Image is of protestors in Nigeria in 2024.
As I’m sure everybody is aware by now, Trump’s accusation that Nigerian armed groups are unfairly persecuting Christians in the country is a rather bizarre lie, seeking a justification to go in, to quote Trump, “guns-a-blazing”. Whether this is likely to actually occur or is merely a threat, who can really say nowadays? But Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are targeting people in Nigeria fairly indiscriminately; insomuch that there is a target, it is farmers whose land is being raided and taken in resource conflicts, and their religious affiliation is not usually questioned by those groups before they are pillaged and/or murdered from what I can tell.
The President of Nigeria, Tinubu, has no small responsibility for this state of affairs - enacting IMF “reforms” which have exacerbated hunger, poverty, and unemployment in the service of Western financial institutions. Those who have protested against this state of affairs have faced repression by state security forces. Meanwhile, Tinubu allegedly has strong connections to the DEA, paying large amounts of money to avoid a trial for his actions; the DEA released this statement: “We oppose the full… release of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records,” which is certainly not concerning at all - followed by “While Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”
It must be a shame for him that such a loyal subject of empire is facing such scrutiny, and it likely has everything to do with Nigeria’s inexorably growing connections to China (just like pretty much every country on the planet), especially in relation to Nigeria’s massive mineral deposits. It could also perhaps be retribution for Nigeria’s failure to adequately oppose the growing independence of the Sahel.
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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.
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.
Not just that. Sadly the surveillance capabilities have absolutely advanced in leaps and bounds.
Back in Vietnam the resistance could dig tunnels in the jungle and at night the US generally couldn’t have anything approaching total visibility. These days with modern satellites, high altitude and low altitude surveillance via drones and manned planes they US can have just incredible visibility of movements even in jungle using things like IR sensors and motion detection. So if they say plan to fight a protracted battle against a direct US invasion it’s going to be hard if they haven’t extensively prepared before now because the US is going to spot and know where any new major construction on bunkers, underground tunnels, facilities, etc are and can see assaults heading towards cities ahead of time with way more warning than in Vietnam. Frankly there is huge gulf in US capabilities then and now and the relative levels of support the two countries could expect. Vietnam was getting direct military aid from the USSR and China who was just over the border, Venezuela has no nearby superpowers that aren’t across an ocean or two to supply them and Russia is currently quite occupied dedicating its production capacity to Ukraine while China is unlikely to want to get involved and certainly won’t be likely to go into smuggling or blockade running over a wide ocean to do so.
Frankly I do think the US could succeed in seizing the capital city, turning it into a green-zone and pacifying the area around it long enough to set up a comprador government that’s recognized internationally and arming and training the local reactionaries. They’d face years of insurgency obviously but with US air cover they could perhaps manage to seize the oil producing regions or at least deny their ability to export (perhaps through US led interdiction, declaring all the oil belongs to the US set up comprador regime and leading to the US blockading and stealing anything sent out at sea).
But as I think about this I think it’s about many things and given how many are very important it doesn’t look good:
Best hope for Venezuela is that they try to decapitate and kill Maduro and those closest to him (preferable obviously for us that they don’t totally succeed), take out some of their military but then quickly get bored, declare mission accomplished and leave and either a still living Maduro or whoever succeeds him and declare they’ve dealt with the “drug trafficking”. They may yet still think they can just use special forces to achieve a coup and comprador government being put in place after decapitation of the civil government and military as well as degrading of most military capabilities and not want to commit to boots on the ground. As long as local reactionaries can be foiled, prevented from receiving weapons and acting the US can be frustrated into giving up. Though the US will likely turn to economic weapons to try and turn up the heat on Venezuela and get the people angry and amenable to regime change or at least apathetic to the US forcing it.
Caracas is very defensible if enough forces are mobilized. You’d probably have to assemble an infantry force of over 100,000 just to occupy it after you use whatever airpower to assault the city and wear down the defenses. I think it would require too many boots on the ground to supply them all by air, so you’re going to have to secure one of a few roads through forested mountain passes up from the coast, and those come in across town from many of the most important places you’d want to focus your occupation forces. If the Venezuelans have even a little backbone it’s a very difficult job even with overwhelming technological superiority and air dominance. Maracaibo and the oil fields would be a doable target, but actually I don’t think occupying Caracas is possible without mobilizing a much larger force. Honestly it might be straight up impossible for the US military to do in it’s current state.
Now some kind of decapitation strike followed by an attempt to install a puppet with limited special operations forces and air strikes might be something that feels a bit more feasible for the US military to attempt, but I kind of doubt they’ll be able to pull off the second part. Venezuelans aren’t necessarily happy with their current situation, but they’re definitely not going to be happy with the US murdering a bunch of people and bombing their country. There are also deep class and racial divides in the country that underlie its politics and uphold Chavismo’s grip on the country. If you fracture the country on those lines, the more white comprador sections of the country will probably just lose. If the US were smart they’d find some Afro-Venezuelan face for their puppet government, but then that would probably alienate their supporters too much.
I think Rubio wants to overthrow the Venezuelan government by force, and he might be powerful enough to push through some kind of stupid decapitation operation that just devolves into a complete mess. I think there are plenty of saner heads in the Pentagon and Washington establishment that are trying to gently push back or slow-walk this confrontational policy, so it’s kind of up to Trump’s whim whether it happens or not. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet, after all of this provocation, makes me think it’s less likely that anything will happen, and some shiny new toy project for US foreign policy will come along in the mean time and we’ll forget about this like we forgot about the bajillion times Bush and Obama threatened war with North Korea.
One must remember in chaos there is profit for the US. The US also plays the long game. It took them 10 years but they did succeed in getting rid of Assad and achieving their goals in Syria. Even if decapitating the government in Venezuela doesn’t lead to immediate installing of a comprador regime it opens up the field for the US to maneuver in the succession space and chaos and fear that follows and set up dominoes to orchestrate a plot 5 years later that plunges the country into a civil war and with US support leads to some sort of dictatorship. For example if they could merely kill Maduro and top people and push incompetent people, people who are liberal-roaders, who are neo-liberal economically to make bad decisions they could divorce the people from the party and movement and sap them with apathy that creates opportunity for further moves and in-roads down the line. I of course am thinking of Bolivia and what happened there.
biggest issue is 10 years of syrian level chaos this close to the US could be much worse for the US comparatively