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.
Why does every American lib keep saying “they’re doing this because they want riots so they can enact martial law”? They very clearly don’t need an excuse to escalate but continue to do so anyway.
Also a lib favorite: "These aren't REAL Law Enforcement, they don't even get training! They are UNTRAINED!"
Oh so you want the fascist militants to receive more training and funds? You aren't supposed to give the game away until after you coopt the movement and sheepdog it to the Dems first. Also very revealing that they think "real law enforcement" have anything but 100% total support for ICE.
Is that why I’ve seen a few videos where someone is screaming “Call 911” when an ICE agent is attacking someone?
Yeah libs actually believe local cops will help them (lmao)
Because they don't want the US goverment to collapse, they support the US goverment and their actions, they just hate how Trump acts.
They could be firebombing entire city blocks in Chicago and you'd still have tons of people saying "this is just a distraction"
Redditor voice: "The fb'ing of Chicago was awful. But only a handful of people died. We cannot give them more excuses..."
Nice try, Donald, but nuking NYC won't distract us from the Epstein files!
Liberals seriously can't understand that. They can't stop the mantra playing in their head: "Don't give them an excuse." That's another reason many of them need to stress the word "peaceful" every fucking time they mention a protest.
Liberals understand how rioting and overthrowing governments works just fine when it’s another country. Then as soon as it’s their own it all goes out the window and all the logic inverts itself. Notice, you never hear the libs saying about Venezuela or Iran or Russia "don't riot it's just what the authoritarian evil dictator wants!". Instead they promote it and valorize the protesters and cheer on any violent disobedience, lawbreaking or chaos that ensues.
They understand that riots destabilize and destroy governments all the time, and they know it could happen to them to and they consciously avoid it like a hot stove. They specifically DONT want that kind of riot in the USA, which is why they constantly chide everyone to remain peaceful and turn over "agitators" to the cops.
I'm laughing when I think back to the No Kings protests. They were so excited to get millions and millions of people to show up and peacefully too! I asked a few Bluesky libs "What is the purpose of a protest if you make no demands?" I never got a good answer. They just don't get it.
The best they can do was "it wasn't meant to change the administrations' positions at all, it was for us. It was cathartic to know we weren't alone"
Ok, so it was masturbatory?
Pretty much. I think they did it for two reasons.
One - it was a form of cheerleading for their side à la sportsball. Trump's election win was crushing for them. And then his aggressive, hyper-active destruction of the federal government was bleak. We imagine can radical solutions but they can't allow themselves to do that. Cheerleading accomplishes nothing but they didn't care. It made them feel really good.
Two - they got to feel morally superior, show they have greater patriotism, etc. They got more people to "protest" than the republicans could ever muster. For us that's an empty and pointless stat but for them it was a very badly needed "win".
I disagree for the very simple reason that sportsball fans know how to riot, which is a lot more than I can say for those Bluesky libs.
But don't American sportsball fans riot after a huge win?
It would be funny if Democrats started to behave like Italian ultras, shooting fireworks at republicans, stealing their merchandise and occasionally stabbing them
Here I was thinking protests were to achieve some aim or concession. No, you fool, they are to have a party and burn off some stress and relieve guilt
It was so sad to see them so excited about bread and circuses they created all by themselves.
https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-administration-pretext-for-what-it-already-doing/
"don't riot, that's exactly what Trump wants. We should own him by sitting quietly doing nothing forever"
My conspiratorial side thinks they are trying to instigate riots, not so they can declare martial law, but so they can justify a massive expansion of ICE into a full-blown SA. They don't need a justification to do martial law, they already have that power, but a massive expansion of ICE into a federal police force requires money and popular political support, which would have to come from Congress.
They don’t need justification for anything. They will do whatever they want and nobody will stop them.
It is beneficial for them to maintain popular support though, they want the internal boogeyman of “Antifa” to start lashing out in violent, uncontrolled ways.
They’ve been crafting the Antifa narrative for what, a decade now?
"don't riot, that's exactly what Trump wants. We should own him by sitting quietly doing nothing forever"
Riots are generally uncontrolled yes.
People are obviously justified when they riot, but if it’s small scale and unorganized I don’t think it can accomplish meaningful change
Riots are literally the only thing in the west that have any power to change anything
Are you just going to ignore I said “small scale and unorganized”?
If just 3 or 4 major cities in the US could riot right now under a socialist or humanitarian cause, I’m all on board.
I’m not trying to quibble about when is the right time to riot, organize or die.
Every riot starts small before it snowballs. 2020 started in Minneapolis and Portland primarily as well.
Of course rioting is not sufficient to achieve socialism, but it is the one viable tool we have without an organized left to achieve literally anything whatsoever.
Portland and Minneapolis were the only two cities in the country to have any police reforms or punishments whatsoever, meager as they were. The stronger the rioting, the more concessions
They need money for a massive expansion of ICE beyond what it already is, and only Congress can give them that money currently. That $1.5T proposed military budget isn't going to just be a bunch of $100M missiles.
But the Pentagon budget can just be reallocated without anyone with power caring. They'll say it's to fight China and Russia, vote for it, then the executive will just make a Gestapo out of it .
Congress still does care to some extent, because letting the President just do whatever with the budget undermines their own power/authority, and ICE isnt covered under the military budget (yet).
Idk I buy into this. Every time I say this I preface that it is completely vibes based, but they really do seem to want to create some 9/11 moment against the left. They tried to make the Charlie Kirk killing into that, which even the libs saw through it, and similar though half-assed attempts to do the same with the no kings protests, which was laughable. There have been other attempts, and that whole circus around listing antifa as a terrorist organization a while back.
Idk they do seem to want some justification for scorched earth tactics against the nonexistent American left that appeals to people other than the most ardent hogs. I also think the right is still extremely hung up on the 2020 protests and riots - it scared them, it made them feel weak, trump likely retreating to some safe room probably humiliated him. They want to recreate that and fulfill their most violent fantasies from back then, and now that trump is surrounded by bloodthirsty sycophants it’s possible. The libs were also extremely scared in 2020 and if that same anger erupted he could beam a picture of a burning police station into every suburban home and have the libs go “well im anti-trump but these people are violent!” As it is now he’s bleeding all but his most ardent supporters, and as I say there does seem to be some desire for justification. Though maybe now with all these ice shootings they’re past that and doing what they want regardless.
From the liberal perspective, continuity and redemption of the institutions synonymous with progress. The chaos of direct action, people taking things like self defense into their own hands, only frustrates this process.
Real talk they can still escalate pretty fucking hard
I don’t think it’s a lib take to realize that they are trying to create good optics to feed to their base and “justify” further actions
But it does lead to lib ends when the answer is "don't take the bait, protest peacefully"
Liberal ideology requires subservience and belief in their own structures, which tell them to just vote and grandstand and go to a cop-sanctioned protest once a year tops. They are thoroughly propagandized into this limitation on what it means to be political and to engage politically. So when their institutions don't work like they are told they do, they both retreat to the ineffective and invent stratagems by which to rationalize this as clever.
If offered an alternative, they must explain why they reject it. Here is their rejection of doing anything.