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]
      ·
      4 months ago

      This is the critical part of the interview IMO:

      Jeremy Scahill: If Israel does commit and they do want war with Hezbollah, what does that look like from the Lebanese side, based on the history of these conflicts and wars and Hezbollah's response to Israel? If Israel does send in ground forces or engages in a very heavy, wider bombing campaign, what could we expect Hezbollah's response to look like?

      Amal Saad: Well, I think the Israeli intelligence is quite aware because I've read a lot of these analyses in Israeli and U.S. intelligence reports and others, which is that Hezbollah—first of all, I don't think we would see what we saw in 2006. I don't think Israel would even get to invade Lebanon in the same way. I don't think it would be able to stage a ground incursion, definitely not of that magnitude. And Israel would not be in a purely offensive position. Israel would be also in a defensive position because Hezbollah would also infiltrate and make incursions into Israel proper. So, it's going to look very different, just in terms of the overall strategy of the war, that it will be an offensive defense on Hezbollah's part. It won't just be defense.

      Secondly, the fact that Hezbollah has now fully conventionalized, it's no longer even a hybrid force. I've spoken to military experts here, and I've been curious myself to see what they think. Where is [Hezbollah] on the spectrum of guerrilla to conventional army? Is it sort of in the middle, like in 2006? They've said, “No, it's actually a fully fledged conventional force now. But obviously it has these sort of capabilities of an irregular armed force. It still retains them and has that experience.” So we're talking here about a much more sophisticated military organization with well over 100,000 fighters, well over that number, over 150,000 missiles and rockets. You know, back in 2006, Hezbollah had just a few thousand fighters, far fewer rockets, much less sophisticated missiles and rockets. Basically everything that Iran has, all the weapons Iran has, you can be certain Hezbollah has them, too. That's what we know. And that's aside from the things that Hezbollah is manufacturing domestically, like it's drone technology—it's manufacturing its own drones now. So, we're talking here about a vastly different military creature than 2006.

      And, again, the tactics will not just be purely defensive. They will be offensive. And that's not even factoring in other actors in the resistance axis who are itching to join the fight and have declared their intent to send hundreds of thousands of fighters, such as the Houthis [from Yemen], to Lebanon.

      From all the information I've been gathering, it would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state. We're not talking here about just a defeat for Israel like in 2006. It would be the sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise. This is why, when we talk about “the great war,” which is not a matter of if, it's when, when that war happens, which is an inevitability, [Hezbollah] have always said that that is going to be the war that will change the face of the region. So, we are talking here about a scenario which would definitely lead to the destruction of a lot of Lebanon — no one is discounting that or belittling that. But at the same time, it would lead to the destruction of Israel and while it would lead to the destruction of Lebanon in material terms, that destruction would not lead to the unraveling of the Lebanese state in the same way that it would lead to the unraveling of the Israeli or Zionist regime. I think that's one way of looking at it.