ReadFanon [any, any]

I have zero proof of this but the timing of the corruption scandal and the way it took some of Zelensky’s biggest allies off the board, ones who he worked closely with and who were high up in his administration, right when Trump was putting pressure on Ukraine to sign a peace deal as US support was really drying up feels very coincidental in its timing.

I have no evidence to support this but I’d be flabbergasted if Ukrainian intelligence wasn’t working hand in glove with the US intelligence apparatus, same for the corruption watchdog.

It feels likely that they have plenty of dirt on Zelensky and they’re positioning to get him out of the picture by isolating him from his powerful allies and now installing their own into the upper echelons of his administration.

I think Budanov has been tapped to become the next president, one who will work in lockstep with the US, who will assume the role if Zelensky isn’t compliant enough with US demands or if there’s a popular uprising due to war weariness.

I bet you Zelensky will flee to Israel, or at least he will attempt to, under a second wave of the corruption scandal right when there are protests or there’s a peak in discontent for whatever reason, (e.g. when the government has left Kiev without electricity for over two weeks and the people have had enough of it.)

I always switch to hypotheticals “Does that mean…?” or I put words in their mouths “So clearly Hakeem Jeffries will also be calling for…”

If it’s veiled in JAQing off or lib-style smuglord irony it doesn’t attract too much serious attention imo. I doubt a judge is gonna listen to any charges brought against you because you asked a hypothetical to highlight the hypocrisy of Jeffries’ position or because you said something ironic online.

The last line I put in the top comment is completely unnecessary though.

Wait, so if the breakdown of the rule of law and of democracy in Venezuela are legitimate grounds for an illegal invasion of Venezuela by the US, according to Jeffries, and the act of committing war crimes on Venezuela represents the breakdown of the rule of law and of democracy in the US… does that mean Hakeem Jeffries is implicitly advocating for the US head of state to be kidnapped by a foreign military force and for the US to be bombed into submission until democracy and the rule of law is reestablished?

I never knew he was cool like that.

Same here. They still do it, and the even claim that it was a “withdrawal” from Vietnam after achieving their goals (??) and not a defeat as well.

They do something similar for Afghanistan too.

When someone is that deep in the trashcan of ideology I don’t think there’s any reasoning with them tbh. Best to just close the lid and walk away. We can talk about what objectives were achieved in these wars, sure, but if you want me to agree with you that these wars were victories for the US then I’m afraid I’m just not capable of that level of suspension of disbelief.

The question, though, is how badly will this affect Venezuelan resistance?

Very hard to tell and I think it’s going to be largely contingent on the Venezuelan military response. The colectivos are armed and trained but they are militias and they aren’t likely to be able to resist in a significant way without Venezuelan military support, especially if the military turns on them.

If it was a full-blown Afghanistan style occupation then the colectivos could be expected to be very useful as an insurgent force but I don’t think this one is a fight they are big enough to take on so as it stands currently, I think the vast majority of the resistance would come from the Venezuelan military, which appears not to have fired a single shot.

How far in the territory can American aircrafts go before they’re in serious trouble?

Honestly, I’m not a military guy I’m a geopolitics girlie so I can’t say anything authoritatively in this respect but it’s hard to imagine a Venezuelan military with air defence capabilities enough to resist the US. If they went all-in on drones and prepared for a pitched battle then it’s possible that there would be strong resistance but I don’t know how realistic that would have been.

Venezuela isn’t renowned for its military capacity and their military, at least historically, has a tendency towards disloyalty so I’m not that hopeful about their capacity to pose much resistance at this stage.

Agreed on all points. You laid it all out really well here.

My guess is a puppet comprador government for Venezuela if things go to plan for the US, with all the major oil contracts going to US companies (or a privatization and American buy up of the Venezuelan nationalized oil industry, more than likely.)

This is very much in line with what the US has been signalling with foreign policy it has been withdrawing from its NATO commitments and where it has indicated that it will be less involved in the world, strongly implying a return to the Monroe Doctrine era. But there are so many moving parts and they are all moving so quickly that it’s hard to get a good read on what will happen next.

I would expect that the US won’t want to get bogged down in Venezuela, militarily or through administration, because Iran is the next target.

Rules based order my ass.

When the US talks of a rules based order they mean “we make the rules and you take the orders.”

Petition to refer to this and all upcoming US wars of imperialism as “special military operations” when talking to libs, just so it will get under their skin by highlighting their opportunistic, selective antiwar and anti-“dictatorship” political posturing.

The only hope was Russia coming through for Venezuela but I wasn’t convinced that this was anything more than bluster or geopolitical jockeying.

Who knows if there was actually any moves to advance this and, even if it did have enough time to get implemented, what use would it have been if the Venezuelan military had (apparently) been bought off or ordered to stand down by a seditious general or two? I mean, it’s not like it would have been the first time for the Venezuelan military to betray the government and the people.

Exactly.

I don’t want to downplay the fuckery that this is and how awful things are getting for Venezuelans but it feels like this is an indication of where the US economy is at, since this is the classic playbook for distraction from economic woes and to do yet-another wealth transfer from the public purse to the M-I complex while driving up the price of oil at least temporarily and gaining access to vast mineral wealth in the longer term.

I’m reading it as a troubling development for the geopolitical situation around the world because the messier the US economy gets, the more it will spill out onto other countries. I was hoping for the US to get another bloody nose, for all the obvious reasons but also because it might make them think twice about starting shit on with Iran again.

But that’s very idealistic of me. After all, you cannot reason with a rabid dog - there’s only one way of dealing with it.

Very much agreed. I actually put a link to the documentary covering this chapter of Venezuelan history in case anyone isn’t aware of it in a top level comment just a moment ago so it’s good to see others discussing it too. This moment in time has been in the pipeline for over two decades (and honestly it’s really frustrating that the left and the anti-war movement in the west as seemingly been caught with its pants down yet again, despite having more time to prepare for this than a good proportion of people in these movements have been alive for. John Pilger would have some words about this, if he was still around.)

I wonder if they used a cell of Venezuelan gusano expats to conduct this operation, just like they have done with Cuba over the decades? I wouldn’t be surprised and when it comes to matters of imperialism you can accuse the US government of all sorts of things, including the most heinous of crimes, but you cannot accuse them of originality.

Dark times. I hope the fumble this one just like they did some two decades ago with Chavez but I don’t have high hopes.

Good luck, Maduro. Venceremos.

It’s very tight but not inconceivable.

In a country in a region like South America, where the School of the Americas has functioned for the best part of a century, with plenty of comprador governments and counterrevolutionary cells that operate that are essentially on the US payroll in one way or another, it’s quite possible that the US could have activated a plan to kidnap Maduro and it could have been executed within the span of hours.

This is America’s backyard, like it or not, and the Monroe Doctrine has set them up to be most effective in this region due to many reasons; it’s not Iraq or Syria which is much more difficult to penetrate with special forces and to glean intel.

Trump talks shit a lot of the time but it would be an immense public embarrassment for his administration if he falsely claimed that he had kidnapped Maduro so I’m very much inclined to believe this on the face of it, without any evidence to support or dispute the claim.

Time will tell.

A good time to be a Chinese car manufacturer, especially given the climate of Russia and CATL launching headfirst into sodium batteries.

Hi friend, I’m glad to see you here too. I hope you’re doing well.

Updated info on Ahmed al-Ahmed (feel free to edit into body of your post if you want to):

Ahmed al Ahmed’s cousin gives an interview to Al Araby. Full translation in the subtitles, but key highlights:

His full name is Ahmed Fathi Al-Ahmed

Ahmed is Australian, of Syrian origin, from the city of Idlib, from the village of Al-Nayrab

He didn’t know; it was not targeting Jews. He saw an armed man shooting at people. When he saw people dying and being shot, he couldn’t bear it.

At first, he wasn’t thinking about dying. When he saw people dying and bullets flying above his head, he said, “God gave me courage.”

Regret? No, God forbid. On the contrary, it was a heroic act. Why regret it? He is proud that he saved lives. Only God knows how many people would have died.

We live in Australia with all nationalities and sects. In our life, we never think about these things—whether someone is of a certain nationality or religion. Here, we don’t care whether someone is Jewish, Syrian, Muslim, or otherwise
Source: Twitter

Video interview here

Updated info on Ahmed al-Ahmed (feel free to edit into body of your post if you want to):

Ahmed al Ahmed’s cousin gives an interview to Al Araby. Full translation in the subtitles, but key highlights:

His full name is Ahmed Fathi Al-Ahmed

Ahmed is Australian, of Syrian origin, from the city of Idlib, from the village of Al-Nayrab

He didn’t know; it was not targeting Jews. He saw an armed man shooting at people. When he saw people dying and being shot, he couldn’t bear it.

At first, he wasn’t thinking about dying. When he saw people dying and bullets flying above his head, he said, “God gave me courage.”

Regret? No, God forbid. On the contrary, it was a heroic act. Why regret it? He is proud that he saved lives. Only God knows how many people would have died.

We live in Australia with all nationalities and sects. In our life, we never think about these things—whether someone is of a certain nationality or religion. Here, we don’t care whether someone is Jewish, Syrian, Muslim, or otherwise
Source: Twitter

Video interview here

Update: Appears one of the suspects is likely Middle East/Arabic/Subcontinent background. Going to see a rise in racism for sure

Naveed Akram has been named as one of the shooters. Reports are that he’s of Pakistani origin and he is Muslim.

Fortunately the guy who tackled one of the shooters has an Arabic name so my hope that’s going to dampen down the inevitable response of racism and islamophobia.

Ahmed al-Ahmed is the name of the guy who tackled the gunman. It’s going to blunt the Islamophobic response that will come in response to this attack.

Fascists often refer to Discord disdainfully as Doxcord because they believe that it leaks their details to the feds.

I’m not one to take the fash at their word but in this case I’d be inclined to agree. There’s nothing about Discord that indicates to me that it’s anything but a typical leaky platform which collaborates closely with government like WhatsApp or any other typical service like that.