cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/73633
[Editorial note: Orinoco Tribune is not necessarily aligned with all the opinions expressed by the author in this article. However, Orinoco Tribune considers it important for publication in order to present various positions on complex issues.]
By Joe Emersberger – Aug 21, 2026
Since January, the US has imposed a level of subordination in Latin America that has not been seen since the early twentieth century when it directly occupied Haiti and Nicaragua. Today, only Cuba and Nicaragua deserve to be called sovereign states in the region. Trump has succeeded because the Holocaust in Gaza made western imperialists realize that they can get away with far more than they ever thought they could.
We who live in the imperial core should, at the very least, legitimize armed resistance to western imperialism at home and abroad, not make excuses for cowardly governments.
The despicable abandonment of Cuba
Cuba is hanging on by a thread as Trump has imposed a Naziesque fuel embargo on the island this year. Mexico and Brazil, two large oil-rich countries, have refused to sell oil to Cuba because Trump threatened them with tariffs. And Trump has actually threatened worse than that through his recent actions. In December of 2025, the US military stole a Venezuelan oil shipment to Cuba, and, soon after that, bombed Caracas and kidnapped President Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Venezuela has been run as a U.S. colony ever since.Oil-rich Canada, one of the USA’s top vassals, also hasn’t defied Trump’s fuel blockade on Cuba despite having diplomatic relations and a long-standing trade relationship with Cuba. Canada’s government is probably happy to see Cuba starved by the fuel blockade. Prime Minister Mark Carney is a shameless western imperialist. He applauded the US bombing of Caracas, supported Trump’s war of aggression on Iran, sanctioned Iran for defending itself against US aggression, and demanded that Palestinians adopt the ideology of the state that is genociding them.
China has sent solar panels to Cuba which, unlike other shipments of non-fuel humanitarian aid, directly undermine the fuel blockade. Russia made a huge one-time oil shipment that brought some relief. Iran has not sent any oil but it has its hands full expelling the US from West Asia with stunning success so far, and is making tremendous sacrifices to do so. Russia is fighting a proxy war against NATO.
One could still reasonably criticize powerful China and Russia for not doing more for Cuba, but the inaction of nearby oil-rich Latin American states cries out for the harshest condemnation.
Venezuela made into a US puppet
By now it is clear, despite some initial hopes I had, that Delcy’s government in Venezuela is a US puppet. Its actions, such as handing over Alex Saab to the US, and seeking rapprochement with “Israel” are so cynical that I now believe Delcy and her clique masterminded the overthrow of Chavismo and a gradual transition to fascist rule under Maria Corina Machado or some close equivalent. I believe Delcy sold this plan to the US. Her clique was likely motivated by a desire to save their own skin by sacrificing millions of Chavistas.High level betrayals are not new to Chavismo. Hugo Chavez was plagued by them as was Maduro. But Chavez and Maduro maneuvered around US-instigated betrayals before the Holocaust in Gaza changed western imperialism into something far more bold. In 2019, the US under Trump bluffed that it might invade Venezuela from neighbouring Colombia. The bluff failed, but in 2026 the U.S. dispensed with bluffs. The US military took a direct role in overthrowing Maduro because it failed to do so through devastating sanctions and by using proxies to attempt coups on its behalf.
However, the US military is also very casualty averse. Despite not being a match for the US militarily, Venezuela could have imposed significant US casualties had it fought back.
Surrender by exploiting Chavista discipline
Apologists for Delcy assume she made a good faith calculation that the costs of fighting back would have been higher than surrendering. But it is no longer reasonable to believe that she made a good faith calculation. I stopped believing that when Alex Saab, a minister under Maduro, was handed over to the US by Delcy’s government. The US is now certainly torturing Saab to try to use him against Maduro in a show trial. In June, Delcy’s government allowed the US to carry out assassinations on Venezuelan soil. The steps Delcy has now taken to normalize with “Israel” have further exposed her as a traitor.A Venezuelan friend I trust, who has been a dedicated Chavista activist for decades, says that government workers who are long-time loyalists to Maduro and Chavez are now forced to take orders from known enemies of Chavismo or else lose their jobs. In my friend’s assessment, Delcy has also exploited the disciplined manner in which the Chavista base has rallied behind Chavez and Maduro to survive decades of US efforts to destroy them.
That discipline made it important for Delcy and the US to keep in place a facade of Chavista governance through a constitutional transfer of power to Delcy, the rejection of snap elections, and a perfunctory defence of Maduro. Delcy’s government is still paying for Maduro’s legal defence while he and his wife remain hostages in the US. All of that has contributed to keeping a lot of the Chavista base relatively quiet (notwithstanding the dissenting voices of Chavistas like Luis Britto Garcia and Mario Silva) but that relative quiet probably won’t last.
Trump’s theft of Venezuela’s oil revenues has prevented Delcy from delivering any major economic benefits to Venezuelans since she replaced Maduro. Economic growth slowed after Maduro’s kidnapping. And Trump maintains sanctions to ensure that a transition to full unabashed fascism in Venezuela is not interrupted.
My Chavista friend believes a mass uprising against Delcy by the Chavista base is coming as she inevitably rolls back rights for peasants and workers in the name of rejecting “polarization”. My friend is probably right, but with Venezuela security forces surely being purged of Chavistas I fear revolt will come too late, and will be viciously repressed. Regardless, Venezuela will certainly not be selling oil to Cuba any time soon.
The fake sovereignty of Lula and Sheinbaum
Often lauded as ‘progressives’ who stand up to Trump, the reality is that Lula and Sheinbaum feign independence from Washington, and not even very well, while cowering before it.Lula won’t dare defy the US fuel blockade by selling oil to Cuba. He vetoed Maduro’s efforts to enter BRICS. He echoed the US rejection of Maduro’s election win in 2024 but immediately welcomed the fraudulent election victory of Ecuador’s rightwing dictator (Daniel Noboa) in 2025. Lula also glad-handed the US-installed former Al-Qaeda and ISIS operative who is now the dictator of Syria.
Lula’s idea of showing independence from Washington is echoing its vilification of Maduro but adding procedural quibbles: like saying Maduro should have been tried in Venezuela. Lula has also added that he does not consider getting Maduro and his wife released from the U.S. dictatorship’s clutches a top priority.
In 2004, Lula sent over a thousand troops to Haiti where they murderously consolidated a coup that was directly perpetrated by the US. Despite Lula’s service to US imperialism, the US helped railroad him into prison because Washington prefers far right vassals like Jair Bolsonaro. That didn’t make Lula less servile towards Washington. It seems to have made him worse.
As for Sheinbaum, her pitiful response to Maduro’s kidnapping was to ask the war criminals in Washington to give him a fair trial. Sheinbaum has stopped Mexico from selling oil to Cuba, and she happily handed out medals at the World Cup final standing next to genocidal Trump, whose bigotry towards Mexicans has been one of the defining features of his presidency.
The sophistries of surrender advocates
Every government has to make some concessions to western imperialism. It’s the inevitable result of living in a capitalist-run world, so one way to defend US vassals is to say they are doing the same as Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Chavez and Maduro all did.But it is absurd to deny the truth about the USA’s ‘left’ vassals – and repulsive to invoke heroic leftist leaders of the past to do it. Today, former allies of Chavez who participated with him in armed insurrection in 1992 now debase themselves saying that fighting the US is “counterproductive” and that normalizing with “Israel” while it perpetrates genocide is very important.
Contrast that with Maduro wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh at his birthday celebration about a month before he was kidnapped. The keffiyeh he wore had words on it praising armed resistance against Zionism.
Iran, whose government is valiantly resisting the US, has stated the obvious about Delcy’s cowardice. Her government responded with a formal protest. Of course there are no protests from Delcy when Trump or his officials repeatedly say that they now run Venezuela.
Attacking gringo activists to defend US vassals
Apologists for Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum often attack anti-imperialists who live in the imperial core. One piece made a very common line of attack as follows: “You gringos tell us how to make our revolution when our problem is you have failed to make yours.”There is a big category error in this rebuke. Activists in the imperial core don’t command militaries. Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum all do. If they aren’t willing to ever use their militaries to inflict casualties on the US then they are colonies, not sovereign governments, and certainly not revolutionary governments. Their militaries may as well be disbanded. Also, is it ok to call Javier Milei a US puppet or should we say nothing because Argentina’s plight is actually our fault for not overthrowing western imperialism?
As Justin Podur has noted, history shows that the imperial core is much more efficiently controlled than the periphery. Control has involved a mix of tactics that include bribery, propaganda and censorship, but also financial ruin, incarceration and murder. The characterization of imperial core activists as very free but too incompetent to overthrow their governments has been pushed by prominent non-violence advocates like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. That characterization is false, and to promote it for any reason—including to shout down criticism of Delcy, Sheinbaum or Lula—makes revolution within the imperial core even more difficult to the extent it is believed. There is no non-violent path to liberation anywhere in the world, including the imperial core.
Podur correctly observed “while the global north is unequivocally more materially comfortable because of all the stolen wealth, it is not an easier location to ‘go and make a Revolution’ “.
Another attack line is that it is easy to advocate armed resistance from the relative comfort of the imperial core. Again, it is literally the job of militaries in Latin America to prevent their countries from becoming colonies. Those militaries have no valid reason to exist otherwise. There is nothing wrong with anyone saying that. And it is also easy—in fact, easier—to advocate surrender while living in the imperial core. Surrender advocacy is what imperialists want.
Unbreakable Cuba: Why Washington Still Fears a Defiant Island
Never ignore the costs of surrender
Selling defeatism is easy. The assassinated Hezbollah leader Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah constantly did the exact opposite of that. He reminded people that the costs of surrender tend to be forgotten – and that liberation requires sacrifice.Underdevelopment imposed on Latin America and much of the world by the leading capitalist states has killed hundreds of millions people since 1990 alone. That’s the cost of surrender to western imperialism. Whether you live in the imperial core or not, you must never forget it.
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At a certain point you have to ask the question: What is the point of having a concentrated chain of command in individuals if you can’t ensure the individuals will stay loyal to the revolution? There’s a limit to how many times you can look back at history and say “oh, those weren’t really our true comrades, or revolutionaries”, because the Party selected them, over time.
Certainly, if you want to act unitarily as a state on the global stage, there are strong currents that pull you into a narrow range of action, and that seems to mean having a single head of state.
But after so many cases of “look, the number two just betrayed the number one, and sold out the Revolution”, doesn’t it start to become a question of judgment and/or strategy?
Forget the Great Man Theory of history, maybe we need a Loyal Man Theory of succession.
the Brazilian and Mexican governments cannot even maintain control over the entirety of their own territory, expecting them to militarily defy the empire right on their doorstep is absurd
I found this
valuable to read.No amount of geopolitics understanding can substitute direct action and direct experience. If I find myself frustrated with the lack of revolutionary action in the global south, then I must principally blame myself and the collective western “left” for allowing the conditions to fester by which the global south is forced or intimidated into inaction.
“In the [Russian] Civil War, Communists were expected to be the first to volunteer for every battle-front. In the Soviet Union today, they are first to be sent to difficult posts in industry and farming. They may be torn from jobs in which they are successful and sent to work which they hate; they must thereupon cease to hate it and do it well as an important task …” — This Soviet World, Anna Louise Strong
Communists should not be in the business of expecting others to do the dirty work. I’m not throwing shade at anyone here, only reminding myself and maybe others find it a useful reminder
I think finger pointing and name calling is useless. There’s no point of blaming US left for the failures of the Brazilian left, or vice-versa. Political organizing in any place has its own difficulties and contradictions.
Lula is receiving a lot of criticism from marxist orgs in Brazil (even from marxist tendencies inside the workers’ party itself), as specially in his third term he assumed a defeatist stance, with both poor domestic and foreign policies. Most gestures regarding defense of Palestine and South to South integration have been at most symbolic. He also signed a deal between Mercosul and EU, and allowed a deal with the US company (US Rare Earth, which has contracts with the DoW) to have them own a Brazilian rare earth mining company (Serra Verde). His domestic policy has been equally bad by pushing an austerity policy that will eventually undermine their own social policies (Bolsa Família) and a privatization agenda for ports, subway lines, water supply and logistics, many of those to be acquired by foreign capital.
I appreciate your insight into Lula. I desire not to place blame, but to insist a correct attitude and interpretation of events from my own western perspective, against what I think are other western perspectives. Maybe I’m out of place given the comm, I don’t mean to deny critical discussion among LatAm folks who are directly involved in the struggle.
The ethos I try to embody is that communists can never be let down by the people. Only the people can be let down by the communists. To think otherwise is to adopt the Kamala liberal habit of locating the fault outside of oneself, to blame the people for failing to act, for failing to manifest one’s theory.
If historical materialism is to be believed, the material conditions determine the sphere of possibility of human will to “swerve” history in a different direction. The focus of communists should be always on those conditions, not on the strength of will alone, and certainly not on the will of other people facing harsher conditions than oneself.
I appreciate your insight into Lula. I desire not to place blame, but to insist a correct attitude and interpretation of events from my own western perspective, against what I think are other western perspectives. Maybe I’m out of place given the comm, I don’t mean to deny critical discussion among LatAm folks who are directly involved in the struggle.
You have all the right to criticize Lula, Sheinbaum, Rodriguez or any other LatAm leadership, as long it’s a fair criticism, with actual materiality to your analysis. Fair criticism is a tool for improving on bad practices and fixing the direction of our political line. Within the Marxist tradition, criticism has always been a fundamental tool, especially since our movement was as an internationalist one since the inception.
We do have criticisms of our own to politicians like Starmer, Sanchez and others who are leaders of working class parties, even those who are not communists or marxists. But we also do criticisms of Western leadership and organic intellectuals who fall into the trap of falling behind bourgeois leadership, like Hassan glazing the Democrats (in Brazil we had our own pejorative term, “Axé Kamala”), or any form of sectarianism that causes splits in the movement or even denies unity in action.
The ethos I try to embody is that communists can never be let down by the people. Only the people can be let down by the communists. To think otherwise is to adopt the Kamala liberal habit of locating the fault outside of oneself, to blame the people for failing to act, for failing to manifest one’s theory.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s precisely the attitude the communist movement should have.
If historical materialism is to be believed, the material conditions determine the sphere of possibility of human will to “swerve” history in a different direction. The focus of communists should be always on those conditions, not on the strength of will alone, and certainly not on the will of other people facing harsher conditions than oneself.
Once more, agreed.
We who live in the imperial core.
“Please kill our empire for us, we won’t and don’t want to bleed for it, but you should. I know my plans never work here, but you dear 3rd worlder, you’re much more revolutionary, than a yankee like me, so you have to do this plan I have.”
Anyways can you guys just go to war already I’m tired of this austerity and like we want to go to Disneyland already, fuck. Just do it so we can all go to Disneyland ugh…Activists in the imperial core don’t command militaries. Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum all do.
The brazilian military has enough ammunition for about 24 hours of small arms warfare.
I will say that your heart is in the right place my guy, but latin america is not Iran and there’s no straight of hormuz to block here. The actual struggle in LatAm is decolonial. Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela are not fighting to liberate the continent, they are fighting to find some footing as semi-independent states with compromised territories.
People will say a ton about operation condor and the cold war. But the LatAm elites are derived from something even older - the interwar period when the US definitively displaced the british empire from the continent in full. A political renewal on that scale is not going to happen again without a collapse of the US and/or a rise of China.
Mexico is, in effect, an economic annex of the US. Brazil has comically fewer resources to work with than its territorial extent suggests. And Venezuela already fought decades of hybrid warfare against the US. To demand any more of them is, with all due respect, canadian.
The brazilian military has enough ammunition for about 24 hours of small arms warfare.
Yeah this is a huge problem, we cannot afford open confrontation with the empire. In fact, it’s election year and there is a genuine fear of the US interfering in one way or another. Not only that but there is also the fact that our military is very far-right and so anyone that is a leftist is worried of what would happen if the US decides to invades us.
I understand not liking Lula, I don’t like him, his government has been more and more liberal over time. I’m not
for him in the first turn (sorry I forgot how that is called in english), only on the second one when it’s him against Flávio Bolsonaro because I sure as hell am not voting for that fascist and imperialist dog.Brazil has comically fewer resources to work with than its territorial extent suggests
I could be wrong because there are gaps in my knowledge, but as far as I’ve seen talked about, the issue is not the amount of natural resources we have, but rather that we are a deindustrialized country that is subservient to foreign capital. We have the natural resources and capacity to have our own industry and to be self-reliable and self-sustainable even, the issue is the lack of a national project that is truly sovereign.
Which is not to say we couldn’t and shouldn’t be doing more to help Cuba, we can and should. That being said MST has sent 7.6 tons of medication to Cuba which should be more than enough to make the current government ashamed, yet here we are.
When we needed medics Cuba didn’t bat an eye and helped us as best as they could, and now we aren’t doing nearly enough to help them out in their time of need.
Who would you recommend in the first turn? I’m not familiar with all the candidates. Feel free to DM me if you prefer. Thanks.
I’ll be voting for Samara Martins from UP. I have issues with UP, from their amateurism when it comes to elections, to their very sectarian position online, the countless issues I’ve seen their members talking about online and their line on China where they call China imperialist somehow, but she looks like the best actual radical leftist candidate there. Another valid one I think is Hertz Dias from PSTU, I haven’t searched much about him yet and I don’t like that PSTU is a Trot organization, but it’s not exactly the time to care about that and neither of them is gonna be elected anyway, the first turn is a vote for ideological affirmation, and showing that there’s is a demand for more radical change is paramount as propaganda for us.
For everything else I’m voting for everyone I can from the Bancada da Esquerda Radical, but in my state they haven’t announced people for all the positions yet.
Thank you!
In fact, it’s election year and there is a genuine fear of the US interfering in one way or another.
Yet, you’ll probably agree with me that this doesn’t even matter to the article at all? Would they care if our Congress went from 50% Carlos Hitler to 80% Carlos Hitler on the basis of Lula being less media savyy and making pointless comments about saving Maduro? Because a Lula that signals to a foreign, first world audience is, simply, a very stupid politician with his head on the clouds and pretending as though this country is not infiltrated by megachurches, USIsraeli spies and under US media monopolies.
I could be wrong because there are gaps in my knowledge, but as far as I’ve seen talked about, the issue is not the amount of natural resources we have, but rather that we are a deindustrialized country that is subservient to foreign capital. We have the natural resources and capacity to have our own industry and to be self-reliable and self-sustainable even, the issue is the lack of a national project that is truly sovereign.
Yes and no, right? Because, of course, the greatest issue at hand is that Brazil was defeated after the Volcker Shock and subjected to deindustrialization as a policy. But there is also a massive disconnect between the natural resources actually available to Brazil and Brazilians’ sense of ‘destiny’. Brazilians believe that Brazil, if well administered, would necessarily be a wealthy and powerful country. That has never been the case.
In reality, Brazil spent the second industrial revolution with poor demographics, poor geographic distribution and no real mineral coal reserves with which to make steel. It spent the third industrial revolution looking for oil everywhere and failing to make real headways until the 21st century because the continental shelf of Brazil has nothing like the american Permian. Petrobrás was more of a refining company than an actual oil company for most of its history for a reason. Brazil was a historically agricultural country that wasn’t self sufficient in actual food stuffs due to climate and the disparate nature of its islands of natural fertility. That Brazil is even a net food exporter today is a matter of state policy and subsidies, not, as nationalist romanticism might term it, ‘destiny’.
Brazil is not the United States. It doesn’t a network of dozens of natural harbours everywhere, navigable rivers connecting the entire country and mineral resources ready for industrial exploitation. What we have in Brazil today was built up with a great deal of stubborn effort and labour, and only held onto because in spite of the Washington Consensus Brazil happened to niche itself well into supporting China’s industrialization with primary products.
The same industrial impetus that created Brazilian agribusiness is capable of creating the future of Brazilian industry. But neither of them rely entirely on natural resources available, neither of them are natural occurences and, as it turns out, Brazil never played this game with the kind of resources that were available to the historical industrial powers. That the monarchy could not industrialize and that the republic could only industrialize in part due to a very specific window in global geopolitics are facts that send ripples across to today.
you’ll probably agree with me that this doesn’t even matter to the article at all?
Yeah I agree with that, that’s something that the author of the article does need to take into consideration. It’s not some minor thing that can be an afterthought.
But there is also a massive disconnect between the natural resources actually available to Brazil and Brazilians’ sense of ‘destiny’. Brazilians believe that Brazil, if well administered, would necessarily be a wealthy and powerful country. That has never been the case.
Because the issue is not it being well administered, but rather of having an actual industrial and national policy for development. We weren’t “well administered” under the brutal military dictatorship, yet we had a national industry.
In reality, Brazil spent the second industrial revolution with poor demographics, poor geographic distribution and no real mineral coal reserves with which to make steel. It spent the third industrial revolution looking for oil everywhere and failing to make real headways until the 21st century because the continental shelf of Brazil has nothing like the american Permian. Petrobrás was more of a refining company than an actual oil company for most of its history for a reason. Brazil was a historically agricultural country that wasn’t self sufficient in actual food stuffs due to climate and the disparate nature of its islands of natural fertility. That Brazil is even a net food exporter today is a matter of state policy and subsidies, not, as nationalist romanticism might term it, ‘destiny’.
Okay so this is where a huge gap in my knowledge comes in so I can’t properly comment on any of that. My only issue here is that you are not presenting the reason for each of these things, making it seem like the issue is with Brazil itself. I could very well be misinterpreting your point here, so please call me out on that if that’s the case. It’s important to understand these things historically, but if those things are not issues anymore, because like you said, there was a great deal of effort, labor and state policy, than there’s is no excuse to keep us deindustrialized and subservient to the imperial core if not by an imposed policy by said core.
The same industrial impetus that created Brazilian agribusiness is capable of creating the future of Brazilian industry. But neither of them rely entirely on natural resources available
I’m not trying to say that we need to rely on any natural resources being readily available, just that if needed it could be not that huge of an issue for us and that the lack of such resources cannot be used as an excuse to not be industrialized. We can be a properly industrialized and developed country with our own strengths in the global stage.
Okay so this is where a huge gap in my knowledge comes in so I can’t properly comment on any of that. My only issue here is that you are not presenting the reason for each of these things, making it seem like the issue is with Brazil itself. I could very well be misinterpreting your point here, so please call me out on that if that’s the case. It’s important to understand these things historically, but if those things are not issues anymore, because like you said, there was a great deal of effort, labor and state policy, than there’s is no excuse to keep us deindustrialized and subservient to the imperial core if not by an imposed policy by said core.
They are historical issues that are both behind us but that send ripples to our time period nonetheless, yes?
Easy scenario that any brazilian can envision. During the Monarchy, Brazil was a slaver country with an extensive territory and a relatively small population. The state was aware of its coal reserves in the south and its iron reserves in the southeast. You needed that mineral coal to make steel. There was a brief moment in time when harvesting that coal was considered useful to the state. But it fizzled out. Not just because the Monarchy was dominated by aristocrats. But because the material conditions were not there. Brazil’s geography, market demands and population distribution just weren’t there during the early to mid monarchical period. The population of Brazil was nowhere near those Santa Catarina coal reserves, which aren’t even that good anyways and, besides, the river networks and the mountaineous nature of the great escarpment even make transportation a nightmare.
So, ultimately, Brazil entered the oil and hydropower age of Latin America by making Steel with American technology and using American coal. Understand? And even then, Brazil refined oil for most of the 1900s. Our oil production only stops plateauing low in the mid 1980s, and only becomes really significant in the 21st century.
Today we can and should invest in the ongoing electrification revolution that China’s made possible. But, on the one hand, we have to deal with a former developmentist state that maintained protectionist policies as a means to finance itself (to tax people, not as a tool for industrial policy). And, on the other, we are still a nation that could not industrialize itself in the 1800s, industrialized itself halfway through the 1900s and then deindustrialized itself.
You know the saying about how it is easy to complain about the SUS without realizing that it is being built in Brazil and not Denmark? I think that, ultimately, even when Brazil turns into a new form of developmental state, the results will not be China tier. Which of course they won’t be. But I do believe Brazilians expect that level of success from any government they perceive as ‘non corrupt and well administered’.
Ok, so I did misinterpret your point, sorry for that.
Yeah I can mostly agree with everything you said. The only thing I’m not sure is that we couldn’t be “China tier” of development. I need to study this much more, but what I have seen from people that is many times more knowledgeable than me, it should technically be possible. Just not under capitalism, specially this dependent capitalism we have.
The brazilian military has enough ammunition for about 24 hours of small arms warfare.
The brazilian military would be the US’s first invading force again.
first of all, brazil got tariffed anyway so lmao on that front. second of all, one can send non oil shipments which will actually help (electric trucks, batteries for residential refrigerators, solar panels), instead of aurafarming and sending food which they can’t distribute or preserve. you aren’t cynical enough about these people.
the less said about delcy, the better.
(electric trucks, batteries for residential refrigerators, solar panels)
I don’t think this game is winnable, frankly. Just as Brazil is not redeemed in your eyes for donating food, I assume China is similarly sinful for merely helping Cuba electrify.
Nothing short of the impoverished, destroyed and massacred peoples of the world mobilizing militarily to save the wealthy and powerful from their own governments is enough for the worldview expressed in the article.
I don’t know. I feel like there’s a difference between declaring total war on the global hegemon and letting Trump decide your trade policy.
I just think there’s a spectrum between openly handing over politicians to the US for imprisonment and shooting every gringo in the face.
I just think there’s a spectrum between openly handing over politicians to the US for imprisonment and shooting every gringo in the face.
The primary concern of the article is assuaging the moral conscience of first world residents*. And it does so by hiding behind Iran’s success while condemning Venezuela’s defeat. As though Venezuela did not fight and suffer at all! Both countries have struggled, one of them lost after decades of hybrid warfare.
All countries in Latin America are, at all times, under hybrid warfare of various kinds and are all in that spectrum of ambiguous resistance and defeat you have described.
And yet the OP lumps all governments together under the monicker of ‘surrender’ and ‘vassalhood’, regardless of actual policy. Why?
There is a big category error in this rebuke. Activists in the imperial core don’t command militaries. Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum all do. If they aren’t willing to ever use their militaries to inflict casualties on the US then they are colonies, not sovereign governments, and certainly not revolutionary governments.
Because they don’t care about the spectrum you have conceptualized.
I feel like there’s a difference between declaring total war on the global hegemon
This is what they advocate for. Nothing short of the total mobilization of the massacred peoples of the world to save canadians and americans from their own governments will ever be enough for them.
*White or non white, but moreso motivated by a romanticized revolutionary struggle than personal solidarity in their communities and with communities abroad. I don’t think people here are like that and, if they act that way, I think they are just momentarily misguided but ultimately good-headed.
china sends nowhere near enough considering its capacity, they could solve half cuba problems with 0.1% of their annual solar output in a year (which would be around 10-20% of cuba needs). i also sent solar panels to one cuban, but i’m not manufacturing super power, am i.
the biggest historical disgrace is south africa anyway in this shit, but for china this is very cheap way to needle/distract usa and aurafarm, instead of just sending letters.
(as for military mobilization, one has to wait a decade for demographics of venezuela to arrive to see how many lives they have saved, after all farmer bankruptcies, deaths of despair and things of that nature)
I have editted my original response to be less glib, but I’ll reiterate:
As Justin Podur has noted, history shows that the imperial core is much more efficiently controlled than the periphery.
This is the kind of bullshit the OP is about. Latin America is riddled with drug cartels armed and funded by the US, spyworks and sabotage commanded from Israel, asssassinations and hybrid warfare galore. We are the colonies. I will not entertain the delusions of some canadian moron who believes they are less empowered to effect change than colonized peoples because there are flock cameras in american neighborhoods now.
You know what being ‘less efficiently’ controlled means? It means human life in the peripheries is not politically valuable enough to be that controlled. That’s the colonized reality.
The article in the OP is calling for the military mobilization of Mexico and Brazil against the United States. That’s the actual discussion here. Not how many solar panels China donated to Cuba or how much food Brazil donated to Venezuela. And, yes, had China fully electrified Cuba in three months it still wouldn’t matter to people like in the OP.
Because the goalposts are always moving and there’s no winning this argument.
Not how many solar panels China donated to Cuba or how much food Brazil donated to Venezuela. And, yes, had China fully electrified Cuba in three months it still wouldn’t matter to people like in the OP.
This is disproven by the explicit stance of the article itself, which says China should have done more but praises it and especially Russia for their action:
China has sent solar panels to Cuba which, unlike other shipments of non-fuel humanitarian aid, directly undermine the fuel blockade. Russia made a huge one-time oil shipment that brought some relief. Iran has not sent any oil but it has its hands full expelling the US from West Asia with stunning success so far, and is making tremendous sacrifices to do so. Russia is fighting a proxy war against NATO.
One could still reasonably criticize powerful China and Russia for not doing more for Cuba, but the inaction of nearby oil-rich Latin American states cries out for the harshest condemnation.
He is clearly giving them credit for engaging in some level of resistance and solidarity.
He is clearly giving them credit for engaging in some level of resistance and solidarity.
The argument is not winnable because the goal posts can and will be moved at will. If this article wished to dogpile on China, it would, in fact ‘resonably criticize China and Russia’ more harshly.
You keep talking about moving goalposts, but I’m struggling to understand a consistent criterion from you. So does goving credit not count because, in a hypothetical article that the author didn’t write, he could have said something else? So he’s unfair here because hypothetically he could have been unfair? When is it justified for him to offer criticism or even acknowledge that criticism could correctly be made?
I think you’re just psychologizing the author instead of addressing the actual claims. Let’s say they’re a demon acting in total bad faith, that doesn’t make it necessarily true that he’s presenting an incorrect or inconsistent position, we still need some ability to evaluate the actual claims that isn’t predicated on enlightened knowledge of whatever spiritual disease the author has that in an alternate timeline causes them to make an argument not here made that we can blame them for.
I understand that you’re appealing in effect to the idea that his claim can’t be falsified, but I don’t see how he could falsify your claim either except by saying that China is perfect as regards this issue, i.e. any position opposed to yours is ipso facto false because the goalposts could be hypothetically change to something unreasonable.
not it’s not actual discussion, or the thrust is at venezuela as i see it. why did they have military after all?
as for the rest, usa already shown they can kill 200 fishermen with no reaction from the “colonies”, next they’ll show they can kill 200 indigenous people inside latam proper stopping some gold mine development or cattle ranching, at what point does the military existence start making sense in such a ladder? just admit you are a colony and stop wasting resources then and disband the military, all they do is usa sponsored coup anyways.
global north is in complete treatlerite nirvana, they don’t even need police, the workers will march to the discussion room of 5% col raise by their own volition after they made 50% more bombs filled with phosphorous, so that part of op i also disagree with.
as for the rest, usa already shown they can kill 200 fishermen with no reaction from the “colonies”, next they’ll show they can kill 200 indigenous people inside latam proper stopping some gold mine development or cattle ranching, at what point does the military existence start making sense in such a ladder? just admit you are a colony and stop wasting resources then and disband the military, all they do is usa sponsored coup anyways.
You started this discussion laughing at the fact that my country is under hybrid warfare. I feel like you are just being callous for its own sake, at this point.
what’s it for in non-colonized country?
Good post. I’m usually quiet about this shit, because the opposition is scraping the bottom of the (cracker) barrel for the most disgusting removeds they can find. We along with Syria and Ukraine are one of the countries with a cannibal problem, the opposition somehow found someone more disgusting than all the cannibals, salinas pliego. I actually miss the days of jefe Diego.
But yhea it sucks. I also think that this doesn’t begin to cover the bad parts. The Mexican government and the governments of Mexican states continue to rob land from people, in a systematic way. While the mayors, and governors profit from it.
The current sheinbaun and AMLO governments has been incredibly anti science and anti education. I have no degree but I know academics and things are bleak.
There is a consistent policy of de industrialization, our electricity is both rationed and more expensive than in the us. In nominal terms, not even adjusted. And, at least were I live, we have rolling black outs. And of course the government bans new investments.
Our gas is more expensive than in the us.
There is a lot of truth about the narco government, but if you hear about internal us aligned propaganda, it’s basically “the poor president has to juggle pleasing trump without betraying her corrupt party, she herself is blameless”. Wich makes me wonder why are the gringos so benevolent towards her, specifically.
Edit: the venezuelan government has always been 2 faced about it’s dealing with Iran, they had 30 years to do what Yemen did in 10. The situation in Yemen was much worse, and Iran did a lot to help re start venezuelan oil industry, yet under Biden the maduro government chased them out.
Edit: as for the people saying, you don’t have a military industry so you can’t have independence, well yhea, that’s why they suck. During the Mexican American war, there was one looser who after being defeated told the gringos when they asked were munitions was stored, " if we had munitions you wouldn’t be here". But war is precisely about logistics, and securing munitions, the fact that he failed at that, makes him a loser.
Maduro chased out Iran before J3?
Yep, there was a partial lifting of sanctions during Biden, Chevron entered during this time, chasing away Iranian investment in the oil industry was one of the conditions, there was still some Iranian investment in other areas. There was a plan too lease the Iranians 6k square kilometers of agricultural land, I think that also fell through, but I’m not sure if that was related.
Interesting, so it seems like the sovereign foreign policy has been dwindling since Maduro already, just the invasion subsequent occupation sped up the process. Country is surrounded by compradors and wishy-washy allies, decades of hybrid warfare also have an effect. I feel like people analyze the current situation in a before and after 3J, this leaves out a lot stuff.
Sanctions hot really hard, and most countries would rather be part of the global financial system than take the steps necessary to seek sovereignty. Venezuela had plenty of time to prepare, they could have trained a generation of chemical and aeronautical engineers, in those 30 years invited advisors from Iran, but they chose not to. I don’t know why.
Similar thing happened with Assad, he kicked a lot of Iranian advisors in 2018, and tried to get the gulf countries to mediate and get sanctions removed. Again, chose not to figth.
I think these liberal state apparatuses are not good at planing. And what’s saving Iran is that the irgc is independent of them. They were able to use those 40 years of revolution to develop themselves.
You sort of see it with China too, Chinese
(what happened to them?) had a few effort posts on how the financial system and the liberal 
of the party leadership favor short term policy.The national bourgeoisie wasn’t being held by the proletarian leash to break away from oil dependency I fear. In order to have a proper autopsy and analysis of what’s happening at the moment I think one would have to start since the discovery of oil, proletarianization and then into the guerrilla movement that led to this multi-class, multi-tendency revolution that pulled a zillion ways.
Yes, you are right, it’s in the interest of the national bourgeois and the classes of state beurocrats to have access to international finance, and this prevents long term planing, or building foundations for independence.
It’s also the foundation for corruption and the pilfering of PDVSA by the likes of al-Aissamis
lula is known for negotiating with fascists by anyone who is not a fanatic.
which is better than being fascist, but that’s a low bar isn’t it.
The “bar” for most (not all) latam politics is so low that tardigrade can jump over it.
Bolivia, Nicaragua and most importantly Cuba, they must survive the imperialist onslaught.
are you up to date on bolivian news recently comrade? la lucha continua
Somewhat, i mean shit is pretty bad here in Chile it’s a clown car. Che guevara was right, bolivia es clave 🚬
i shudder whenever i think of the consequences of losing.
Shoveling your forces into a meatgrinder against an adversary with vastly superior resources are the only meaningful resistance.
How about literally any resistance from Delcy Rodriguez, how about that? Because I think at this point the people advocating for maoist guerillas at least have a fucking ethos, while the “Oh there are other way” people just have capitulation.
The fucking Houthis could stand up to the US with backyard foundries and thrown sandals in the middle of their own civil war, and no country in Latin America can do anything but hand over their own citizens and let Trump dictate trade policy? You just gotta let them starve cuba because that’s meaningful resistance?
The fucking Houthis could stand up to the US with backyard foundries and thrown sandals in the middle of their own civil war
They have material, ideological, and military support from Iran. Ansarallah did not do it all on their own. The entire Axis of Resistance only exists because of the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. If Iran still had their shitty shah installed by the British, you would not have an Ansarallah or a Hezbollah or any of the PMUs in Iraq. Whatever Shia resistance groups that would exist would be poorly armed and poorly led that would’ve been steamrolled by the IOF or ISIS.
That doesn’t actually change the facts here at all.
You haven’t provided a single fact in this thread, you realize that right? All you’ve said is that the government is run by compradors, a word I don’t think you understand based on how you are using it, and even that isn’t a “fact” no matter how much you want it to be in order to justify the position you’ve vibed yourself into
At this point I just accept that everything said by you guys is projection.
Yes the people writing long effort posts explaining geographic, historic, economic, and cultural conditions are projecting the material conditions they are describing onto the world. That’s what is going on
The fucking Houthis could stand up to the US with backyard foundries and thrown sandals in the middle of their own civil war
Yemen and Iran did not willingly become what they are. Neither did Russia. Neither did China or even North Korea. No society organizes politically to undergo generations of unmitigated human suffering required to get there. They are pushed to the brink by the Empire, and then they survive. Or they break. Latin America has a history of breaking.
Would I do more for Cuba? Yes. According to the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry all we’ve done is donate something along the lines of 20k tons of food to them and this was back in March. I doubt the number is actually impressive to anyone who knows anything about humanitarian disasters. But I don’t expect the Brazilian political system to feasibly coalesce in a way that can challenge an oil embargo enforced by the US Navy.
The last time Brazil tried to use financial and industrial resources to create an oil refining system in the Caribbean we got couped. And that was in the last decade. We do not have the military power to enforce anything concrete beyond humanitarian donations.
Just a few years ago we were talking about how Iran betrayed the axis of resistance. First because of the death of Nasrallah and then because of the fall of Assad’s government. Now they are heroes. And I can’t help but notice that, at the end of the day, the only thing people in general and westerners in particular really respect is military prowess. Not resistance.
Doomerism is not political analysis. Countries have and continue to resist being CIA outposts and it is embarrassing to pretend there is no other option.
I am pitting “Literally being an arm of the US government” against “Doing literally anything else” and you’re saying number two is the only possible choice, citing the fact that others have done things and sometimes the US gets mad. The US gets mad if you are a lackey. If Trump is going to kidnap you unless you surrender your entire country to him, then you go to jail. The possible consequences here are personal to Delcy Rodriguez, and she is refusing to take personal risk, instead surrendering the sovereignty of her entire country so she can sleep safer at night.
The average US protestor in a frog costume has a bigger spine than her, and I’m not going to pretend handing over people you used to be in government with to the US so you personally don’t get handed over to the US is anything but moral cowardice.
Doomerism is not political analysis.
Not a single word you have just typed engages in any way, shape or form with anything I wrote.
I mean same for your post
Ahh it all makes sense, you can’t read. That explains why you have literally nothing to say based on any evidence. There is a famous communist frame about speaking on things you haven’t investigated
Nope.
I’m sure you do.
The average US protestor in a frog costume has a bigger spine than her
Synthesis: sending labia hats to PSUV to foment #resistance
Not having any material analysis of the differences of the nations you are talking about makes it really hard to come to more accurate conclusions. Everyone I see arguing the points you are making here, in this thread or other threads, are basically saying
“there are no fundamental material differences between two nations, and therefore if one country didn’t do something that another country did do, that can only mean they are run by compradors”
This is metaphysical thinking and is anti Marxist. “Venezuela should have done what yemen did” is capitalist bootstrap mentality, victim blaming, punching down, etc.
Not material analysis: There’s gotta be something you can do besides integrate your country into CIA operations
Material analysis: Actually not, every single Latin America can only be a US vassal state, even if they didn’t use to be, even if the only change is t hat the US kidnapped the duly elected leader of your country. The only possible thing to be is a comprador.
I’m sorry man, you just gotta stop trying to outmarxist people when your take is nothing.
The positive side of historical materialism is that the world is changeable. The negative side is that history largely sets the terms and timeline on which change occurs.
If humanism forms any part of your Marxism then you have to understand that not every moment is revolutionary, and surely every historical revolution was preceded by years of danger, loss, hope, loss, worsening conditions, and more loss; and that denying this causes additional, unnecessary suffering by forcing a revolution against the facts.
Marxists should be comfortable thinking in terms of generations and even centuries. That’s how long most things take to change. We got lucky a few times, but mostly things are heartbreaking and glacially slow. Is it possible that disappointment and impatience cause you to judge the people suffering defeat?
The point I think Jabril and Carminecatboy2 are making is that Venezuela actually has suffered a strategic loss, and that trying to wriggle out of that loss will not meaningfully change the situation, and only cause more suffering for the Venezuelans.
If Delcy has betrayed the country, then honestly where are the protests? Where is the mutiny from PSUV? I don’t think anyone sees a strategic opening that would be more than symbolic.
If Delcy has betrayed the country, then honestly where are the protests? Where is the mutiny from PSUV? I don’t think anyone sees a strategic opening that would be more than symbolic.
This isn’t an argument against Delcy betraying the country. The government handed over Maduro, there were widespread protests in favour of Guaido. I don’t know why PSUV is not mutinying, I suspect because they don’t believe they can replace Delcy with a suitable replacement and avoid a civil war, and that many of its higher ranking members are comfortable with becoming a member of the American sphere in return for an easing of sanctions and the threat to them personally. Likewise I don’t know why the venezuelan left are not taking to the streets, but I suspect the fact that the right wing and America just showed that they can replace their government at will and the people meant to represent them will acquiesce make it hard to muster any kind of useful resistance.
If humanism forms any part of your Marxism then you have to understand that not every moment is revolutionary, and surely every historical revolution was preceded by years of danger, loss, hope, loss, worsening conditions, and more loss; and that denying this causes additional, unnecessary suffering by forcing a revolution against the facts.
I don’t demand any revolution. I demand nothing. I am disappointed that it was this easy to crush Venezuelan resistance to the imperial hegemony, and dismayed that the current leader of the country and a supposed revolutionary party is so quick to abandon her principles. I think saying that she can do no other is not based in fact or reason.
Edit:
I also think going “Neener neener you’re a stupidhead” is not an argument, hence I have blocked Jabril.
Edit 2: I also think it isn’t revolutionary to not let Trump decide your trade policy. Canada isn’t a revolutionary government, it isn’t having a revolutionary moment, Carney is not a revolutionary. He was still willing to say no. And while he does face less risk than Delcy Rodriguez, she isn’t even doing a token attempt to establish the sovereignty of her country.
The decisions of the Venezuelan leadership are plausibly consistent with a nation that has suffered a strategic defeat and are minimizing the loss.
When the empire parks the Death Star in your orbit and demonstrates the weapon on a moon before pointing it at your feet, there is no meaningful resistance. You beg them not to push the button and try to salvage whatever dignity you have from the situation.
it was this easy to crush Venezuelan resistance
Idk, it’s much easier to resist when alive than dead, in a not-fully-destroyed country. The US struggles against Iran for well known reasons, but Venezuela? That kind of warfare is the bread and butter of the US military. Just drop bombs forever until the society is fundamentally destroyed. It’s easy. They don’t even have to fly far, it’s practically nextdoor. The Venezuelan military can resist an invasion, but they cannot resist an enemy that lobs infinite missiles without ever setting foot on the ground.
If resistance still exists in Venezuela, then they can learn something from the loss, maybe for example developing missile infrastructure á la Iran which could withstand a long term bombing campaign. Or they don’t, that’s up to them. They don’t owe it to me to end US hegemony.
The people who should feel ashamed at the moment are US Americans, for allowing their government to do this to Venezuela and forgetting about it after a couple news cycles.
I also think going “Neener neener you’re a stupidhead” is not an argument, hence I have blocked Jabril.
Oh wow you really can’t read without inserting your own false premises .
It’s a shame people here with such bad takes so often refuse to even attempt to defend their takes or explain why other people are wrong and instead just engage in openly contrarian idealist behavior before blocking people. It is incredibly revealing about their intentions and their complete lack of credibility as an alleged leftist. Wrecker behavior entirely.
Right, you think there is a way to “out Marxist” someone with “takes” because instead of applying dialectical materialism you only have vibes. Literally every statement you’ve made in this thread is just a “take” with no real basis in any evidence whatsoever
You are not applying dialectical materialism, you are just doing vibes yourself. You are a hypocrite. It is all projection.
Sure buddy, everyone here writing clearly researched and thought out analysis is a hypocrite and you are the only person who knows what is correct, which has only been “compradors!”
Entering hot wars of choice with horribly insufficient logistics? They are not Israelis.
Now did I say they need to start bombing the US? No? Ah shit, I guess that doesn’t fucking matter when you’re the comprador defense league on hexbear dot net.
If they aren’t willing to ever use their militaries to inflict casualties on the US then they are colonies, not sovereign governments, and certainly not revolutionary governments.
I’m sorry, the only way to do revolution is to declare war on the US? What?
Imperial core will fight until the last colonial troop. One way or another, left or right.
It’s clear that every social democratic government south of the Rio Grande must become the Viet Cong overnight and… Do guerrilla warfare on Venezuela?
must become the Viet Cong overnight
This is a completely one-sided and bad faith way of framing the argument that I feel like I hear every day at this point. No one is saying that the problem is a single abstention, specifically abstaining from hitting the “Permanent Revolution” or “Protracted People’s War in the Florida Everglades” buttons. The argument is that what we see now is a logical consequence of longstanding systemic problems and this is an example of why these systemic traits are bad. The author is probably overstating their case, but this false dichotomy between rolling over and letting the US dictate even your trade policy to make you complicit in genocidal sanctioning versus spontaneously conjuring a Red Army and Red Guard out of the air is not a worthwhile discussion, it’s a way to deflect from the idea that these states are engaging in something even worse than appeasement instead of developing any strategy to resist the US on the basis of international solidarity even of their immediate allies.
Maybe the author is wrong, but screaming “START A REVOLUTION TOMORROW THEN!” is only a good rhetorical strategy if you’re a twitch streamer who larps as a proponent of Lenin while operating as a socdem, and regardless is a bad strategy for determining the truth of the matter.
If you were really a revolutionary you would ensure the downfall of the Venezuelan government and then order all Venezuelans to invade the US.
I call it the ‘don’t siege stalingrad, merely take it’ revolutionary school.
Yes they want more dead abuelitas, somehow if enough Venezuelan blood is spilled I guess the US will just give up??
Maoist-Branniganist thought
yes actually, at least for Venezuela, declaring war should be the expected response to a foreign power invading and kidnapping your head of state. it is humiliating to watch PSUV roll over for the imperialists like this. Independence and freedom carries a heavy cost, but it is worth any price. Vietnam didn’t win their sovereignty by begging, it took millions of martyrs. Iran and Gazans understand this too.
What would the military strategy have been?
defensive asymmetric, like Vietnam, like Iran. They wouldn’t be able to get maduro and flores back, they would certainly have their cities and infrastructure heavily bombed, but would the US dare to invade? I don’t know, but Venezuela has the geography and popular support to make it a daunting task for the imperialists. They seem unwilling to do so for Iran, but Venezuela would be logistically easier and thus more likely. But even then, an invasion would give the resistance the opportunity to inflict casualties on the imperialists and an sustaining an occupation is not cheap, even for an empire. All PSUV would have to achieve is survival, while the US has the impossible task of extinguishing all resistance and establishing a “legitimate” puppet government that everyone will see as a sham. A stronger US miltiary in the past has repeatedly failed to do this, and they are failing again in Iran. They can’t even seem to achieve this in tiny, isolated Gaza, despite the extreme violence and brutality. Victory is not impossible, just very difficult and very costly.
Such a war would have also destabilize the politics of the entire region, would we have seen the social democratic governments in Columbia, Peru, Bolivia fall like they did if the Venezuelan government refused to submit? again, I can’t say for sure, but such a blatant war of aggression would have galvanized leftist resistance. There would be significant pressure on Latin American governments through refugees and popular outcry at Americans atrocities. It would have severely complicated USA’s relationships with the rest of Latin America and beyond, complications the US would rather not have.
infrastructure can be rebuilt, martyrs can be memorialized, a nation’s history cannot be rewritten. Whatever the future holds, Gaza’s sacrifice has made the Zionist Entity’s name synonymous with genocide and Palestine with resistance. Iran’s sacrifices have allowed them to hold a knife to one of the world’s economic arteries and has force every nation to reckon with that fact that unprovoked, imperialist wars of aggression still have consequences. We see the alternative in Venezuela: they have sacrificed their gold reserves, their natural resources, their own people to the ravenous beast and what they get in return is humiliation and enriching the empire that wages war in their former allies. Is peace worth that price?
Venezuelans get to make that decision, and I don’t necessarily condemn them for what they’ve done in the face of aggression, but I cringe with every shameful act of submission they are forced to do. Resistance is victory in itself, and creates new opportunities that wouldn’t have existed before. And I know and believe the words of Uncle Ho: "Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom”
What would the “defensive asymmetric” strategy actually be? What would they do? Guerrilla resistance in the face of an invasion? They were quite obviously prepared for that, but the US didn’t invade. So every single Venezuelan could take to the jungles with guns, but there’s no one to fight.
Vietnam was invaded after years of trying very hard not to be, of taking covert and overt military attacks from the US while their country was literally split in two. They did everything they possibly could to avoid a US invasion because they saw what happened in Korea.
infrastructure can be rebuilt, martyrs can be memorialized, a nation’s history cannot be rewritten.
This is enormously callous and shortsighted. You’re basically just saying any number of dead third worlders is worth it. And infrastructure actually can’t just ‘be rebuilt’. The US in wartime is extremely effective at destroying countries just like Venezuela top to bottom. They did it in Libya and Iraq. Would that be better than Delcy? A true war against the US would mean millions of dead Venezuelans. Actually think about inviting that.
Iran, too, avoided war as long as it could. It never directly attacked the US or its vassals unprovoked, let devastating assassinations to unanswered over and over again, compromised its economic system to attempt to appease the empire, repeatedly entered into fake-ass negotiations, anything it could possibly do not to have a war with America. Now that they have, an extremely particular set of circumstances totally unlike anything available to Venezuela has enabled them to win decisively. What is Venezuela’s equivalent to the Iranian missile program, drone production, or Strait of Hormuz? Iran is also FUCKING HUGE and ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET. No aircraft carriers needed that you can strain. They’ll just fly from Puerto Rico.
I too would like to see Venezuela more effectively resist, but sometimes the option simply doesn’t exist.
Resistance is victory in itself
Not if you lose.
They seem unwilling to do so for Iran, but Venezuela would be logistically easier and thus more likely.
It’s vastly logistically easier. The US can just use Puerto Rico along with other Caribbean states as staging grounds instead of straining their logistics with the case of Iran. Read up about what the US had to do to transport troops from the US to Vietnam. It involved hopping multiple Pacific islands before stopping at a puppet regime in South Vietnam. Fortunately for Iran, US logistics have atrophied since then.
But we are not talking about Iran or Vietnam. Outside of Cuba, the US has a pretty good record in crushing leftist governments or otherwise toppling non-leftist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. Examples include Grenada, Panama, Chile, and Haiti. Why has the US been so successful? To paraphrase a Mexican president, “Poor Latin America, so far from God, so close to the United States of America.”
There was a moment in history where the close distance between the US and Latin America/the Caribbean could’ve been exploited as a weakness, where a few well-placed IRBMs, ideally with nuclear warheads, could’ve acted as deterrence against the Yanqui menace. Too bad Khrushchev had to do a Khrushchev and fuck things up.
lie to usa (instead of going through) and shoot down the helicopter,
execute survivors during “escape attempt”trade the survivors away for removal of blockade. you imagine political shitstorm inside usa if jan 3rd gone that way? completely voluntary mission with dead troops around?What are you saying? Lie to the USA about what? They tried to shoot down the helicopters and failed because the US is actually astoundingly effective at black ops work and has a gargantuan naval support system backing it up with very advanced specialty technology. I guess you’re saying that Delcy orchestrated the whole thing?
ah, we’ve argued about that already together. why does that black ops not work in sanaa? i think there were stand down orders, yes. not delcy alone of course, the military, it may look like “tonight folks, we are rotating units or repositioning manpads to hide them from cowardly yankees”, there are lots of ways, if you don’t see full picture to sabotage extraction route that soldiers on the ground won’t notice. there was 2 manpad launches and one machine gun firing, pardon me if i believe that not their full strength.
Ok so if you’re right (and I don’t think you are), you’re strategy is… Don’t get betrayed? Very meaningful criticism.
distribute manpads to militias, give televised speech (not orders to some generals, speech) that they can shoot any helicopter at will at night, bypassing chains of command, that at the day if they see helicopters shaped like this they are free to shoot. done. professional military will inevitably betray you in latam it’s law of nature
(preferably, not be inside caracas tbh) (meaningful part is never trust the army, same as cops, least of all the generals, the professional army class interests, such as they are, are completely unrelated to working class, they want not to die and get money, therefore if threatened enough they’ll just twist their thumbs unless their grandma is killed, so in surgical operation they just as likely to say fuck it, nothing gonna change for me, so usa excellence in those operations as you say it, is directly connected to that simple fact and nice cia communications)
Take out the Burger Town, for a start. Second, literally just keep selling oil to Cuba.
The US Navy was stealing the oil ships bound for Cuba, remember? How would you prevent that in Venezuela’s position? Keep throwing tankers at the US Navy?
Keep ‘em flowin’. Instead of just letting every other country get pinched off by the imperialists. If we look at how the Trump regime operates they do the same thing no matter what the other countries do. Name 1 country that’s benefited by acquiescing to Trump right now.
Ok so yes, your solution is to feed tankers to the US and also still get none to Cuba
That’s literally what they’re doing now but via the market.
Tell me, what exactly do you think is the limit to America’s power and what’s stopping them from taking all of South America right now. Because all you do on this site is go “nothing good is possible”, never revealing an exact outline of your incredibly fed-adjacent, american imperialist-friendly thinking.
Edit: is any resistance allowed at all by you? What are the limits of this resistance if so?
I missed the Saab news, Jesus that’s rough
As the CEO and Commander-in-Chief of Antifa, I bestow upon Joe Emersberger the field promotion to the position of frontline squad captain. Make us proud!
Joe is usually pretty on the ball, but I think he’s reacted poorly to the Maduro kidnapping and Delcy government.
It’s hard not to react poorly to the Venezuelan government going full comprador.
This sounds kinda like if I got drunk and angry but didn’t really know that much about what’s up in those LatAm countries on the ground.
Smells like struggle sesh… Give it to me!
I found YouTube links in your post. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
