Image is from this article, showing a march by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Youth. The preamble’s information came from a few sources, such as here, here, and here.
Over the last few weeks, pressure on Venezuela from the US has mounted as their newest proxy, Gonzalez, lost the election to Maduro. The Trump administration now alleges that Maduro is the mastermind behind the “Cartel of Suns,” raised the bounty on Maduro’s head from $25 million to $50 million, and is working to deploy troops and naval assets to the region.
While I would not consider myself an expert, I believe an explicit boots-on-the-ground campaign by the US in Venezuela would be, at best, implausible, though the administration has not explicitly denied it (and even if it did deny it, denials by the US are merely confirmations that are being delayed). What seems much more likely is an intensification of a subversive campaign against Venezuela which seeks to further isolate it, with intelligence from the US given to whatever groups and individuals exist inside the country. There are certainly some parallels in regard to recent US belligerence towards Mexico, with both countries being implicitly or explicitly threatened with military force under the guise of “preventing drug trafficking” - and, of course, spreading drugs is one of America’s greatest specialities.
Will this work? I don’t know, though I am optimistic about Venezuela’s chances. The Venezuelan government does seem to be taking this threat with a refreshing degree of seriousness - with over 4 million militia members being activated across the country as of August 18th, as well as a call from Maduro to the armed forces to be on high alert. The socialist youth of Venezuela are being mobilized in defense of the revolution.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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Israel'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.
Most traitors and fifth column were purged shortly after the 2019 coup attempt, Maduro replaced basically everyone with loyalists. Even the legal opposition parties were purged from traitors and replaced with Venezuelan nationalists, while they are right-wing and do criticize Maduro, they don’t want the US there.
Venezuela is not going to be like Panama, Grenada or the DR invasions. Venezuela will be more like Vietnam/Iraq. The Bolivarists can wage guerrilla war against the US for many years if they really want to.
purely tactically, a good chunk of Venezuela are hills and mountains covered by jungle, amirite? With cities on the hillside?
Terrible place to invade, perfect for guerilla war
Not really like Vietnam because there is no equivalent of the South Vietnamese puppet government for them to prop up and have local soldiers to use as cannon fodder. I doubt they can set up a “Guaido government” that would have any kind of legitimacy in Venezuela.
Also hopefully not like Iraq because there was not that much real resistance in Iraq at first. The CIA bribed Iraqi generals with suitcases full of dollars to have large segments of the Iraqi army just stand down and do nothing when they marched in.
They also exploited pre-existing religious sectarian and ethnic divisions against the government. So they did very little actual fighting when they marched into Iraq and had local allies that helped them because of this. The armed guerilla resistance groups only started to coalesce later after the army was dissolved.
With them cutting all the social programs Maduro grants, they’ll just be as unpopular as the current Peruvian Goverment.
They can attempt to use Guyana as cannon fodder, but I doubt Brazil will let that happen since the Brazilian goverment and military have interests in Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana, Brazil controls most of their borders.
Guyana is tiny. Almost their entire population is concentrated in and around Georgetown on the coast. They probably don’t have much more than 200,000 adult males. A country like that makes for poor cannon fodder. Venezuela is a country of almost 30 million people with patriotic and well organized communal militias. And as you say, there are other regional players that do not want to see a conflict in their region. Not just Brazil but Colombia as well.
Yes, I would even add Suriname to that list, they don’t have good relations with Guyana because of the Tigri Conflict. Ever since Suriname’s independence they have been fighting border skirmishes over this region. And considering that the current rulling Suriname party is a left-wing socdem pro-military party that has had really good relations with Venezuela,.