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.
Can any Geopolitics Understander tell me more about US control of Greenland and what this means for the Arctic trade route that Russia and China are forging?
I don’t have any source for this claim at the moment so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently Peter Thiel has been envisioning Greenland as a sort of tech-libertarian utopia with massive data centers and zero workers rights for years now.
If true, this could definitely be a factor, as JD Vance is speculated to basically be Thiel’s guy.
China did some investing in Greenland natural resources that “scared” the west a while ago. Peary Land also hosts massive amounts of zinc and likely germanium as well. Of course the US could exploit Greenland more directly and pressure Canada to internationalize its arctic waters more easily. But it already has defacto military control over Greenland since they occupied it during ww2.
I think most posters have it right that it’s primarily driven by Trump wanting to purchase a territory like Seward’s Icebox, Purchase of Danish Virgin Islands or the Louisiana Purchase.
uh it’s not exactly a strategic spot from my perspective in relation to China and Russia. At most they could stick some missile silos, those high tech secret squirrel sensor suit installations, and maybe upgrade some of the ports as a sort of shitty midway point of trade.
From my guestimation the real hotspot for the U.S to leverage its own arctic trade route and put pressure on Russia and China routes is by further developing Alaska’s sensor suits, deep water ports, rail and air infrastructure and try to turn the northern shield of the U,S into a northern spear to fuck with other countries. but thats decades off at least.
In the Mercator projection, the standard in many American maps, Greenland appears Very Big. Like, size of the continental US big. Trump is Mercator-brained and wants to map paint. It also happens his ridiculous whim lines up with the American imperative to secure access to Rare Earth Minerals, of which Greenland has a lot, and mining them becomes more viable the more the Earth heats up. I don’t think it’s useful at all for Arctic trade, it’s just a resource play like the Ukraine deal Trump signed a while back.
That’s exactly why I never buy the “Trump extravagance” argument. I think it’s just his flavor that he sprinkles on top of the things the foreign policy blob wants him to do.
Like demolishing the East Wing to renovate the bunker below. I bet that shit was planned for a long time and they just needed an excuse to do it. Ballroom
It’s kind of like Nixon’s madman theory, but even crazier. Trump’s strange whims provide cover for the worst impulses of the Blob.
Not much. Greenland has already been under American military occupation since the 1950’s and if they want to use the island to sabotage China or Russia they are already free to do so.
Formally sneezing Greenland as an American colony would be a net negative for the imperialists, albeit a small one. The ability to install terrorist infrastructure or to station occupation troops would be unchanged but the indigenous population might be less cooperative, some might even be resisting. The euros would cope and seethe for a while which might make some of them slightly less obedient for a short period.
In addition to the resource wars, part of me thinks it might also have something to do with the Golden Dome missile defense system. Systems stationed in Alaska and Greenland combined could potentially block a lot of ICBMs en route to mainland Burgerreich from Russia and/or China.
The US would control, or at least have the ability to blockade, both ways in and and out of the Artic Ocean: the Bering Strait and the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap. It already effectively does control them, given that Denmark let’s the US basically do whatever it’s wants militarily in Greenalnd, which is why I don’t really think this is a about maritime trade routes. To be honest, I think Trump just wants it because it would be larger than the Louisiana Purchase. Someone told him he would add more land to the US than any other president and now he wants to do it.
It would also help them block in Canada too.
Actually @Yuritopiaposadism@hexbear.net posted a video on this just earlier today. Unfortunately the video is AI slop but at the same time it seems pretty on point and informative strictly from a geopolitics point of view (I have not fact checked it though)
According to the vid: Although it does seem to be the Burger Reich laying their claim to the North Atlantic, it seems to be more about control of rare earth minerals than trade routes.
The Burgerlanders know that China controls the rare earth minerals and supply chains that their military war machine needs to survive. Turns out Greenland has massive reserves of the exact varieties that they need (at least some of them). While at first it certainly seemed that Trump just wanted to play Victoria3 and make the USA map colour go bigger, it seems that there’s much more to it than this.
I’d actually be interested in hearing others’ takes on this situation (as well as that video, I find it intriguing)
The problem with mineral extraction in Greenland is that it is really challenging. Even the Chinese couldn’t make it profitable. The yanks certainly can’t.
Also, you still have to refine them and that remains the block. The US already has a rare earth mine, but it was shuttered because they couldn’t make it profitable in a world where China is the primary refiner. Hell, China is nearly the only refinery.