Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.
Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.
Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.
Thank you to @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Venezuela! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
— Aimé Césaire
great comment. you inspired me to read more from Discourse on Colonialism and I already found this banger in the leadup to the above quote:
Discourse on Colonialism is like infinitely quotable. I've read and reread it many times in the last year, and I always find something new each time
damn that goes hard
anybody know of any historical precedents to this sort of thing? as in, settlers go "no! you're not doing fascism hard enough! we must take over the bases and force them to do genocide EVEN HARDER!"
the closest thing I can think of is American settlers marching into Native American territory and settling there under the belief that the American government would protect them, which would sometimes happen and sometimes not, but that's not so much infighting as what's increasingly going on in Israel.
I'm curious to see if this sort of infighting could plausibly go somewhere or if every Zionist will circle the wagons once the war with Hezbollah begins
Algeria, the coup attempt on de Gaulle and the O.S terrorist group
fuck, right, yeah. I think that's the closest analogy to what's going on now.
I'm always apprehensive to say "NOW is when the Cool Zone begins!" because the Cool Zone always tends to only briefly exist before dying down again for a while, but this, plus the Haredi tensions, plus the losses in Gaza, plus the impending war with Hezbollah, plus increasing economic/political isolation are a dire combination of factors that will lead further and further down the road of state dissolution. it won't be now, but this is a meaningful stepping stone.
Bacon's Rebellion, which, yes, is more-or-less your second paragraph.
I have read accounts of white settlers in North America in the 19th century. They were every bit as deranged as Israeli settlers. There was frequent conflict with the US Army but that was only because settlers always have a reach that exceeds the grasp of what the military can support. But I suspect white settlers in North America were far more reliant on support from the military than Israeli settlers are with the IOF due to the distances involved, so perhaps that allows Israeli settlers to be even more hostile to the military. Also, Palestinians are forcibly kept more defenseless than Native Americans were, at least so it seems to me.
it's kind of unimaginable at this scale, but settlers given the slimmest autonomy & obligations to a distant government pretty much always have an impulse to take affairs into their own hands. Mormons, Martin Cortez & the encomienderos, Revolt of San Tito on Krete---but these motherfuckers are like, right next to the 'proper' state and have everything provided to them by that state. they aren't responsible for getting the grain for the metropole or getting unfavorably taxed to my knowledge.
this could really be a new leaf in settler derangement and entitlement tbh
I mean, you could also say it's essentially one of the major reasons for the U.S. War of Independence (that and preserving slavery; also somewhat related).
Maybe a good example could be the US independence, one big turning point was Britain banned the settler from expanding into native territories that were allied to london, which made the US landlord class angry with the crown
I mean, trying to coup the government because they aren't doing war hard enough is what the whole Wagner thing was. Obviously different wars there, no moral equivalency, but you get the idea.
Man, 10 months ago, I thought Israel was going to head towards a civil war, but it would have to do with a mix of failure and tensions over Haredi being forced to serve in the military, not doing Jan 6th for actual rapists.
The radical evil of fascism has always been underestimated because normal decent people simply don't think the thoughts fascists tend to think
The military failure set the stage for this
What do you call a thousand Zionists killing each other?
spoiler
A good thing.spoiler
A good start*not enough
Is there anywhere/anyone providing decent coverage of this?
I'll believe it when DW starts to panic.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sde-teiman-israeli-soldiers-under-arrest-raping-palestinian-prisoner
Found an article about it
A new front! Wgat are we at, 8 now?