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darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]

@ darkcalling @hexbear.net

Posts
2
Comments
583
Joined
6 yr. ago

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • On the other hand they have zero chance of getting Maduro back by force or of getting any relief by force. They are entirely outgunned and outmatched and have no interest in fighting a long war against the US to emerge victor of the ashes. So sucking up to empire, bending the knee, being cordial, and being beyond cordial are about all they have for trying to get what they want out of this situation.

    I think it's foolish. I think it's doomed to failure and the US is just going to come back again for another pass. But it's hard to say to your people that we must be the ones to fight the US empire when it seems like if you play your cards right you can get the empire, the eye of sauron to focus on another country and spare yours for a time, make someone else fight for you. And everyone has this idea so the US keeps getting concessions from everyone including the major powers because there's no desire to band together. There's no desire for pain and shared sacrifice. Too many people look back at the 20th century and Vietnam and Korea and are terrified into submission by those and Iraq. US may not win but you won't either. Your development will be set back decades, you'll endure horrific losses of civilian life, horrific lowering of quality of life. It was so much easier to resist when most people were peasants living very basic lives and had little to lose. Development has brought the trap of having far more to lose in a modern life if you challenge the empire.

  • The US Department of Agriculture suspended all federal funding to Minnesota effective immediately. The department claims "massive fraud".

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  • Eh I doubt it.

    Look to history. As much terrorism and violence as the right did over the civil rights era when the US federal government used some level of strong-arm tactics including deploying troops, siccing the FBI on them, etc, etc the people murmured and murmured in rage and then exactly nothing happened. Their politicians raged at the podium, they raged in the papers, they raged on TV and then nothing happened.

    That's exactly what will happen this time. Trump will beat down Democratic opposition while at least half of Democratic voters cry foul for their party not standing up to him and the liberals and ourselves will seethe and rage. And there will be teeth gnashing and fiery speeches in the press and protests. But nothing will happen.

    This isn't going to cause the US to break apart. It's not going to be civil war 2.0. It won't cause alliances of states. It won't result in challenges to federal power. It'll result in Trump bowling over opposition to implement what he wants and then Dems once back in power refusing to use those levers of power he just used so effectively because of muh norms and need to rebuild civility and blah blah blah. Democratic voter-base rage and anger will simmer but not boil over. Not over this.

  • Let them fight.

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  • Not really. EU is vassalized to the US as well and instantly folded in Trump's tariffs negotiations.

  • Worthless

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  • Democrats like:

    Rein in ICE:

    Let ICE reign:

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • US according to various commentators: told Russia and China it would allow them spheres of influence and pull back.

    Meanwhile also the US: pours more money into war machine than ever in history, demands it increase production capacity of high end and low end weaponry by vast amounts.

    If it were one or the other you could argue US just intends to use such weapons in wars and regime change in Latin America but to have both can only be for fighting a peer power like Russia or China. High tech weapons are the ones the US prefers using against outgunned adversaries in precision strikes and carefully crafted campaigns but low end weaponry is what you need to sustain a peer power conflict when you can't possible keep up production of your $10 million a shot missiles at a pace of a hundred day for months on end. Probably also why Trump is doing the Trump battleships/cruisers because they saw in Ukraine how important basic artillery is and figure if they have a bunch of these they can have more staying time in naval battles which are important for encircling, blockading, and choking off China from suppliers and customers when they decide to have that blow fall.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • Because Iran refuses to adapt and most of their government has liberal-capitalist brain worms I think chances of US/Zionist pressure succeeding in neutralizing them either with complete decapitation and regime change or just getting tools installed who let the zionists/US do whatever they want in the region, break ties with Russia/China, etc are very, very, very high this year and next.

    They're going to keep pouring on the pressure as it's the last stumbling block to totally US hegemony and control of the middle east and indeed to completely blocking all aspects of the belt and road overland. Iran being killed off also of course means basically all resistance groups operating in the region opposing the zionist outpost stop getting major funding, weapons, intel, etc and become a lot less effective.

    So they're definitely going to try. More decapitating strikes, an attempt to kill the supreme leader for intimidation but more basically attempts to take out military leadership.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • Surprised they were given launch authority. VZ air defences should've stuck to Iglas because now they've lost a bunch of BUKs to an enemy that would've never been at risk, despite being still comparatively threatening should a colour revolution turn a country like Brazil to the Empire.

    The operators had no way of knowing what was happening. It's easy to arm-chair general but for all they knew this was the start of a general US invasion of their country and the only chance they'd have to fire before all assets were hunted down and destroyed. Not like the US rang up Venezuelan air command and told them not to panic, just kidnapping your leader and leaving (and not like a perfidious country like the US should be trusted if they did ring you up with that story).

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • Pictures I've seen show a very, very white woman.

    By the accounts I've seen so far she either was trying to block them with her car as other people sounded the alarm and they murdered her for it or she genuinely had some car trouble or a moment of panic and got stuck blocking their convoy.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • Three outcomes here:

    1. China and India (but especially China given they're China) reach never before seen levels of cutting their own hands off, bend the knee and help the US destroy Russia or at least badly humiliate and isolate it in a move it won't forget when they're in trouble.
    2. China or India or both don't bow and this finally kicks things into motion regarding de-dollarization.
    3. US passes this but then starts handing out waivers or something and essentially backs off itself and uses it to beat on smaller countries and force anyone who isn't India or China sized to decouple from China/Russia and get into their orbit. If China impassively watches this happen and watches the US grab much of the world and drag it behind its high fence and does nothing well they're going to have a very bad middle half of this century 2030s when the US turns the screws on them.

    I'd almost bet on Trump trying to do 3 as it seems to be the move US empire wants to make anyways but I figure they might see if India and China will bend the knee first and only compromise if they don't and look like they're going to cause trouble.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • There's easily 20% of Americans who if you told point blank they won't see a cent of it would still say "well I still believe it's the right thing to do to give it back to its rightful owner who makes more in an hour than I will in my entire life destroying my body". Protestant slave ethic is a disaster for the human race.

  • They truly are decades ahead of us

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  • Not all fakery is AI. There is such a thing as a conceptual render done by engineering firms and product companies for pitches that has existed long before AI was a thing. Sometimes they take short-cuts like copy and pasting parts.

  • So, turns out all the Maduro & Chavez haters helped bring Nazism back. Red Scare 3.0 baby!

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  • The thing is the state of the reactionary is fear. They know nothing but it.

    Sure some of the top bourgeoisie live charmed lives after the fall of the USSR and don't really worry because they think they've got the whole thing locked down after winning the cold war. But not all of them feel that way, many of them exist in a state of anxiety when they see groups of workers together without management, when they see large protests. Deep in the back of their minds they know what they stand atop is unjust and that the only way to maintain it is via violence and propaganda and if those fail they know they're in trouble.

    As to your average chud? They live in constant fear. Jumping at shadows. Brown people near them. Poor people, homeless. They clutch their guns tightly in their suburban castles fearful of tax increases, of people different from them, of not getting their way. Imaging studies have shown reactionaries have enlarged amygdalas, the part of the brain responsive to fear. Yes they're angry too, yes they play up the fear, but they're genuinely easily frightened people who weaponize that fear and twist it into rage rather than thought.

    In a way one could say the necessity of surveillance like this is driven by fear. If they didn't worry they wouldn't pay for it. It exists because of fear.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • They wouldn't even have to reunite to likely get the DPRK agree to an umbrella and potentially sharing solely for defense against American/western imperialism. All they'd have to do is kick out the Americans, agree to non-aggression and fraternity with the DPRK, drop any remaining hostile acts and stances and increase cooperation. I'm sure the DPRK under that situation would accept a two-systems situation where the violent American imperialists are kept out and they agree to use nuclear weapons in defense of the south should the Americans attempt to return or against the Japanese revisionist pawns and so on. The DPRK would still be deeply suspicious and rightly so of the quisling south but if they were sincere about national liberation from the west there could be room for a thawing.

    Sadly I just don't see this happening at this stage. The US is still too strong and would simply invoke the override clause, take control of the South's military and overthrow the government of anyone who tried to do that while calling them a traitor and either murdering or trying and imprisoning them for their troubles. Best they can do at this point is attempt to intertwine the interests of their national bourgeoisie with those of China and to whatever limited degree possible with trade zones with the north so that over time it becomes the interests of the national bourgeoisie to avoid getting used by the US against China and using that neutrality to gradually pull away from US influence without pulling off a hard break that would demand and allow support from the national bourgeoisie of a military coup.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

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  • Yeah this would 100% be let known because it makes the US look untrustworthy and really hurts its ability to do negotiations in future because of such a bad faith, illegal tactic on its part. No one would ever receive them again with any kind of entourage allowed in discussions. I don't think Trump would do this because he likes using negotiations and acting the tough businessman too much. It would cause too many problems for other strategies and areas of interest the US is trying to vie for.

    This is all cope. The US simply is THAT GOOD at what they do. They meticulously planned this. They had satellite and drone intel, they knew positions, they knew routines, they had infrared, they used wifi and radio to see through walls and see where people were positioned, they hacked the phones of everyone around him 3 weeks ago and all the networks and computers. They came in with overwhelming firepower and precision and had better technology, better weapons, and just overwhelmed them quickly and didn't stop moving at all until reaching their objective. What I find most interesting though is the claim that they used gas cutters to burn through barriers, that takes time, even the really nice ones the military uses would slow them down a bit though I guess if no alarms were set off by guards taking the extra 10 minutes to do it this way vs explosives that are quicker but alert everyone might be ideal still.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES

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  • It worked last cold war too. Lots of countries orbited the USSR but didn't enter alliances with it, didn't stand together and let the US pick off individual countries with coups, palace intrigue, CIA operations, color revolutions, etc.

    The thing is they get to keep on trying too. You have to succeed in preventing the CIA/US/NATO/western bourgeois interests from couping your country every single week. They only have to get lucky once after meticulously sewing the seeds, planting the groundwork including trained local operatives and trying again and again and again. If you're as big as China and as strong you can afford to try rolling up their intelligence networks and stymie them a bit in this but most countries don't have that ability. By the time you see the clear pattern of what the whole of US operations against you are it's too late 8/10 times because they've coalesced into a color revolution or coup. And even in those 2/10 times they can come back 2 years, 5 years, 10 years later and keep trying after slapping on more sanctions to make your people more impoverished and desperate and willing to sit on their hands or support the overthrow. But if you do stand together you get branded as an axis of evil, you get heavy sanctions, heavier pressure, "moderate rebel" terrorist groups cropping up and doing spectacular and horrible attacks to make you look weak, you get risk of direct invasion and so on. It's still better though to try together than assuredly be destroyed and subjugated individually one by one.

    You're on the back-foot if you're playing defense all the time against the world hegemon, the economic powerhouse, the one with the ability to solely sanction you and crush your economy on their say-so alone. The one that controls world popular media, the one that controls the internet. The one that controls and uses as a weapon social media like Facebook which it owns and uses for its purposes. (One of China's biggest saving graces is they never allowed those rats in and kept internet sovereignty. But even so, they need to try harder to export Chinese culture and media to the rest of the world to gain soft power. Cannot rely entirely on easy loans, forgiveness and investment which the US just sanctions and tariffs and bullies into making the assets of the US under a debt scheme they slap on)

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES

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  • They did the same thing in Iran if I recall correctly. Trying to bring down a country's entire air defense network is more risky, more expensive, more TIME-CONSUMING (important in a quick in/out special forces raid where you want all your resources directed and available towards that effort and protecting your guys) and if you're not intent on immediately gaining air superiority also unnecessary. Especially with a country like Venezuela even if you want to later attain total control of their airspace and be flying big low and slow bombers day and night over it, you can just come back later, they can't replace their losses and you can just come back and pick them off over a number of nights if you wish.

    That said all this talk of deals does make me uneasy. The alleged deal in Moscow between Russia, China, US to divide up spheres, China's silence at UN votes. It wouldn't shock me if Trump was the type of person to find someone high ranking in the Venezuelan military willing to sacrifice the leader to maintain the base of power and avert a war, especially if China told them they weren't going to help or protect them and Russia said the same and told them to figure it out for themselves. I certainly didn't want to and don't want to believe such a deal took place but given all that's happening it seems slightly plausible. Time will tell and reveal more. Right now it seems a little close to disinfo designed to dispirit the Venezuelan people, Chavismo, Bolivarian revolution, etc and divide and get them fighting or distrusting one another in time for Trump to do some election meddling in the required election within 90 days as Maduro isn't coming back and the constitution apparently stipulates this so best to disbelieve it short of better proof.

  • It's Putin's fault

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  • Americanly does American things within the Americas while citing century+ old doctrines that existed before Putin's father was born while Russia was still feudal and before it became the USSR to justify it. Does so based on a tradition of US lawless interventions in the region and globally going back 50+ years during which time Trump was literally in high school and college and Putin was a nobody.

    "Umm acktually this is because of Russian man bad"

    No clemency for the western press when the accounting is done.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES

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  • True, true, good point. I thought you meant 2022. Though there had always been this old guard neo-con anti-soviet undercurrent of boomers who just hated Russia and didn't trust it through the mid 2000s and spread a kind of vague malaise of accusations against Russia. But they definitely went more mainstream and entered the foreground of thought on Russia at that time as a result of 2014 and Crimea and Russia refusing to be silently encircled, partitioned and destroyed and thrown out of the Black Sea and relegated to being a polar power.

  • fellowship of the, uh... what?

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  • What's funny is the politics of this shirt is no more or less incoherent than the simplistic anti-warism politics of this person with a Ukrainian and Palestinian flag in their bio. It's just the people who made this are pandering to weird reactionary cobbling together of liked flags/leaders brainworms instead of their liberal brainworms. As always the chart divines the truth:

    This type of slop being for social darwinist types who believe the atrocity propaganda about the DPRK and China and think it's based and good.

    (It could also just be a funny meme with leaders often in the news with no real political meaning I guess...)