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.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
Indeed he did. The two 20 billion USD bailouts came in at the right time. Of course they’ll have absolutely no positive impact on the economy, no bridges would be built, no schools will be repaired and no new hospitals will open. We all know that “generous” bailout from the US is not aimed at improving our material conditions rather than saving whatever investor really fucked up and creating a scenario of “immediate default” as soon as any administration takes power other than those approved by the US.
And the main opposition couldn’t even capitalize on this, either. Here’s a small story:
In the midst of the 1946 presidential elections, Perón was likely to be the winner. He was the de-facto leader of the “1943 Revolution”, using his military rank, his position as vice-president and Secretary of Labour and Social Security he had gained A LOT of support from working class people. In that context, the US Ambassador to Argentina, Spruille Braden, openly opposed Perón’s rise to power and campaigned against him. The problem is that this didn’t go well with people in general and Perón was able to capitalize this foreign intervention to his favor. Thus Peronism became anti-interventionist and Braden polarized the elections, the now iconic phrase “Braden o Perón” was born. In the end, Perón won despite the direct US interference.
This time around Peronists are so devoid of political content and guidance that they couldn’t even formulate an anti-interventionist rethoric even though it’s ridiculously clear to all of us that the US is DIRECTLY INTERFERING. They had some timid responses, but nothing major. And this time around we don’t have some ambassador talking shit, we have the US President himself talking directly about our elections. It goes to show that Peronists are still looking at the US with fond eyes, that they abandonned whatever anti-US attitude they once had (which, still, it was short lived, as Perón normalized relations with the US in the late 40s) and they will not take a fighting stance if they win the presidential elections in two years which, to be honest, is looking very very unlikely now.
This country absolutely loves the US and it shows. Which why I said a week or so ago that we are now fully tied with the US empire, when they fall, they’ll take us and “israel” with them.
In Argentina peronism took the place of a more „classical“ marxist-leninist left, so of course the modern neoliberalized socdemifyed peronists flounder at chance to take out fascism.
The issue lies not with Argentina but with its left.
I’ve always found it weird that Peron was the main guy for the Argentine Left, they need a new… face and ideology.
Straight up foreign interference, but it’s Venezuela who has rigged elections
The last time US bragged about rigging an election so openly was Boris Yeltsin.
Oh so they cheated. I was wondering exactly how in the fuck Milei won again.
The peronists (mostly socdems, but some are neolibs) are unpopular (Milei also bragged about arresting CFK, the main opposition figure in Argentina). But it’s pretty clear that the US gave a bunch of money just so their guy wins the election, they did the same thing multiple times before (which is why sometimes literal nobodies win elections in the Global South).
Everytime I hear about Argentina I get more and more depressed
To me it’s every time I wake up and realize I am, in fact, living in this country.
Straight up just a repeat of 1996 Russia. Can we expect Milei’s successor to declare war on
then?
I mean the bailout is big help. Just by offering that bailout to the current Argentinian government, Trump secured millions of votes for Milei.
Also polls always underrepresent this new era of right wing politicians since 2016. Polls showed Trump and Harris at a statistical tie in 2024, yet Trump delivered the biggest Republican win in decades. Polls showed Clinton beating Trump comfortably, Trump narrowly won instead. Polls showed Biden vs Trump to be a blowout, and while Biden still won, it was much closer than the polling suggested. It seems that people are shy to state that they’re voting for this new kind of politician, even to pollsters, and the methodology has not been corrected. A better way to look at polling in the modern age is to look at which candidate or party is ahead on the key issues, people are less shy about that. For instance, Trump polled ahead of Harris on almost every key issue.