Image is of military and civilian sites across Caracas which were bombed by the United States as of last weekend.
As everybody has already known for a couple days, the US has abducted Maduro and his wife in a massive operation (of which the exact details are not currently known, but involved hundreds of aircraft and at least some bombing of military and civilian targets), and has threatened Venezuela and the socialist party with further abductions and widespread murder if they do not hand over control of the country directly to the United States. In a statement that really says it all, Trump said that Machado is not being considered for the colonial viceroy position due to her sheer unpopularity. Various parties and countries around the world - and inside the US - have expressed their disapproval, which, as we all know, will not shift US foreign policy a single iota.
A few months ago, when the pressure campaign on Venezuela began, I speculated that Maduro was going to be killed or captured eventually. Flagrantly illegal and violent American military campaigns in Latin America are not new. The US has been invading land, looting banks, assassinating democratically elected leaders, and otherwise overthrowing countries in the region for their own economic benefit for the better part of two centuries, under both Democratic and Republican parties. Unfortunately, we all know that Russia and China are unlikely to do anything meaningful to contest the US in their attempt to more violently assert hegemony in Latin America. I doubt very much that the China of today will come out to bat for Venezuela and start meaningfully pressuring the US economically. For better and worse, we are far from the days of the USSR.
However, Latin America has, historically, met the US in its radicalism, committed to wars of anti-colonial nationalism, and carried out successful revolutions against the dictators placed in control from the US. As history continues ever onwards and conditions develop, I can only assume that we shall once again enter that radicalizing cycle. In that vein, the big question on my mind, and everybody else’s, is: what comes next? Does the Venezuelan socialist party have the social and military cohesion to wage a years-long guerilla war against occupying troops? Can they quickly transition from a conventional to guerilla force as their military facilities are bombed, or will it take several years? Can they prevent the theft of their oil resources and make the attempt at foreign occupation more costly in both the manpower and economic costs than what that war will generate? Can Venezuela manufacture weapons for this guerilla war in a state of blockade? Will this military campaign begin immediately upon soldiers landing, or will it take a period of relatively unopposed occupation of months or even years? Will Cuba, Colombia, and even Mexico be in the same situation by the end of the year, with abducted leaders?
Yemen is the very recent proof that seemingly weak countries can force the American military to retreat in defeat. Can Venezuela follow? We shall see what Maduro has done to prepare the country for this war very soon. The only certain thing is that the murderous violence propagated by a trembling and dying empire shall be defeated eventually, whether it takes months, years, or decades, and the end result will be a socialist victory.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
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.
Multiple buildings in Tehran are on fire, reportedly even the Ministry of Defense building. It looks like the US/Israeli agents on the ground all going all out.
Just saw a video of a passenger in a moving car opening semi-automatic rifle fire on the driver of an adjacent car, who presumably died and veered off the road and crashed into an embankment. There are open drive-by shootings going on now, Iran needs to get this under control
MES just posted ominously “What I can say: the gloves are off” so I think they’re about to bring the hammer down. If trump takes the causus belli, it makes sense why everyone’s been evacuating.
Iranian Analyst’s thoughts
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Question I’m getting: Where are the police forces to suppress the riots?
My take: From what I’ve understood, the security forces are not on full crackdown because the intelligence are monitoring to identify key elements within the rioters to arrest them.
Arresting these key riot leaders is more important to do now otherwise they’ll be activated during active war.
Will Iran fall? My opnion? No. To put things into perspective: 1% of 90 million is 900K. So even with 1% nothing will happen, and the number of rioters and protests today is (in my estimation) roughly around 10k-15k.
To put more things into perspective: The annual pro-IR marches in Iran have about 22-25 million attendees nationwide. Do you think a couple thousand cosmetic nose-surgery “men” are going to overthrow the government?
Don’t fall into this media vacuum. Tehran is neither Syria nor Libya.
look i share the vibe it’s probably not fatal but simple quantity maths are not a viable point of analysis–the position, supply, militancy, and support for that group are much more salient. most coups are carried out by much smaller proportions of the population than 1%.
I mean they can monitor their way into successful maidan, oh well, if iranians that desperate to suck pisrael
There are way too many people protesting now for the actions being carried outto be done just by Israeli or US plants. It looks like there’s some buy in now by more of the population, that wasn’t present a few days ago.
Respectfully, there is no reason to be posting this.
It will be days or even weeks before we can make an accurate assesment of the real events happening and the actual numbers of people at these riots. The child-murdering israelis and americans are masters of information warfare, deception, and media manipulation.
The internet in much of Iran is out now anyways so the only video you are seeing is from the enemies and sent through pedophile Musk’s starlink which the enemy deploys specifically for this purpose.
I wont even say what i think on how strangely coincidental some posters take the very worst speculative doomerism at the worst moments.
While I do not share the same pessimism, I do want to point out that the poster in question was bullied right here on the news mega when Syria was falling… a lot of people doubted their takes (who was one of the few here that correctly saw the swift collapse in Syria) until the news inevitably proved the doubters wrong.
I guess we need to embrace more diversity on thoughts and opinions here, as long as they’re not reactionary or peddling imperialist propaganda, we should let people have the freedom to voice their opinions even when we don’t agree with them. This is a discussion forum after all and not an echo chamber.
The Iranian proletariat may not be yearning for the shah or Israeli vassalship, but it also cannot survive on crude oil instead of bread. The liberal economics have done little to adapt to its economic strangulation, compared to the near total reorganisation of the Venezuelan economy.
And sure “wow this movie is giving boss baby vibes” but how about Cuba? Vietnam? China? Even Russia 2022-2025 underwent a massive shift even if it’s now stagnating. VZ even had moments like this under Maduro and he met the moment, so all isn’t totally lost.
If this latest wave of unrest doesn’t spark something, the reality is that the current government is due a purge of the reformist and compador factions. If the Americans and Israelis are instigating riots in your capital, you’re already making too many mistakes to go on like usual.
Seeing pictures the larger crowds, reminded me of how big the freedom protests got in melbourne,australia, during 2021, which gave me some hope, because those guys really tuckered themselves out marching around in pointless circles, before going back to their cushy middle class lives
but its best to not waste time getting caught up in speculation