- 2 Posts
- 30 Comments
4·9 days agoTrump did make that cryptic statement “… the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have.” General Dan Caine said that US Cyber Command and Space Command “began layering different effects” to “create a pathway” for US forces. Not surprisingly, they did not elaborate on what those were, but we can be certain cyber warfare played a role.
The CIA first dropped a team into Venezuela in August, got an informant close to Maduro, and spec ops forces created a replica of the building Maduro would be in, which they drilled in repeatedly. So yes, months of preparation.
Since you asked and I haven’t seen anyone else answer, the most recent parallel to the Maduro situation is the 1990 capture of Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama. All around, it was a pretty similar situation. Just like Maduro, Noriega was accused of using Panama as a drug shipping hub and of being a dictator by the US. Relations deteriorated until in late 1989, Panama declared they were “at a state of war” with the US, prompting George H W Bush to launch a ground invasion into Panama with one of the goals being the capture of Noriega, which was achieved within a few weeks in early 1990. He was then flown to the US to face a trial over his drug charges and was held in prison until 2010, though he was then extradited to France and later Panama, where he spent his final 6 years in prison.
Like Maduro, while the capture was ostensibly over drug trafficking concerns, it was largely to further US interests in Panama and Central America as a whole. Namely, it was to gain outsized control over the running of the Panama Canal for the US and grant them special perks such as reduced costs to send goods through, something that saved US companies billions every year. Additionally, it allowed as many as 14 military bases to be established in the area.
Here’s a really fantastic and very thorough comparison between the two that goes into much more detail. https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/comparison-of-us-capture-of-nicolas
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
1·2 months agodeleted by creator
Pretty sure the reply is “A chill one? 😭💀”
1·4 months agodeleted by creator
While the Old West goes back a few centuries, I’d say the “gunslingers era” isn’t until the first Colt revolver becomes available in the mid 1830s. It took a bit of digging to find pirates that would have definitely been around late enough into the 1800s that they’d be contemporary with gunslingers and samurai (class abolished in 1870), but old school river piracy lasted, even in just the US, into at least the late 1870s, so I guess that all checks out, as long as you weren’t expecting Blackbeard or anything.
Coke was originally among many other “tonics” pushed back in the day, but it also wasn’t marketed under the name Coca-Cola while it was sold as a patent medicine tonic. It also was only was sold in that form for a few months before being made nonalcoholic and marketed as a beverage later that same year. Sales were initially poor and only picked up with aggressive advertising campaigns, which I suppose is a strategy that Coke never left behind and leads us to the world where we are today.
30·5 months agoPhoto taken 10 seconds before that one of the cop smashing up pinball machines with a sledgehammer because they had been banned under anti-gambling laws. Pinball makers would eventually successfully argue that they were a game of skill, rather than chance.
111·5 months agodeleted by creator
One common tenant of direct action is decentralization. It’s a lot harder to squash direct action when the people doing this stuff are just groups of 2-5+ friends (it’s called an affinity group) who believe in the same stuff and have no common leader. Sometimes direct action is as simple as smashing up some windows in the dead of night and running away.
I might add that masking up is a good idea even if you plan on doing nothing but observing. Sometimes rightwing media personalities will photograph unmasked people at protests in an attempt to send online harassment their way regardless of whether they’ve done anything wrong. Additionally, there have been instances where innocent individuals have been charged with actions that other people in the crowd did, so even if you plan on being good, you could still get in trouble for the actions of others. A mask would add another layer of protection from identification and hopefully prevent you from getting wrongfully charged. I expect this administration to be particularly vindictive against protesters.
I’d recommend you don’t sign anything at a protest, ever. No petitions, no signing up for orgs, not even if a goth baddie asks you to sign their tits. Do that stuff offsite before or after a protest on your own time where’s it’s a lot less likely to be an informational gathering tactic. You don’t want a record of which protests you’ve been to, especially if they’re the spicier kind where direct action might be happening.
Mask up and bloc up.
There’s a reason they call that the “crotch” of the tree
An unrelated matter from months ago