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.
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.