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 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.
President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, hold another phone call with Lula and Petro yesterday. She thanked them for the support and aid they have been giving, seems like she also talked with the PM of Spain.
I read online that some Venezuelans/Chavistas have been saying that the US plan probably was to kidnap/kill Maduro, his wife, Delcy, Diosdado and Padrino, but they failed to find the others. They were also saying that if there was a betrayal or something, Delcy probably wasn't part of it since her first action as President was to change her security personnel for people who were closer with Chavez.
I can not know anything what would future bring but if current govenrment does not betray venezuela, everything that happened so far would be a big W for chavistas
What then? Who would assume the presidency? It would either result in a big, messy civil war (not conducive to oil extraction), or other Chavistas quickly consolidating power.
I wasn't sure at first, but I don't think there was an internal betrayal. Simply massive US military/technological advantage. They went in with night vision goggles on stealth helicopters, covered by stealth jets, during a cyber attack, and probably coordinated with other CIA sabotage operations.
I'm convinced that leaving Delcy to assume the presidency was part of the plan. The colectivos and militias have no one to rebel against while the US exerts pressure.
I think between Padrino (Military Faction) and Diosdado (Chavista "Radical" Faction) the US prefers Delcy since she is a moderate like Maduro.
Feels like speculation without evidentiary basis
Yeah it doesn't seem too far a field that the US just has intelligence and stealth as an advantage here.
First thing that comes to my mind especially is orbital assets too. VZ and FL are both real close to the equator. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a secret hifi satellite nestled in all the traffic there, maybe even just disguised as something else benign. Would NOT be hard to get some crazy pictures. Couple that with other kinds of coordination on the ground? Lidar? More conventional stealth flights etc. I could see it from what I know about those things.
If I were the US or friends I'd very VERY much like to leak/push a betrayal narrative so no one gets any idea of what kind of crazy space toys I have. Or any other methods I'm using for that matter.
Obviously, whatever evidence later comes out is evidence, though. I'm also speculating.
There was an OPSEC failure before the strikes about RQ-170 Wraith/Sentinel stealth ISR drones carrying out missions over Venezuela. US Air Force Southern Command accidentally posted about it on X/Twitter, a photo of the remote pilot and her patches. And on the morning after the strikes, someone in Puerto Rico got a video of it on approach.
It's the same deal with the Zionists gloating about how they have super leet haxxors that planned the pager terrorist attack: assume what they publicly boast to be misdirection of what actually happened. Using this a guiding principle, the Zionists mostly relied on traitors within Hezbollah's ranks rather than a massive technological edge while the US mostly relied on a massive technological edge rather than traitors within Maduro's administration.
The one big technological advantage Israel had that Hezbollah failed to account for was the sheer amount of damage Israel could do with 2000lb class bunker buster/penetrator bombs (BLU-109/116) launched from fighter aircraft. Hezbollah faced significant losses in key leadership personnel and significant damage to underground facilities with Israel's widespread use of these bombs. Israel dropped 60-80 of them on a single large bunker in Lebanon for instance.
No one should take what Scott Ritter says seriously, and he's a "fugitive" because he's a convicted sex offender.