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.
As a China watcher™, I had almost the opposite reaction lol. A lot of the stuff displayed was already known about or seen before. What was most interesting was China turning their remaining 30 or so DF-5 ICBMs that haven't received the MIRV upgrade (DF-5B) into Fractional Orbital Bombardement Systems (FOBS), which is what the DF-5C is according to the announcer, similar to the Soviet R-36O. Interesting given the context of SpaceX's Starship and the "Golden Dome" project. (What is Starship strategically, an orbital bombardment system with very high precision, a 35 ton payload, and the ability to deploy various payloads in orbit). The other interesting thing was a first look at one of China's hit to kill SAMs, the HHQ-9C, similar to PATRIOT PAC 3 MSE. And the Collaborative Combat Aircraft China called the "air superiority UAV". Had a full sensor suite and everything.
I always need to open Wikipedia to even know what these system types are. But a FOBS (orbiting at low earth orbit instead of using a ballistic trajectory) sounds really powerful.
Still, how long does it take for such weapons to reach the target? Are they literally flying at orbital speeds? So then we say about 7.5 km/s to fly maybe 11,000 or 10,000 km to get about 22 to 24.5 minutes.
Yes they travel at orbital speeds, usually at altitudes between 150-200km for the orbit. I hate to say this, but the best footage you'll get of such a thing flying would be from the latest SpaceX Starship test.
The Soviets came up with the concept, to overcome the forward base disadvantage (US and NATO had nuclear weapons in Europe, the USSR did not have anything close to the mainland US after the Cuban missile crisis), to give them the ability to launch an attack with minimal forewarning, and potentially to defeat anti ballistic missile (ABM) systems. The USSR had 18 R-36O systems. With the ABM treaty in 1972, and the USA developing infrared early warning missile launch detection satellites, the R-36O lost it's strategic importance, and the USSR agreed to dismantle 12 of them in SALT II treaty, signed 1979. The remaining 6 were converted into R-36 space launch vehicles.
FOBS may gain relevance again given that the US has multiple technologies that could act as such a system with high precision (X-37 and Starship), and with the advent of the "Golden Dome" ABM project in the USA. China has experimented with orbital bombardment systems that are significantly more advanced than the DF-5C with its unitary warhead shown in the parade, including a hypersonic glide vehicle test in 2021.
Am I correct in thinking that the "game plan" might be to launch the FOBS then to use the hypersonic glide vehicle a bit before the predicted enemy radar/interceptor coverage to rapidly descend onto the target? And the advantage of FOBS over cruise missiles (or type 5 missiles in the graphics you've shared before) is that they have intercontinental range?
Also, I calculated the time to the target incorrectly. The time taken at an orbital trajectory (ignoring north-south distances) should be equal to
(longitude of destination - longitude of source) (convert to radians) * square_root (radius of orbit / gravitational acceleration)
An optimistic case scenario:
Missile launched from coast of China with longitude at 122 deg Missile destination is coast of US at longitude 236 deg => 114 degrees of traveling = 1.99 radians
Missile travels at an altitude of 150 km (so radius of earth 6380 km + 150 km altitude = 6530 km radius)
Travel time = 1.99 * sqrt( 6530,000 / 9.81) = 1624 seconds = 27 minutes
I don't know what anyone on this megathread needs the calculation of orbital trajectories for, but I can't let a math mistake slide.
That could be a thing depending on how big the payload is. Systems like the DF-5C and R-36O, they have a single unitary warhead that gets de-orbited by a "braking maneuver". But if we're talking about the potential military use of Starship or the super heavy launch vehicles China is working on like Long March 5/9/10, that's where it gets interesting. For instance, during the test Starship deployed 8 dummy next generation starlink modules into orbit (1250kg each). Now imagine that instead of being starlink modules, these were hypersonic glide vehicles with a nuclear warhead. Maybe a dozen or more glide vehicles (depending on payload limitations) de-orbiting at some point, individually aimed. At that point you essentially have the 21st century version of a MIRVed ICBM. The Space Shuttle and Buran could also do similar if weaponized among other things, but that required a crew and a lot more expensive supporting infrastructure.
Another advantage of FOBS is that you don't need to travel directly to the target, instead orbiting over the south pole for instance. Avoiding a ton of early warning detection sensors.