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.
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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.
Read a very interesting article in the Financial Times this weekend. Basically, it argues that the revenue the United States will generate from tariffs over the long run is actually helping keep yields on American bonds from exploding.
Full article is here: https://archive.is/RP0UF
Remember, in actuality bond markets are the real sovereigns here, and potentially the only thing that could "discipline" governments (as we saw with Truss and the UK a few years ago). So what does this mean long term? Even if Trump gets voted out and replaced with a Dem, they're almost certainly going to be forced to keep these tariffs around unless they want to risk bond yields spiking. They only way they'll reduce that risk is either by massive tax hikes (politically untenable) or austerity measures (possible but again risks massive electoral pushback). So realistically, thanks to Trump's massive tax cuts and spending coupled with tariffs, he's sort of "locked in" the United States to committing to tariff revenue for the long term. Thank you JDPON Don.
Which they immediately fucked up when Lutnick insulted China by remarking that he wanted to get them addicted to US chips.
This not only lead to China telling its companies not to use NVIDIA hardware, but is accelerating the production of their domestic chips. Another one of those self-owns by the US. 
They've deluded themselves into thinking this is actually a good thing. Disregarding that tariffs will be passed on to consumers, which will lead to lower demand, and an economic contraction. Said contraction will lead to job losses and loss of tax revenue from every other form tax collected in this country. Humans are so fucking stupid, they'll truly believe anything to keep the house of cards from falling.
You can think of it like this: when reckless Wall Street bankers crashed the economy in 2007, who were the ones that paid the price? Was it the Wall Street bankers, or the 9 million American families that lost their homes and the millions more that became unemployed as a consequence?
Austerity against the American people wrapped up in a protectionist bow. It's amazing how many CHUDS don't understand how tarrifs work. All their rage boners are directed to smashing immigrants. I have zero hope for this place.
I don't honestly believe any of this. I firmly believe that a state with the monetary sovereignty of the US can absolutely have power over the bond rates. Bond rates always closely follow the central bank's policy, and whatever happens on secondary markets is irrelevant because as long as the state charges banks less interests on loans than it provides through bonds, bonds will always be profitable in dollars.
Why would the US gvt need to raise through tariffs the dollars it creates itself through the Fed? Just makes no sense
I mean in actuality you're right, yes. If those in power accepted modern monetary theory then none of this matters. But as things stand, the neoliberal brainrot has made those in power believe that this is the case, that they must follow bond markets, so then it becomes "true" insofar as this is how the world works at the moment.
Not necessarily. Japan doesn’t follow MMT and is just as much of a neoliberal brainrot. Bond vigilantes have been hysterically speculating for years about Japanese Government Bonds, yet nothing ever happens. Turns out the yield curve was under the control of Bank of Japan at all times. That’s because Japanese debt was only issued in yen, of which it has infinite supply of.
As @FuckyWucky@hexbear.net said, Truss was weak, and so she got bullied by the bond speculators.
As for the US, there is no credit risk for US treasuries. It is near impossible to get to a point where the US government cannot pay its interests, unless some major catastrophe happened in the country and its economy collapses overnight. As such, US treasuries are simply free money for the rich and there will always be a demand for it.
The main error of these bond vigilantes is that they still think of currencies in terms of fixed exchange rate as in the gold standard or Bretton Woods era, which hasn’t been the case in our world for at least 50 years. It’s also why Austrians (and some neoclassicals) continue to believe in gold and crypto and bet on the dollar collapsing.
Voting on 'nothing ever happens', because nothing ever happens with sovereign floating currency bond yields. Truss was weak, unelected and could be pushed out easily. And in the end it was the BoE who stabilized the yields, their refusal/incompetence to do it sooner was the cause.
They will do the latter, but not because of bond yields, that's just an excuse they make up. Demand for bonds will always be there because its the only free money you get for holding USD. Dems'll remove most of tariffs AND do austerity (not for bond markets).
So they'll definitely do more austerity then
I don't see how they sustain tariff revenue over the long term. Eventually tariffs would help domestic production, right? Maybe not as much as they promise, but I still assume there is going to be an impact. This presents a contradiction, if people and companies start buying primarily from US producers and aren't buying imported goods then there's less revenue coming in from tariffs.
This won't play out in the short-term, but if these tariffs last longer than the next four years it's going to become a problem.
Not without an actual, robust plan towards industrialization. Import taxes are just one tool in the arsenal towards such an end. Without a larger movement from the state, what you end up with is just a wealthy retail sector making a lot of money from selling inputs and finished goods to industry, farmers and the masses. As well as a shift of the tax burden towards the poorest of society. US producers will continue to import whatever they need, and pay the middlemen for it while the US public will continue to import cheap high quality goods from China and elsewhere, while also paying middlemen for it.
Basically, what you need is a larger plan and redistribution model that makes it profitable, efficient and useful to produce, say, Steel in the United States with its current level of financial wealth. Without that, you'll continue to import Steel from the rest of the world only the poorest of society will bear that burden while companies that cannot pay the premium just go belly up. That's not counting the things the USA straight up doesn't have any business producing, like oranges or coffee. Hawaii and Florida have better shit to do with their land than trying to make up for brazilian production.
The way I see it the real contradiction is whether the US government can collapse the dollar standard or not. Ending the dutch disease of just printing dollars for all purposes is the one thing that would push the american estabilishment towards creating a new status quo - for better or for worse.