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.
Consent Manufacturing for Iran on reddit is in full swing and swarmed by CIA bots.
watching people cheer the fucking shah is a fantastic indicator of just how ignorant people online largely are about history.
I wonder why they had the revolution against them? Hmmmmm?
The current government isn’t exactly great, but there are reasons it exists.
Fox news is on at the gym I’m at and they literally did a back to back segment of " Beautiful Iranian protestors vs thuggish Minneapolis rioters"
Fox is pro-muslim and hates white people.
Would you be able to take one of those omni-remotes (for phones with IR sensors, it is just an app), and change the channel?
Haven’t thought of that but it’s a funny idea
Guerilla counter-psy op.
Their advantage is that they can flood all information networks with their slop.
We can try to just quietly swap it out with something inert or positive wherever we see it.
Countering propaganda by simply changing the channel to some random day time soap opera.
Oh even better opening up the YouTube app and playing the Maduro no war just peace song on repeat
If it’s more subtle, it would take longer for them to detect and take down.
These guys spam the terminally-online gamergoblins, but those guys have limited value. Spamming public centers where people hang out in the real world is something else.
I think the left may have a pathway for advantage in the real world with physical presence. A touch-grass dominance.
Which is funny because blm never started killing cops :(
Nothing on this earth will ever convince me that a “bring back the Shah” movement is organic
Pro-Shah movement has exactly one real supporter
Waiting for trump to treat shah like Machado “he’s a nice guy but no one likes him or supports him”
even shah does not want to rule iran lmao
The Pahlavis were founded by some random soldier the british decided to install as their puppet. Should have LARPed as some long lost cousin of the Qajars lmao.
it’s probably like the Soviet era dissidents that liked WW2 era collaborators to a suspicious degree. Probably unlikely to take power directly, but almost certainly highly influential on whatever action a hypothetical liberal revolutionary government would take.
you say that, but look at Ukraine. they got there in the end
after the capitalists moved heaven and earth for them
I don’t like how every Western ghoul these days seems to be taking it for granted that Iran is just about to collapse. They are very confident and smug in their statements, more than usual.
Are they just huffing their own farts as usual, still high on the Maduro kidnapping, or is the current attempt at regime change more dangerous than previous ones?
Wishcasting. A lot of the people in charge in the west are pure idealists at this point, they think they just need to insist upon something enough to make it happen. Things still do happen because of the inertia of the system, but those things happen in spite of the people in charge, not because of them.
westoid public statements all assumed that there would be a transition of power to the opposition in venezuela the day after maduro was snatched, they could just be stupid
Turns out that firing anyone competent for being gay and woke and replacing them with drunk podcasters and blind loyalists actually has negative consequences.
I think the only competent person in the administration is Rubio, and the administration is completely running off of doing whatever they want cause there is literally no opposition from Dems, most other countries, and they give 0 shits about public opinion
it’s not just in the trump-addled halls of american power, though. macron was saying the same stupid shit. the west is cooked
IDK, as bad as it sounds I see a lot of myself in Macron, and if I were a neoliberal, my thinking would probably be to the effect of:
“They wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of doing this unless they had a plan for what comes after, right?”
So Macron gave his congratulations when the Maduro kidnapping happened.
But answer is yes, they would absolutely do something that dumb without a plan for what comes next.
And then, realizing the baffoonery, Macron did a rhetorical 180.
The implications here are that Macron is responding to world events with less information than we have. And the evidence in this regard is nontrivial.
I usually take a “world leaders must be more well informed on geopolitical events than laypeople” because the idea that they aren’t, they actively don’t bother to understand what is happening around them, is absolutely terrifying.
Would a volatile administration inform a vassal state not even in the 5-eyes before doing a secret operation?
I understand France is in the 14 eyes, but still.
If random laypeople’s information gathering skills can more or less figure out geopolitical events before they happen, I would imagine most nation’s intelligence agencies would also be able to do so. Though maybe they think that is a waste of their resources, when they need to pour those resources into oppressing minorities.
Look at those Iranian women wearing skirts
let’s kill a million Iranians
preaching to the choir of other bots
prompting to the bot farm