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.
The Venezuelan opposition has apparently published their tallies online: https://resultadosconvzla.com/
Thoughts?
Anyone can make a website with numbers. They’ve been repeatedly lying and changing the numbers willy-nilly (69%,80%,70%,73% and now 67%). These are the same US-bootlicking golpistas that have been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government for two decades now (2002, 2004, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2020). Like everything else they put out, it’s fake news.
They also said they had 80% of the votes. They posted this on whatsapp after their first 4 websites didn’t work.
What about the images of the vote receipts that are supposed to provide the backing data for their calculations? The way I heard it, they had volunteers at various polling places that represent a diverse cross-section of Venezuela statistically equap to Venezuela’s diverse electorate from past elections, then I guess copied those voting receipts, then published their results. Are there other ways to make this proof they published?
They are mostly reusing the receipts they leaked earlied during the elections. Like I said before, Gonzalez voters voted earlied in the morning. They were leaking receipts with like: “Gonzales had 9999 votes and Maduro only 2!!” when most of the people hadn’t even voted yet.
The opposition and all the parties are actually part of the CNE (Venezuelan Electoral Justice) and receive the minutes with the electoral records when the elections are over. The question is how González’s “results” can change all the time, first 70%, then 73%, 68% and now 70 again.
What’s more, Gonzalez, instead of going to the judiciary and asking for a recount or saying it was a fraudulent election. He simply said, I mean Maria Corina said for him, that he had won because his own polls showed that he would win. The records they showed also had problems. It seems that they were showing that people who were dead or who didn’t exist had “voted”, while the electoral records of all the other parties were practically the same as Maduro’s. Even the anti-Chavista parties said that Maduro had won and the votes were the same.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. Since you seem more informed on this situation, maybe you can help with another point I’ve seen people give that I don’t really have a counter to:
Why doesn’t Maduro just release the results? Sure maybe they got hacked once, but what stops them from revealing the results again on a site like the opposition did so everyone can see? Just make another domain and put the data up there. That seems to be the main problem. Or like email results to the press or something?
When I can’t answer, I just kind of explain that even if he did steal the election, it’s probably better than a right-wing taking control and selling their country’s resources. But libs don’t like that answer because democracy is sacred above all, which I get lol.
Huge Answer
Maduro does not control the CNE (Venezuelan Electoral Justice). Its website hasn’t been back up and running since the hack attack, but the CNE seems to have managed to regain access to the electoral records. They just haven’t made them public yet.
Maduro, along with other candidates besides Gonzalez, filed a complaint about the CNE’s failure to release the electoral records. The Supreme Court asked all the candidates to present the minutes with the electoral registers they had, started the investigation into the hacking attack and ordered the CNE to release the results, I think around Monday or after that, I don’t remember now, or to explain why they weren’t releasing them.
Maduro and the other candidates, apart from Gonzalez, have agreed to be questioned and to give the Supreme Court all the support they can.
Huge Answer
I believe that this is illegal in Venezuela. Venezuela, like Brazil for example, has its own Electoral Justice (CNE), and this organization is the only one that should handle the elections and count the votes. They are mainly made up of members of all parties and independent judges. Maduro has asked the Supreme Court to check whether Gonzalez has committed any crimes by creating these websites.
And the actual results will be available at http://www.cne.gob.ve/ when they are fully released.
Huge Answer
That’s true, but I don’t think he stole the election. If Maduro stole the elections, then Lula da Silva also stole his election, which doesn’t make sense. The Venezuelan system is the best electoral system in the world, Jimmy Carter said so. When you vote, not only is your vote counted by the system, but you also receive a document proving that you voted. Rigging an election in Venezuela would be very difficult and pointless (it would be better simply not to have elections).
What some liberals say about Venezuela is not that Maduro committed fraud. But that the election was unfair, because most people vote for Maduro because he promises things and convinces public sector workers to vote for him. In addition to having the entire army backing him. And that the Chavistas generally “intimidate” opposition voters. And since most right-wing Venezuelans have immigrated to the US, Brazil and Argentina, where they can’t vote at the embassy because those countries are hostile to Venezuela (Brazil recently switched to friendlier relations), the opposition’s voter base has been shrinking year after year. (The same thing they say about Putin).
But even that argument is a bit wrong. The opposition has US support and used to have entire radio stations, TV stations and other things on its side. And the Chavistas had nothing. Fortunately, Chávez was smart and had a very popular TV show called Alo Presidente, in which he announced things live on TV, so most people watched, which helped counterbalance the private TV that the opposition used. But even the Alo Presidente program had an “evil” US-backed version called Alo Ciudadano (Which is currently hosted by a guy who escape to Miami after it was revealed he was a CIA asset). The US has financed several documentaries, books and TV programs against the Chavistas. The opposition has several media outlets that support it, such as the Spanish CNN, El País, WSJ, etc… So you can’t really say that the election was unfair, because Maduro was under constant attack from basically all the Western media, while Gonzalez continued to be promoted as this nice, democratic guy.
@Redcuban1959@hexbear.net will know more specifics, but i believe two people including Maduro showed evidence in court of the fascists having bought that domain before the election, built a website and had poll numbers on the website all before the elections. The website contained the poll numbers they eventually published and was shown as evidence this was premeditated
Yes, this is one of the ten different websites that the opposition created. First, they simply didn’t work, then they showed where you voted and whether your vote was counted (this didn’t work most of the time, it gave a generic error). And then they simply published the results like this. They also published random messages on whatsapp as proof that they had 80% of the vote.
They haven’t provided any proof or documents that these figures are real. And Maduro, the vice-president and some other generals said that the few ballots they presented contained wrong information and didn’t have the signature that all ballots are presented again after the election is over. Apart from the fact that they kept changing the numbers all the time.
And then there’s the fact that the opposition team supposedly collected all of Venezuela’s votes in a day and a half and counted them in a day? For example, did they go to some indigenous village in the middle of Amazonas province and get the votes from there? The CNE is an entire organization with Chavistas and opposition members who count the entire process, it makes sense that they could complete the count in a day or so. But now we’re supposed to believe that these opposition guys can do the work of an entire organization?
Gonzalez was the only candidate who didn’t present his electoral minutes to the Supreme Court, which are given to all the parties after the election. Even the minor anti-Chavista candidates presented theirs. Gonzalez didn’t even file a complaint with the court about the alleged fraud or ask for a recount. He simply said: “I won because my polls showed that I would win. And now I’m the president”. Which is really surprising, considering that he did this just in time for the hacker attack on the CNE’s website.
Telesur Article Talking About This.
Thanks as always comrade
Fake and stupid