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.
Something has broken down in the “spheres of influence” understanding between the USA, Russia, and China over Christmas, or around then I’m guessing. Since then we have the US taking aggressive actions, Venezuela and taking the Russian flagged tanker today. Chinese military drills around Taiwan with China talking about decapitation strikes on Taiwanese leadership, Russia with claims about Ukraine attacking Putin’s residence. The situation in Iran. Simultaneous escalation everywhere. Lockheed Martin apparently agreeing to triple to quintuple production of missiles across their product line (PATRIOT PAC-3 MSE, THAAD Talon, JASSM/LRASM, PrSM) over the next 5-7 years. Trump talking about a $1.5 trillion US military budget for 2027, and publicly pressuring Raytheon to match Lockheed Martin on SM-3 and SM-6/AIM-174B production.
Whatever is happening, something has changed.
At risk of sounding naive, I never bought the “spheres of influence” thing. The US was never going to settle for anything less than global domination. With domestic reforms being completely out of the question, the only thing preventing the US from being eclipsed technologically and culturally by the other “spheres” is to completely asphyxiate them.
It does feel like something has transformed fundamentally over the last month, but while we sit here waiting to see how the other great powers respond, the shift so far appears to be unilateral.
It never made sense. The US would only back down from global dominance temporarily and out of necessity. That necessity would be borne out of China’s economic dominance, and they have no need to make spheres of influence deals with the US to maintain that because the US can’t do shit to them. Russia doesn’t have the capacity to expand its sphere in any meaningful sense without the US relinquishing Europe, which they aren’t doing.
I wonder if the “spheres of influence” was all more unspoken understanding and Russia and China responding to what they saw the US doing.
I think Trump and Rubio are driving most of this, for different reasons. Trump is absolutely high as a kite on what he sees as a hugely successful operation in VZ + it being clear to him he can just take Greenland whenever he wants, and the Europeans (and rest of the world) will do nothing. He might have been thinking in terms of spheres of influence a week ago, but his ego has gotten such a huge hit of narcissistic supply he might be going back on that. He is feeling goddamn invincible right now.
And Rubio, who I think is the real puppet master behind all this, sees his goals are all within his grasp. He can cut off Cuba’s supply of oil and hurt them bad. I think he cares about Latam first and foremost but maybe he’s also feeling a bit of that invincibility. He’s always been a China hawk even if it’s secondary to him after Cuba and Venezuela. Idk I do think he’s ideologically committed to anti-communism, he might relish the opportunity to try and really hurt China.
Of course all it takes is for China to go back and stop rare earth exports and we might see a lot of all this get reversed.
I’m not sure if the “spheres of influence understanding” has broken down, or if it’s been solidified to the extent that each side feels comfortable such that they are willing to be bolder.
Yeah I think this is it. Remains to be seen, but each side has become more comfortable with shaking the status quo and not interfering. Trump has basically given up on Ukraine negotiations and will just let the Russians figure it out, China has continued to escalate with Japan without so much as a peep from the Americans. The Yalta-esque conference we assumed happened with Witkoff in Moscow has clearly changed the game.
IMHO, the US is retreating while Russia and China are advancing. The US realize it has overextended and is pivoting towards consolidating control over its backyard.
It does feel like we’ve moved into a different stage. But what? Is the world going to be ruled by a triumvirate of regional powers now? Is Europe being ceded to Russia?
Not explicitly, but I imagine it’s more the US being like “yeah we’ll fight Russia to the last European,” arming them but providing plausible deniability that they are “respecting” Russia’s sphere of influence. Whether that works, and what the EU does, who knows. If they go along with this and rollover to American whims, as is most likely, then yeah practically they’re irrelevant at best and under Russian influence.
Europe is just hamstrung either way I think. They need energy and the only viable options are to go with US-aligned oil, Russian oil/gas, or Chinese renewable tech. Nuclear was for some reason abandoned and decades of protectionism doesn’t seem to have developed their domestic renewables industry.
We’re in the age of Impunity now.