shomyshomy

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Rubio's speech was obviously imperialist and repulsive (and all global South states should take note, and plan deterrence accordingly). But it also shows he understands an important historical fact that most people do not grasp, and which the US has spent the past half century trying to erase and obscure.

Namely, the anti-colonial movement, which was one of humanity's greatest moral and political achievements, was led in large part under the banner of socialism. Rubio referred to "anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come."

The hammer and sickle... the symbol of the workers and peasants - overwhelmingly in the global South - whose labour creates the world's wealth...

The national liberation movements - and the masses of workers and peasants they mobilized and represented - understood that they needed to regain control over their resources and productive capacities, and organize them around human needs and development rather than around servicing capital accumulation in the core. Socialist ideas provided a method for achieving this, and with remarkable results.

It is crucial to understand that socialism gained *enormous* global prestige with the success of the anti-colonial revolutions. And this prestige was further cemented when the socialist countries (mainly the USSR and China) played a decisive role in defeating fascism, which was spawned within and promoted by the capitalist core and inflicted brutal violence not only within Europe but much more extensively in the colonized territories.

Socialism was so popular at the time that the US, as the rising imperial power seeking to consolidate hegemony, tried (falsely) to paint itself as a champion of anti-colonialism and anti-fascism. Of course, this was a lie: the US was created through violent colonization, complete with fascist ideology (which they leveraged to justify ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass enslavement and apartheid).

The fact that the US represented itself this way - through an aggressive propaganda strategy - is testament to the popularity and prestige that socialism held. Rubio is now dispensing with the propaganda, and in the process reveals the reality... that the West is doubling down on imperialism, once again with openly fascist ideology, and they recognize the only real force that has ever held them in check: socialist and anti-colonial movements.

[COMBATE |🇵🇷 @upholdreality]

In 2026, the financial siege that strangled Cuba for more than six decades became a military one.

Five oil tankers seized in a single month. 7.3 million barrels confiscated. One of the tankers was not even under sanctions.

The largest naval deployment in the Caribbean since 1962. US drones surveilling Mexican tanker routes. An executive order threatening tariffs on any country on earth that sells Cuba a single barrel of oil.

Mexico, facing $400 billion in trade exposure to the US, stopped shipments. Venezuela's supply was destroyed by force. No alternative supplier was willing to risk retaliation or seizures.

20-hour daily blackouts. Hospitals on generators running out of diesel. Families cooking with wood.

The Secretary of State testified to Congress that regime change is the objective. The President said: "I think it's just going to fall."

But the siege did not begin in 2026. It began decades ago, and it was never unilateral.

187 nations vote to condemn the US embargo on Cuba every year. 33 consecutive years. The most lopsided vote in UN history.

And every year, every country that votes against it lets its banks enforce it anyway.

The reason is structural.

88% of all global foreign exchange transactions touch the US dollar. 95% of cross-border dollar payments clear through 42 American banks. One country controls the pipes through which the world's money moves.

That is all it takes.

Any foreign bank that processes a Cuba-related payment faces ruin.

BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion.
Société Générale, $1.34 billion.
HSBC, $1.9 billion.
Standard Chartered, $1.1 billion.
ING, $619 million.

$13.5 billion in penalties against foreign banks from countries that formally oppose the embargo.

The lesson was received. Most foreign banks now refuse all Cuba operations.

Several countries passed laws making it illegal for their own companies to comply with the US embargo.

Total enforcement of those laws over 30 years: one fine. $15,000. Against a hotel in Mexico City.

The votes against the blockade are symbolic. The fines are real.

And the machinery does not stop at banking.

A US private equity firm buys a Dutch software company. 23 years of Cuban contracts, severed in a week.

A US corporation acquires two Swiss ventilator manufacturers. Deliveries to Cuba stop overnight.

An American cargo company refuses to deliver Jack Ma's donated medical supplies to Cuba. It was the only country in Latin America that did not receive them.

PayPal blocks any transaction containing the word "Cuba." Including orders for a cocktail recipe book.

Cuba does not lose these suppliers to politics.

It loses them to mergers, algorithms, and compliance departments that would rather cut off an entire country than risk a phone call from OFAC.

The result:

35 children on a pediatric ward vomiting 28 to 30 times a day because the anti-nausea drug essential for chemotherapy cannot be sourced from anywhere on earth.

An 89-year-old woman implanted with a pacemaker recycled from a dead patient, two years of battery life, because no manufacturer will sell to Cuba.

69% of necessary medicines unavailable.

Infant mortality rising for the first time in decades.

When one nation controls the infrastructure through which the world trades, and weaponizes that control to deny an island of 11 million people fuel, medicine, food, pacemakers, ventilators, software, insurance, shipping, and banking for more than six decades, while every other nation on earth formally objects and none enforces its objection, the word for that is SIEGE.

The longest siege in modern history.

Condemned annually. Enforced permanently.

[Isaac’s Army @ReturnOfKappy]

This is the craziest most accurate AI video I have ever seen.... https://t.co/OUm0OetIDx

[Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg]

💥💥My latest: How Human Rights Watch Shattered Yugoslavia💥💥

https://t.co/VBHQjDEfTG

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

The "40 dead Israeli babies" was a hoax. But for Palestinians, 40 dead kids is a daily nightmare.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

To fly to the U.S. Netanyahu's plane flew via Europe's airspace unimpeded, which tells you all you need to know about Europe's "stand for justice and the respect of international law."

[Ali Abunimah @AliAbunimah]

I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police. This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family. On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges. As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.” On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell. During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home. I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being. All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it. I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit. But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care. And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant. That is the perverse, unjust world we live in. This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor. More than ever I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus. The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world. I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an @intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism. Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime! Say it with me:

From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! ❤️🇵🇸✌️

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Biden should have hired Hamas for debate prep

[Mike Mihajlovic @MihajlovicMike]

On 12 April 1999 NATO targeted a bridge in Grdelichka Gorge. The F-15E crew had enough time to steer the missile away but they didn't. They launched the second one, just in case. A war crime which those NATO criminals named "collateral damage" (when they do that).

[Dissentral Intelligence @dissentralintel]

UN spokesman Faran Haq HUMILIATED by journalist who poses simple question: “Do you think the US military presence in Syria is illegal or not?”

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

People who get really into 9/11 truth often talk about how America would wake up if they could just really grasp what their government did, but this is equally true of the things the US is undisputedly publicly known to have done in places like Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria etc.

[Mick Wallace @wallacemick]

A huge blow to International Law that the #UN Security Council has refused to initiative an Investigation into the deliberate sabotage of #NordStream
Pipeline which was an act of Terrorism - So #US and #EU don't want the Truth exposed...? I wonder why...?
https://t.co/4oSxEq2Hzc

[Internet Archive @internetarchive]

Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries & the communities we serve.

But it’s not over—we will keep fighting for the traditional right of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. Learn more & take action👇 https://t.co/qAwI4tbrNX

[TIMES OF GAZA @Timesofgaza]

Terrified Palestinian child narrates how the lsraeli colonial settlers burned the house upon them while they were sleeping inside.

[Ahmed Shameya 🇵🇸 @ahmedshameya995]

Israeli forces confiscated the phones of the worshipers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque after expelling them from the mosque to prevent the publication of videos of the storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem 🇵🇸

[Mirko Radoš @frankblack2000]

Yesterday, on the 24th anniversary of NATOs illegal aggression vs FRY the usual NATO fans and Albanian extremists came out to defend it because NATO acted to "prevent genocide." Is this true? What did NATO actually say when they launched their missiles?🧵

[Hüseyin Dogru @hussedogru_]

On this day in 1999, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. It was the alliance's first war without UN permission and in just under 3 months left 2,500 people dead and a further 12,000 injured. 🧵

[Calla @CallaWalsh]

24 years ago, NATO began illegally bombing Yugoslavia for 78 days. Thousands of people died, including many innocent civilians. NATO bombed civilian trains and even the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The world will never know peace until we #AbolishNATO.

[The International Magazine @TheIntlMagz]

24 years ago NATO brought the destruction of Yugoslavia.

Thousands of people were killed, many of them unarmed bystanders. NATO struck Belgrade's Chinese embassy as well as passenger trains carrying civilians.

Claiming itself a harbinger of peace, NATO had only bought mayhem.

[Hampton Institute @HamptonThink]

Capitalism is a wasteful scam.