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 bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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.
Funk stuff you asked me if it was just as ghoulish to laugh at Venezuelans being sent to ICE as much as Dems asking for Latinos being reported to ICE because they voted Republican.
It probably is but those people weren’t just falling for propaganda and saying dumb shit online. They were going out of their way to mock Maduro and relishing in the thought of him being killed. At that point I really don’t give a shit if they’re sent to CECOT.
They’re the same type of right-winger I remembered as a kid during the final years of the Guatemalan civil war. The type who take their brainwashing a step further and will violently crush you at the smallest sign of weakness. I feel more sympathy for their families that had to find out their relatives got taken away.
The goal for liberals is to dehumanize latam migrants as a whole, racially coding them as not worth caring about to provide cover to the state brutality and to deradicalize others.
We are laughing at the migrant gusanos dry snitching on themselves next to a prison for zero benefit. Its been a year of ICE terror in the streets, they believed they were untouchable.
They think the law and police is only there to attack minorities (they see themselfs as whites/honorary whites) and the left.
I’m sure a lot of them would be considered white in their home countries too, but it doesn’t work that way in the imperial core lol.
For all I care these gusanos can go fuck themselfs, they already are receiving special treatment by the US goverment, see if any Salvadoran or Haitian (who come from an actual dictatorship) get the same treatment from the US goverment.
The difference too is that we don’t support harsh border controls or immigration enforcement. Liberals do. Liberals, when in power, maintain strict border controls and deport hundreds of thousands of people. We don’t do that.
So there’s a qualitative difference in us laughing at a group of traitors getting hoisted by their own petard, and being the one hoisting the petards. We haven’t done any violence or deportations, Liberals have. We don’t want there to be ICE, Liberals do.
The thing with ICE is that they have only acted as a weapon of class war, not really to “cleanse the nation” of all immigrants as much as fascists want that to be the case. The jackboots get deployed in hardware stores and other places working class Latinos are known to congregate and in front of some houses in the cities but that’s it. Latinos in richer suburbs are mostly doing fine. Those would be the bulk of people celebrating. Maybe the poorer ones too? Idk.
90% of all Cubans and Venezuelas who live in the US get preferential treatment compared to all other latinos, just ask any haitian how they are treated when compared to a Cuban.
Venezuelan “refugees” are just as bad as so-called Cuban “refugees.” There is a saying in Latin America that goes, “Liberal abroad, fascist at home,” which describes 90% of them. The Left in many South American countries couldn’t care less about these “refugees” because the refugees are all reactionaries, and the Right hates them with a passion. I’m pretty sure that the president of Chile, who is a full-fledged Nazi, said he wanted to enslave them because, according to him, they are lazy. Milei’s supporters said they were ashamed that Venezuelans supports them and that they would rather support a Peronist politician than help a Venezuelan obtain citizenship.
Thanks, I’ll have to give the book a quick read especially now.