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.
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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 mentioned in the article, "Some F-15EX aircraft have vented fuel at a higher-than-expected rate" - they do clearly accept some degree of venting, but these planes are going beyond that, enough for the Air Force to ground them
But this isn't a new aircraft type - it's the F-15, which has been continuously manufactured in various forms since the early '70s. Yes, this is a thoroughly modernized and upgraded model of it, but it's still not a whole new plane design.
The whole point of the F-15EX procurement was to take advantage of an existing production line to avoid these kinds of initial hurdles so common to new designs. Boeing were working on a modernized variant anyway, and were in fact already shipping earlier iterations of it to the Saudi and Qatari militaries - such kinks should have already been ironed out.
Except they were planning only 80 until recently (after dropping to that number from an initial 144), and then they increased the number to 104 (https://www.twz.com/f-15ex-eagle-ii-total-buy-increases-from-80-to-104-in-new-usaf-budget), and again to 129 just a few month ago (https://www.twz.com/air/f-15ex-planned-fleet-size-grows-to-129-jets-from-98), clearly indicating that there's increasing interest in the plane - they've already almost climbed back to the initial number. Also, this is just my amateur conjecture, but it feels like this may be related to the F-35 slowdowns - the reduction to 80 was in 2022, but then Lockheed shat the bed with F-35 deliveries in '23 and '24. The 1st increase in F-15EXs was in 2023, and now in 2025 we're seeing a 2nd (and larger) increase.
Today, after a substantial investment in the F-35's production.
Unit-cost by itself doesn't give the full picture, we have to take into account R&D costs, costs of setting up production, as well as total lifetime costs, which are particularly relevant given that aircraft remain in service for a long time, and have complex maintenance and logistical needs.
The F-15EX could likely be cheaper if the US bought more of them - the Boeing production line may have still been open, but it was presumably operating at a pretty low rate, and so some expansion had to be done for this contract, but it's still nowhere near late Cold War levels. It's just that the whole point of this is to be a stop-gap measure and supplement the F-35 and F-22, so it doesn't make sense to invest too much in it. The EX probably wouldn't have been a thing in the first place if F-35 production was going faster.
F-15EX is a ship of theseus type aircraft, built off of the base used for export orders for Saudi Arabia and Qatar as you've said, whose F-15s are significantly more advanced than others. Yes technically it's an F-15 (in the same way as Su-35 is technically a Su-27), but the avionics, sensor suite, flight control system, engines, and structure are different from the F-15E. The whole reason it exists for the US is because of post cold war budget cuts and delays in the F-35 programme, the US was supposed to have close to 400 F-22s and the F-35 has compounded issues from procurement errors made 20 years ago. But the same can be said for new productionJ-16s to an extent, and especially for the Su-35, they only exist because fifth generation fighter aircraft production is difficult and there's a need for these kind of aircraft.