Tag: coercion

Judge blocks Trump 2.0’s declaration of war on Venezuelan “gangs”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Federal judge blocks Trump’s plan to target ‘alien enemies’ for deportation

In his latest move to clamp down on illegal immigration and immigration more broadly, President Trump has filed a presidential action invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a seldom-used law that gives the president authority to detain or deport nationals of an enemy nation during wartime. It’s only the fourth time in American history a president has used the act — and the first since World War II.

The directive targets members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang, and authorizes expedited removal of all Venezuelan citizens 14 and older, deemed to be members of the organization, who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

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Cuckold Europe, prop up dictators: Trump’s global plot laid bare

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Cuckold Europe, prop up dictators: Trump’s global plot laid bare

A month after Donald Trump’s second inauguration and the geopolitical global upheaval that may be unprecedented, one thing is clear: The president is an American sovereigntist, not an isolationist. Once this is understood, Trump’s seemingly wild upturning of the geopolitical order actually makes sense.

Sovereigntists are illiberal internationalists. They came of age after World War I, preventing the US from joining the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations). At the time, American sovereigntists regarded the league as a stalking horse for global governance, anti-colonial independence movements, black internationalists, left-wing political movements and liberal Christians.

Today’s sovereigntists aim to weaken non-Western international associations that seek a more democratic international order. They make common cause with similar forces; Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, for example. Their aim is an illiberal international geopolitical order where domestic political systems resemble “competitive authoritarianism” – multi-party elections embedded in a rigged legal and political environment. Under this model, the media and the machinery of government are used to attack opponents and co-opt critics.

Trump wants the US, not China, to write the technical standards of the global economy. Control over these standards creates lock-in effects in finance, telecommunications, space, robotics, bioengineering, nanotechnologies, and advanced materials and manufacturing methods. That means full-spectrum rivalry with China. If economic control is not possible, the plan B goal is global economic separation from China.

For Trump to achieve these goals, there are three key frontlines: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Taiwan.

A Wave of Pessimism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Una oleada de pesimismo (Google Translate)

“Keep calm. Hasty emotions are unnecessary today,” wrote yesterday Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the most belligerent members of the Ukrainian government, reacting to the wave of pessimism and, at times, hysteria that spread across the European continent throughout the day yesterday, focusing on analyzing the implications of the telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and the subsequent statements by the president of the United States. “The Trump-Putin conversation reduces tension, but at the expense of Ukraine,” stated the British BBC before the political spin managed to create a continental crisis from an initial conversation whose only agreement is to continue talking. Because despite the adjectives that are being used to describe the contact between the two presidents or the way in which it occurred, the result of the call was the mutual reaffirmation of the importance of peace and the implementation of the mechanisms to schedule a meeting between the two leaders, which will presumably be in Saudi Arabia, and begin a negotiation process.

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DOGE is Sharpening the Tools of US Empire – Not Dismantling Them

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
DOGE is Sharpening the Tools of US Empire (Rumble)

Many people have become so distracted with debates over the process DOGE is overseeing in exposing and eliminating US government fraud, waste, and abuse, that no one is focused on its purpose.

The current US administration has declared its intention to uphold the irrational and unwarranted pursuit of US dominance over the globe and is merely attempting to sharpen and streamline the tools available to do so more efficiently.

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This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Prison Notebooks

This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

It’s certainly fitting to think of what Gramsci was writing from a fascist prison in today’s political climate. But it’s also true that we’re in another sort of interregnum, one of romance, sexuality and gender itself. And this one comes with its very own set of morbid symptoms, as anyone who’s tried dating lately can attest. Dating apps are a plague, every week there seems to be a new term for bad behavior (“ghosting,” “breadcrumbing,” whatever), work demands more and more of our time, leaving less and less for love, and a constantly destabilized economy leaves us anxious and stressed even if we do happen to have stable work. Abortion is now illegal in a huge chunk of the country, and homophobic and transphobic violence — not to mention actual bans on trans healthcare and drag — are on the rise. And even if you do make it to coupledom and want to have children, our country still has precisely no support for working parents. The material basis on which you might have thought you’d be able to build a life is crumbling. 

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A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The question of women’s liberation is central to any revolutionary project, and thus so is the question of “sex work.” Esperanza Fonseca’s contribution, although coming from a Maoist political orientation with which we often have differences, [1] makes the stakes of this debate crystal clear, as she combines personal experience, public policy research, and historical materialism to argue that Marxists cannot uphold what she calls “sex-trade-expansionary feminism.”

Content Warning: Descriptions of rape.

…

The right of the subordinated classes of men to buy access to women’s bodies has been used historically to break class solidarity in order to maintain the dominant social relations of the time. This was true in feudal Europe and remains true today: when proletarian and petit bourgeois men get to buy women too, they develop a false consciousness and build solidarity with bourgeois men of their own gender rather than aligning with women of their own class. And because the overthrow of capitalism is only possible by the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, prostitution serves two great purposes: (1) allows bourgeois men access to a reserve army of women for their pleasure, and (2) prevent class consciousness and thus helps stop the proletariat from organizing as a class.

A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The vote in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29th November, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm by the bourgeois media. Photos featuring jubilant campaigners for voluntary euthanasia were plastered across web front pages. The real promise of this Bill is far from joyful for many. The Bill, which will now go to parliamentary committee with the opportunity for amendment, if finally passed into law, would represent a major political attack at a time of huge inequality and significant shortages in access to health care, social care, support for independent living, and end of life care, including adequate, high quality palliative care. Despite all this – and the loud opposition of disabled people’s organisations in particular – this measure is still mistakenly understood by some on the left as merely a matter of personal choice: an enabler rather than a threat.

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube

China continues to strengthen its military capabilities, combining rapid growth in conventional power with readiness to counter U.S. asymmetrical strategies.

Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire (archived)

Previously:

US proxy groups capture Rakhine State in Myanmar

US Greenland-Panama Ambitions Aimed at War with Russia-China

Hot spots where war may break out or escalate in 2025: Balochistan