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
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.
::: spoiler liberal cope
OK but some of the China Victory Day parade is actually computer generated, right? at least this stream that was linked in this thread
Look at this angle:
Then this angle:
The camera is revolving around the planes yet the same bit of the front is visible? It's especially obvious with the turbines, you would expect that if the camera is revolving around so dramatically you would be able to see the sides of the turbines in at least one of the shots.
There's lots of shots that I can't really say are fake but look incredibly sus because of how uniform and shiny all the surfaces are, like this one:
The marching shots seemed legit though (maybe some of them were a little too low quality for me to say that they were real, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). Maybe I'm losing my mind.
The entire thing was captured by dozens of different news organizations and you can see hundreds of cameras.
Faking all that footage would, essentially, be impossible with current AI technology.
AI video production is not perfect and they are even less proficient when depicting things that are not commonly available video - for example, a military parade with completely new weaponry and technology. There would be no footage for it to 'train' off of and learn how to accurately depict the desired scene.
I don't see any soldiers morphing into one another or spontaneously splitting into multiples - and there are hours of footage here.
Now if the planes were CGI, they would have been rendered into 3d models which would then be viewed on an angle - they don't animate ever frame like traditional 2d animation and thus have room to 'cheat' like that. It would actually be harder than just showing off the 3d model.
Yes, you're exactly right, and I thought of that too, but why the hell do they look like that? I can at least imagine that this particular broadcast had some additional footage that may have been computer generated and was added to fill the dead air between other shots (keep in mind, the shots that I'm pointing out are all really brief, and as I said most of it looks legit). I'm just saying that if one or two of these shots got altered by some software, maybe for just a couple of different broadcasters, then it would explain why Western libs are saying it was AI.
They are deceptively large objects with a conical rounded surface. It's an optical illusion essentially.
Additionally, they weren't taking off - they are simply traversing the runway for a parade show.
Also, forgot to mention, surely you can't have a ton of military planes taking off from the same runway at once, right? That definitely seems wrong and clashes with what little I know about air traffic control.
I can't imagine this incredibly important, well-publicised event would be subject to the usual air traffic control rules... also they're not taking off necessarily, just lined up? As for the tanks, that was broadcast live and was also seen by thousands of people with their own eyes... are you trying to say that they're, what, too clean?
I don't want to be mean but it might be worth taking a break from this rabbit hole
it's called an elephant walk, they just taxi planes around in a parade.
They do that for formation flying, you can see something similar at some air shows with large formation flights. Its like 1 plane at a time but very tightly timed so they can get a dozen planes in the air in a minute or two
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: