Interview: Venezuela’s militias and the civil-military union

October 30, 2025 - www.red-spark.org

So, in the face of this threat, our militias are prepared and we have very high morale. Just as the militias are prepared for civil duties, we are prepared in the strategic concept of permanent war. We understand the necessity of resistance, of the people in arms and of providing material and logistical support to the entire resistance effort of the armed struggle. We are constantly training in the tactical methods of revolutionary resistance and training in different disciplines of combat so that we can mesh with other combatants in other areas. The militias are prepared, organised and trained to be able to execute any type of manoeuvre in order to resist any attempt to desecrate Venezuelan sovereignty.

We will defend our homeland. If we must resist for 50 years, or 100 years, we will do it and we will resist with everything we have at hand. We will not surrender our homeland to any imperialist power.

https://red-spark.org/2025/10/30/interview-venezuelas-militias-and-the-civil-military-union/

img description crowd of people behind an APC, there's a woman in a pink garfield shirt holding a rifle

The complaints — filed by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, the ACLU, and the National Immigration Project — claim the abuse took place between 2023 and 2025, across two presidential administrations.

[...]

“It got to the point where he would harass me everywhere that I went,” Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, who identifies as male, told Newsweek in an interview from the South Louisiana Detention Center in Basile.

“If I was in the recreation yard, he would come and he would follow me. If I was eating at the dining hall, he would come and just sit there next to me, making me feel uncomfortable. He would follow me into the dorm,” Renteria-Gonzalez added

He and two other trans detainees, Kenia Campos-Flores and Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, say they were targeted by the warden with an ad hoc, forced-work program and subjected to manual labor for little or no compensation.

Detainee complaints about the abusive conditions were allegedly met with the same repsonse: “‘If you wanna be a man, I’ll treat you like a man’, or ‘Aren’t you strong enough? Aren’t you a man?’”

The forced labor included pushing heavy cinder blocks or metal cabinets across a dorm before detainees were ordered to push them back to where they came from.

[...]

Multiple complaints about the alleged mistreatment were dismissed as “unsubstantiated.”

[...]

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security official tasked with refuting multiple claims of abuse by ICE and its proxies in President Trump’s war on immigrants, responded to the allegations in typically bellicose language employing questionable statistics.

The allegations were “another hoax about ICE facilities,” she said, dismissing the detainees claims as the types of “smears” that are “directly contributing to our officers facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them.” She didn’t provide a source for her statistic nor said whether the alleged assaults were against officers in ICE facilities or in cities where ICE officers have forcibly injured and detained people without due process.

DHS is really out here openly defending ICE under a previous administration, its a big beautiful fascist machine folks, one of the best, vote blue

‘I want to be buried in a land of a sovereign’ – the 95-year-old Korean POW wants to die in the North

[...]

"I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land," he said. "A land free from imperialism."

[...]

in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.

But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.

"At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South]," he said.

"If I returned to the North, it would've felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans - vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn't allow that."

[...]

[after being tortured in prison] "Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands - to see if there was any red ink on them," Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.

That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.

"If there wasn't, I'd think, 'No matter what they did, I won'. And I felt satisfied."

[...]

Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim's decision to send troops to aid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[...]

"I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don't want to be buried under [American] colonial rule, even in death."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jnk1dr5pgo

anything I cut out was just the BBC writer saying stuff like 'we're not sure what he meant by 'giving his bedroom over to the americans'', when his message is clear, death to imperialism!

the article does contain a video of him giving a speech

🫡

A document seen by the BBC's US partner CBS describes the potential resettlement as a "priority" for President Donald Trump's government, however the timing has not been publicly confirmed by the White House.

In a statement published on Friday, South Africa's foreign ministry described the purported move as "politically motivated" and designed to undermine South Africa's "constitutional democracy".

In February, Trump described Afrikaners as victims of "racial discrimination" in an executive order, opening up the prospect for them to resettle in the US.

🫠 if the usa wasnt a settler colony I could almost get excited about this, at least send them to the netherlands or something.

there's mention in the article that the RSA govt is objecting because it suspects some of these people are running from criminal charges, classic

🏳️‍⚧️

BIGOTRY WON'T FIX YOUR RENT

Banner seen on unceded Kaurna land, Trans Day of Action, 2025

source, instagram

its a tv miniseries

saw it mentioned in a youtube video by FD signifier, I just finished the first episode, and I enjoyed it a lot, something about needing positive propaganda not just constant commenting on reactionary garbage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_a_Virgo

synopsis below, directed by Boots riley, released 2023

Cootie is a 13-foot-tall (4.0 m), 19-year-old Black teenager raised by his Aunt Lafrancine and Uncle Martisse in Oakland, California. He is shielded from the outside world until being accidentally discovered by a group of teenage political activists

“I didn’t vote,” says the Kangaroo.

“Are you not allowed?”

“I am not allowed and I don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to?”

“No, because it’s not an election,” says the Kangaroo. “It’s just the illusion of democracy, a mock poll, the Fata Morgana of popular government. In short, it’s only the appearance of an election, or, to use the official terminology: a dummy ballot.

“A dummy ballot?”

“It’s as if you go into a supermarket and can choose between soup packets by Maggi or soup packets by Knorr, but in reality, it’s all Nestlé. The dummy ballot suggests freedom, but in reality, I tell you: it’s all capitalism, it’s all Nestlé, it’s all chicken. But because I generally do not wish to consume packaged soup, I don’t really give a hoot about brand options at the supermarket.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kangaroo_Chronicles

I never finished reading it, but the first chapter is on youtube as an audiobook read by the author, it's good for a laugh

Marc-Uwe Kling: Kangaroo Chronicles - Chapter 1 (youtube, 4m 17s)

NSFW probably

content warning for the article and anything related sexual violence, sex abuse (sorry this wasn't here initially)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Wuornos

I should have shared this sooner, I made one of these events today, was really good, and I left feeling really invigorated and hopeful

November 6 at 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Palestine: Hyper-Imperialism and the Global South

November 2 at 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Teach-In: Socialism and Anti-Imperialism – Vijay Prashad Tour

Kathleen Fitzpatrick Theatre Arts West (Building 148), University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Boorloo (Perth) Activist Centre 15/5 Aberdeen St, Perth, Australia

November 6 at 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm

There Will Be No Modi 3.0 in India (Perth) – Vijay Prashad Tour

Herbert Smith Freehills Lecture Theatre Law Building (Building 465), Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

A comrade just sent me this, from https://cubaisnotalone.art/

I don't know where else to post this, it's a response to some anti-tanki shit I saw locally on the local cool leftist instagram clique 🥸

Its a good critique on online ~~anti-communists~~ very correct ultra-left-ists or whatever they call themselves

https://culture-centered.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-whiteness-of-binaries-that-erase.html

I'm definitely try and see Prashad talk later this month