Image is of Venezuela's Maduro and Colombia's Petro walking together at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2022, sourced from this article.
Ordinarily, I avoid straying into the American domestic situation, but the government shutdown appears to be continuing into increasingly harmful territory. If the situation is not resolved, soon tens of millions of Americans will lose food assistance, and already millions of federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay. To those not in the know, this situation has essentially stemmed from the Democrats refusing to sign off on the Republicans' plan to substantially shrink Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which would eventually result in tens of millions losing healthcare coverage and tens if not hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
To be clear, though, the Democrats have not exactly been paragons of healthcare: they not only oppose plans to make affordable healthcare a right (in defiance of wide popular opinion), but also do their part to maximize suffering. Biden's policies during the pandemic ensured at least one million people died, and millions of children lost public healthcare coverage. We may never know the true toll, as the US decided that simply ceasing to report on a problem means that the problem no longer exists.
In other news, over the last couple weeks, the US has expanded their hostility against Venezuela by also including Colombia in their ire, and particularly the left-leaning leader, Petro. Both countries are now experiencing major economic and covert pressure by the US to try and cause regime change. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela and is conducting a military training operation with Trinidad and Tobago, which Venezuela has warned may be the prelude to the long-awaited attack.
Additionally, the US is attempting to combat Chinese geopolitical interest in central America and the Caribbean by carrying out digital attacks and launching pressure campaigns against Chinese and pro-Chinese countries and organizations. Given China's enormous economic weight, if central America were to break all ties with China, it would be a catastrophe for them; such decisions would only be made by outright compradors, and the resulting economic problems would make their reigns unpopular and, hopefully, brief.
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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.
Venezuela claims capture of CIA group, accuses U.S. of plotting ‘false flag’ attack
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article312660489.html
https://archive.is/lqPsQ
The majority of the libs on social media & Reddit are mad that the Trump administration is incompetent at executing the brutal business of the empire. There is some discussion about opposing regime change and other crimes like randomly blowing up civilian boats, but they are a clear minority. US Congress mostly doesn't care.
"not against wars, just stupid wars"
Against all wars except the current one.
It seems like because it's Trump a lot of the libs I'm seeing don't believe the rhetoric, a lot of upvoted comments on r/worldnews of all places saying he was murdering fishermen etc. I was surprised to see the response to one commenter saying they were Venezuelan and their government was lying about capturing foreign agents, that they were corrupt and everything, all the replies were saying that Maduro was right and were defending Venezuela.
I guess no one likes gusanos.
That's concerning. Last time they captured those mercenaries in Trump's previous term they presented them clearly. Could be keeping it secret for operational security though, so that the US doesn't know who is compromised.
Yeah, since the US is certainly running many different operations, there's no advantage to making which ones get squashed public
I'm not going to call them on it till the US start producing evidence that any of the boats they targeted were carrying drugs
Last time it was ostensibly peacetime (or at least a lull) and the propaganda may have outweighed the intel value. We’ll see
Since operations are ongoing, I’m sure it’s opsec.
The Venezuelans have had some surprisingly effective intelligence in the the US, most notably through double-agents. If they learn with a high degree of certainty that a strike is coming they need to prepare to strike first to hit whatever they can because they'll lose all significant air and naval capabilities within a couple of days anyway. Playing like good little boys and waiting until most of your offensive capability gets wiped out is worthless, even politically. They don't have the kind of deep strategic reserve that, say Iran has, they have a relatively small and moderately capable conventional navy and air force that they can probably score some hits with, or let get blown up in port/hanger. Sinking a destroyer or two, knocking out an AWACS platform, cratering a runway, all of these things could have useful impact on military operations and more importantly, would rally the people to defend their country and prevent the US from getting the cheap easy victory they must be imagining. If things get kinetic it's use it or lose it for those assets. Get a couple of symbolic wins and prepare the ground forces to defend the central plateau and harass any landing in the Maracaibo region. Their air defense can't really hold up and deter air strikes for long, but they can prevent successful airborne operations if they can muster and disperse their ground forces to defend critical areas. If they let the navy and air force get wiped out with nothing to show for it, there's a very real risk that the army and militias just roll over and allow some sort of Special Ops-led coup.