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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
I’ve seen a lot of talk online about the US helicopters used in the attack on Venezuela online and why Venezuela struggled to shoot them down, unfortunately a lot of it dominated by people on social media circling random parts of the helicopter and acting like it’s alien technology. I suck at photoshop and making graphics, but thankfully some internet nerd on X/Twitter with great photoshop skills and a knowledge of military aviation has already done it. Thanks to Air Superior on Twitter/X, the source of all these graphics linked here. There are a lot of unique systems on these helicopters, just start googling some of them labelled on the graphics and you’ll get an idea of the kind of technology involved, from detecting laser designators aimed at the helicopter, to smokeless and low illumination flare countermeasures that are almost invisible to the human eye.
MH-60L/M DAP:
One typo here, should say AN/APQ-187 instead of AN/ALQ-187
MH-47G Block II:
I’m not even christian and that offends me. That’s a hym about a baby being born that’s supposed to bring peace to the world. A solitary few hours of respite and recouperstion.
Takes a special kind of bastard to go around killing with something like that proudly on their sleeves. From their own religion too???
This is the country that calls their hypersonic missile the “Dark Eagle” and the called the most powerful nuclear weapon they ever made the “Peacekeeper”, edgy names with double meanings is nothing unusual.
Unfortunate and true.
is the big tube hanging below the minigun to channel the spent shells
Most likely, to prevent them being sucked up by the engines behind them.
really hadnt appreciated helicopters getting so good at countermeasures, guess there’s still aircraft best shot down with flak lol
Yeah, I was just thinking to myself that what they need are a few surface to air HMG deployments. Let’s see how it holds up to a guy just pointing at it with an HMG equipped with light-armor piercing rounds. Oooooohhhh noooo your fancy SEAD disabled our targeting lasers/radar? Guess I’ll just have to use iron sights. Machine gun go Brrrrrrrrrr
There were Venezuelans/Cubans on the ground who fired at the US helicopters with small arms/machine guns or even AAA. They were subsequently targeted by the helicopters with their own machinegun and rocket fire.
I’m reading about the challenge of surface to air small arms targeting now, and I had a naive conception of the difficulty involved. I wish them all the luck in the world, and hopefully an innovative breakthrough soon.
Maybe cheap drones carrying small explosives that can just be crashed into the damn things? I dunno. Air supremacy seems like a nightmare to deal with if you’re not tunnel maxing.
such weapons are good for drones as well
I don’t want to underestimate the problem. Sophisticated coordination and air supremacy do not make anti-air emplacements a safe job… But if you’re going to hold a position or deter those kinds of air raids, a bunch of relatively cheap HMG/Cannon nests seem a decent way to cause massively disproportionate damage. One of those helicopters and crews are VERY expensive, both in material costs and PR.
Not all helicopters, this is a ton of bespoke equipment that is very expensive and exclusively for 160th SOAR. This not mass produced stuff. A single MH-47G Block II helicopter costs around $50 million… An F-35A fighter jet unit cost is $85 million for context…