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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
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1- Clearly a right-wing liberal sociologist, common in anglophone countries but treated with scorn in sociological talent pools; Latin-America and western europe
2- Now the idea is that there will be no economic crash but "overheating"? According to who? Monetary neoliberal economic "orthodox mainstream" anglophone universities?
3- Who the fuck analyzed the military stock numbers? American military generals?
4- Why the hell is he shifting the peace rhetoric to gain time to Russia? Intellectual dishonesty at its best
Overheating sounds so goofy. "The economy is doing really well. But is it doing too well?"
It sounds like them just saying that no matter what happens it's evidence Russia is losing.
“Overheating” is capitalist speak for how markets actually suck at allocating resources efficiently since what the term really refers to is over-investment in certain types of production such that supply begins to exceed demand, leading to oversupply of certain goods and then losses instead of profits made on the over-investment and a less allocatively efficient economy overall.
It is a real problem in unplanned economies.
The kernel of truth in "Russia will fall when their economy is overheated!" is that although mainstream bourgeois economic dogma is bunk, Putin and the ruling elite in Russia are liberals and might believe in it. They could very well be scared shitless by the threat of "overheating" and unable to move beyond liberal orthodoxy they might act as if it is real.
"Mythical defeat of Ukraine", idk what else would you call consistently losing territory, making a great deal of having a dozen half-century-old F16 as a replacement airforce, and 'scraping the barrel' to increase military recruitment? What about how Ukraine is planning on halting debt payments, and begging for scraps from Europe? I'd like to ask this guy, is this the behavior of a country that's winning a war, or even successfully defending itself?
Winning is when your entire economy and infrastructure is slagged, half a million men are dead or injured as a low ball, your military has suffered 300%+ attrition, you've depleted NATOs stockpiles of weapons, you've gained no terrain or strategic points, and your enemy's homeland is untouched and their economy is stronger than it was when the war started.
No many people know this, but Saddam Hussein actually won the 2nd Gulf War. No idea how he died tho
literally who, and how is it different from crashing the economy in 2022?
lmao are you actually taking this dreck seriously? Is this a bit?
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gish gallop wishcasting. gishcasting?
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the only way this could be true is if one was idiotic enough to believe the "Russia does human waves, has lost 500,000 troops, 69,000 tanks and vehicles since war began" thing; belief in which will legally qualify you for the reeducation camps in the future. the most notable part of this is that the narrative has shifted from "Russia will economically collapse because of sanctions" to "Russia will economically collapse because they're actually doing TOO well", which is pretty entertaining.
if there was any hint of the truth of all that, we'd see evidence on the battlefield, and everything seems to be not only fine, but steadily improving for Russia, with territorial acquisition gradually speeding up from the rate in 2023 and the opening of new fronts indicating that troop levels are okay. economically, I think Russia should be more scared of an American recession (thus causing impacts on China, thus causing impacts on themselves) than some neoliberal jargon about their piss-to-shit index ratio reaching dangerous temperatures or whatever.
I bet $100 that Russia will still be handily winning this war by this time next year.
What a silly person
I mean there's a small element of truth here. The Russian "war economy", if you want to call it that, has peaked as of mid 2024, with the introduction of new arms and equipment that allowed for the attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, increased supplies, the use of guided glide bombs, etc. Now its Ukraine's turn to introduce new equipment, more arms, and peak. However, at the end of the day one has to ask if Ukraine's peak will significantly influence the battlefield by stopping or reversing Russian gains. Once Ukraine goes through their peak and the dust settles, we'll find out who's ahead. Ukraine's previous peak during the "counter offensive", failed to do much to influence the battlefield, and Russia came out ahead there.