Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela
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.
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.
Hungary blocks the EU from releasing a joint pro-coup statement on Venezuela. Only statement will be from the unelected commissioners, judging someone's elections.
Hungary’s veto underlines a fundamental flaw in EU foreign policy whereby decisions — including potential future sanctions on Venezuela — must be unanimously agreed among the bloc’s 27 member countries. This has led several countries, such as Germany, to advocate taking foreign policy decisions by a qualified majority. The Hungarian government couldn’t be immediately reached for a comment on the motivation for its veto.
Some people are saying this is fake news, but besides one newspaper, no other said it was fake.
It's funny that they qualify this situation as a flaw in the rules. You guys are the rules perverts, don't go blaming the rules when things don't go the way you think they should.
They need to just admit to the elephant in the room, Hungary needs to be kicked out of the EU and NATO. The west are in denial that they are clearly going full Belarus eventually. Orban is much like Putin. Hungary does everything it can to stink up the works of the EU, which rocks, but clearly they all see they are obviously hostile. How long can it last?
Hungarian Foreign Ministry press secretary said it was fake news
I fucking hate the EU. They want to sanction Venezuela, while they fuckin support Israel where, at the the same time there's a riot for the right to gang rape prisoners of war.
The EU is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the US. According to figures from the European External Action Service’s COARM database, between 2018 and 2022, EU member states sold arms worth 1.76 billion euros ($1.9bn) to Israel.
Arms have continued to flow from EU countries to Israel even after the International Court of Justice made an interim ruling in January that the Israeli army was plausibly committing genocide. The EU has a system in place to implement arms embargoes but has refused to apply to Israel, leaving member states to slowly implement measures under pressure from civil society with scant political will to do so and falling far short of what is required.
Sure you fuckin wankers, put an arms embargo on ... checks notes... Venezuela? Wtf?! You pieces of shit
Hungarian Foreign Ministry press secretary said it was fake news
I fucking hate the EU. They want to sanction Venezuela, while they fuckin support Israel where, at the the same time there's a riot for the right to gang rape prisoners of war.
The EU is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the US. According to figures from the European External Action Service’s COARM database, between 2018 and 2022, EU member states sold arms worth 1.76 billion euros ($1.9bn) to Israel.
Arms have continued to flow from EU countries to Israel even after the International Court of Justice made an interim ruling in January that the Israeli army was plausibly committing genocide. The EU has a system in place to implement arms embargoes but has refused to apply to Israel, leaving member states to slowly implement measures under pressure from civil society with scant political will to do so and falling far short of what is required.
Sure you fuckin wankers, put an arms embargo on ... checks notes... Venezuela? Wtf?! You pieces of shit
The arms embargo will do nothing to Venezuela. Chavez was smart enough to change all their American and European made guns, vehicles and equipment to Chinese and Russian made stuff back in 2010.
I mean, yeah... it's the principle that the EU is berating Venezuela and then they put an arms embargo on a country not comitting genocide while they send arms to an apartheid state committing genocide
And then they pretend they care about human rights
Absolutely crazy upside down world the liberals live in. It's like a parallel universe.
At this point it seems like it should have been obvious that Maduro should have adopted Leninist praxis instead of parliamentarism
He was funded by the Soros Foundation, the vice chairman of Liberal International. The ideal candidate for a neoliberal technocrat. What’s his problem with the liberals in the EU?
He was more of a classical liberal in the 90s, kind of a Thatcherite.
After the utter failure of neoliberalism in the 90s and 00s, and after the nominally "socialist" but fiscally neoliberal party fell out of the voters favor, he campaigned as a nationalist populist. Orban's post-2010 regime is a kind of local oligarchic feudalism embedded in the neoliberal ocean of the EU. His main project is creating a local loyal bourgeoisie, and he uses insanely corrupt methods to achieve this, for example:
His childhood friend, a complete nobody, suddenly became the richest man in Hungary out of nowhere by getting government projects and being at the right place at the right time when assets get privatized.
They use state money to seemingly nationalize multinational companies, but then they sell them cheap to local private equity, so in the end it is just reprivatization using public funds
And so on.
His economic policy is a bastardized version of the Asian Tiger economic strategy. Kinda. At least that's what they like to think, but there is no true dirigisme, because that would need a Keynesian fiscal policy with superpower allies willing to play along. They aren't building up local industry for the benefit of the locals - they are trying to attract global capitalists with the promise of cheap labor while still being inside the EU. Some of his staunchest allies are German car companies, but he's also inviting South Korean capital.
Sometimes they enact non-neoliberal policies (like price fixing during COVID), and then the stupid liberals usually say "see, he's just a commie!" just because he's not doing literally everything out of Milton Friedman's wet dreams.
But his whole voter base is built upon the people's disillusionment with the Western neoliberal order, and he uses the usual right-wing rhetoric, similar to Le Pen, Farage, et al.
This not only talk though - they are right wingers with many-many right wing policies.
Since he is anti-liberal West in rhetoric at least, he sometimes accidentally arrives at the correct opinion, simply because shitlibs are wrong about almost everything.
“Behind every fascism there is a failed revolution.”
From what I understand he's just in charge of a political clique made up of a national bourgeoisie. Said oligarchs make money from their closness to the state and it's ability to bring in investment and broker a middleman status between the core of the EU and Russia. The hungarian economy is beholden to Germany's industry and Russia's resources and energy, which means that Orbán and the hungarian political system is bound to the EU's self preservation in a way no atlanticist government ever will be. Their money, income, and assets are bound to Europe while western european elites are just invested in the US stock market and LNG importers instead.