Image, sourced from this article, is of George Bush in 2002 meeting with María Corina Machado, who was even then being trained as a figure to oppose Venezuelan socialism, and very briefly succeeded with the Carmona Decree. Now the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, she has begged the Zionist entity to drop bombs on the Venezuelan people.
As of me writing these sentences, it appears that the ceasefire in Gaza is underway. Zionist ceasefires are, of course, an oxymoron - not only in the grand sense that their work to continue genocidal atrocities against others locally and regionally will not cease until the Zionist entity’s occupation of Palestine is overthrown and Palestinians can resume the governance of their territory - but also in the literal sense; that bombings and shootings are often only merely reduced, and rarely cease entirely (as was/is the case on their northern border with Lebanon). Nonetheless, hopefully the population can receive some aid, and the long process of rebuilding can begin.
On the other side of the world, it seems increasingly likely that a new war is set to begin. Because the US is eschewing the usual process of generating pro-war propaganda and casus bellis (aside from a laughably transparent Nobel Peace Prize award) and seems content to just skip straight to the “bomb and depose” step, it’s quite hard to predict what precisely they want to do. Anything seems to be on the table - from freely striking Venezuelan territory where “drug dealers” are to try and prompt a Venezuelan response, to assassinating Maduro and/or his generals and hoping a power vacuum can be filled with compradors, to attempting to outright invade Venezuela and establish direct American control over important government sites. All appear to be possibilities, though as of right now, the most drastic measures seem unlikely due to their difficulty.
We know that the US has almost totally abandoned diplomatic communication with Venezuela, and that the US has deployed warships, a nuclear submarine, F-35s, surveillance planes, and at least 4,000 military personnel to the Caribbean, with some sources putting the numbers higher. Some people have suggested that the point is to try and force Maduro into a situation where he must begin hostilities, or be seen as weak and perhaps overthrown from within. It is at least encouraging that Maduro is not like Allende in Chile, and is taking this situation extraordinarily seriously; the masses are being trained and mobilized in the event of an invasion, and military drills are ongoing. Venezuela has no real capacity to stop the US from attacking and bombing them, but it is much more possible to prevent a West-friendly puppet from gaining meaningful control of the country. A comprador might be able to make a brief statement or decree in a Venezuelan city saying that Chavismo is over, but actual power will hopefully prove very elusive.
2020, and particularly 2022, has clearly become a turning point for the Western imperial system, in which increasingly aggressive and reckless moves are required to keep the system functional (stability is, at this point, out of the question). Unfortunately, this has also resulted in the deaths of many long-lasting, inspiring figures, such as Nasrallah, and many more will certainly die before the empire collapses. If Maduro is assassinated - and I’m having trouble imagining how he won’t be doggedly pursued in the days. weeks, and months to come - I have hope that a successor will rise to continue to lead the Bolivarian Revolution.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
The big winner was the ruling center-right PSD and its coalition partner CDS, the right has, in all its coalitions combined, taken the center-left socialist party PS’ spot as the party with the most mayorships and won in the biggest 5 cities, another confirmation of the right-wing shift in Portugal that we witnessed pretty dramatically in May’s legislative elections. The PS with 30% lost but not majorly, which to them is a win since at the legislative level they basically tied with the far-right CH but retained their heavy presence at the local level and they also took, for the first time, a couple of long-held PSD bastions that the PSD had never lost. The far-right CH got 3th with 11% and ONLY 3 mayorships, which is far more than they gained last time but really nothing special for a party that tied with the socialists at the national level and that constantly brags about having broken the 2-party system. As expected the communist party’s coalition dropped to 4th place with 5.2% and 300k votes, which is more than we got in May’s legislative elections which was expected, and we got 12 mayorships, 6 of them with absolute majorities, which is more than the far-right, but this is down from 2021’s 8% when we got 400k votes. The coalitions of the post-trot demsoc BE with the green eurocuck L and the animalist PAN barely helped those parties in trying to matter at the local level, and honestly if the people who voted for them had voted for the communists we would’ve taken a lot more mayorships from the PS and the right.
We lost our biggest mayorship, city of Setubal, by a pretty huge margin but that was a complicated scenario with a former communist mayor that split from the party due to her being investigated for corruption running as an independent backed by the PSD, and apparently when she WAS with us she did a good job in the mayorship so people still support her. We also squarely lost Evora in the interior even though one of our best guys was the candidate. The one that personally hurts the most was losing Santiago do Cacem by less than 60 votes to an anti-communist coalition of the PS/PSD/CDS/IL that mascaraed as an “independent citizens movement”, which really should be illegal to do since almost everyone in the “movement’s” lists were from parties, the locality was governed by us for 50 years and it shows, positively, but it’s a little solace that the anti-communist forces had to resort to such an underhanded stratagem to beat us. It’s also dramatic how we’ve seemingly lost the little footing we had in the north of the country, a very conservative region where even the 1974 revolution barely changed things.
However we held on to quite a few of our other bastions and significant mayorships, and one of the most surprising events was regaining from the PS the increasingly important port city of Sines which we hadn’t governed for 20 years, and looking at some results there were a lot of places where we lost or didn’t gain the mayorship by numbers in the low 100s.
12 mayorships and 93 electeds to juntas all in different districts, at the time where the country has CLEARLY shifted rightwards, with local elections being far more crowded than they used to be with the far-right now being a valid option to vote for and a non-communist “left coalition” always available for anti-communist leftists that also don’t want to vote for the PS, and all this with the specter of the communist party’s anti-nato position on the Ukraine war which a lot of people still don’t shut the fuck up about, all in all, it was not a terrible results, I just feel personally shitty because of Santiago like I mentioned.
Speaking of spoilers in the capital Lisbon the communist party outperformed all polls and is set to tie for 3rd place with 10% with the far right, by less than 11 votes, with just 11 more votes we’d have taken a council member from the far-right. And as I explained before, the communists sat out of the broad “left coalition” that included the PS and every other left parties, and all throughout we’ve face accusations of wanting to spoil the PS’ win against the right-wing mayor. Well they can eat my ass because that coalition lost but clearly not because of the communists, the communists got basically the same votes as 2021, around 26k, while all the parties in that coalition summed together lost 15k votes and only got 33% losing to the incumbent right-wing 41%. The fact that the communists didn’t really gain much while the left coalitions lost votes just proves these coalitions are not just exercises of sum and addition and that if the PS wanted to win the mayorship and the support of the communist party all it needed was to not suck ass.
Next are the presidential elections in 2026, where the 3 contenders are a non-party frontrunner from the marine who was the guy that organized the covid vaccine distribution, the far-right guy, the center-right. There is a centrist to right-wing socialist party candidate that is demanding the rest of the left vote for him to stop the right, even though he’s not even backed by his own party, the demosoc lady in the european party and one of the more respected guys from the communist party, one of our guys that gets people to say “oh he’s really good…if only he wasn’t a communist”. Well, the struggle continues.
Three years ago I was certain that by now, the few left parties in Europe that took a principled stand against materially supporting Ukraine would get a significant boost in support. That hasn’t happened, it seems. Granted, Ukraine has given Europeans just enough for them to hold on to delusions of defeating Russia. But I’m wondering now if Europeans will ever regret supporting Ukraine as they have, despite the fact that all it’s done is further vassalize countries to the US. Not that these parties should have done anything different, of course. I guess the media has done a good job of disconnecting economic hardship from support for Ukraine?
Here’s to a better future, though. Thank you for sharing this recap, I learned a lot. Even though it sounds like it wasn’t a great result for the party, I personally do like hearing about community parties in other countries - even 5% sounds like a dream to us Americans.
Yeah the principled position we’ve had since the war started (and even before) is morally correct but politically incredibly costly, we’ve basically lost the “normal party that normal people vote for” we had somewhat obtained (for some people) after 2015. But aside from changes in how the message was communicated I wouldn’t have it any other way, for me obviously I feel vindicated and maintain that at any point in the war it would’ve been better for ukranians if their government negotiated.
Yes I don’t think people perceive them as related.
Portugal is also VERY pro-eu for certain reasons, and support for ukraine is viewed as being “european” and therefore “good”
Well, it’s only been 3 years anyway, maybe in a year or 2 people things will look better for us politically on that front depending on how the war goes, but even people who were saying “ukraine will win” in 2022 and now admit they have to negotiate are very reticent to acknowledge we were correct in 2022 and are more likely to just say we were accidentaly correct because we love putin
What do the demographics look like between the average communist voter and average chega voter? I’ve been wondering who that shithole party actually appeals to and why
Chega took votes from literally everyone unsatisfied with the 2 party system both rich and poor, including from the communist party and the major 2 parties as well. There’s a media myth about a straight transfer of votes from “extreme to the other extreme” that could explain explain the loss of power for the communist in the interior, but if you look at the numbers it’s really a mix of that AND moreso the decrease in votes from the 2 major parties that congregated in CH and edged us out a few years ago, also people who vote for the communist party getting older and passing away
The far-right here just has broad appeal for people who don’t care too deeply about politics, their rethoric is different, aggressive, anti-migrant and full of scapegoats, and they can argue that “they’ve had their shot, the country sucks, now give US the opportunity”, plus the media has major blame here, they love the far-right party leader and are constantly interviewing him, with big announcements for their upcoming interviews with him because on average their ratings have, like, a 20% increase during those interviews. So, like, if you’re unsatisfied in general (and obviously if you’re racist and are already prone to scapegoating migrants) they’re constantly putting this guy in front of you, broadcasting his message and portraying him as “against democracy” but also as an alternative to the past 50 years, of course people are gonna vote for him.
Whereas the communist party is pretty much erased in the media, and that’s been the case even when we were getting +10% of the vote.
The far right is quite trumpian in that their leader is completely venerated by their base and the show is built around him, in this local election he’s face was on every single party poster next to their mayor candidate, he is viewed as a “salvador da patria” (savior of the fatherland)
The communist party’s voter base is traditionally very old, they’re people who’ve always voted for us ever since the revolution and still value that period of the country’s history (and remember it, so they know what things USED to be like), it’s also, as expected more working class, the party totally dodged the “brahmin left” phenomenon, wealthy or middle class leftists are far more likely to vote for the greens or the PS now (and formally the demsocs). Though the youth wing is pretty dynamic and capable of bringing in new people to the party, I brought quite a few, but on average the number of people willing to join ANY party, much less a party like the PCP which understanding that it doesn’t have the media coverage of every other party has to depend a lot on party work and activism to grow, is very little.
And its strength was always pretty much correlated to organized labour in the country, which took major hits in the 90s, then in the troika period too, and now the government is set to try a finishing blow against the communist-aligned labour union confederation with its upcoming labour law. Organized labour also decreased here for the same reason as everywhere else, outsourcing, changes in political identity and in types of jobs people have etc.
Thank you for that answer. Pretty much what I had assumed, but I didn’t realize that Chega was so Trumpian in that way. Typical media to cover that so relentlessly and essentially feed it free legitimacy