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.
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
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.
This assassination, why now?
They've had a long fucking time to do this and they've not done it. What caused the decision to tip over to "we need to do this now before x happens" ?
Speculation: Was it the coming together of Palestinian groups and the agreement made in Beijing?
Israeli needed to throw some read meat to its base. The consensus on the ground is that the Gaza invasion is a failure and there’s 0 plan for afterwards.
The Sde Teiman demonstration needed to get out of the headlines, and Bibi gets to look like Obama in zero dark thirty.
I do genuinely think Israel is now very frightened given internal dissolution and the attrition of their army. Killing Resistance leaders has never been productive for them and they know this because they have been fighting them for decades, they are aware that the Resistance has great internal redundancy to prevent the assassination of a single guy being too impactful. It's like the decision to try and flood the tunnels: Israel has many engineers that could have told them it couldn't possibly work, so why do it anyway?
Your explanation seems very plausible, maybe the various Palestinian factions were about to announce something and Israel had advance warning and sought to disrupt it. Another explanation is that this was done for morale purposes for Israelis. The issue is that by assassinating one of the negotiators for Hamas, this means that Israel is now willing to trade the possibility of ever negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas and the end of the attrition and deaths that Zionist soldiers constantly face inside Gaza for mere morale, which is a dire trade. It's like self-cannibalizing when you're starving to death. You're trading an immediate burst of energy for an even more certain death by infection, or weakness.
I'm just not convinced that an assassination can happen just for morale. It's a goal undertaken for a specific purpose usually so my thinking is "We need to kill this guy to prevent [thing]."
Now, that thing might not be to do with the Beijing agreement, I'm guessing. But I think whatever this guy was involved with recently and was planning to do would point you onto the path of what Israel is afraid of and is trying to prevent by murdering him.
Some speculation on telegram that it was discussed whole bibi was in the US. Useful as a token for Isn'treal to say they've won the war and do some kind of negotiated ceasefire. Not sure if that will actually pan out after whatever Iranian response occurs
They should kill Bibi, half of Israel will celebrate, including the military generals.
the most fitting end for Bibi is to be torn apart by a crowd of Zionists
Like ceasefire talks?
(With lib hat on) Or they hate possibility of scahill interviews
If I were to speculate on motive I think it was a further escalatory step. The Zionists can't win this war on their own and their only hope of a decisive victory that restores western dominance is to get America to commit fully to the war and genocide, probably with boots on the ground.
This attack, combined with the terror bombing of a civilian housing block in Beirut, is likely to be intended to provoke a retaliatory response from Iran and Hezbollah. This response can then be sold to western opinion as "an attack" on the illegal zionist entity and activate American promises of "defending" the zionists.
Whether America has the stomach and the resources to commit to a new major war in the middle east is debatable but if they don't, there is really not much left for them to do but murder civilians as their Lebensraum falls apart.
This is also a way to do
for Gaza, so the IOF can deploy to south Lebanon
And if the USA steps in, how likely is is Israel to "win"? I use scare quotes because they were already cooked 6 months ago.
this comment upthread I think lays out four strong factors
https://hexbear.net/comment/5198278
I also thought that was a solid analysis. Things are settling in a way they don't like, so they are shaking them back up again.