Don’t tell me the white empire is gonna start another front. 🫣

Looks like you were right when you said this: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12334797/8514359

The statement does read very much to me like Hamas is essentially saying, Palestinian statehood and sovereignty is the only path to willing disarmament of the Palestinian resistance factions. Like, they’re only going to agree to it if it means there’s a recognized/respected Palestinian state that is independently (from any occupier) handling militarized matters.

And this part:

The occupation’s commitment to halting the killing and ending its attacks is the fundamental prerequisite and the first step in proceeding with the implementation

It reminds me of Iran’s negotiations with the US a bit. In that, it communicates their willingness to come to the table and negotiate, but in practice, it is unlikely to go that way because of how rabid the empire and its regional attack dog is.

I’m sure that’s part of it. Whether it’s that people don’t care or that the systems of power are so obscured that it’s harder than it looks for people to resist it within the imperial core; harder than it looks meaning, like, people in the imperial core are fed the illusion of having state-sanctioned people power (“democracy”) but in actuality, are kept far away from policy making. Not to say it’s hopeless, but it’s multi-layered, I guess. For some, there is the step of getting them to realize that the power they are told they legally have is largely fake and then there is the step of organizing them toward something different, while knowing the state will be very mad if you resist imperialism even slightly.

Kinda how I feel having empathy and being aware of ongoing genocide. It makes it a lot easier to understand why some people end up in adventurism, even if I don’t agree with it in principle as a means of effecting change.

I wonder how true this is or if they’re blowing hot air. It’s hard to imagine Hamas agreeing to disarmament, only to hand over power to some technocrats who work with occupier military forces.

I agree it’s desperation on the part of Ukrainian leadership, though I’m not sure that it would instigate anything resembling a world war (even if that may be what the Ukrainian Nazis are hoping for). Iran is already fighting / has fought off the US and israel, and various empire states have helped with the empire side of things, even if somewhat indirectly. Given the restraint Iran has shown consistently so far, the likelihood is that it would do a tit for tat with Ukraine and then stop, and like… what would the EU do for example? Condemn Iran when it already tends to militarily support the US against it? All I see it accomplishing is Ukraine accelerating its fall by pissing off Iran and getting hit proportionally harder, relative to the remaining strength it has.

Hmm. Is there a pattern here with countries getting bolder after seeing the US getting debased by Iran? This and the Malaysia statement have got me thinking.

But I was not keeping close track in the past, so maybe there is already precedent for this kind of reaction to US imperialism from countries like them. Not really sure.

Beijing is increasingly trying to fill a global leadership vacuum left by the US withdrawal from international organisations through initiatives ranging from the Belt and Road infrastructure programme to others covering security, governance and development.

While many of these initiatives begin with vague-sounding names and few detailed objectives, analysts say

Do the analysts’ titles start with “CIA”?

If China can take the lead on global AI adoption and standard setting, it will control one of the most groundbreaking technologies since the internet, giving it an opportunity to impose its values over those of the US-led liberal world order.

*US-led imperial world order.

**an opportunity to impose its values that it won’t use in the same imperialist manner as the US does because it’s not imperialist

To build foreign dependence on Chinese AI, China also launched the China-ASEAN Countries Artificial Intelligence (AI) Application Cooperation Center last year.

Psychological projection: “This is why we’d do it, [to make others dependent on us], so China must be doing that too.”

While China is touting open source, there is no guarantee that its companies will continue to make their models accessible if they come to dominate the technological frontier, analysts say.

“They’re just waiting to do the capitalism monopoly thing! They’re exactly like us! I mean, not like us. Because they’re commies. They’re the opposite of us! Except the same! Ugh, propaganda is hard.”

Still, for developing countries, China’s offer to help them navigate this complex new world would be compelling, Xu said.

“Because the developing countries will be like: ‘Well, we don’t even have a 10th of the resources that China has. How are we going to keep up with this?’” Xu said. “China’s answer is: come to our country. We will educate you with our open-source software and this is how we’re going to do it.”

Scary. Going to another country and learning. What is China gonna do next, offer free hugs?!?

Yeah, like if it came down to military confrontation, the US might have trouble occupying the country, but they could still do major damage. They eventually lost, in a sense, in Vietnam, but not before doing horrible damage to the people there, some of which is persisting damage from chemical weapons. Granted, the empire is not as powerful today as it was in Vietnam, relative to other militaries in the world. But it’s also more abstracted today, insofar as being able to do more with less boots on the ground, and has barbaric reasons to test that kind of technology on a target to refine AI and such.

Whether some of it was bluff, or fully real, the Maduro operation put Venezuelan leadership in a position where they were facing a threat of the leadership being annihilated vs. doing some dealing. I can’t remember the details offhand, but I remember an article about this, that IIRC the story is the other leaders were facing immediate threat of something happening to them too. Like the US basically had a gun to their head.

And considering what they managed to do in Iran, in spite of how capable Iran’s military is, I would not put it past them being able to do some precision assassination still, in a country that is positioned as much weaker militarily than Iran is. That would surely create blowback like it did in Iran, but Venezuela would have a much harder time turning that blowback into a military response that is capable of making the US hurt in return.

Either way, I’m not the one running a country with a gun to my head having to make that call and I have consciously tried to change my own mindset to sort of back off on matters like these when it comes to passing judgment on the peoples contending with them. In my case, there’s a layer to it where, being a “white” Yankee, I see it as part of unlearning the western superiority view; do I have experience running a country under the shadow of imperialism? No. Have I led to success, or taken over leadership on after it’s establishment, a people’s revolution? No. Have I even lived under the shadow of imperialism from the side of the most marginalized? No.

So I’d much rather be saying “I don’t know enough to pass judgment” than condemning some figure I know little about and never even bothered to learn the name of (Rodriguez) before the kidnapping of Maduro happened. I’m not gonna hold back to the point of making it a personality, where I don’t speak up on things I am informed on, but “no investigation, no right to speak” has something to it, I think. And investigation is more than reading a few headlines.

I saw a bunch of people on telegram calling Delcy a puppet for this and I just couldn’t wrap my head around what these people were on.

Maybe I’m projecting from instincts I have at times, not totally sure, but it seems to me that it goes back to the “scramble to condemn” that lefty types can get caught up in. Like if you don’t quickly condemn everybody who needs condemning, your True Lefty credentials may be in question and if you do, it helps prove how truly lefty you are. I suspect that’s some of the psychology of it. Because like, suppose that Delcy actually was a puppet, what would be the point of a bunch of people online jumping to that as fast as possible? Are they going to mobilize Venezuelans by posting really hard? That’s like the kinda shit color revolutions do, not organic revolutionary forces. So if there isn’t an immediate material benefit (for the cause of liberation) that justifies jumping to conclusions and being fast to condemn, what benefit remains? One can be personal benefit of seeming more with it, more truly lefty, someone who calls out the frauds.

In that sense, what it makes me think of is the view of Lenin that can overly focus on something like: “lol, Lenin really dunked on those frauds.” Like yeah, he criticized tendencies he thought were wrong, but he was also an organizer and doing it from the orientation of criticizing local tendencies who might overcome MLs in jockeying for control of an alternative to the status quo. For him, it was an immediate existential problem of gaining or losing control over the system as its contradictions became unsustainable.

Whereas it is questionable what’s being gained when people jump to “Venezuela compromised” or whatever. Geopolitics is rife with countries that deserve our support doing questionable things sometimes because of the horrifically abusive and repressive conditions that imperialism created–and which imperialism is currently trying to reassert even as it declines in fits and starts.

Welcome back!

To be clear, still has to pass in the senate:

The House’s approval of H.R. 8800 illustrates the increasingly partisan politics surrounding the annual defense authorization bill. Although five Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in supporting the legislation, and one Republican voted against it, the measure advanced with overwhelmingly Republican support and now heads to the Senate for consideration.

But I would not be surprised if it passes there too.

One country, two systems, but it’s colonizers sharing tips on how to mass murder civilians.

Meanwhile China rises in global opinion by doing such insidious things as helping other countries out with win-win exchanges, living in peace with their neighbors, and being a powerhouse of research and manufacturing toward pro-social ends.

The audacity of the empire really knows no bounds. Like the only reason the Strait was disrupted in the first place is because they attacked Iran. Now they want others to pay them for providing (shitty) protection in a conflict that they keep going because they refuse to cede to Iran being a sovereign country. I think the level of pettiness to it is the part that would make me want to laugh if it wasn’t so angering. Like Iran goes “we’re closing the Strait and charging for passage” and the US goes “nuh uh, we’re closing the Strait and charging for passage.” Like they can’t stop Iran from enforcing sovereignty over the Strait, so in a childlike fashion, they act like they’re doing something by saying they’ll do it too. This is not the actions of stable, mature adult minds. Adult children are managing the empire’s decline and people have to take them seriously anyway because they have control over pre-existing military and economic power.

Trump and co are still dangerous, even with the sometimes absurd belligerence, because they have the military might of the empire behind them. That military might has cracks showing, especially up against a country as militarily developed as Iran is, but it can still do damage.

Or to put it another way:

Long-term view: The empire is in serious decline, shows no signs of being capable of turning things around, and through its mask off belligerence is currently redefining itself as an overt world terrorist organization (thereby damaging the soft power of the past). A new multi-polar world order is not yet solidified, but Iran’s ability to defend itself is solidifying the multi-polar rise against imperial attempts to reassert the uni-polar order.

Short-term view: The empire still has a lot of weapons and can hurt a lot of people with them. Nobody has perfect defenses that can stop every attack and people living in relative peace is better than them dealing with a thrashing beast.

As for Trump himself, he’s long been kind of unhinged. Plus narcissists tend to be when backed into a corner. Hypothetically, would it materially change much if Trump himself was no longer making the executive calls but others in his circle were? I would figure, policy-wise, no dramatic changes. But others may be more grounded in terms of the consequences of the flow of oil being disrupted for so long and more willing to make peace deals for that reason. Media management would for sure take a hit, with them struggling to find somebody with the same personality cult draw.

But all of this analysis doesn’t mean much with regards to the headline. The fact is, he pissed off enough people for them to want to do this. Whether it would actually lead anywhere, it is a pretty strong statement of hatred of the man coming from the region.

Interesting, thanks for doing such a detailed breakdown on it. When you put it that way, I can see why there’d be a desire to cover it up (if it was him dying to a Russia attack in Ukraine) to avoid open escalation. With it being such a proxy war. But I can also see how if the timeline allows for it as you say, then maybe he really did get back uninjured and die at home. From what I could find on aortic tear/dissection, he’d be in the age range where it could have been building up unseen as a problem for a while.

Like this is what one source says on it:

Aortic dissection happens because there’s a slow breakdown of the cells in the walls of your aorta. The breakdown has likely been going on silently for many years before the weakened area of the aortic wall finally gives way. This results in a tear, which leads to the aortic dissection.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16743-aortic-dissection

So if it was a cover-up, they were certainly careful to choose something as the cause that tracks as believable, while also being subtle enough in how it can occur that (from the sound of it) it wouldn’t necessarily be something you’d notice as a problem coming in a medical record.

For the conspiracy angle of it, that same article does also say:

Traumatic injury to your chest like a high-speed car crash or serious fall from a height of more than 20 feet.

(among factors that can increase risk of aortic tear)

So it’s possible that he got injured in Ukraine and it triggered an aortic tear, but you’d think if he was injured there, he’d be kept there rather than shuttled back to Washington. But I spose it could be that he technically did die of an aortic tear while in Ukraine, after getting injured by some attack. And the cover-up is that he died at home.

I was reading a thing the other day claiming the timeline made no sense for him making it back when he supposedly did and then dying after. Though at the same time, the idea he was killed by a Russian strike seems like a very specific explanation; is there data behind it or just conjecture? It seems like the US would want to seize on a thing like that to vilify Russia further, unless they are afraid of admitting weakness in the process? Or afraid of its visibility drawing them into a more direct war with Russia? (Though Trump is so belligerent, he doesn’t seem like the type to want to hold back.) OTOH, if he died to the Ukrainian side somehow (ex: from infighting, blowback, etc.), that seems more like a thing they’d want to hide.

But either way, it is strange and I’m curious to know if there is more info on the situation beyond the stuff about the timeline.

Yeah, if Iran can hold its own against the empire, then I’m not sure it’s even exaggeration to say that China would be capable of doing a reverse uno and turning empire states into failed states. All the more so after all the resources the empire has burned against Iran. Not that China would want to do that much widespread damage, but I guess what I’m trying to say is, I really don’t think the empire has yet gotten the message that its hegemony is not coming back.

It’s funny how blatant they’re being about it. Like you didn’t even change the title much. And the article is pretty transparent about saying there are concerns that they won’t be able to wage war against the DPRK or China because of what they’ve lost against Iran.

Like here:

Analysts believe war plans with North Korea call for a significant amount of US missiles, both to hit enemy targets and to defend US forces and Seoul from projected massive strikes by Pyongyang’s forces.

They aren’t even hiding it. They’re talking about Occupied Korea like it is just a US military base with the civilian people living there as an afterthought. Which is pretty much what it is, but it’s so mask off. And they call it “war plans”, not some hackneyed euphemism.

The O’Hanlon quotes are the most weasel word, but sound downright funny when you read past it:

O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said he doesn’t believe the US military’s ability to deter Chinese or North Korean aggression “has suffered yet.”

But the expert cautioned that “at some point” deterrence could wane. “It’s probably unmeasurable and unknowable where that point might be, since it’s largely about an adversary’s psychology,” said O’Hanlon.

“Unmeasurable and unknowable.” I guess that’s bourgeoisie intelligentsia for “I don’t fucking know.”