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.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    22 hours ago

    The thing is with the HAS debate, is against any party with standoff precision guided munitions that can punch through concrete (China is definitely one such party), they’re effectively useless. The Tomahawk Block II cruise missile has existed for over 40 years, and China is not Iran or even Russia, I’m pretty sure that China has thousands upon thousands of precision accurate long range fires equal or better to the Tomahawk. Going back to HAS in recent conflicts, Iran had HAS for their aircraft in Hamadan: Israel punched holes in many of them, destroying whatever was inside (likely with GBU-39 SDBs or similar).

    The HAS built in Europe during the cold war were designed to protect aircraft against cluster munitions and the aftermath of a nuclear attack, not a direct hit from a weapon designed to penetrate concrete. Sure you can try alter the design and put a very thick concrete cap on top like Egypt does, but these type of HAS in Iraq also got destroyed during the Gulf War.

    Egyptian HAS:

    So I think US strategists don’t want to invest in it because they think that China is technologically advanced enough to the point that HAS won’t do much of anything, based off of their own experiences in fighting against opponents that used HAS. At best the US building a ton of HAS will force China to switch from cluster munitions to precision guided unitary warhead type missiles.

    • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      20 hours ago

      this was mentioned in the article:

      Air Force officials have also pushed back on the value of more extensive physical hardening in the past. “I’m not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then head of Pacific Air Forces, the top Air Force command for that region, said at a roundtable at the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association symposium. “The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons … you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.”

      this is the exactly the “we’ve defeated HAS before so it doesn’t matter” argument, but:

      Hudson’s report includes an entire section rebutting arguments like Wilsbach’s, including highlighting how physical hardening would force the PLA to expend more and better weapons in attacks on airbases to try to ensure success. The report also highlights how other countries beyond China, including Russia, North Korea, and Israel, are also very actively investing in new hardened airbase infrastructure.

      Now, China could likely produce a pretty substantial amount of those more powerful munitions, but even as the world’s premier industrial powerhouse there’s still limits to what they can do. And even a slight increase in survivability is still something, especially if it’s relatively cheap to actually implement, which the report also argues for:

      The report does acknowledge that IASs do not provide anywhere near the same level of protection as true HASs, which are costlier. It also makes clear that shelters, hardened or otherwise, are just one part of a larger base defense equation. However, its authors argue that robust passive defenses are the most cost-effective single measure that can be taken to provide critical added resiliency against attacks and help provide a key foundation for other concepts of operations. … Furthermore, “a $4 million fully-enclosed, substantial hardened aircraft shelter [for fighters] that may last for decades costs as much as a single Patriot surface-to-air missile or 1/20 the cost of an $80 million fighter aircraft that the HAS might otherwise protect,” the report adds, quoting a separate white paper on airbase defense that the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies published in July 2024.