#fucking tankies

[will-ruadh]

THE FUCKING M*NISOC CAME AT NEIL G4IMAN LMAOOOOO

[almostdefinitelydying]

Me: -reads a funny post- hah, that's funny..

Me, 5 seconds later: that's a profile pic of fucking Lenin isn't it? -sigh-

[anartificialsatellite]

If you wanna LARP there's people with foam swords meeting in the park every weekend, guys.

[hussyknee]

Lmao.

[jaskierx]

holodomor denial is genocide denial. the systematic starvation of an entire people is not something for you to debate on the internet with your lenin pfp and your xi jinping header while you sit in your warm safe home with a full stomach and plentiful access to food. the generational epigenetic trauma that is irrevocably coded into modern ukrainians’ dna after the scale of manufactured starvation that their families experienced is not a ‘narrative’ or a ‘lie’, it’s proof of an atrocity that you’re continuing by denying its existence.

despise the west all you want but do not sit back and enjoy the comforts it gives you while handwaving the experiences of millions of ukrainians. there’s plenty of propaganda out there for you to be mad about. there’s plenty of it on your own fucking blogs. you don’t need to start shitting on the graves of my family’s dead ancestors.

[woman-respecter]

lets make a rule that anyone with a [animal]girl[body part] url is banned from talking about politics etc

[spot-the-antisemitism]

The Glorious Revolution stuff is so irritating honestly. Like yes Revolutions can be justified in some cases, however they are a weapon of Last Resort.

Revolution is what you turn to when it's the worst case scenario and nothing else is working. Why? Because they cause a heck of a lot of collateral damage, primarily impacting vulnerable communities that need actual help, and it's always preferable to pick the option that causes the least amount of damage.

We aren't there yet, and you shouldn't want to be there. Calling for a Revolution now is so incredibly dangerous because we can still do so much to enact meaningful change without causing massive amounts of collateral damage, and we should do those things instead.

And if you think it would be somehow better if we were in such a bad situation that a revolution would be necessary, I honestly don't think you are being serious. We shouldn't want things to get worse just so we have the excuse to pull out an incredibly destructive tool in order to fix the mess. That's not a reasonable proposal in the slightest.

^^^^

I think it's because it's easier to reject the entire system and roleplay revolutionaries than it is to decide what is and isn't there to keep in deeply corrupt democracies

thank you for your essay azeriaisis

[arachnerd-8-legs]

really disappointing that bunjywunjy had to be pestered twice just to quietly remove their reblog after using their huge platform to encourage garbage like raving about the lesbian estonian soviet flag and how 'new pride flag just dropped' so people could go 'ooh pretty' about a flag that was forced onto us by ppl who wanted our culture gone and oppressed us for about a century in total if not more.

to say nothing or not show anything of the truth about that flag and quietly remove the reblog felt more like it was done out of obligation (and you didn't agree) rather than care for the subject matter that is still a fresh wound in our country's memory. it's only been 33 years since it ended.

I'd rather you make the mistake about something you didn't know (eastern european history is easy for westeners to overlook, because we're not a big country like them, we're not england or france or spain or germany) and admit/apologize for said mistake or even just outright state that you don't actually care rather than say nothing and quietly remove something so that people would stop talking about it

[notaplaceofhonour]

goddddddd the USSR fanclub is so creepy & annoying. I went for a walk in a neighborhood near the local university & nearly every street sign, lamp post, and electricity box for like 5 blocks was covered in posters & stickers with the hammer & sickle, Marx & Lenin, and calls for revolutionary war. some of the posters had already been graffitied, and I think I tore down like a dozen pictures of Lenin just walking down the street

[whereserpentswalk]

Made this political cartoon. Feel free to share it around just don't remove the watermark.

[beep-beep-imma-sheep]

"The entire country without electricity, hospitals collapsing, and they're like this. We're not to be demoralized nor weakened, 25 years are already enough".

This is El Cuartel de la Montaña. There's where Chávez rests are. During the entire blackout, that, for me, was 19 hours long, that place had electricity.

El Helicoide, the largest torture centre in LATAM also had electricity.

"A patient in the Noriega Trigo hospital in San Francisco just died. She was intubated and glued to a respirator.

The hospital doesn't have a power plant, nor UPS for the devices. They tried to resurrect her with CPR and nothing".

friend since 4 in the morning without electricity. The light came on about an hour ago with a lot of force and burned down a small refrigerator that we have with my mom and sister's insulin. This is a disaster. We went out to buy ice as best we could and the neighbor lent us some Colman coolers to store them in because the heat here is very intense. God willing, we'll get away from these people. Thank you. Anonymous. Please.

In Lecheria, girl.

Maria Corina is very badass, she flew with her rocket and left us all without electricity EXCEPT Chavez, Helicoide and Miraflores... it's incredible that they are even incoherent when it comes to lying.

— Without showing evidence, Freddy Ñáñez blamed María Corina Machado and Edmundo González for the national blackout: "People like that cannot be considered Venezuelans" "FREDDY ÑÁÑEZ BLAMES MARIA CORINA AND EDMUNDO FOR THE NATIONAL BLACKOUT"

Do you still believe that everything that has happened in Venezuela (electrical failures, shortages) in these last 25 years is the fault of others? No, gentlemen, it is a system of psychological conditioning to exhaust every Venezuelan.

— Hospitals, nursing homes, schools, homes... WITHOUT LIGHT The Helicoid TORTURE WITH ELECTRICITY What is this called? STATE TERRORISM

And this happened already.

Additionally:

Two former Colombian soldiers, Alexander Ante and José Aron Medina Aranda, were detained in Venezuela during a stopover while returning from fighting in Ukraine. Following their arrest in Caracas, both were extradited to Russia, where they now face charges of having fought against Russian forces as mercenaries. A Moscow court has ordered their provisional detention, which could lead to a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The family, who had been waiting for their return in Colombia, were devastated to discover that they had been sent to Russia without warning.

@lasttarrasque

@tren-trenvilu

@punishedsaints

@fuckyeahmarxismleninism

@prensabolivariana

@thegreenbisamurai

This is what y'all supporting 🫵

—.

Everyone else, feel free to tag any other chavista/ tankie/ communist / leftie who is speaking about Venezuela when they know nothing about us or out history.

Disclaimer: those terms do not apply to any Usamerican / foreigner who is actually being respectful, I'm only refering to the ones that defend a dictatorship who lets people die while they keep the power to themselves.

[r0entgen]

"Why won't Venezuelans just address the blockade?"

If you're wondering why, read below.

Let me start by saying that I wrote this after I finished work, with less than three hours of sleep and a single meal in my body, so if you find any grammar mistakes, my apologies.

This is the comment that kickstarted this post. I believe I've mentioned this before, but when you're living in a country that weaponizes propaganda and hijacks every single media outlet, you have to master the fine arts of fact checking and cross-referencing. Which is exactly what we're going to do right now, addressing the claim that 40,000 Venezuelans have been killed by the US sanctions, and why We Won't Engage with You In This Particular Argument.

*Note: click the underlined text for links and sources.

In the paper Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs (who will be referred to as WS in this post), WS mention that between the years of 2017-2019, the economic sanctions caused a 31% increase in the general mortality rate in Venezuela, a number that they calculate may be of about 40,000 deaths. While they cite ENCOVI and a UN report from 2019 as the sources of this statistic, they clarify the following in the footnotes:

The ENCOVI 2018 survey has not been made public, the mortality statistic cited here is from the UN Report (2019).

As of this date, WS has not made public the data source for this estimate, and the UN report used as a source (Venezuela: Overview of Priority Humanitarian Needs, March 2019) is not publicly available.

So let's take a look at some sources that ARE publicly available.

The World Bank Group World Development Indicators registers at least a 30% increase in the infant mortality rate in Venezuela from the dates of 2013 to 2016. Similar numbers are reported in this paper, seeing a 40% increase in the infant mortality rate in Venezuela between the dates on 2008-2016. Here's an excerpt from the paper Impact of the 2017 Sanctions on Venezuela:

While different than other overall mortality rates, increases in infant mortality rates are generally interpretable as a preventable consequence of inadequate pre- and post-natal care for otherwise healthy but vulnerable infants. Thus, infant mortality is often recognized as a good proxy measure of the quality on overall public health provision.

What this tells us is that THERE HAS BEEN an increase in general mortality rate - one that started long before the 2017 sanctions.

However, this doesn't mean that in the periods of 2017-2019 there wasn't a high death toll. Let's look at another publicly available source.

The National Hospital Survey (2019) found that between November 2018 and February 2019, 1557 people died owing to the lack of supplies in hospitals [...]. 40 patients died as a result of the power outages in March 2019.

We see the first mention of a number in the 2019 Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Something interesting this report mentions is that 40 deaths were caused by the blackout in March 2019. A blackout that lasted 7 days and affected our 23 states.

The energy crisis which caused this nationwide blackout started in 2010. The Wikipedia article is a good summary, if a bit simple, of the events that led to and took place during and after the energy crisis (which affects us Venezuelans living in the country to this day)

Back to the UN Report. Something else this report indicates is the following:

In 2018, the Government registered 5,287 such killings, while the non-governmental organization Observatorio Venezolano de la Violencia reported at least 7,523 killings under this category. Between 1 January and 19 May 2019, the Government reported 1,569 killings for resistance to authority. The Observatorio Venezolano de la Violencia reported at least 2,124 such killings between January and May 2019. Information analysed by OHCHR suggests many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial executions.

[...] Six young men executed by the Special Action Forces (SEBIN) in reprisal for their role in anti-government protests in 2019.

This means that between the dates of 2018-2019, there have been approximately 9,647 deaths in the context of security operations - which includes Venezuelans that took part of the protests in 2019. Very similar to what we have been reporting since after the elections in July 28.

2017 to 2019 was one of the most difficult periods in Venezuelan history, marked by the sanctions imposed by Trump which affected oil export, access to diesel, and food and medicine imports. Some people argue that the economic recession in Venezuela was caused by the sanctions - failing to notice the negative trends in the years prior to these.

Bahar, Bustos, Morales and Santos (who will be referred to as BBMS in this post) conclude in their paper, Impact of the 2017 Sanctions on Venezuela, that while the sanctions had a negative effect in the oil production, "it is quite impossible to attribute the fall [...] to one single event (i.e., the sanctions), when many other confounding events were happening at the same time."

Oil production: Oil prices dropped during 2015, and oil production decreased as a result of lack of maintenance and investment.

Energy crisis: By 2009, when the energy crisis was first declared, the electrical grid had already been suffering from the lack of maintenance and investment since 1998. The Chávez administration distributed million dollar contracts [...] that enriched high officials of his government and the works were never built. [1] [2] [3]

Economic decline and hyper-inflation: Actions taken by the Chávez administration such as expropriation and price control, as well as the PDVSA purge in 2002 led the country to depend almost entirely on its already declining oil industry, causing shortages and price rises in common goods, food, medical supplies and so on. By 2015, 60% of the Venezuelan population was living in poverty. [1] [2] [3] [4]

From only these three points, we can establish a negative trend starting way before the first US Sanctions. Thus, we can conclude that by the time the devastating 2017-2019 sanctions took place, Venezuela was already deep in a state of generalized crisis.

WS conclude in their paper:

[...] One of the most important impacts of the sanctions is to lock Venezuela into a downward economic spiral. [...] An economic recovery could have already begun in the absence of economic sanctions.

While Bahar, Bustos, Morales and Santos declare:

[...] Our analysis finds insufficient evidence to conclude that they [sanctions] were responsible for the worsening of the socio-economic crisis. [...] The weight of evidence seems to indicate that, rather than being a result of US-imposed sanctions, much of the suffering and devastation in Venezuela has been, in line with most accounts, inflicted by those in power.

In conclusion - both papers seem to agree that the crisis in Venezuela started before 2017, but where WS claim that it worsened due to US sanctions, BBMS place a higher blame on the deterioration caused by the Venezuelan government.

Now, you may keep whichever analysis you prefer, but one thing we know for sure: the 40,000 Venezuelans that WS claimed died due to the sanctions cannot be found in any public report, while the death toll of protests and extrajudicial killings has been extensively reported.

Why is this relevant?

Contrary to what some people on this site would say, Venezuelans generally agree on the negative impacts of US-imposed sanctions (note: this poll accounts only for Venezuelans in Florida, as polls aren't often published inside Venezuela). However, the general consensus is that US-sanctions only added up to a crisis that had been building up since Chávez rose to power, and rather than the cause, it was yet another symptom.

Yes, the US is the Big Bad, but placing the blame solely on the sanctions only takes the responsibility away from the government and diverts the attention from the poor governance, rampaging corruption, violent repression and denialism that we've grown used to in the last 25 years.

So if you ask "why don't you address the blockade?", my response is: why don't you address the 9,647 extrajudicial killings, the 40 deaths caused by the energy crisis, the energy crisis itself, the economic decline, the lack of maintenance in the infrastructure, the violent repression, the forceful abductions and the censoring?

What we want you to understand is that when you center the US as the cause of the crisis, you are actively participating in our state-funded propaganda and knowingly turning a blind eye on the suffering of all Venezuelans. You are no better than imperialists - you ARE participating in imperialism.

Remember:

Last, but not least - be careful with your sources. This Venezuelanalysis article was written by Andreína Chávez, former editor-in-chief of TeleSUR, a government-funded news channel known for spreading Maduro propaganda. One of their most recent claims: dead Venezuelans are shown as having voted in the ballots shown in resultadosconvenezuela.com. Needless to say, this is false. This news portal is what some people would call, BIASED.

For more information, please read the amazing analysis written by @systhemes HERE.

A more direct response by @achillesmonochrome HERE.

For other sources, check HERE.

*Fellow Venezuelans, feel free to include anything I might have missed.

[odinsblog]

Message to all alleged “anti-war tankies”

If you were truly anti-war, at worst you’d at least try to pretend to be neutral, and not support either side. At best, you would not be on the side of Russia, the aggressor that, unprovoked, invaded a smaller sovereign nation that was peacefully minding its own business, was not in NATO, and wasn’t even applying for NATO membership. NATO was not the cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As always, I remind people that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, including but not limited to: erasing all mentions of Ukraine from schoolbooks, murdering entire civilian populations of Ukrainian cities, and kidnapping thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children (some as young as 4 months old) and placing them into “re-education” centers where they are forced to learn how to become good little Russians. Russia is indiscriminately bombing civilian targets like funerals, churches, schools and hospitals, and the Russian army is using mass rape as a weapon of war.

(Remember, Ukraine has demonstrated that they have the capability to reach Russian held territory, but unlike Russia, the Ukrainian military has only targeted military installations.)

If you can just hand wave all of the Russian war crimes and atrocities away because “America bad,” then please spare everyone your anti-war concern trolling, and your faux worries about Ukrainians dying. Just admit that as long as, lol, “communist” Russia isn’t the one being invaded, you are morally indifferent to human suffering and you actually do not care about ending wars.

Russia can end the war instantly just by going home.

[spot-the-antisemitism]

https://nour386.tumblr.com/post/760299113184182272

Fellas the tankies have twisted themselves into

'it's pinkwashing to callout the homophobia and transphobia of antizionist orgs for the good of the revolution"

truly late stage antizionism and peak tankie

the pinkwashier is you

[psychotrenny]

So fucking funny how many people try to frame Trotsky as being less "Authoritarian" than Stalin. Like one of his greatest achievements was doing "Tankie" shit without even using Tanks and then 2 decades later, while in exile, telling the haters to basically "Cope and Seethe over Kronstadt"

[moomeylian]

Every time tankies accuse a Venezuelan of being rich just because they speak English I laugh very hard because it shows how egocentric they are. They can't conceive someone learning a language by themselves because most entertainment and academical papers are in English and they don't have the necessity or motivation to learn another language.

I basically learned it by myself because I wanted to play mystic messenger and since my family didn't have the money to put me in an English academy and I'm incredibly stubborn, I downloaded many grammars and spent the holidays reading them and watching English teacher's videos on YouTube. Then, I was in contact with language through fanfiction and later when I started my degree I also had to read papers in English for my essays and stuff. I'm also a bit of a language nerd so I'm doing something similar with French.

Is it easy? Of couse it isn't.

Would I have done it if I didn't have the necessity? I don't think so, I only learned about my passion for languages once I started learning English because of necessity.

It takes time, motivation and a lot of effort, but it's not impossible. And it is racist, diminishing and dehumanizing to assume people can only learn languages if they have the money to pay for it. It makes it easier, but it's not a requirement.

People have learned languages because of necessity for ages.