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.

guaido-despair guaido

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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    I'm getting Tiananmen Square vibes from it all (as in, student protests with unrealistic/undefined aims lead by foreign intelligence), but if it happened to a significantly worse country than China, though still one that is meaningfully not aligned with US interests in regards to China/Russia. Any time a protest has its aims basically be the overthrow of the government as opposed to a more concentrated aim like against a war or genocide, or in favour of labor/minority rights, I get a little suspicious, because that only ever happens to anti-Western countries.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Proletarian movements have materialist aims. If the goals of the movement aren’t explicit and based in hard class interests, it’s a fake color revolution led by bourgie idiots

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
          ·
          5 months ago

          No the Luddites were proletarian and had a class interest in the means of production. you could argue they made a strategic error in destroying them instead of seizing them, but they would have seized them if they believed they could have held them - they knew capitalist reaction would set in. They were not reactionaries.

          Also says nothing of the fact that the Bangladesh government is geopolitically more aligned with neutrality or even towards BRICS, not the west if i recall correctly. They don’t recognize Israel and are majority Muslim. Smells like Arab spring bullshit to me

            • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
              ·
              5 months ago

              Incorrect. Marx agrees with me, not you.

              No wonder that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a series of revolts of the workers directed against the machine and the new technical methods of production took place. These revolts attained formidable proportions in England in 1815. (The weaving loom was finally perfected in 1813). About that time the movement spread to all industrial centres. From a purely elemental force, it was soon transformed into an organised resistance with appropriate slogans and efficient leaders. This movement directed against the introduction of machinery is known in history as the movement of the Luddites.

              The ruling classes, the dominant oligarchy, directed the most cruel repressions against the Luddites. For the destruction of a machine as well as for an attempt to injure a machine, a death penalty was imposed. Many a worker was sent to the gallows.

              There was a need for a higher degree of development of this workers' movement and for more adequate revolutionary propaganda. The workers had to be informed that the fault was not with the machines, but with the conditions under which these machines were being used. A movement which was aiming to mould the workers into a class-conscious revolutionary mass, able to cope with definite social and political problems was just then beginning to show vigorous signs of life in England.

              Marx is quite clear that the Luddites are a workers movement in its nascent stage before fully conscious, they are NOT reactionaries and they are not idealist bourgeoisie. They are workers involved in class struggle. Please don’t “read Marx” at me when you have no idea what you are talking about

                • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  My original contention is that proletarian worker movements have material demands, while bourgeois revolutions and counter-revolutions have idealist demands such as freedom, equality, brotherhood, etc.

                  The Luddites were a nascent, very early in the struggle worker movement. They had not yet developed full consciousness, but they are a worker movement and had materialist demands regarding the means of production and working conditions.

                  These Bangladesh protests don't seem to have clear materialist demands to me. The current government is relatively secular and pro-BRICS and anti-zionist, even if it is a bourgeois state, compared to the right-wing islamist opposition which would surely have many more compradors and sell-outs. The dissatisfied workers there seem to be led by the nose by the would-be compradors and petty tyrants considering the west has an interest in installing a more manipulatable right-wing puppet (like they did in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, etc).

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
        ·
        5 months ago

        i don't think the protests in Bangladesh are entirely bourgie. there are color revolutions which are much more co-opted than others, like the one in Venezuela right now, very obvious that the 'protestors' are mainly right-wing even if some of them may not be happy about the economic conditions.

        This is a good article I read on this

        I think I'm seeing more parallels with Indian anti-corruption protests of 2011 (wiki article is kinda biased). Regardless of the aims or goals, the protests contributed to the overthrow of the relatively secular albeit neoliberal Government with the fascists bjp-cool. The protests were used by the capitalists at the time to get an even more 'pro-business' party in power.

        Look at the kind of shit BBC was writing at the time

        There are similarities and differences with Bangladesh currently, the protestors in Bangladesh initially did have a goal, remove the unfair quota system which didn't even give priority to the actually marginalized. There was dissatisfaction with the Government then, in part due to their neoliberal policies and the end of post-2008 stimulus which came around ~2011.

        The main opposition to the current secular Government in Bangladesh are right-wing Islamist parties. In fact, the current Bangladesh Government's response to anti-Hindu protests in 2021 was praised.