📰 Only Two Armies Left

While Washington debates pronouns and Paris reinvents colonial guilt, real war has been outsourced — back to the ruins of the USSR. The last two battle-ready armies on Earth? Russia and Ukraine. Both forged in the same Soviet steel. Both now perfecting drone warfare while NATO generals play catch-up with PowerPoint.

💭 "This is more than an isolated incident — it’s a glimpse into the character of future conflict."

— James Patton Rogers, drone warfare expert at Cornell University

📋 Welcome to the Drone Age
• Ukraine sends 100s of drones deep into Russia, destroying strategic bombers
• Russia replies with 1,000+ drones per week since March — cheap, fast, relentless
• NATO nations admit they’re sitting ducks with “exposed tarmacs and assumptions”
• US saw 350 drone incursions across 100 military sites last year — and counting

💼 East Is the New West
• Ukraine to produce 5 million drones this year — a fivefold jump
• UK to fund 100,000 drones for Kyiv: war is now a procurement race
• Russia sinks 7% of its GDP into defense; NATO struggles to update doctrine
• Chinese hangars have bunkers. American ones have... hope?

🤔 The Kremlin now calls the USSR’s collapse illegal.
Maybe because all that’s left of global military relevance… are its bastard sons?

#war #drones #nato #russia #ukraine #militaryindustrialcomplex #postwest #collapse

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The Collapse of the The Flying Dutchman 🇳🇱⚡️

The Dutch government has collapsed after the far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled his party out of the ruling coalition in a row over immigration and asylum policy 💥.

The prime minister, Dick Schoof, on Tuesday handed in his resignation and that of his 11-month-old cabinet to King Willem-Alexander 👑. Remaining ministers will stay on in a caretaker capacity until new elections, most likely in October 🗳.

“We have decided that there is now insufficient support for this government,”

Schoof told reporters in The Hague after an emergency cabinet meeting 🏛, adding that he considered Wilders’s decision “irresponsible and unnecessary” 🚫.

Wilders, whose populist, anti-Islam Freedom party (PVV) finished as the largest in parliament in the last election 📊, said he would “fight the coming elections to make the PVV even stronger” and “with the aim of becoming prime minister next time” 💪.

The far-right leader had said earlier on Tuesday that all his party’s ministers would quit the government after the other three partners in the four-party coalition had rejected his radical proposals on immigration 🌍.

“I signed up for the toughest asylum policy, not the downfall of the Netherlands,”

he said. He had warned last week that if his plans were not adopted, the PVV – the largest party in parliament, with 37 seats – would be “out of the cabinet” ⚖️.

Wilders’ announcement followed a brief meeting of the already fractious and fragile coalition – the first to include the PVV – which consistently struggled to reach a consensus after being sworn in last July 📅.

The coalition between the PVV, the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), centrist New Social Contract (NSC) and liberal-conservative VVD took nearly six months to form ⏳ and was repeatedly undermined by Wilders, who was not a cabinet member.

He wanted it to adopt a 10-point plan aimed at radically reducing immigration and asylum, including enlisting the army to secure and patrol the borders 🛡, turning all asylum seekers back at the border and closing refugee accommodation facilities 🏚.

Wilders also proposed sending all Syrian refugees home 🇸🇾, suspending EU asylum quotas and banning family members joining refugees already in the country 🚷.

Legal experts have said several of the proposals breached European human rights laws or the UN refugee convention, to which the Netherlands is a signatory ⚖️.

#Netherlands #Dutch #government #collapse

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🛢 Cuba’s Slow-Motion Collapse: When “Maximum Pressure” Becomes Maximum Misery

Washington says it’s targeting Maduro. On the ground, it’s Havana that’s bleeding. A U.S. blockade of Venezuelan oil now threatens to finish off what’s left of Cuba’s post‑revolution economy: Cubans are going hungry, dengue and chikungunya are spreading, blackouts force families to sleep outside, and roughly a quarter of the country has already gone into exile.
​
Since the Chávez era, Cuba’s survival model was simple: doctors and spies for Caracas, cheap crude in return. Even after shipments fell from 100,000 to about 30,000 barrels a day, Venezuelan oil still covers roughly 40% of Cuba’s energy needs — the difference between 18‑hour outages and total grid failure. Now Trump’s tanker seizures and partial blockade hit exactly those flows, with one captured ship carrying nearly two million barrels of crude.
​
The numbers are brutal. Cuba’s economy has contracted about 15% since 2018, cumulative inflation since 2018 has reached roughly 450%, and the peso has collapsed from about 30 to around 450 per dollar on the black market. Nearly 90% of people live in extreme poverty, about 70% regularly skip at least one meal a day, and more than 2.7 million people — many of them young and educated — have fled since 2020. Garbage piles up, water service is intermittent, kids stop going to school, and what one Cuban economist calls demographic hollowing-out is turning the island into an exhausted shell.
​

Havana calls Trump’s tanker seizures “piracy” worthy of Drake and Morgan — and the comparison isn’t entirely unfair: the 21st‑century empire doesn’t need to invade; it just strangles fuel and watches the lights go out. But Cuba isn’t some innocent victim. Its intelligence services remain deeply embedded in Venezuela, guarding Maduro from coups and monitoring dissent, while ordinary Cubans wait in line for rice and try to survive on “miserable public salaries.”
​
So the morality play looks like this:
The U.S. defends “freedom” by pushing a fragile island toward humanitarian collapse.

Havana defends “sovereignty” while exporting counterintelligence and importing subsidized oil.

Caracas defends “Bolivarian dignity” with Cuban spies and a broken economy.

Everyone talks about dignity, sovereignty, hope. No one talks about the grandmother who can’t refrigerate her insulin or the kid doing homework by phone light — at least not until he finds a way off the island.

#cuba #venezuela #trump #sanctions #oil #collapse #fakeHumanitarianism

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Why Has Iran’s Economy Not Collapsed Under US War Pressure ?

😊😊😊😊😊

Millions of people across Iran are struggling for livelihood and survival, but the country’s embattled economy is still far from a state of collapse despite five months of war with the United States.

The vast and resource-rich country of more than 92 million people has developed a relatively diversified domestic economy for a major oil exporter, as the authorities over decades leaned on self-sufficiency in the face of harsh economic embargoes and confrontation with the US, Israel and the West.

Water-intensive agriculture, manufacturing and services have reduced total reliance on oil, while shadowy oil transfers, cross-border trade, maritime networks and a large informal labour market have helped keep the economy resilient.

Still, the population has paid a huge price by having to absorb much of the strain. More than a decade of all-encompassing sanctions, as well as two wars since June last year, nationwide protests during which thousands were killed and several state-imposed internet shutdowns in the past year, have only made it more difficult to earn a living wage and have a future outlook.

‘An expensive way to survive’
Welfare economist Hadi Kahalzadeh said he defines collapse as famine and the state losing the ability to pay its employees and deliver basic services. In that sense, the economy has not collapsed.

“And I don’t think the combination of war, blockade and sanctions, as painful as it’s been, gets us there anytime soon,”

a resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and research fellow at Brandeis said to NYT.

“That keeps the system functioning, but it dumps the cost directly onto households,”

he said.

“Then the state tries to soften that with cash transfers and subsidies. It’s an expensive way to survive, but it does avoid collapse.”

The monthly minimum wage is less than $100 and the government offers a monthly cash subsidy and electronic coupons for essential goods, amounting to a few more dollars.

#iran #war #collapse #economy #farzanegan

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😊😊😊😊😊

Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said during a news conference on Tuesday that the government has belatedly managed to pay designated shops in the coupons scheme. But stores have not received the money because several major banks remain disrupted more than a month after authorities said they faced major cyberattacks.

She also highlighted infrastructure damage inflicted by the US during the latest round of bombing this month, saying 12 bridges and two tunnels were struck and parts of Iran’s natural gas production and electricity generation capacity were lost.

Mohajerani said it was a “valuable achievement” showing government resolve that manufacturing industries are set to have two days of blackouts per week, instead of the previously projected three days.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, a professor of the Economics of the Middle East at Germany’s Philipps-Universitat Marburg, said “endemic corruption” that reduces productivity, weakens institutions and rewards political connections rather than efficiency is the most serious internal threat to the Iranian economy.

Oil incomes have allowed the government to conceal some of the deficiencies and postpone consequences. But they have also encouraged rent-seeking and overdependence on the state, which has weakened the private sector and reduced incentives for innovation and long-term investment, he told Al Jazeera.

“Households reduce consumption, firms postpone investment and educated workers consider emigration. The economy continues to function, but at the cost of a shrinking middle class, lower capital formation, weaker public services and declining confidence in the future,”

said Farzanegan.

Khodaeian also said there are more than 20,000 exporters who have to repatriate 94 nearly $107bn in export yields to the country by law, but have failed to do so.

They include 225 unnamed individuals with more than $57m in foreign currency commitments each.
Iranians get poorer Kahalzadeh, the welfare economist, said prolonged sanctions have completely reshaped Iran’s socioeconomic pyramid.

“In 2011, the middle class made up the majority of the population. Today, it has become a minority. At the same time, people who were once a minority, the poor and those vulnerable to poverty, now account for roughly 70 percent of the population,”

he said, adding that this trend will continue.

“Even if inflation later comes down or economic growth returns, the damage will not disappear quickly. Once families lose their savings, assets, health, educational opportunities and sense of middle-class security, rebuilding them takes many years,”

said Kahalzadeh.

Iran and the US continue to communicate messages through mediators, and have largely suspended military action, but the conflict has now spread to the Red Sea and the Caspian Sea while tensions remain high in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Even if the political system survives, the economy may remain chronically sick,”

he said,

adding that economic relations with China, Russia and neighbouring countries may provide temporary breathing space but cannot fully replace international ties,”

said Farzanegan.

“The most important economic policy is therefore the reduction of geopolitical risk through diplomacy. Without a stable environment, the Iranian economy may continue to survive, but it will have little chance of genuine recovery.”

#iran #war #collapse #economy #farzanegan

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