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 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.
Visual confirmation of C-2A Greyhound aircraft from the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier landing in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Carrier operations in the Carribean have started.
First photographs + Flightradar24
Detailed photos
Puerto Ricans reporting a lot of military activity not publicly viewable on flight tracking software
Two US Navy Warships (Destroyer + Cruiser), operating about 30mi/50km from Venezuela, with transponders on.
Source
Potential for another show of force/probing bomber mission off of the coast of Venezuela soon
The buildup is slower than it needs to be, why? They must have some door open for de-escalation if they’re taking their sweet time about all this.
Hurricane season is a big factor. But the movement of the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier hasn’t been unusually slow, it just happened in two stints. The move from Croatia to crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and stopping near Morocco, and then the move to cross the Atlantic. Once they started crossing the Atlantic a few days ago, they’ve been moving fast.
But I do think hurricane season is a bigger deal than most make out. A late November hurricane could disrupt any plans, so I think they’ll wait for it to finish. That’s what happened with the invasion of Panama, waited until December.
There’s also the fact that the aircraft carrier is not really needed, the US mainland and Puerto Rico outside of it are close enough. So there is a lot of signalling involved. Ideally they’d want Maduro to step down or be removed from power without war. But it would have to be a full surrender, any sort of deal for elections won’t work after the Qatar 2024 deal under Biden that was supposed to remove Maduro, was used by Maduro to entrench himself in power.
Venezuela signed a deal with the Biden administration and Blinken in which sanctions would be lifted and normal relations restored between the US and Venezuela, if the opposition was allowed to participate in elections. Such deals with a party like the United States have implications, and the implication here was that this election would see Maduro removed from power. Instead, Maduro won the election.
This is why I think any sort of future “deal” between the USA, Maduro and the PSUV would have to be a complete surrender on the PSUV and Maduro side. Otherwise there is no diplomatic solution. From the US perspective (not mine), they tried some sort of halfway deal already, and Maduro did not uphold his side of the deal. So they’re not going to do that again.
What’s the rush? Nothing will substantially change in Venezuela, and they certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do this before the election. What difference does it make if they do it this month or next or the month after that?
I just wouldn’t expect the military to be dragging its feet without a reason that’s all. I’m speculating what reason it might have for not going sooner. Marmite’s speculation that the weather is the cause is pretty good.
remember how long it took for them to strike Iran? Took 'em ages and the entire time they were leaking shit like “oooo we might not!!! we’re scaredddd!!!” and then the B2s flew around backwards like some fucking 420 blazeit Xx trickshot compilation
It appears that the Trump administration is deeply divided as to whether they actually want to launch this war. Of course, that could be some kind of deception, but one would think the deception wouldn’t have lasted so long.
Part of it just comes off as escalating pressure, like they’re trying to get something by being scary but without acting. Maduro to step down and hold new elections? Maybe they’re confident the opposition would win in such a scenario.
That or they’re trying to trigger a coup, but you would think it would have happened already if that were the case. They may have thought they had someone on the inside ready to assume power, but for some reason it hasn’t come together.
When they tried ousting Maduro for Guaido in 2017, there were massive protests against the government, and the opposition was very active. Maduro’s position this time appears to be much stronger.
Trump 1 was the absolute low point for power and popularity of the Bolivarian Revolution. They have done a great deal to rebuild public support for the project, and such flagrant imperialism is only hardening that support further.
They openly attempted a coup, but Guaido and the Coup plotters fucked up and most of the Army and Police ended up siding with Maduro, with exception of some soldiers and cops who had to escape the country.
I renember that Guaido spend an entire day in front of an airbase asking for the commander of the base to join the coup (they had s bunch of news crews there so if the army shoot them they could use this to show how Maduro was killing “innocent” people, or to show how popular Guaido was). In thd end the commander ordered the military police to crackdown on the protestors with rubber bullets, the police was helped by pro-goverment civilians.
After that Maduro crackdown hard on the military, police and political parties, there was a huge purge and most were replaced with Loyalists. Only people like Caprilles were not purged mostly because they didn’t agree with Guaido and prefered a more peaceful negociation with Maduro.
Oh yeah I see that brought up from Reddit liberals on how “really FUCKING bad” the Maduro government is
Yeah where is all that shit? Feels like they’ve got nothing, they’re probably trying to inject special forces into the country that will work with NGOs or the opposition to bring about things like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that stuff last time was being instigated by similar operatives and they just don’t have the same capability now after crackdowns.
That’s what USAID was for
After the 2002 military coup, Chavez, and eventually, Maduro begun purging and cracking down on NGOs and the Paramilitary groups in Venezuela. The only Far-Right group still operating in Venezuela is the Comandos con Venezuela (aka Comanditos), they are really poorly trained and with just small arms, probably bc most of them come from gangs or are ex-cops. Their plan is to attack soldiers, cops and the colectivos (far-left civilians who formed their own paramilitary group to support Chavez and protect thei neighborhoods).