The Great Housing Mission of Venezuela, launched in 2011 by Hugo Chavez, is the most ambitious housing project in the country's history. This week, the 4,600,000th house was built, with a goal for 5 million homes by 2024 and beyond. The program has built 1,255 residential complexes on a total of 9,837 hectares, an area equivalent to six times the Swiss city of Geneva.
The program additionally provides social infrastructure like schools, subsidized food markets, and recreational and green spaces. Over 70% of constructions are self-managed by communities, with financial and logistics support from the government. Communities also provide each other with materials - from each according to their supplies, to each according to their needs. Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian companies have helped supply the program over the years.
In Antímano Parish in southwestern Caracas, a group of predominantly women came together in 2015 and trained in construction, cleared land, and then built apartments while under the pressure of food and materials shortages and electricity blackouts due to the United States' sanctions campaign.
Claudia Tisoy, a mother and self-trained plumber, said “This goes beyond building homes for our families, we are also building the future of our country, with women leading the way. This is what the socialist horizon is all about.”VA
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
The old thread is locked so here's an explanation mostly, for @ziggurter@hexbear.net , on how the Bradley fighting vehicle was so shit it indirectly lead to the Oklahoma City Bombing:
Timothy McVeigh served in the first Gulf War and - as well as developing a battery of illnesses that may have been linked to experimental vaccines I.e. gulf war syndrome - wrote lots of letters detailing how terrible, dangerous, and not remotely fit for war his unit's Bradley's were when they were assigned them. He states he's terrified for the first time in them and bemoans that the US would give its soldiers such shitty equipment. He stated that his time in them lead to being part of the Highway of Death war crime, running over injured and surrendering Iraqi troops and civilians before being ordered to bury them alive with excavators. It's arguably the biggest psychological damage in his life (if you don't go in for the MK Ultra stuff for him) and the experience that seemed to start him turning on the US government.
Years later came Waco. He'd visited the Branch Dividians long before the FBI seige and murder of the group. He knew a lot of people in the survivalist fringe right, including the Weavers who'd previously been killed (some straight up murdered) in the standoff at Ruby Ridge. He knew these people personally and what did he see the FBI and US government using to seige and then breach the Waco compound but ten Bradley fighting vehicles and some of the same excavators from being part of the war crime that haunted him.
It was only after that he became as militantly determined to strike a blow against the US government as he did and his psychological health entered freedfall according to letters, and his friends and family. Obviously there's a lot of spooky stuff around McVeigh, but even if you only prescribe to the most straight forward, conventially accepted narrative, his rationale is haunted by the Bradley fighting vehicle. Although naturally, the media and government narrative don't really highlight the reasons why McVeigh turned so hard from idealistic, commended soldier to psychologically damaged anti-government terrorist.
Of course not. Reasons don't exist. Things just happen. Context is just a fancy dictionary work, not something to be considered when discussing real-world events.
Wow. Fuckin' hell. Thank you.