Image is of Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro walking together at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2022, sourced from this article.
Ordinarily, I avoid straying into the American domestic situation, but the government shutdown appears to be continuing into increasingly harmful territory. If the situation is not resolved, soon tens of millions of Americans will lose food assistance, and already millions of federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay. To those not in the know, this situation has essentially stemmed from the Democrats refusing to sign off on the Republicans’ plan to substantially shrink Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which would eventually result in tens of millions losing healthcare coverage and tens if not hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
To be clear, though, the Democrats have not exactly been paragons of healthcare: they not only oppose plans to make affordable healthcare a right (in defiance of wide popular opinion), but also do their part to maximize suffering. Biden’s policies during the pandemic ensured at least one million people died, and millions of children lost public healthcare coverage. We may never know the true toll, as the US decided that simply ceasing to report on a problem means that the problem no longer exists.
In other news, over the last couple weeks, the US has expanded their hostility against Venezuela by also including Colombia in their ire, and particularly the left-leaning leader, Petro. Both countries are now experiencing major economic and covert pressure by the US to try and cause regime change. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela and is conducting a military training operation with Trinidad and Tobago, which Venezuela has warned may be the prelude to the long-awaited attack.
Additionally, the US is attempting to combat Chinese geopolitical interest in central America and the Caribbean by carrying out digital attacks and launching pressure campaigns against Chinese and pro-Chinese countries and organizations. Given China’s enormous economic weight, if central America were to break all ties with China, it would be a catastrophe for them; such decisions would only be made by outright compradors, and the resulting economic problems would make their reigns unpopular and, hopefully, brief.
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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
When the US bourgeois media started posting about how there are poor people in Venezuela who need to be liberated (*from their mortal coil by JDAMs), anyone with a hint of critical thinking knew this was coming. Libs falling for it again as always though.
I keep coming back to something Jon Elmer said recently: all through the last two years, while the US and Israel lie all the time, they do not bluff. They say “we are going to invade” and then… they do it. Every time. At the start of this military buildup I was hoping this was a bluff to get concessions out of Maduro but it now it seems fairly certain they want him out of power and they want all of Venezuela’s resources for themselves. I don’t think they are bluffing, I think the US will attack. I’m just hoping that it’s ineffective and the US gives up with minimal loss of life.
Death to America.
It also happens in stages, where the US and Israel count on the opponent revealing their hand, because the opponent has no other choice.
In Israel - Iran, Israel instigated a conflict by assasinating Iranian officials in Syria. Iran then responded with an attack on Israel that was mid level in their capabilities, what they’d be able to put together consistently during a conflict, involving hundreds of one way attack drones, and a mix of ballistic missiles that was mainly on the lower to mid end of their capabilities, very few solid fueled maneuverable ballistic missiles were fired. This revealed Iran’s capabilities, and the attack was not successful. No one way attack drones got through, and very few ballistic missiles. However there was still uncertainty about Iran’s high end capabilities, which were not used. Israel then responded by destroying one of Iran’s four S-300 fire control radars with a Blue Sparrow/Golden Horizon air launched maneuverable ballistic missile, which would have alarmed Iran and is why there was no further Iranian response.
Israel did the same thing a year ago with the decapitation strike on Hezbollah, instigating a conflict with Iran. Iran responded with the most ferocious attack we’ve seen so far (even more than this year), an attack at the maximum of their capabilities. 200+ ballistic missiles launched, a large share made up of advanced solid fueled maneuverable systems. This attack was the most successful so far, landing dozens and dozens of hits, and even between 30-40 hits on a single air base in Nevatim. However accuracy this time was the issue, of those 30-40 hits, only a handful hit anything important. This again revealed Iran’s hand, and the result was not good for Iran. Israel had faced a worse case scenario, and came out of it with minimal damage. There was no uncertainty about where Iran stood now, even their most advanced capabilities failed to deter Israel (successful deterrence would’ve required wiping out the majority of F-35 hangars at Nevatim, which is why Iranian officials claimed they had done so. In reality, a single F-35 hangar was hit.). Israel responded by striking all known S-300 sites in Iran, along with above ground missile production facilities, and demonstrated a high degree of accuracy in the latter. Iran did not respond.
With Iran’s hand revealed, their most advanced air defences down, and Syria under HTS control, Israel felt comfortable to attack Iran this year.
The US has done similar to Venezuela, and while there’s been no direct military action against mainland Venezuela yet, Venezuela has revealed their hand in deploying certain air defence systems, moving them around, getting fighter jets ready. It does not look good for Venezuela right now.
Why is this the opposite of what analysts say
This makes me so depressed. I don’t think I can live a happy life seeing these evil fucks do whatever they want for eternity.
GOOD post
Trump does actually bluff constantly, but only in rhetoric. If pieces are moving, something’s happening.