From Ill Will (25/01/2026)
The frozen city is under siege. In the long cold winters at the heart of the Midwest the air can get so cold it hurts to breathe. Masked mercenaries in unmarked vehicles rove through the snowbanks, snatching people off the street and shuttling them to detention centers for indefinite periods of time. Each of the mercenaries is paid tens of thousands in a “signing bonus” (up to 50k, and 60k in student loan forgiveness) simply to take up arms on behalf of the embattled regime. Faced with a slow-motion economic crisis in which a surreal, state-backed stock market boom is paired with persistent stagflation in the everyday economy, bootlicking is one of the few industries seeing any real growth. As the streets freeze in Minneapolis, the S&P reaches record highs. Meanwhile, the last year’s employment growth was so dismal that, after the numbers were released, the regime moved quickly to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and threaten media outlets reporting on the figures.1 In addition to declining employment due to the freeze on immigration, the depth of the crisis is signaled by the ongoing drop in the Labor Force Participation Rate, which served as the largest single drag on employment growth in the first half of 2025 — indicating that more and more people are dropping out of the labor force entirely, but not being picked up by unemployment statistics.2 We can therefore think of the siege as sort of mercenary Keynesianism, making up for the lack of employment in the new AI-powered defense sectors that have been the focus of the larger plunder-and-restructure approach to governance.
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For Frank Fernández (1932–2026)
Cuba and the anarchists have a long history of the pursuit of freedom. The early labour struggles, the important contributions to Cuban independence from Spain, their protest against U.S. interventions, their critical attitudes toward social problems during the two republics, their spirit of combat and sacrifice against the dictatorships and disorders of Machado, Batista and Castro. Finally, the unbreakable faith that unites us in the present sinister moment of our destiny, serve as a powerful spur to continue the struggle until the end.
Frank Fernández
Of history, the social history of Cuba. “Not the history of wars, not the history of patriots, but the history of slaves, the history of women, the history of Cuban society. We must write history by eliminating epics, leaders and divas enshrined in statues. History is not made by them, but by the people. A tobacco worker did more for the Republic than many soldiers did for independence.”
Frank Fernández – Blázquez, M.G. y, Martín, F. “Entrevista con el historiador cubano Frank Fernández2, CNT, November 2004.
Frank Fernández (1932–2026). Historian of Cuban anarchism, libertarian activist and intellectual in exile.
Daniel Pinós, Redes libertarias (26/01/20269
Francisco Fernández, known in activist and intellectual circles as Frank Fernández, died in Miami, Florida, on January 18, 2026, at the age of 92, from infectious complications following his hospitalisation in intensive care. His death marks a significant loss for the historiography of Cuban anarchism and, more generally, for the social and political history of the Caribbean.
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