Image is from this article, showing a march by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Youth. The preamble’s information came from a few sources, such as here, here, and here.
Over the last few weeks, pressure on Venezuela from the US has mounted as their newest proxy, Gonzalez, lost the election to Maduro. The Trump administration now alleges that Maduro is the mastermind behind the “Cartel of Suns,” raised the bounty on Maduro’s head from $25 million to $50 million, and is working to deploy troops and naval assets to the region.
While I would not consider myself an expert, I believe an explicit boots-on-the-ground campaign by the US in Venezuela would be, at best, implausible, though the administration has not explicitly denied it (and even if it did deny it, denials by the US are merely confirmations that are being delayed). What seems much more likely is an intensification of a subversive campaign against Venezuela which seeks to further isolate it, with intelligence from the US given to whatever groups and individuals exist inside the country. There are certainly some parallels in regard to recent US belligerence towards Mexico, with both countries being implicitly or explicitly threatened with military force under the guise of “preventing drug trafficking” - and, of course, spreading drugs is one of America’s greatest specialities.
Will this work? I don’t know, though I am optimistic about Venezuela’s chances. The Venezuelan government does seem to be taking this threat with a refreshing degree of seriousness - with over 4 million militia members being activated across the country as of August 18th, as well as a call from Maduro to the armed forces to be on high alert. The socialist youth of Venezuela are being mobilized in defense of the revolution.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
That was never the goal. There arent going to be a million Congolese, Russians, Iranians, Brazilians or Chinese making their landing in California or Southampton to put hexbear users in charge.
Many people don’t remember but there were serious calls for de-dollarization back during the 2022 BRICS summit. Because of the Ukraine war, BRICS leaped from relative obscurity to a major headliner in international news.
I remember very well lol. The summer of 2022 was the most optimistic I ever got, and it still felt just like yesterday to me because I still cannot cope with so much missed opportunities.
As I have said repeatedly on this site, the solution is very simple. China simply has to import from the rest of the world and give up its net exporter status (IMF export-led growth model).
This way, China solves its own domestic consumption and deflation problem, its industrial capacity gets redistributed to the Global South and raise the income in the developing world, allowing them to form an economic bloc that is truly independent from Washington. When nobody has to sell to the US, the dollar becomes useless. That’s how de-dollarization is going to be realistically achieved.
The current form of BRICS is what you call “multipolar neoliberalism”. With everyone trying to run a trade surplus to adhere to the IMF rules, they are playing from a very disadvantaged position and will only make the Global South more vulnerable to Western financial imperialism.
Turns out, the greatest weapon the US has - its trump card, if you will (pun very much intended) - is not its military, its nuclear arsenal, or its global financial institutions that can sanction any country. It is the ideological capture of the economists and policymakers from the rest of the world, who went to study in Western universities under full sponsorship from their own governments and brought neoliberalism back to their own countries.
How could one have international cooperation without the international monetary fund? Checkmate ultra, time to go vote
/sarcasm
Another tangentially related question: I’m a Westerner and have to rely heavily on English sources which tend to be heavily reactionary (the only other language I speak we just celebrated their shit getting kicked in 80 years ago so their sources don’t help either), or translated ones, and machine translation is… something. From what I’ve seen though, China seems to be making some strides in improving relations with several other AES states and what I’ve seen has said they desire to swap ideas on governance, and if they’re as ideologically captured as you believe would you consider it a risk of ideological contagion?
I personally find my first instinct was to presume party discipline should prevent that. However if that were enough, we still would have the USSR (or some state derived from it that was still nominally socialist).
Kim Jong-il hated China precisely because the reform and opening up led to the normalization of relations with the US, and most critically, with South Korea in the 1980s. China-DPRK relations fell to its worst in the 1990s and 2000s. For a long time, the DPRK was seen as a nuisance.
I don’t know much about Kim Jong-un’s position… he seems to like Russia/Putin a lot more than China but it’s hard to read given so little information comes out from the DPRK.
Interestingly, Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam - the OG heir apparent - loved China and wanted the DPRK to undergo similar reform. This led to him being purged and Kim Jong-un had to be recalled from the international school he was attending in Switzerland to be groomed as the next heir. Kim Jong-nam would eventually be assassinated in a Malaysian airport back in 2017, if you remember the news. Someone here once told me that he was a CIA asset and spent most of his time and fortune gambling in Macau lol.
I was the one who said that: admittedly its based on journalistic findings but it does track with how Kim Jong Ill has always occupied the weakest stage in DPRK’s history and letting his son roam free like that was a mistake.
The KJU era is very exciting however, considering that the ideological shackles of China and Russia are loosening and they dont have to occupy the “friends but dont tell anyone” zone anymore.
SWCC would have not been a good option for the DPRK because it lacked the sovereignty of the Korean peninsula to do so. The US would also never give the go-ahead considering ROK was going to be their golden child to delegitimize the socialist north. WPK executing KJN at that late point was incredibly lenient given that he had no other political platform other than hedonism and reformism, nepotism has its perks… For a while.
I don’t think this is even a question from what I’ve seen, which is curious. I do find Putin a curious case, as I’m not sure how that closeness formed, but there is likely something I am missing.
It would be nice for more information to come out of the DPRK for a better understanding.
I think the point is they’re not saving themselves. China’s growth doesn’t correlate with Africa’s well being, on the contrary, the world has been consistently getting poorer in the 21st century despite Chinese prosperity, climate change will affect these areas the most regardless of how much Chinese feel good investment into renewables(while keeping capital relations the same etc).
It’s a rhetorical lose-lose for China w/ Western leftist takes though. If working with China worked for these countries to elevate them to relative prosperity, well that’s China propping up capitalists! If they don’t rocket ahead, well BRICS has failed and it’s time to restart the “is China imperialist?” debate. I’m exaggerating wrt this thread of course, but I think an analysis one level deeper us called for. For example, how would these countries do without this cooperative stance? Are there similar countries that went another direction and how are they doing? What are the causes of differing economic performance between these countries?
You’re telling me this for the first time