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Bulletins and News Discussion for May 26th to June 1st, 2025 - Sanctions Continue To Fail, More At 11

Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.

To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.

As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:

  • The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...
  • The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
  • Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.

Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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781 comments

  • Things aren't looking good in Cuba:
    https://xcancel.com/bellybeastcuba/status/1929158797173371202

    Cuba’s population has declined nearly 13% from 2020 through 2024, according to recently released data by the island’s National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI). In 2024, the population was 9.7 million, 1.4 million less than in 2020.

    Cuba has been going through its largest emigration wave in history, as people flee a deepening economic crisis fueled by U.S. sanctions. The U.S. is by far the largest recipient of Cuban immigrants. Unofficial reports have put Cuba’s population loss at even higher numbers.

    The long-term damage of the emigration crisis can be catastrophic for the island, since thousands of young people, and particularly young professionals, are part of the wave.

    Cuba’s education, health and scientific sectors are facing personnel shortages. It is even more alarming considering Cuba’s aging patterns, to which low birth rates also contribute. Cuba’s around 71,358 births in 2024 are the country’s lowest in 65 years.

    ONEI’s report points out that more than 25% of the population is over 60 years old, making Cuba one of the fastest-aging countries in Latin America.

  • Skulls of 19 Black people once subject to racist study in Germany are laid to rest in New Orleans. (Hexbear link)

    The skulls of those 19 patients have now been repatriated to Louisiana after more than a century abroad. On Saturday, they were honored in a multi-faith memorial and laid to rest in a jazz funeral rooted in New Orleans tradition.

    The remains were returned by the University of Leipzig, which in 2023 contacted the city archeologist in New Orleans, acknowledging the skulls had been acquired in a "colonial context and unethically." The two-year return process involved city, state and academic institutions. It culminated in a notable international restitution, a return of African American remains from Europe — with many remains still lingering in archival collections across the U.S. and abroad, at museums and universities.

    In Canada, a daughter’s fight to bring her murdered Indigenous mother home. Hexbear Link

    Winnipeg police were first alerted to the then 35-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist on May 16, 2022, when the partial remains of Rebecca Contois were found in a rubbish bin. Skibicki was charged two days later, and the following month, police began searching the Brady Road Landfill, a municipal landfill on the outskirts of the city, where they found more of her remains.

    Morgan and Marcedes’s families were told that their relatives' remains were likely in the privately operated Prairie Green Landfill, a sprawling waste disposal site north of Winnipeg.

    To their dismay, police refused to search the landfill, believing they had enough evidence to convict Skibicki without the remains of his victims.

    Utah lawmakers said gender-affirming care is harmful to kids. Their own study contradicts that claim. Hexbear post

    SALT LAKE CITY — When Utah Republicans passed a ban on gender-affirming health care for children and teens in 2023, they argued it was needed to protect vulnerable kids from treatments that could cause long-term harm.

    Years later, the results of a study commissioned under the same law contradict that claim, and the Republican-led Legislature is facing pressure to reconsider the restrictions.

  • for the Polish presidential elections with 99% of the votes counted, the right winger (who visited Trump recently to do a photo op) has 51.08% and the lib (who seems to be losing for the second time in a row) has 48.92%, the right winger is like a more aggressive version of the current right wing president Duda

  • Great engineering breakdown of why SpaceX’s new rocket engineer, Raptor 3, is likely more of an explosive dud than the engine it is replacing. And why SpaceX is trapped in an engineering Catch-22 that probably makes the entire Starship project a flop that simply cannot succeed:

    https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/spacex-has-finally-figured-out-why-63b

    At the time of writing, SpaceX has already spent approximately $10 billion on Starship and hasn’t even managed to reach proper orbit, let alone deliver any payload to space. For comparison, NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which was designed and built using more expensive and less accurate old-school analogue technology, cost roughly $6.4 billion to develop, and the launch costs were approximately $1.4 billion in today’s dollars. In other words, for the same amount of cash that Musk has splashed on creating a rocket that doesn’t work, NASA was able to send astronauts to lunar orbit using technology from the 1960s. And, even more embarrassingly for Musk, this sorry saga is only going to get worse.

    … how did test flight 7 fail? Well, excessive harmonic vibrations ruptured the fuel lines, creating a gigantic fire that destroyed the entire upper stage mid-flight. This occurred despite the reduced stress placed on the engines and structure itself. Even worse, test flights 7 and 8 were launched using an improved version of Starship, featuring redesigned and strengthened fuel lines to prevent these failures from occurring.

    So, why did this solution not work? Well, Starship has a huge thrust problem. Musk and his engineers overestimated the amount of thrust their Raptor engine could produce while designing the Starship. Even Musk himself has publicly stated that Starship can only take less than 50% of its promised payload to orbit, which is likely an overestimate. This means they are forced to cut down on as much of the craft’s weight as possible and push the engines to the limit during launches. Unfortunately, this makes the rocket more fragile and means the engines generate excessive heat and vibrations — which is a perfect recipe for guaranteed failure.

    At the time, the cause of this failure was apparent to me and many others. It’s obvious SpaceX can’t make Starship robust enough to survive the thrust required for a fraction of its payload without dramatically increasing its weight and, therefore, reducing its payload to nothing.

    On the eve of Starship’s 9th test flight, SpaceX finally revealed what happened during flight 8. A “flash” event occurred in one of the rocket’s engines, causing it to fail (or, more accurately, explode) and take out the other engines in the process. This led to the rocket tumbling uncontrollably and disintegrating in the atmosphere.

    A flash is when a rocket’s propellant ignites when it shouldn’t, creating a sudden explosion. This can be caused by many things: a fuel leak igniting; an incomplete fuel and oxidiser mix that removed the engine; rapid pressure changes that disrupt the correct flow of fuel and propellant; or even overheating, causing combustion in the wrong places. However, SpaceX has stated that “the most probable root cause for the loss of Starship was identified as a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s center Raptor engines.” This heavily suggests a fuel leak or an overheating problem, which can be caused by building these engines too light and fragile or pushing them too hard — which all but confirms my and many others’ speculations.

    Flight 8 is damning evidence that these engines are being exerted beyond their natural limits and are still incapable of producing enough thrust, as well as that Starship is simultaneously far too heavy and far too fragile to actually function. This is a fatal catch-22 that is baked into the core design of Starship.

    So, how does SpaceX address this issue? Well, with an updated engine: the Raptor 3. This engine is simpler, 7% lighter and has 21% more thrust than the current Raptor 2. Surely, that should solve all these problems, right?

    Well, no. First of all, Musk has lied about Raptor’s thrust before, meaning that his claim of “21% more thrust” is seriously dubious. But also, the engine being 7% lighter and having a 21% increase in thrust isn’t nearly enough to increase Starship’s payload to usable levels.

    What is more concerning is the method SpaceX used to made this engine so light and powerful. By modifying how the fuel flows, they have improved the engine’s internal cooling needs and supposedly eliminated the requirement for external heat shields and a fire suppression system. As a result, they have elected to remove these components, which has made it possible to save this amount of weight. Furthermore, the improved cooling will supposedly enable them to push the engine harder, creating the aforementioned 21% increase in thrust.

    In other words, the current engines are being pushed too hard, causing them to fail from fuel leak fires and excessive heat, which has happened so consistently that no Starship has even survived a trip to space with a fraction of its proposed payload onboard. Yet somehow, the natural solution is to ditch the engine’s heat shields and fire suppression systems? That decision alone would be silly, but to then also push these engines 21% harder makes this entire proposal utterly moronic.

    More thrust will create more vibrations and stress, causing fuel leaks (especially if the lines aren’t further enforced), incorrect fuel mixing, and unstable internal pressure. All of these factors can then create flashes, which overheat the engines and quickly develop into huge explosive fires, which will be even more catastrophic than before, as these engines have no heat shields or fire suppression systems.

  • Oh so a bunch of ukrainians using a truck and a few drones managed to sneak up and attack a large russian military base, causing almost irreparable damage almost for free? You should be taking notes...

    I say, imagine being able to cripple a certain country's airforce in a revolutionary moment with just a few quadcopters and some courage... I'm just saying. Would be very useful in Minecraft...

  • Good thing is that Dollar exchange rate continues to struggle despite yields going up occasionally. The only thing preventing further crash appears to be in part the other central banks' willingness to buy up Dollars in the forex markets so as to maintain trade competitiveness ie to maintain exports to the US. The "Dollar Standard" remains for now.

  • Reading the Financial Times this morning I came across an op-ed by fucking Francis Fukuyama. How this motherfucker still gets writing gigs I'll never understand.

    Anyway this bit about Lee Jae-myung, probably the next South Korean president, absolutely cracked me up.

  • with the sino/us geneva agreement in danger of breaking down due to chips/rare earths dispute, one wonders if china bottlenecking RE will finally allow the US to rediscover industrial policy. it's pretty clear that chinese dominance in REs allows them to crush any competitor on the free market at will, with the disturbing implication that the XHS strategy of using fake money (but i repeat myself) to build out supply chains in peripheral countries, at least in this sector, could be less than optimal. it was dicey for strategic necessities in the first place, but for something with as much capital overhead as REs the risks become noticeably starker.

    it appears that the necessity of security of production, once subsidized by western technological and financial superiority, is once again asserting itself as hegemony erodes. the ongoing russian drone fiasco provides illustration in this regard (i think someone else actually mentioned factories being a more valuable target inthread). the working assumption is that no one is dumb enough to halfass things in this situation (the actual working assumption is nothing ever happens), but i wouldn't rule out the funniest outcomes of building processing in australia/greenland or failing to protect monopoly power from non-government corpos.

  • This is an embarrassing strike on Russia, but it bears remembering that propellor based strategic bombers are nearly obsolete weapons of war.

    Their only use in this war is a stand-off distance launching of cruise missiles.

    These are nuclear deterrent platforms, which are frankly always oversold in importance. Russian nuclear deterrence is not significantly impacted as long as their nuclear submarines exist.

    Destroying an artillery factory would have more impact on the actual war. However, the Ukranians exist a proxy meant to damage Russia, not actually win the war as it is. Thus flashy strikes like this one.

  • Samidoun writes on X

    There has now been well over a year of fake "ceasefire" shenanigans from the US, the Zionist entity and the Arab reactionary regimes. This was always the danger of making the main focus on the term "ceasefire," rather than the relevant demand of "ending the genocide."

    For the past week, we have witnessed a spectacle that has nothing to do with ending the genocide (nor, for that matter, a ceasefire) and is meant to do nothing more except toy with the sentiments and needs of a people undergoing genocide and being starved.

    **The end of the genocide -- at least the portion of the genocide in Gaza -- can only be obtained by pressuring the Zionist regime. ** Instead, all of the pressure is being directed at the Palestinian resistance, which is not being careless and is seeking to protect their people.

    The Zionist regime broke the January ceasefire, again and again. They break the ceasefire in Lebanon every day. And then they relaunched the genocide with full force on March 18. They continue to be armed and funded by the US, Canada, Britain, EU countries.

    By right, all of these states should be 100% excluded from any "mediation" role -- although it is logical to demand a US guarantee for the actions of its colonial spearhead, "Israel".

    So we've seen 2 US envoys, Adam Boehler and Bishara Bahbah, engage in negotiations with the Palestinian resistance, only to then have the US say that they don't actually mean any of those agreements or proposals and instead demand Netanyahu's latest proclamation.

    This is not to mention the Edan Alexander matter, in which the Palestinian resistance turned over a prisoner (an occupation soldier -- a war criminal -- to be clear) to secure aid for their people, only to have the US again renege.

    And, the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation," the "aid pier" reboot --- ostensibly "humanitarian" but instead a mechanism to impose security control & surveillance on Palestinians & keep the starvation regime intact, with an entry into Palestine for US mercenary "military contractors"

    The Palestinian resistance has engaged in all of these negotiations with a tremendous amount of responsibility. It has agreed to things even when it knows that the US cannot be trusted, in an effort to protect their people.

    The latest Witkoff "proposal" was literally for 7 days (not 60, prisoner transfer to be completed within 1 week). The experience of just the past 60 months, let alone 78 years or 108 years, is clear: this just means agreeing to be bombed again in 7 days, but with less leverage.

    ALL of the media reporting, in Saudi/US/etc media, about how "a ceasefire is coming soon!", Trump's proclamations and the like, are meant to do nothing more but quell opposition and build up hope among people living in intolerable conditions, in an attempt to force submission

  • 'Syria and Israel share common enemies'

    The self-appointed interim President of Syria Ahmed Al-Sharaa says

    Ahmed Al-Sharaa during an interview with the Jewish Journal stated that Israel and Syria share “common enemies” and said he is ready to engage with Tel Aviv if there is “a clear path to coexistence.”

    “The era of endless tit-for-tat bombings must end. No nation prospers when its skies are filled with fear. The reality is, we have common enemies — and we can play a major role in regional security,” Sharaa, formerly known as Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, told the Los Angeles-based publication.

    “Peace must be earned through mutual respect, not fear. We will engage where there is honesty and a clear path to coexistence — and walk away from anything less," he added.

    Sharaa also voiced support for reviving the principles of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement (Dofa Accord), calling it a possible framework for “mutual restraint and protection of civilians.”

    The statements from the de facto president come amid reports in western media saying Israeli and Syrian officials have been engaged in face-to-face talks over recent weeks aimed at “preventing another flareup along their shared border.”

    After extremist armed groups led by Sharaa took over Syria in December, Israel promptly destroyed the country's military capabilities and occupied large areas of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, Quneitra, and Deraa.

    “There are indirect talks with Israel through mediators to calm and attempt to absorb the situation so that it does not reach a level that both sides lose control over,” Sharaa said earlier this month, also describing Israel's continued airstrikes of Syrian land as “random interventions."

    He also said Damascus was talking to states that communicate with Israel to “pressure them to stop intervening in Syrian affairs and bomb some of its infrastructure.”

781 comments