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.
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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.
https://t.me/rnintel/50599
Lindsey Graham’s “bone crushing sanctions on Russia” bill is a go. I don’t expect there to be any issue getting the votes to pass it through congress.
If this actually goes into effect, it means negotiations on Ukraine are over, permanently.
These are the sanctions that mandate a 500% tariff on any country importing Russian oil/gas. Mostly aimed at China and India.
We are witnessing levels of hubris not seen in 25 years, maybe more. This administration feels totally bulletproof right now. I’m sure they think the sanctions won’t even hit, that Russia will simply capitulate before they go into effect.
Comparisons to the Third Reich seem cliche, but idk it really feels like something clicked in the last week in the halls of power in DC. They realized that they can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want to, and (for now) no one will stop them. It’s like we’re seeing the beginnings of a geopolitical blitzkreig.
No one wants to be the first to stick their neck out and so the policy of appeasement continues. I wonder what the line will be, if there even is one.
Thank God honestly, the only way to knock any sense into the US right now is for them to directly target China
I had to read this a few times because I was interpreting it as “the only way to knock sense into China is for them to be directly targeted by the US” which also read as true
dialectic dialectic dialectic
Looks like the failure of the “peace negotiations” with Russia where Steve Witkoff showed high levels of incompetence has been the coup de grace for the isolationist faction of the Trump admin. Who knows, maybe the isolationists will make a comeback, but it’s not looking good for them.
Three outcomes here:
China and India (but especially China given they’re China) reach never before seen levels of cutting their own hands off, bend the knee and help the US destroy Russia or at least badly humiliate and isolate it in a move it won’t forget when they’re in trouble.
China or India or both don’t bow and this finally kicks things into motion regarding de-dollarization.
US passes this but then starts handing out waivers or something and essentially backs off itself and uses it to beat on smaller countries and force anyone who isn’t India or China sized to decouple from China/Russia and get into their orbit. If China impassively watches this happen and watches the US grab much of the world and drag it behind its high fence and does nothing well they’re going to have a very bad
middle half of this century2030s when the US turns the screws on them.I’d almost bet on Trump trying to do 3 as it seems to be the move US empire wants to make anyways but I figure they might see if India and China will bend the knee first and only compromise if they don’t and look like they’re going to cause trouble.
China’s not going to bend the knee. What people don’t really appreciate is the fact that Trump actually speaks Chinese.
This recent article here from FT - Why China is doubling down on its export-led growth model is a long article but the most interesting are these paragraphs that provide insight into how Chinese officials think about the US:
It’s very clear that China prefers to deal with Trump than with Europe, because Trump thinks like a businessman, and China reaallllyy loves the transactional nature of business dealings. This is the basis behind China’s win-win cooperation model. And China is confident about dealing with Trump because he speaks their language lol.
Curious to see how this turns out. Will those countries capitulate or do something?