Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.
Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.
Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.
Thank you to @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Venezuela! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
This is from the Economist. Another assassination. Been some serious killings, attempted and successful, over the past few days.
just like how killing Qassem Soleimani completely ended all resistance to Israel in the region, I assume these killings will have a similar effect (/s)
I don't think westerners really understand that you need to destroy the army, not the occasional general or leader, in order to win wars. plans and strategems can be written on paper. replacements can be nurtured under their guidance for when they are eventually assassinated. playing this game of whack-a-mole over the last century hasn't led to a decrease in Resistance strength, it has done the exact opposite. we are the closest we have ever been to Israel's collapse, and the martyrdom of leaders has provided inspiration, not despair, to those fighting, and allowed the cause to continue and strengthen over the decades.
Westerners will never learn real counterinsurgency tactics because they cannot conceptualise fighting for a cause rather than a cult of personality.
it is genuinely fascinating how the US never seems to develop a competent strategy after their many, many imperialist wars that involve fighting insurgents. like, I know it's the military industrial complex and profit-seeking rather than trying to win, and disabling a country for generations via a genocide and making them reliant on US capital and flooding them with dollars later on (e.g. Vietnam) is just as good as actually defeating it, etc etc, but you'd have thought they'd have at least accidentally found a working strategy after doing it so many times.
To be honest if Genocide Joe or Kopmala ever get clipped the US ruling class would back out immediately from Israel and feed them to the wolves.
US settler-capitalist class are only doing these wars if they are specifically insulated from all the danger, like planning for Ukraine to do its blowback on the EU and not the US (which is already happening with the refugee surge).
Insert Iran quote about US having no heros but spongebob and spiderman.
You'd have to kill every politician down to the municipal level to find one who wont bend over for the zionist lobby.
This is what happens when your military leaders learn strategy by playing chess and never checkers.
I'm callling bullshit, the zionists are lying about killing him this time just like they lied the last n times
If he was really killed, Hamas would be the first to announce. They are proud of their martyrs and there's absolutely no reason to hide if he was killed. I call bullshit as well.
This was from earlier in the month. During the airstrike that killed 70 people or something
Definitely not sus that they would announce his alleged death now and not when it allegedly happened.
they announced it back then too but it didn't get much attention because they were obviously lying. they are riding the Haniyeh assassination media wave to try to push it again
From the day Trump got shot and Americans pretended they were opposed to political violence