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.
I was using a more naive definition of "ideology" here.
But if you want a WW2 example I was thinking about the other day.
Take the allied invasion of Normandy D-Day. Of course the allies are all just as much fascists, they all looked the other way and even cheered at the prospect of Hitler fighting the USSR etc. But even considering all of that I do not find many examples where the allies were so compromised ideologicaly that they made the wrong military choice. In fact the most obvious example was the Japanese naval strategy and the infamous decision to favor a "decisive battle" instead of commiting their battleships earlier.
Looking at just the most superficial points about D-Day here:
-Multiple locations were considered and they chose what made the most logical sense, they didn't just go to Normandy because the president liked the beaches there or something.
-The date was kept in secret. While Germans knew it was coming and they prepared defenses, they could not predict the exact time or location.
-The deception plans, not only they kept it secret but even went as far as to try and trick the Germans into believing the invasion was happening elsewhere.
Now compare this with the western media along with the Ukrainian Nazi government approach to the offensive:
Point #1: The approach to the offensive towards the south is entirely an ideological choice and is materialy proven to be the wrong choice.
-Multiple locaitons obviously exist, but Ukrainian officials and leadership of the army seems entirely obscessed with Crimea. The decision here makes no military sense whatsoever since Russia does not need Crimea for reinforcing anything.
Point #2: While the allies tried to keep the invasion date a secret for obvious reasons, the Ukrainians not only announced it months in advance but also publicise it and create hype around it, giving the Russians nothing but their own morale boost for free.
-The date was announced months in advance. The Russians not only had time to prepare massive defenses but given the modern context the Ukrainians had complete precise intelligence data, sattellite photos of all these defenses. Even so nothing was done to even pretend the offensive wasn't going to happen and even worse, when it was first delayed they even reported on the media, Russia doesn't even need their own intelligence agency basicaly.
Point #3: The ideological need to treat their enemy as inferior and to dehumanize them made it impossible for Ukraine to even consider doing something other than the most straight forward and obvious approach.
-Of course no attempt at deception, no sophisticated tactics, just group and charge. This was discussed many times now, they believed the Russians would just run at the first sight. Western media already expressed frustration, "that's the wrong tactics!" they scream as the Ukrainians do exactly as they're told.
Then when Ukraine goes back to the attrition war "NO the offensive isn't going anywhere, we gave you weapons, DO SOMETHING!" they scream as Ukraine now goes back again in another desperate attempt today...