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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
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.


we gotta start a reading group on US DoD reports, there must be so many
moments hiding out
https://xcancel.com/ripplebrain/status/2010169502730731876
more
Some actual quotes from various documents:
https://www.glostat.com/documents-countries/united-states-strategy-for-operations-in-information-environment-soie-2023/
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/display-news/Article/3992620/us-navy-operations-in-the-information-environment-oie-defined/
(couldn’t find from which one this came)
No shit. Anyone paying attention knew they were lying the whole time. We literally saw all the strikes in isntreal. And they claimed to have intercepted them all lmao
Who do they think they’re fooling?
So, no shit, every country overstates its successes in military shit? Why is it big news that the US does so, unless you are so terminally American-hegemony-pilled that you believed them at face value.
None of this however, happened with Iran. Iran was not deterred from firing hundreds of ballistic missiles by any sort of propaganda or psychological operations. And yet, the vast majority were still intercepted. There were not hundreds of impacts in Israel, despite hundreds of missiles being fired towards Israel. SM-3, Arrow 3, THAAD, Arrow 2, Patriot PAC-3 MSE and David’s Sling/Stunner all exist and all performed as adverised, these were not psyops, they are actual systems. Rocket motors from SM-3 landed in Iran and Syria, Arrow, THAAD and Stunner boosters were littered across Israel, patriot PAC 3 components in Qatar. Obviously you cannot intercept 100% of missiles fired towards countervalue targets, especially when hundreds are fired.
With Iran, what happened is that missiles were simply not accurate enough for counterforce targeting. Even in a best case scenario where Iran landed 30-40 hits on an airbase with advanced maneuverable ballistic missiles in October 2024, Iran hit a total of one fighter jet sized hardened aircraft shelter, and one large aircraft hangar. This is insufficient for deterrence regardless of what propaganda or pysops are taking place. Iran’s own behaviour after October 2024 illustrates this. Iran did not respond to a subsequent Israeli attack, the fact that Israel launched an attack illustrates that there was little deterrence. For deterrence to have taken place, Iran would’ve needed to hit a lot more than one hardened aircraft shelter and one large aircraft hangar. This is seperate from propaganda, the Iranians were not convinced to abandon a November- December 2024 Operation True Promise III by US or Israeli psyops. Iran convinced to abandon this by the limits of their own capabilities.
All of this ignores that war is not a purely defensive exercise, and Israel has their own offensive arsenal of air launched ballistic missiles, various other standoff weapons for 4th generation fighter aircraft, and stealth aircraft, which Iran has little defensive counter to. Iran didn’t shoot down a single Israeli or US fighter aircraft during 12 days of continuous bombing. In fact, not a single US or Israeli manned aircraft was shot down during operations in Yemen, Iran or Venezuela, all of which operated advanced double digit SA systems of Russian or Iranian manufacture for air defence. The gap in capability between these air defence systems and US made aircraft is far more concerning than US/Israeli ballistic missile defence performance.
Give Russia the geopolitical freedom to put a huge portion of their non-export-gimped air defenses and EW systems in a country the size of Israel and I bet you would see very different results.
Isolated regional powers will never be able to mount a successful defense to superpower weaponry. Especially when they have a lot of territory to cover and a focus on military self-reliance like Iran.
The only deterrence I’ve seen between Israel and Iran is how quickly Iran turned silent following the US intervention. The most pathetic attempt at kayfabe on the Qatari airbase, made worse by Trump gloating that they let a single Iranian missile make landfall almost as if out of pity, followed by a unilateral ceasefire by the Iranians (which Israel still violated just to prove they didn’t give a shit).
If countries like Iran want to establish “deterrence” against the US, the S-300 is all but scrap.
Spending a trillion dollars or whatever on the Cope Dome
These systems presumably also contribute to the public’s willingness to fight unnecessary wars of aggression, since they believe they’ll be protected from any consequences. I wonder if that’s also officially acknowledged in some obscure documents.
Paper Tigers with effective propaganda.