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darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]

@ darkcalling @hexbear.net

Posts
2
Comments
583
Joined
6 yr. ago

    • Cope and denial of reality because it's too painful

    There's doomerism yes but the flip side is people who stick their heads in the sand and make socialists look like detached from reality deniers by saying nonsense like the US and Trump would make up kidnapping Maduro.

    That kind of thing drives people away from us. Being consistently correct will get people interested in how we think and entertaining our propositions but denying easily provable reality because we don't like it when it's actually provable makes our denials of their fabrications less convincing because we come off as sore losers. Sober analysis isn't some exact center between doomerism and cope and denial but it definitely incorporates an understanding of things being bad without tipping over into woe-filled proclamations of how the world is hopeless and doomed and we'll never escape capitalism and we need to nuke it all. That kind of emotional outburst isn't great even if I understand it. We need to have the strength to admit defeats and failures and not retreat into cope and wishful thinking about "here's how Bernie can still win" but applied to an anti-imperialist situation as well as to try and avoid maximizing doom by extending a regional defeat to the complete loss of hope for the world forever and other absolutist antics of despair.

    There's also the kind of doomer who just parrots suspicious statements and accusations and probable disinfo that aren't penultimate proclamations of doom but empire narratives that are considerably more in doubt than things like claims of capturing someone which historically are not lies. Such as the one about Maduro agreeing to this and this being an arranged exit which is interesting to report on but shouldn't be seen as anything but odd fiction or disinfo to dispirit the bolivarian revolution until solid proof or reliable sources of some sort arises.

  • Yemen was supplied with high tech missiles and technology (including drones) to make more by nearby Iran. Venezuela has no such benefactors in their region (or anywhere globally really). Iran or China also provided them with intelligence to help in targeting US ships and doing interception of merchant vessels in the first place. Again Venezuela has no such powerful benefactor in the region, no supplier of arms, etc.

    There's also the fact that the Yemeni people had a lot less to lose after all they'd been through than Venezuelan people and arguably had/have less compradors within their ranks to sell them out. Yemen also wasn't sitting on oil and the US already had strategic ports and airbases and so from the US point of view fighting them was a draining distraction without any possible reward while Venezuela together with Iran means control of world oil markets by the US empire.

  • Suddenly once Russia becomes an official state enemy, the economic institutions and policies that the west installed suddenly become "oligarchy". What was just recently "free market" policies that America supports suddenly became "corrupt" and "oligarchies".

    Eh one correction. They've been sewing the "Russia corrupt, oligarchy" thing for years now before the Ukraine SMO thing happened. Easily since the mid 2010s. News programs, exposes, I remember one that claimed that Putin had stolen so much wealth he was likely secretly the richest man in the world.

    The problem was always that by that time the Russians were stealing from the people but keeping the theft profits within Russia with Russian capitalists instead of handing it all over to western capitalists as was desired after 1992 and the open looting of the 90s which they wanted to continue or resume.

  • Who controls Saudi Arabia? In whose corner are they? Same with Oman and Kuwait. Comprador dogs of the US.

    If US demands it they'll cut off supplies or increase prices or whatever and put a hurt on China. The mere loss of 20% of supply would result in devastating price shocks and shortages, industry shut-downs and trickle down effects on supplies and various industries. Looking at this can probably take away 35-40% for a sustained period (especially with Ukrainian attacks on Russian infra which they'll help plan and execute) if they want and they'll do this in either a lead-up to increased economic warfare and sanction, isolate, decouple strategy or in the lead-up to an actual military action to leave them hurting for it perhaps by trying to force China to open strategic reserves for civilian use that they then can't use for their military in a future conflict that follows shortly.

    Plus Venezuela and Iran are the last influencers of global oil markets (due to sheer volume and size of reserves) that are not under the US thumb. Russia is already sanctioned and can only supply so much, can't pick up the slack. The US can effectively increase or decrease prices and supply on demand now to hurt a manufacturing economy like China badly. US sanctions against Chinese imports of oil or exports to them will be one tool that can be used if behind the scenes agreements cannot be reached.

  • I definitely agree and I've sounded off on this myself in the past. Trump's push for control of key waterways among other things signals a desire to act as gatekeepers. If they can control the raw resources (like oil, minerals) and the markets then China can only exist and thrive as a manufacturing power via going through the US, paying the US toll (not necessarily money for every product but submission, not disrupting the dollar, not crossing core US interests, etc), then the US stays on top and China is forced into an awkward position of needing to maintain this to prevent the collapse of conditions at home. The US is not far from being positioned to be able to just cut China off from most of both its suppliers and buyers and inflict horrible pain on China.

    With the fall of Venezuela and Iran the US would totally control world oil and petrochemical markets. I fear China's planners may have made the dangerous mistake of thinking the end of history was WW2, that the renunciation of violence and of respecting states and the UN international laws enshrined at the end of that war would carry on forever and the US would abide by them and fear to openly violate them as it is now doing and that bound by that their economic warfare against the US would bring capitalism to its knees. But not bound by that, plans need to change, the US is not far gone at all and has plenty of ways to regain strength and put China in an isolating chokehold.

    Another thought I have on those celebrating certain figures escaping death. Splits are what the US wants, they want factions, in-fighting, etc. But there's another thing, the problem with being an enemy of the US is you have to get lucky every single day. The US only has to get lucky once in killing or kidnapping you. They get to keep on trying and being on the defensive all the time while they get to rest and relax wears you down (Maduro's undoing I presume was this, he refused to be in hiding for what could be months or a year while the US may or may not make a move and didn't want to be worn down by living like that and well he really should have it seems). And shuffling leadership leads to pawns of the US or compradors who wouldn't have passed vetting normally getting close enough to the levers of power for the US to use them in a future play for power.

    When you don't have control of your skies, when the US can assassinate from above, infiltrate special forces from above at will at their pleasure you cannot maintain much of a state. They can continually undermine and destabilize and shuffle up the deck of cards that is your government and movement at their pleasure until they get a deck they like. This may take decades and never work but it often only takes years.

    Syria did not fall in a day or a month or a year. It took a decade of persistent effort but the US won.

    Iran likewise I do not see continuing to stand long-term if the economic pain continues, they're even weaker than socialist states because they're based on an unpopular fundamentalist/traditionalist religious movement that is increasingly out of date and step with the beliefs and wants of average people there and refuses to really moderate or reconcile as a good socialist state would do. And if Iran falls it will have been because of persistent US effort, decades of sanctions, economic and hybrid warfare, undermining, targeted assassinations, operations to inflict trauma and dispirit the Iranian leadership and people, bribes, blackmail, hacking, infiltration, etc shifting enough right pieces into place that it actually happens. With any luck Iran won't fall this decade but I wouldn't be surprised if it fell this year either.

    This stuff (hybrid warfare) is always going on out of sight all the time by the US and when we see history moving disastrously like in the fall of Syria it was because of these many hidden factors we rarely see or hear about and often fail to piece together into a larger picture.

    Too many so-called Marxists forget the primacy of material conditions. The revolution has the support of the people as long as it improves conditions or alleges it will do so in a short while when conditions are already bad. The revolution that's come and gone and who loses material improvements to peoples' lives and sees impoverishment, misery, lessening of living conditions, etc and can do nothing to stop it over a decade or decades is hard to maintain.

    In certain societies like Cuba where you have had more than half a century of revolutionary education and you prevent the imperialist propaganda from reaching the eyes and ears of the people you can hold out quite a bit longer, but in many places they don't control the media, they don't prevent the whisperings of the US and they don't educate the population properly on imperialism, its tactics, historical and dialectical materialism, etc.

    So Cuba, DPRK, both can stand up quite well because they educate their populations in a Marxist way and they prevent the propaganda whisperings and they are isolated from the world economy and cannot be subject to significant further outside economic warfare and pressure.

  • It also smashed the whole Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard nonsense about a China-Russia-Iran axis that geopolitics enjoyers love to put forward (to be fair, I bought into the idea too at one point). There is no axis if the three countries cannot form a military alliance

    Did it though? I don't disagree on the no axis given what's happened but the lens is still useful. The fact is the US has basically succeeded in getting their chessboard in a position they want. They have the gulf comprador states, Syria has fallen, the zionist entity is stronger and more integrated than ever, they've prevented the uniting of land power economically and militarily between Europe, Asia (China), and Africa at the cross-roads of the world in west-Asia/middle east. So I'd say they've for the moment basically won in that sense of maintaining that particular imperative that Brzezinski was talking about. The belt and road looks to be through too much rocky terrain and has been effectively neutralized as an alternative to sea routes which the US commands via their NATO navy and first, second, and beyond island chains like Diego Garcia and various worldwide naval and air bases. It looks to me like they've done exactly as Brzezinski would have wanted and warned them to do. They've not prevented China and Russia from getting together but they've prevented China from integrating closely with the middle east and with Europe and Africa beyond it. They control the routes and are in a position via their naval power to disrupt without having to worry about their lack of ability to disrupt on land as it's been locked down against China.

  • And I do think there's reason to believe the possibility of elements of the NatSec state wanted Trump dead rather then elected again. Not bad enough to kill him themselves (maybe no longer capable because they're the failsons of the guys who actually did that stuff to JFK) but enough to intentionally open up gaps in security, ignore intelligence, look the other way and say if it happens it happens.

  • For now.

    XHS brings up an interesting point about this being to dissuade Chinese investment which brings about severe economic pain and suffering which will cause the people to lose faith in the bolivarian revolution which will lead to election of a neo-liberal which will lead to a temporary brief boost in prosperity compared to the worst of the sanctions at the bottom of this pit the US has engineered which will mean the end of Venezuela as anything but a US puppet for the next 20 years during which time the decisive economic and political conflict for US retaining control of the world against China will take place meaning one less friend for China.

  • All good and well to say this now but I hope they're putting serious work into succession because when they next hold elections people aren't going to vote for some guy the US kidnapped years ago. They need to get a new figure to rally the people around from within the movement who is ideologically committed, loyal, and able to be popular and win elections. And also who isn't afraid of being kidnapped or killed by the US like their predecessor as the US will just designate them a narco-kingpin as well and try and pull the same shit. US is going to be working hard to undermine the next election there.

    I don't think for a second that a lot of the US charges against Maduro like the machine gun one are going to stick because they're absurd (though who knows with this clown supreme court). At least on appeal I figure they'll be thrown out but that could be years from now. I do think they'll probably have some manufactured CIA evidence that paints Maduro as being the kingpin of this invented Venezeulan narco cartel they've invented and I do think they'll get a conviction for him on that via at least RICO (bring in some bribed "informants" who testify against him) and probably some other bullshit charges relating to like sanctions violations or violating the rules the US unilaterally imposed which is easy to get. So in other words I don't see him ever returning to Venezuela alive, they'll execute him or imprison him for the rest of his life. RIP.

  • Actually they just need to occupy the capital.

    Set up a green-zone, call for a "stabilization force" from "coalition of the willing" types, install their puppet, recognize them as legitimate, give them the UN seat, give them embassies, give them all foreign held assets, say all oil revenue belongs to them and so on and they then sign an agreement to give 98% of oil revenue to Chevron. If they can just hold that green zone and prop up compradors, set up local reactionary militias and train a loyal army they can keep control of the oil or at least make it illegal and challenging for other countries to get at due to sanctions on "unauthorized" export of it and they've achieved their goals. No need for widespread pacification or Vietnam 2.0 considering its the oil they're mainly after. At the most just the capital and oil fields but realistically they just need the capital and international recognition and preventing easy payments for any shipments of oil.

    They probably really want to decapitate and fragment the regular Venezuelan military first though. But they might try something weird like trying to ransom Maduro back for oil control too. Or it could just be a gangster play to brandish their power even if they can't get control of the oil right now.

  • That's just cope on your part. The US has no history of lying about these things. They can afford to "make a mistake" in claiming someone was in a building they blew up because they're not on the ground in a position to verify. They know for a fact whether their guys do or do not have the president and his wife. It's not something you can make a mistake out of and there is no tactical advantage sufficient for the humiliation of it turning out to be a lie.

    It has too many disadvantages (including making Trump look like a loser who had to fake doing something a "real president" would actually do). For one the bourgeois press would be obliged to scrutinize future claims more deeply which is the last thing empire wants. They don't want them or their subjects doubting this kind of stuff so burning credibility on it is silly.

    Fact is the US is really, really, really good at this stuff. They and their zionist colony. They killed Nasrallah, they killed that Iranian general. They bombed the command bunker where the Iranian president and leadership were hiding and forced them to flee.

    On the balance of facts and reason and experience and history everything says this is true until disproven which will be very easy and should have happened by now as US special forces are not going to spend hours chasing around a hostile city trying to find what safehouse Maduro is livestreaming from and taunting them from. It would be deeply humiliating for such video to exist to the US and its leaders and the US relies on fear, intimidation and a certain invincible aura to maintain hegemony and control and dominance so again they'd have no reason to.

    If Maduro is alive, unkidnapped then he has a responsibility to the revolution and maintaining stability and preventing even further the possibility of a coup, succession crisis or insurrection to immediately make this known. That it has not happened means he's either kidnapped, dead, or trapped under a ton of rubble. (Or else in on some weird scheme with the Americans to leave under the impression of being kidnapped which I find deeply implausible but still more plausible than your assertion about this)

  • However, other countries with an interest in maintaining sovereignty will have to look at it and learn from it. This worked here this time, but it's not foolproof and you can prepare for it. The US can't project this level of force simultaneously against everyone in its way.

    They don't need to. Less than a handful of countries have a stable anti-imperialist government with a movement behind it that can't be swept aside with an action like this and some other decapitating strike bombings.

    It's like the panopticon, yes they can't be looking everywhere at once but the problem is they can be looking anywhere and you don't know if it's on you and you have to assume if you're the one who stands up while everyone else takes a step back that they're going to come over and cut your head off to make an example of you next. And as long as other countries don't band together against the US in some grand military alliance none of them are going to risk it. None that aren't already risking it and being blown away (Venezuela, Iran are the only two ones that aren't safe because of having nukes and/or being a peer power like Russia/China and oh look one is experiencing color revolutions and threats of decapitation after a near miss when the zionist entity bombed the command bunker with most of the leadership last year during the heightened tensions and the other is Venezuela and oh look).

    Bullies know they need to only go one by one and make examples. That while people stand against them alone they can pick them off one by one. Luckily for the US its main enemies are far from each other, reticent to intervene and have large domestic economic problems the US has carefully sewn to mean they don't have the popular will to pull off an unpopular war waged against the world superpower for the benefit of another country or often even for their own benefit. The planners of these countries know this and are worried of being overthrown in such a situation by CIA elements they cannot root out and so try and bide their time by appeasement and trying to avoid the gaze of the eye of Sauron falling on them. Iran didn't hit the US back for what it did because it judged it would cause an existential war during which they'd have to play all their cards. Venezuela cannot close a strategic maritime strait and hurt oil prices and the US economy. Neither can certain African states that give us hope.

    The US systematically murdered hope last century, moving from one place to the next, using a variety of tactics from hybrid warfare to actual invasion and it succeeded and it won its cold war. It's just doing the same thing of encircling, isolating, picking off one by one. Someone needs to stand up to them in a big way. China doesn't want to do it. Russia isn't going to do it. Small countries are easily divided against one another and distracted with domestic worries caused by the US so they'll talk a big talk but not do anything to stop the material forces of the US military action or of US hybrid warfare.

    They are constantly projecting economic force, hybrid warfare, psychological warfare, propaganda blasts, infiltration, etc all over the world. They never rest and they can continue planting and watering dozens of these seeds in just about every country on earth and slowly undermining the foundation, creating cracks, setting fires the government has to rush from one to the next to put out. Then at opportune moments just as with color revolutions they pounce and pour extra pressure on. They make a demand, if you don't cave they put more pressure on. They can put sanctions on and leave them on with hardly another thought and it slowly angers the people of a country as they get more and more miserable and their government cannot do anything and the reactionary voices keep saying it is their fault and in desperation people begin to believe them. That's the problem.

  • I think the more plausible reality is it's a seeded lie to sew despair in the bolivarian revolution, to paint Maduro as a traitor and embolden the opposition domestically for immediate action as well as to attempt to lend some sort of legal pretext to what they're doing, to have it as a back-up to say "oh he cooperated and agreed to come with us, not sure why he's now lying and saying we took him against his will, sounds like he changed his mind, anyways you can't say we did extrajudicial war crimes stuff because he totally agreed to it for reasons".

    If he was going to leave in a negotiated way he wouldn't do it via US special forces, helicopters and gun-fire, he'd get on a Russian military plane and go wherever he intended on going whether that was Russia or for some weird reason the US.

    US for its part I don't think would want to endanger their military hardware and get trouble at home in case a troop gets domed during it just for some odd charade. Assume it's disinfo leaked by the west to dispirit the opposition and encourage an uprising by the comprador elements.

    Edit: Beyond that Maduro would be a fool to agree to such a ruse and go to the US. They are known liars. Even if Trump personally told him it's all part of the charade but he's going to pardon him for the "crimes" they're arresting him for, why believe him? Why count on him not changing his mind? Why give him that win of propaganda for capturing then being gracious to him? If Maduro wanted to dip because the pressure was too much he could probably move to Russia after abdicating to his VP legally. And he'd look a hell of a lot less like scum to everyone doing that than what is alleged here.

  • The US does not lie about these things.

    These are verifiable facts that would make them look like clowns if they lied about this. They might make up a lie or a "mistake" about killing someone in a strike where there is doubt but they know for a fact whether or not they've successfully kidnapped Maduro and his wife.

    They absolutely have him or else his body double. It's pure cope saying they're just lying and making it up.

    You don't lie about easily disprovable things where the guy just gets on TV and proves you wrong and your opposition at home clowns on you as a result as incompetent and your enemies abroad snicker at you. No one wants to look like that kind of fool, Trump especially.

  • Nothing will happen.

    There will be strongly worded but vague letters and speeches. There will be inveighing for "international law" and so on and so forth. There will be meaningless after the fact "solidarity with Venezuela" things but the show trial will go on.

    And beyond Americans shrugging the rest of Latin America won't dare do shit beyond words. There won't be an insurgency. There won't be "terrorist" attacks within the US that are any more intense or interesting than the usual weekly mass shootings it experiences anyways.

    There won't be any reckoning. The reactionaries will gloat and laugh and grin and laugh and chortle and drink themselves stupid and dine on fine food and rub it in Maduro's face and that of every other sane, moral person as they parade and humiliate him and anyone who supports him by proxy as they display their unbridled power and glare around with even more cockiness than usual. And Trump and the reactionaries will strut around grinning and the New York Times will publish a piece taking issue with some small legal quibble about how it was done, not that it was done and not that it should be undone.

    Venezuelans are not going to march up through Panama (cowed by US over Chinese port ownership already) and Mexico (who would be obliged to stop them in fear of the wrath of the US) and seep through the border and do organized violence shit. And if they did Trump would leap with joy and militarize the border even harder. He'd build a second wall, he'd deploy drones with orders to shoot to kill, the propaganda frenzy and ICE deportations would kick into overdrive fearmongering over dangerous brown Hispanic types who are all Venezuelan commie gang, drug dealer criminals according to them.

  • They're betting the US will collapse in the next 5 years? Because in 5 years the US can do a hell of a lot to reshape the map. The map is largely already in their favor with a few tiny hold-outs, one of which just got taken out and the other is slated for being taken out (Iran). Others like African countries they can just bully by pointing to this, using moderate rebels, bribes, blackmail, etc. They'll take China's belt and road infrastructure and put it under US ownership, put the people in debt, take the wealth and minerals and perpetuate themselves and obviate China's moves for the next 30 years during which time they can turn up the pressure to crack China by blunting economic growth, sewing separatism, and creating dissatisfaction with the government for living conditions not improving.

    I hate to say it but I really think China is playing the wrong game. They think just being good, charitable and a good trading partner will win over the people of the world and bring about change. And absent a violent, experienced hegemon like the US prone to coups, use of hybrid warfare, sanctions, intrigue, manipulation, sewing terrorists and rebellions and a master of propaganda and controller of the world culture and media that might be true but it is not absent that, it has that problem. Last century in the last cold war a lot of newly freed colonies soft-sided with the USSR but didn't hard-side with them and we saw how that ended for the USSR despite their efforts to export development help.

    If China had had another 10 years to win over the people of the world, clearly show them they were better and not the US maybe the US would find it impossible to undo with coups and dictators and forced trade deals and debt bondage but they don't. US is an old hand at propaganda and will spin the victimization of people under the new US regime as being China's fault or that of their neighbors or other religious groups or whatever.

  • I'm shocked they succeeded in capturing him.

    Killing him with a violent sudden strike would seem relatively easy with enough time as they'd eventually get lucky. This means Venezuela kind of dropped the ball on intelligence and security. They should have had security 24/7 ready to evac Maduro and his family the second anything looked up. Really he should have been living in a bunker or series of safe houses.

    Fact is if US indeed did first start striking Venezuelan air defenses and radar Maduro should have been whisked out immediately.

    Does certainly seem plausible in this case that either they had an insider OR someone, maybe not even Maduro but a bodyguard, general, his wife, her hairdresser, etc fucked up and US did electronic warfare, hacking, etc on phones and used them over time to pinpoint a location and strike.

    Not only that he should have been armed and he should have fought to the death. Being taken alive is just asking to be tortured and humiliated, dying on your feet even if they parade your corpse is a lot more heroic and let's be honest less painful than being subjected to CIA torture techniques for a few weeks or months before being put in the darkest hole of solitary confinement in a US supermax prison or GITMO for the rest of your life with regular abuse by guards. Not like a future president is going to pardon him. They get to do a show trial in the US with him as well which they couldn't do if he was dead. They might try and execute him too which again is a lot more degrading and humiliating way to go than dying with a gun in your hand firing hopelessly and getting gunned down by US special forces demons. Not like he'll get to tell his side of things, US media propaganda is fully in on him being an evil dictator.

    Anyways this sucks. My prediction is they kill replacements and command structure in targeted strikes and further kidnappings until someone who is pliable or already an asset is in place and at that point they "make a deal" with the US to essentially hand over the oil while retaining the facade of the revolution and standing up to the US. That or they get exceptionally lucky and manage to splinter the loyalists and install a puppet government in a green zone in the capital but most likely they'll be happy with the oil and message they've sent.

    Right now though they've dealt a big blow to not just Venezuela but the region and the world. It's a big sign from the US that if you cross them they'll just label you a terrorist or drug dealer and kidnap you and if they CAN DO IT in a place like Venezuela that's more resistant than most they can do it just about anywhere that's not the DPRK, China, Russia, or Iran. So next time the US bullies you and you want to side with China or Russia they start making insinuations to doing this kind of thing and maybe you fold. This plus the color revolution in Iran, this is going to embolden Trump to be more interventionist and set up the chess board further. Russia and China will issue meaningless verbal and written condemnations tomorrow in the morning and the UN as usual will deadlock with a US veto and EU abstentions over the issue.

    This is the problem with BRICS and the new order. If one side (US) is willing and able to use force to kill, kidnap, humiliate, bully, violate, and undermine the other side while the other side issues cheap words that US side can hold back progress pretty effectively because of their military primacy. They don't have to pick off China or Russia, just isolate them by picking off all their allies and clients while they roar about it at the UN impotently.

  • Tagline material.

  • They're going to keep doing stuff like this and they're going to use public outrage to ram through incredible levels of control of the internet. They'll eventually get around to making them stop these machines from doing this but first they'll use the outrage to make platforms responsible for all user content, forcing the entire internet to be tightly censored to zionist, western imperialist dogma as part of this. The current say reddit, facebook, etc regimes where they play whack a mole with anti-imperialist content will at that point look like a bright but quickly vanishing past compared to what this foreboding future holds.

    Be so easy to just selectively punish the bad actors and narrowly target them, just like Australia could have just tried to force social media companies to not do abusive stuff in their country, hand over algorithm details for review, that kind of thing but instead why pass up an opportunity to card all internet users behind the guise of keeping children off social media.

    In 5 years people in the west will have whiplash of how fast it all happened, much like 9/11 and the security state expansion there. There will be some truly big outrage moment, authentic or ginned up over this and they'll just bulldoze over any opposition and use it as the perfect pretext.

  • The guilty of doing journalism instead of propaganda for the west.