It's the same point as going skiing on an extreme rated slope. It's about adrenaline, an experience, making yourself the movie badass, using expensive as shit stuff to horrify and intimidate other human beings and getting off on your power over them, your power to make them feel fear. Plus the brass thinks it looks cool and tough and military-like and sends their hog base squealing with joy over this kind of military attack on the sub-humans they hate.
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Right the Dems do it in a more orderly less dramatic more routine fashion. BUT and this must be pointed out to liberals they build the scaffolding, the machinery, the apparatus necessary to support this kind of naked brutality that Republicans seek to do. They could instead tear down the scaffolding and apparatus but they don't. They expand it, they give it more money, they give it approval for spyware vendor contracts and access to mass surveillance tools, they give it military gear, training, etc.
They're the cop standing back looking the other way while his buddies beat you with truncheons.
They don't have a mandate and while China should work with them for realpolitik reasons they are bad guys.
The US puppet regime was unpopular so no one fought to support it but the Taliban itself was not incredibly popular either. They won purely because they were the single largest most organized militant group ready to do a power grab, armed up, trained, fighting for decades. It was a clear situation of one or the other with no other powers waiting in the wings with guns to take the country.
IMO it was more ambivalence among the population and exhaustion from all the years of US occupation than a genuine love for their program. That and no one wants to fight to remove them. I mean look how many Americans are truly happy with their political system when you poll them. Yet how many are willing to rise up violently to change that? Almost none. While Afghans are nowhere near as placated and comfortable as Americans on average they like all people were probably tired of the years of fighting and just wanted peace even if it meant accepting back in a bunch of guys whose program has some points you very strongly disagree with as those disagreements didn't rise to level of risking plotting revolution against guys who will execute you in the town square if they catch wind of it. Because besides them the people there see other choices such as debauched corrupt warlords, and opium growers as the other powers or things that could come back. At least with the Taliban you know where they stand and the rules. At least in theory. In practice like all religious zealots some amount of them are varying levels of corrupt and will gladly take buy-outs to rent away some disposable portions of their morality. Especially when it doesn't interfere with their patriarchal misogynist rule, their domestic control, and it's basically just renting a convenience to a former enemy without giving away the truly lusted after oppression of women, self-flagellation and moral panic and control over the mundane aspects of life that religious zealots obsess over.
Nah. The whole thing is suspect but I'm going to go with it because it turns some small segment of the right even more against pissrael and directs their ire at them instead of leftists as the rest of the right is trying to do with his killing.
That said could be true. I mean maybe he was lost in the sauce and truly thought free speech absolutism was necessary on college campuses for his own career and figured he'd just try and sell the zionists on "hey you know what counters a bad guy with speech, a good guy zionist with speech, give me tens of millions of dollars and my org will counter these pro-palestinians on campuses" and the zionists predictably said "nah that will never work, we're going to go with hard suppression but we'll give you a tiny paycheck to continue your original thing". And maybe it wasn't even sincere, maybe he just wanted to hold out on them doing that because he preferred his approach where they pour tens of millions into his pockets over their approach of the heavy hand of government and sobbing about anti-semitism.
when it strikes back
When it hits the US with a silly sword made of foam. Last time they struck back they told the US ahead of time, used their most easily intercepted ancient missiles and it was clearly just pure performance and impotent rage to convince domestic audiences they were doing something.
Iran doesn't have escalation deterrence options. Their options are either the nuclear one of closing the straits and either backing down within a week or getting into a hot war with the US/NATO over it OR things like trying to take out a US navy ship and again getting into a hot war with an enraged US. They can hit on the zionists a bit but if they do so effectively they tend to hit back hard and get papa US to throw in a final punch too before calling peace. Zionists and everyone else only back off because no one really wants a full scale war with Iran right now (well the zionists do but the US doesn't so that settles it) and Iran doesn't want one with the US/NATO either.
Until Iran is willing to wage such a total war (or even risk it) the west will continue abusing them and letting them get away with minor things like arming Yemen but not anything that actually injures the face of the US or truly threatens its interests and Iran will have limited ability to deter the west because they know their character and it's a mixture of hardline religious zealots who hate the US but also fear it and liberal reformers who desperately think that they can get back into the good graces of the west again with just one more small concession and one more nuclear inspection. That and its population is one that don't want the total war necessary to inflict any kind of change or get the bullies to back down because it would bring hardship and that's understandable but the Iranian government knows it would not have the support of its people to wage total war on the US an the zionist entity. And we can't blame them but the west understands this and exploits it. The west has been playing chicken with Iran and they keep blinking first.
Iran is already over as any kind of a means to stop the genocide in Palestine. Iran is already over as a serious regional player who can coerce concessions from the US or their puppets in the next few years at least.
Well the thing is the Taliban have no air force, no proper mechanized force, limited heavy weapons, no advanced intelligence or security apparatus like most stable nations. So what chance do they have in a stand-up fight against a US concrete fortress with air support from helicopters, drones, AC-130 gunships that can lay down hails of bullets, dominance in the skies, electronic surveillance and warfare, and the list goes on and on? The US can bring in heavy armor like tanks as well, artillery or large gun emplacements. They can bomb a strip around the base and remove any structures within half a mile, mine directly around the perimeter of the base and keep constant watch.
Sure they can't hold the country, they can't win the hearts and minds, they can't safely take and hold multiple cities full of people who cooperate with the Taliban in fighting them or are Taliban themselves. But holding an airbase fortress that size with air re-supply shouldn't be too hard from a tactical point of view. It's more is the drain on resources to accomplish that sustainable and worth it long-term to the US and the US seems intent on encircling China so the answer is maybe.
Say they fly in 10,000 Marines and special forces to retake the base, stabilize it, repair it, put up mines, repel initial attacks, fortify it, etc. They then draw that down to say 5-6000 within 6 months with a heavy focus on drone patrols, cameras, sensors, aerial overwatch and rapid deployment forces within the base to repel any attacks on the perimeter with a permanent station of say 5-6 helicopter gun-ships, one AC-130, and several combat and surveillance UAV type drones (the big ones). Plus of course CIA forces, stealth helicopters, transport helicopters, etc for moving their ISIS moderate rebel types up towards the corridor that connects to China or possibly even trying to do low flying penetration into China itself to do drops of these moderate rebels and equipment caches directly.
Holding cities full of hostiles or people friendly to hostiles is very hard. Holding a fortress as long as you can supply it is not that difficult when you have an overwhelming advantage against the enemy and they have no ability to siege you with heavy weapons. Sure maybe the Taliban could get some powered hang-gliders and try to do a thing but base sensors would probably spot that, as would night-vision look-out and though they might kill some Americans they'd be slaughtered pretty quickly if not shot down on the approach. Probably it would mostly be limited to trying to snipe Americans who poke their heat out too far and taking pot-shots at the base walls and landing aircraft, as well as some drone attack attempts which is why the US would need some kind of point defense system but they probably have some they can deploy here. Maybe the Taliban can eventually get enough drones and weaponize them to start inflicting losses on the US that make the base a drain but they'd need an awful lot to overcome US defenses.
It kind of seems like with this:
ensure that all requirements for every combat Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) “returns to the highest male standard, only because this job is life or death.”
That the quiet part given they want the highest male standard is they want to purge the overwhelming majority of women from combat roles as they may not be able to meet the "highest male standard" which would fit with their whole anti-woke Christian crusader ideal of a bunch of TOUGH (white) MEN who drink blood and "sit on thrones of Chinese skulls" which they're going for.
This would seriously hamper short term US ability by pushing a bunch of talent out. The Pentagon may just tell him no or slow walk the whole thing to avoid things imploding. But if they push it through it almost would seem to lend credence to the domestic occupation and escalation ideal as if you want to impose hard-edge white male supremacy on the US population you don't want the troops enforcing it to include people who are going to be made second class citizens or even untermensch by what they're upholding as they might not carry it out or even risk rebellion.
It definitely seems to fit into a kind of reactionary path back towards 20th century fascist ideals along with the push for being healthy which because of brain worms running the show means snake oil and very minor reforms but the want is there, the thinking is there. This, the Thiel stuff, so many other things, they're really serious about clash of civilizations 2.0 here against China and really against all non-white, non-Christian nations who don't submit to them and pay tributes.
One can only hope it leads to collapse and failure but most likely it results in these things turning inward if they do fail abroad. And with AI assisted surveillance, kill-bots, social control via the internet. Things look grim for those in the west.
I think it was less he needed to be removed because he was a serious threat and more two birds with one stone they were looking for some kind of 9/11/Reichstag fire type moment anyways and he was suitable for it as his loss would benefit them more than his continued living.
Not good if true. Fact is the US can pretty easily swoop in from the air and take that base if they want to. It's pretty fortified too with huge concrete block barriers all around it so the US could take and hold it and its size means its somewhat self-sustaining as a mini-city with air resupply. It then just becomes an issue of morale as the troops can't leave the base, occasional suicide attacks will occur (though if they're simply using it as a fortress and the Taliban blocks anyone from selling to them anyways these will likely just mean some concrete blocks get replaced now and again as it's hard to get inside a place like that if they're not letting locals in or leaving much to go out themselves). Also an issue of cost but because the US can print unlimited money it can just afford to constantly fly in all the supplies they need from neighboring countries. If anything the strain will be more on how it will occupy some amount of their air force supply chain into the future keeping that place open. They'll need to deploy some advanced anti-drone and anti-man-pad systems to prevent the Taliban shooting down their transports I suppose but that, some bombing of the areas around it and a no-go zone will make it harder.
Total aside but I read a kind of funny piece from RT where they were talking about how because Russia, Iran, and China are against it the US can't possibly take the base. My thinking on that is yes they can. Iran is a paper tiger who backs down at the first opportunity and doesn't want to truly provoke the US, they're not going to fire a massive missile salvo there to try and dislodge the US. Their economic power to punish the US is zero. Russia is already near maximally sanctioned by and decoupled from the US, their economic influence on the US is zero. They've also show zero appetite for a direct engagement with even European lapdogs of NATO and constantly duck their escalations despite all their rhetoric so they're not going to militarily stop the US. China has zero appetite for militarily challenging the US especially over this. Given the trade war, decoupling, stuff, etc they don't have leverage to play against the US that won't cost them a higher price than they're willing to pay at this point. The article brought up economic leverage against the Taliban but that assumes they have a choice in the matter and if they don't all of China's cutting trade to Afghanistan won't mean a thing. If anything if the US pushes in against the will of the Taliban then China will be incentivized to continue and upgrade trade in an attempt to prevent the US normalizing economic relations and gaining more influence and operational freedom though this may not work.
Pakistan also won't do shit. India will cheer it on as they're cheering on Trump's genocide plan in Gaza because Modi and his Hindu fascist brigade have a genocidal hatred of Muslims.
The nearby 'stan countries are unlikely to cheer this on but most likely at least one of them will quietly cut a deal with the US for selling supplies and/or use of airbases in exchange for money and investment.
No one in the region will like it, Russia/China won't like it. They'll condemn, issue strong speeches, maybe some veiled threats but none of them are going to go to war with the US to put a stop to it. Nor do I suspect Russia or China will go as far as say giving the Taliban advanced anti-air systems to make air-resupply impossible which would shut the whole thing down or require a massive US commitment for a full invasion which I don't think they'll go for.
The Taliban are likely to greatly resent the US doing a forced invasion and taking of it but I doubt they'll have a meaningful ability to dislodge them if they're able to rely on air resupply as between air power and base defenses they'll be able to hold off the type of light mechanized stuff the Taliban can throw at them. If anything it might pressure them to try and negotiate and spin the situation and Trump might even agree to some sanctions relief in exchange for some level of cooperation like allowing Afghan merchants to supply the base and for them to avoid attacking it.
I honestly don't how how heavy an ask air re-supply of a 10,000 strong force there would be so maybe it wouldn't be viable without Taliban cooperation but if anyone can do it the US can.
This map does a good idea of showing why the US wants it:
They could from this base use helicopters to ferry ISIS fighters up towards the corridor with China, move CIA assets up there as well and of course they'd like to be able to launch bombers/missiles at China from the west when it comes down to a war with them.
I would presume to prevent communication with collaborators/spies, to maintain order, prevent public panic, rumors, truths that are uncomfortable and panic inducing, etc.
I don't know I think this is fake. I believe the "israel"-Kirk split the grayzone reported and that they're the ones who actually killed him in order to get the juice to fully finish the total crackdown on pro-Palestine speech at college campuses and in fact to seize universities by the throat and censor any non-zionist approved ones.
As others have noted it's not so much the CIA goes to their color revolution program and clicks a given country after deciding "hmm time for a change". Sometimes there's an organic protest and the choice at a certain intensity becomes either the US co-opts it to ensure their continued control and to perhaps give a facelift because their old puppet regime is unpopular or the US sits it out and from their perspective that risks people with the genuine interests of the people there gaining power which is bad for the US.
So if:
- it's happening anyways they will co-opt and they have a lot of global infrastructure in place to do that.
- If their old puppet is unpopular, known to be corrupt, unstable, and something comes along that's close to being strong enough to overthrow might as well support it to have a more stable new puppet regime at less of a chance of being overthrown for some years
- their puppet regime is straying, making eyes at China and Russia, maybe not even a successful one so much as the threat of one to remind them of their place.
It is a fact that unless a revolution is run by an ideologically disciplined central group with clear aims and goals, internal discipline, organization, etc which they maintain throughout that these types of protests have no protection against co-opting and it's often very easy and the US is almost always the one behind it because of their massive global infrastructure for this stuff.
Hmm this really does seem like the opening salvo in a MAJOR escalation that goes beyond mere words or pandering to the base and sets the groundwork for uh not great things.
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indica” (indicators) of violence:
- anti-Americanism,
- anti-capitalism,
- anti-Christianity,
- support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
- extremism on migration,
- extremism on race,
- extremism on gender
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
Breaking this down a bit:
- extremism on migration,
Clearly to go after anyone against deportations, ICE, etc. Even someone just working the policy and judicial angle as say a lawyer who never attends protests would be a dangerous indicator of terrorism under this.
- extremism on race,
I have to wonder for some of these if it's entirely up to the discretion of the cops doing the work or if there's additional (secret) guidance defining these because on the surface this would certainly seem to suggest support for BLM or anything they deem "anti-white"
- extremism on gender
As with above I have to wonder if there's additional secret guidance on the meaning of this one. Obviously trans rights activists (including any trans person who isn't constantly denouncing their own existence I presume) would fall under this as would any feminists who are for abortion, are against the traditional 1950s Christian Protestant views on family, etc, etc.
The last three in the list are especially broad, vague, and therefore worrying but seem to reinforce the above and remove doubts about what extremism on race and gender are.
I'd suggest either A: not worrying about it, lots of things get lost to time, place the security and safety of your comrades over some people in the future who will find it an object of curiosity and interest but not of help as the revolution will have already won.
Or B: since you want it published long after your death after a point where it no longer compromises op-sec for others I think you need to consider real world solutions. Storing copies with a trusted friend in an encrypted form and giving another very trusted friend the encryption key.
Put both in sealed envelopes on durable storage media for the encrypted notes themselves (a MABL type HTL bluray (possibly two copies on two discs) would be probably my top choice as flash drives and the like often fail or suffer decay and corruption in short periods of time but the alternative would be several copies on several different media or at least multiple of the same) and include instructions for who the other person is to get in contact with ONLY upon your death and to only combine the two and for the person with the decryption info to only release this password to the other if you are dead and the year is at least 20xx or x number of years have passed, whatever. I would also include both on the storage medium with the notes and a paper printed hard copy details about the encryption and what software should be used to decrypt it in case say this is being accessed in 15-20 years it may not be obvious. I would if possible include the executable software and all necessary components for accessing the files on the storage medium itself in case in the future it isn't easily available. You could break up your encryption key among more than just one person so have 3 or more people involved but the problem then becomes what if one of them dies and their stuff is thrown out? There are schemes for breaking authentication data into multiple pieces of which only a certain percentage are required for recovery though I can't recall them at the moment the privacy community people may know what I'm talking about but you'd still need like 4 or more trustworthy people for redundancy not counting the person or persons holding the data (and you may want to consider having two people holding copies in case again one dies). Also for the data itself I'd make sure to include with it a paper that explains what it is or gives some hint is important and who it should be given to if the person in question dies (another close friend) especially if only one copy is being made instead of two copies for two friends.
You could alter this arrangement a bit. You could break a key/password in half, give copies of the same half to several people you trust with instructions and if you're short on people copies of the data as well and then arrange for the other half to be delivered by some means far in the future. Of course that becomes a problem itself as there's no way to know that Google won't delete your gmail account with half the password while you're say in prison or whatever.
You need to evaluate risk of each part of the chain for both security (how few actors it requires to compromise it and how trustworthy x number of actors are) and preservation/longevity as in how will this arrangement function if people die, how immune is it to stuff being thrown out or to the media itself decaying (hence media redundancy and MABL HTL bluray discs which should last several centuries being preferable as most flash drives, SSDs, hard drives will see data decay or corrupted within anywhere from a year sitting unused to perhaps 10 years and it's all a matter of luck).
If you do it like 2 people, one holding the digital copies encrypted, one holding the whole key then collusion between both is needed to get at your data (consideration to coercion by legal means should be given and how well these people will hide this stuff or go to bat to protect it), on the other hand either dying or losing the key or the data means a total loss of it so it's not very strong for preservation purposes. Two people with one holding the data, one holding a partial key, and some electronic mechanism of delivering the other half of the key means an adversary has to get at both those people and the system holding it which also means those two cannot collude on their own against you or be pressured into doing so but introduces another potential area of failure (3 versus only 2 for the previous idea where any one failing means total loss). So redundancy is key. I'd try if possible to have two automated dead-man switches from two companies/services that don't give away the whole thing which send email, snail-mail, etc to a person holding a copy of the data so you have redundancy. Otherwise I'd try to have the dead-man switch located within a service you can pre-pay for many years into the future. If you can only pay for 10 years, you could include if you trust your friends an instruction not to use it for an additional x number of years in your dead-man message. Or you could avoid this automation, and do say 4 trusted people, with 2 getting copies of the data and 2 getting the decryption information and the identities of the people with the data. But you must assess and plan for risks. Would adversaries break into the homes of these people with the decryption info and find it then break into the homes with the copies of the data and find it and then decrypt it? Could you use nick-names that are used off-line and not known to facebook and the like to describe who the people with the data are without naming them directly or so on.
Ultimately it's likely you'll have to make some compromises in survivability of the data or security unless you have a decent amount of trustworthy friends.
Yep it's just sanctions tactics turned inwards.
There's no dramatic images of dozens of people being marched off to black sites never to be seen again. There's no court drama because the government has long had assumed great latitudes in controlling money, doing interdiction on it, and forcing the injured parties to positively prove otherwise in courts in long, expensive, boring, hard, up-hill processes.
But it's a chilling effect just the same. And it clogs the gears of the opposition, it makes the lives of the leadership hard when say they can't access banking services because their risk profile is too high or else it's illegal because of these restrictions on them. It puts a price on associating with these groups by leading to contamination and tainting of your own group so others tend to avoid touching or helping or interacting (again sanctions tactics, classic).
Yeah, it does seem like a strangely made for TV moment. But also FBI are mormon puritans who probably would feel guilty about writing naughty swear words. To say nothing of the fact in their right-wing brains they can't conceive of why anyone would be against it so in trying to grasp for something against it their brains fail as after all there's nothing wrong with it, so in a panic they just write "anti-ice" because searching their brain's filing cabinets for "anti-ice slogans that look good on TV" turned up nothing.
The woke commie terrorist known as 4chan.
Won't matter though. These edge-lords are easily cast as leftists because none of them bother to record video manifestos stating otherwise directly. Anti-ICE = communist cop hater clearly, nuance on weird segments of the non-Christian, non-mainstream internet edgelord right is not acceptable in the mainstream and I would not be shocked if this particular one or others in future intentionally try and make it seem like they were leftists to as a kind of classic channer false flag move direct antagonism onto their enemies for "lolz". And of course the current government is more than happy to do that while if it was still Biden they'd probably blame Russians despite these types being 100% American and infiltrated by the American FBI among others.
I may regret saying this or even look very foolish but I'm not so sure the US wants to dispense with the charade of parliamentary politics and how useful it is for channeling discontent into dead ends like the Democratic party.
I could totally see them banning, outlawing, persecuting, and putting camps all leftists, shutting down PSL, DSA, etc but this would be IN SERVICE OF the Democratic party as now they're as left as you can legally go and they don't have to deal with insurgents and can push more and more right while beating their base and terrifying them with worse prospects of the machine coming after THEM if they don't moderate, all the while the Republicans ever continue to be the naked edge of brutal reaction and lean further and further into open reactionary terror. In this way the US is moved further right and prepared for a confrontation with China and deteriorating conditions at home they hope quashed before they spiral into a labor movement with the proles disciplined into meek acceptance of mere promises of minor reform by Democrats and encouraged to put all their energies into Democratic presidencies and national races only to get lucy-footballed again and again with only tiny crumbs of concession from the Democrats (concessions that in all likelihood WERE Republican party positions within only a few decades of the past) to show for and give false hope to the masses of investing in the electoral project.
If the US does discard bourgeois electoral theater it will be very foolish for its ability to continue to survive another 15-25 years IMO. But maybe some plan they have requires it anyways.
Can confirm, it's great. One of the better, more wholesome anime out there and the creator is a woman so it's not dripping with objectification.
RT reported that it's likely the administration is trying to goad Venezuela into a response that justifies US doing a decapitating strike on Maduro. So each of these events is best seen as poking at Maduro, trying to get a violent response.
Thing is even if Maduro just takes slap after slap without hitting back they could still just kill him anyways.
I thought of this before Trump got elected again but it comes back into the fore. The problem with China's non-interventionist policy is it can be blunted by a US violently and directly interventionist policy of regime change, color revolutions, coups, wars, decapitating strikes, sanctions, etc. Sure the big countries like Russia and India can afford to stand up to the US and those within China's orbit who do more trade with China and have more to lose from China will stick with them for the most part. The issue is tons of people out there across the world who are greedy little comprador opportunists, unprincipled, etc who will do what's best for their pocket-books even if it burns their nation to the ground. We may or may not see this with Afghanistan if those rumors of the US offering the Taliban shit-loads of money are true, it would be putting greed over the good of their people but for religious fundamentalists that shouldn't be a surprise.
Sure the world eventually gets wary of this and after 10-20 years most countries overthrow the regime (though usually remain trapped in some sort of debt bondage their previous leaders put them in and don't go far enough in the the sense of throwing off the shackles) but then the US can just switch back to friendly liberal mode. As long as they dominate the propaganda, as long as they control the culture, as long as they have Hollywood and control of the internet. And even if that doesn't work it gives the US a decade of dominance and control in which to encircle, isolate, and remove China from the global economy and pour pressure on them to attempt to force a collapse or surrender.