this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 66 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Econews - All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat

Elon and DOGE (allegedly) made a copy of the social security database to bypass oversight and restriction, uploading all data to CloudFlare.

extracts

Borges alleges that a little-known federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, copied the government’s master Social Security database into a cloud system that lacked normal oversight.

In plain terms, that means data normally locked inside tightly-monitored government systems was duplicated onto remote servers where watchdogs had fewer tools to see who was logging in or what they were doing.

The dataset at issue is not just a list of numbers. A Washington Post ruling summary describes how DOGE team members were given access to databases containing Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank and credit card information, tax details, work histories, and home addresses for millions of Americans.

A filing summarized on Representative John Larson’s website states that DOGE workers used the third party service Cloudflare in March 2025 in a way that violated Social Security’s own security policies, and that DOGE employees attempted to pass sensitive personal records to an outside advocacy group seeking to overturn election results.

The same filing says confidential information on about one thousand Americans was sent to Elon Musk’s team, and that the agency still does not know exactly what data reached Cloudflare or whether it remains on that server.

For now, there is no public evidence that this particular cache has been used in large-scale fraud, and the legal fights over DOGE and Social Security’s systems are still unfoldi

[–] Parzivus@hexbear.net 50 points 6 days ago (1 children)

little-known federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE

Who wrote this article lol

[–] GoodGuyWithACat@hexbear.net 20 points 6 days ago

AI and then someone edited out the em-dashes.

[–] companero@hexbear.net 42 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Invalidating existing identity information could have good synergy with the looming voter ID law...

[–] demeritum@lemmygrad.ml 35 points 6 days ago

I am sure only certain groups will get their social security "fixed" in time for the election. Dems while wag their finger and probably laugh about how the GOP is led by fools and let trump "steal" the midterms.

[–] TheGamingLuddite@hexbear.net 41 points 6 days ago

The amount of bureaucratic work this will require may indicate Musk is some kind of crypto-Keynesian sleeper agent.

[–] volcel_olive_oil@hexbear.net 19 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"oopsie whoopsie we did a fucky wucky on the computer and now you're not a valid citizen uwu"

[–] ziggurter@hexbear.net 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Shit. Now you have me fantasizing about a timeline where literally everyone is suddenly undocumented. sicko-pog

If only it were possible to implode the corprotocracy with the one simple trick.

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 25 points 6 days ago (3 children)

CW-SA

MoA - akshually its ephebophilia (defending Chomsky and minimizing Epstein’s pedophile ring)

Smearing Chomsky For His Friendship With Epstein Is A Disgrace

Merriam-Webster defines pedophilia as

a psychiatric disorder in which an adult has sexual fantasies about or engages in sexual acts with a prepubescent child

Jeffrey Epstein was notoriously involved in sexual activities (not intercourse) with female teenagers. In the known cases the youngest was fourteen at the time of her first encounter with Epstein (but had been told to lie to Epstein about her age before meeting him). There is no suspicion and no credible allegation that Epstein did ever do anything sexual with prepubescent children.

The girls were paid by Epstein to perform massages on him while being bare breasted or naked. While they were doing so he tended to masturbate. These contacts were consensual. No force was applied. The girls received $200 to $300 for each session. That’s a lot of money for an hour long effort for someone at that age.

It is certainly a weird habit for Epstein to have but it had nothing to do with pedophilia.

Macleod writes that Chomsky:

.. expressed his desire, on multiple occasions, to visit Little St. James Island, the location of many of Epstein’s worst sex crimes.

There is no evidence that Epstein, on his island or wherever, ever committed any ‘sex crimes’. Macleod does not and can not even name one.

One wonders why girls who were paid to do consensual massages are suddenly classified as ‘survivors’. There are no allegation that any of them has ever been forced or threatened. These weren’t ‘survivors’ and not even ‘victims’ but service providers. That is exactly why no criminal procedure was initiated over most of those cases.

Having consensual intercourse with a person a day before that person’s 18th birthday is not a crime in most of the world.

And the chuddery goes on

Like it’s not surprising to see extreme chuddery on MoA but damn dude

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think this is beyond chuddery. Chomsky is a member of the western left, which means that leftists ought to hate him but so do chuds. Right wingers otoh are the people who were most proactively scammed by the US elite when it comes to Epstein and they are lashing out. Liberals have an easier time rationalizing the need to investigate the Clintons and Trump both. Chuds believed Trump was a secret agent against the Deep State.

MoA seems driven by being a contrarian idiot. When the Ukraine War started and certain bloggers/vloggers gained proeminence - Alexander Mercouris, Simplicius, MoA, some folks on Naked Capitalism - I'd read them conscious of how the ultimate test in their future would be the second Trump presidency. All of the right wing contrarians still have the reflexive need to blame everything on 'globalists' simply because they can't blame Biden any more and they can't blame the conservative Reaganite ideology that defines their entire side of the political aisle.

But that's just brainworms. MoA's article is on a Joe Rogan/Alex Jones tier of crowing about the Deep State for 10 years and then becoming best friends of Peter Thiel who, for all intents and purposes, privately owns the Deep State.

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It was interesting to see half or even most of the comments on MoA calling him out for this.

An extremely rare once in a lifetime tell your grandchildren about this W for the MoA comment board

[–] tocopherol@hexbear.net 14 points 6 days ago

It's kind of wild to see, some of these popular people seem to forget that most people are disgusted by child abuse. Like there was a guy on Joe Rogan saying like "these were cool parties, everyone wanted to go, it was almost entirely adult women!" Like ohh there was only a minority of trafficked children, that's okay then, just a bit on the side so it's fine. Basically all comments even from chuds were like "wow, fuck these pedos and pedo defenders." qin-shi-huangdi-fireball qin-shi-huangdi-fireball qin-shi-huangdi-fireball qin-shi-huangdi-fireball qin-shi-huangdi-fireball

[–] SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net 20 points 6 days ago

Another transphobe who has no problem defending pedophilia. shocked-pikachu

[–] demeritum@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 6 days ago

Hes an traditional western classical leftist found primarily in post-socialists states - the new left of the 70s considered "free love" between teenagers and adults "normal" and opposition as prudent conservatives, in Europe "ephebophilic" relationships were very much normalized until recently (Several of my classmates in the age range of 13-15 dated older men in their late twenties and everybody considered it normal), this also covers the queerphobia aspect of MoA, since sexualities and gender identies deviating from heteronormative and cisgender standards are considered bourgeoisie decadence or whatever.

A historical fact to keep in mind, is that the german new left movement of the 70-80s largely feel apart due to the rampant sexism of the male leaders (amongst other things).

[–] Sasuke@hexbear.net 51 points 6 days ago

After U.S. extends AGOA, China finally agrees zero-tariff access for 53 African nations, Business Insider Africa (14 Feb)

China announced a zero-tariff policy for imports from 53 African nations, effective May 2026, aiming to enhance trade relations.

This policy expands previous coverage, removing tariffs for nearly all items from Africa, excluding Eswatini due to diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

China-Africa trade reached $222 billion in early 2025, though Africa experiences a significant trade deficit due to its reliance on raw material exports.

China asserts that this initiative supports African export growth and aligns it strategically with its global partners.

[–] BigBoyKarlLiebknecht@hexbear.net 44 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Delivery van 'stuck on deadliest mudflat footpath'

HM Coastguard Southend said it was called out to reports on Sunday of an Amazon delivery vehicle on The Broomway, at Great Wakering, Essex, after the driver had been following a GPS route to Foulness Island.

The Broomway is a route across flat sands from the shore near Southend-on-Sea to Foulness Island and is home to a Ministry of Defence firing range.

Amazon said it was "aware" of the situation and was "investigating".

The Great Awakering passion

[–] take_five_moments@hexbear.net 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Love that this lad saw that shit and was like "nah mate stay the course"

[–] ziggurter@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago

I mean, looks like they almost made it, too. I hope they managed to get out and book it, and it's only the corpo van and property that's stuck in the Britshit.

[–] culpritus@hexbear.net 19 points 6 days ago

This image sums up the state of capitalism in the face of climate change pretty well.

[–] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 17 points 6 days ago

Dude, some of the paths Apple Maps sends me on when I'm biking are fucking whack. They're like ATV trails that are flooded 3 feet deep in the spring and fall and I don't know how they're even on there in the first place.

[–] joaomarrom@hexbear.net 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

aw man I hate when that happens, I'm always getting my cargo van stuck on the mudflat footpath on my way to Foulness Island

[–] Nacarbac@hexbear.net 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Beep boop. We're sorry, your order of "1 miniature novelty life preserver" could not be delivered today to "Foulness Island", would you like to choose a different drop off poi-

"No! Ha ha ha. no! Send more delivery vans." sicko-flipped

[–] Lovely_sombrero@hexbear.net 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 6 days ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 15 points 6 days ago

Foulness Island

fuckin

[–] LocalMaxima@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 6 days ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] HarryLime@hexbear.net 87 points 1 week ago (22 children)
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