocket motor to the mix for interoperability with THAAD and future proofing, meaning that PAC-3 MSE actually outranges the PATRIOT's radar.
PAC-2 also relies on a blast fragmentation warhead, which is not ideal for intercepting ballistic missiles. If you want to ensure a good destruction zone for hitting ballistic missiles with blast fragmentation, you ideally want a directional warhead with lots and lots of fragmentation to shower the incoming missile, look at the size of the warhead used in Arrow 2 and S-300V. PAC-2 is not really optimal for that. PAC-3 solves this by using a hit to kill/kinetic warhead, there's no explosive, it directly impacts the incoming missile, with the high speeds involved the kinetic energy is massive. It also makes the interceptor a lot smaller. You can fit 4x PAC-2 on a single launcher, meanwhile you can fit 16x PAC-3 or 12x PAC-3 MSE on a single launcher, and can combine loadouts with all three. There's an image of a Ukrainian PATRIOT launcher going around with 12x PAC-3 and 2x PAC-3 MSE. This makes a saturation attack with ballistic missiles against PATRIOT more difficult.
As for other nations, it's difficult to compare numbers as PAC 3 is quite a specialised interceptor, hit to kill with an altitude control system integrated in a high to medium air defence system (HIMADS). And ballistic missile defence is quite specialised and expensive.
Russia has a direct analogue, the 9M96 series of interceptors for the S-400 and S-350. Altitude control system and hit to kill. But production numbers don't seem great, not even all S-400s are integrated with it, and if it is, it's usually one or two launchers per battery. S-350 production is slow. Thankfully for Russia, that's not their primary anti ballistic missile system, that would be S-300V4. No altitude control system or hit to kill, but enormous missiles that accelerate and travel very fast and provide a decent maximum engagement altitude (around 30+km). There's also the 40N6 missile for the S-400, fulfills a similar role to the USA's SM-6.
China has the HQ-9C now, hit to kill and with an altitude control system. So that's a direct comparison that will be in mass production for both the army and navy. 8 missiles per launcher, they're bigger than even PAC-3 MSE. China is also the only country in the world outside of the USA to have a THAAD analogue, the HQ-19.
Israel have a whole host of anti ballistic missile systems, Arrow 3, Arrow 2, David's Sling. But Arrow 3 and Arrow 2 definitely aren't HIMADS systems and specialise in engaging ballistic missiles only. David's Sling's Stunner interceptor uses hit to kill technology, but no altitude control system, to expensive for Israel to mass produce or purchase, which is why they developed Stunner with Raytheon instead of buying PATRIOT PAC-3. And yes these are all joint Israeli - USA projects.
The best defence is always offence and to win a war, you can't spend all day just swatting down missiles, you have to actually take out the infrastructure producing the incoming missiles and destroy them before launch. Missile defence is meant to supplement that and defend the assets that do that, not act alone. That's Ukraine's big problem, they cannot do that on a large enough scale. Their operation spiderweb taking out some Russian bombers was the closest they got to that, and it's reduced the amount of incoming cruise missiles. But it does nothing to stop ballistic missiles, which don't rely on these bombers to launch. That's also where Europe differs from Ukraine, European NATO would definitely try take out Russian infrastructure instead of swatting down missiles all day. The question is would they be successful at it? Europe has a bunch of F-35s and domestic 4th generation fighters, but can they suppress double digit SA systems. Only the USA and Israel have done that so far. I'd guess that China can do it too with all their stealth and EW aircraft. Russia hasn't been able to do it in Ukraine. Europe may have some of the key pieces like stealth planes, but taking out modern integrated air defence networks involves a lot more than that, especially Russia's.
five missiles
if everyone else contributes 25 other missiles
what in the coconut tree pell grant is this
iirc the French army only has three days-worth of bullets for a high intensity war
Pakistan and India definitely do have functional air defense. I imagine Japan does as well. Shambolic from the euros as always though.
Ukraine supposedly uses up to 60 patriot missiles per month by the way, which itself is already about equal to the American industrial capacity for this type... and they're still rebuilding their paper-thin stockpiles after their adventures around Israel/Iran/Yemen.
lol. lmao.
Some smaller countries like Finland are surprisingly strong still. France is definitely powerful. Germany is deindustrializing but they haven’t yet mothballed everything. Steel production in Germany could increase by 50% practically overnight, assuming they went war-economy.