Tag: Human Trafficking

Is Trump 2.0 Planning to Invade Venezuela?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Trump secretly authorized military force against Latin American drug cartels classified as foreign terrorist organizations

“The president is determined to not just dismantle – but completely destroy – [Venezuelan dictator Nicolas] Maduro’s Cartel de Los Soles and obliterate their operations in the Western Hemisphere,” a source close to the White House said.

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Maduro, Venezuela’s president since 2013, has been a particular focus of the administration. 

The Justice and State departments announced Thursday they would award $50 million to anyone providing details leading to his arrest for violating US drug laws.

Related:

María Corina Machado and Marco Rubio Escalate Interventionist Narratives Against Venezuela

Lenin’s Warning and the American Playbook in Venezuela

F.B.I. Agents in Southeast Asia Paid for Sex While Police Stood By, Watchdog Says

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

F.B.I. agents stationed overseas had sex with prostitutes in Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand, even as some bureau employees attended training meant to combat human trafficking, a practice that often exploits vulnerable women, according to an investigation by the Justice Department’s watchdog.

F.B.I. Agents in Southeast Asia Paid for Sex While Police Stood By, Watchdog Says

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.

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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)

Syria’s Rojava [Where They Run Torture Camps] Is in Grave Danger +

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Federalization of Syria a.k.a. Balkanization

Syria’s Rojava Revolution Is in Grave Danger (Reason magazine)

If the Kurdish-Arab alliance unravels, the U.S. military may decide to directly back Arab tribes as a bulwark against Iran and the Islamic State, according to Nicholas Heras, who has advised the U.S.-led military coalition in Syria and is now senior director for strategy at the nonprofit New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington. In 2019, when former President Donald Trump wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, the Trump administration considered a strategy of letting the Kurdish forces fall to Turkey and buying off Arab tribes.

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The United States has, directly and indirectly, backed all sides of the fight. Turkey is a NATO ally. Some of the SNA [Syrian National Army] units now attacking Kobane had received weapons and training from the CIA and the U.S. military. (After the Trump administration cut off support, a U.S. official condemned these same factions as “thugs, bandits, and pirates that should be wiped off the face of the earth,” and the Biden administration imposed human rights sanctions.) Meanwhile, several hundred U.S. troops are embedded with the SDF.

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In his Sunday victory speech about the fall of the Assad government, President Joe Biden said that he wanted to support an “independent, sovereign—an independent—independent—I want to say it again—sovereign Syria.” But U.S. policy at the moment seems to be creating the opposite: a Syria chopped up [Balkanization] by foreign powers.

Rojava is also known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

Related:

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Trump 2.0: Scientology sitting pretty as Trump names Pam Bondi his pick for Attorney General

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

After once and future President Donald Trump named Matt Gaetz, a loyalist, to be his pick for Attorney General in his incoming administration, former top Scientology executive Mike Rinder last week announced at his blog that Scientology would have nothing to worry about from the Department of Justice for the next four years.

Scientology sitting pretty as Trump names Pam Bondi his pick for Attorney General

What’s Up With Linkin Park’s New Singer?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The media is whitewashing her connection to Scientology. She was raised in the ‘church’ according to Growing Up in Scientology! That said, the song isn’t too bad. As far as I’m concerned, no one will be able to fill Chester’s shoes!

In the end, it wasn’t actually the end for Linkin Park. The rock band is back with new music for the first time in seven years — and a new singer as well. Emily Armstrong joined the band, replacing the late Chester Bennington, who died in 2017. Armstrong has sung in the band Dead Sara since 2005, and makes her Linkin Park debut on new single “The Emptiness Machine,” sharing vocal duties with Linkin Park cofounder Mike Shinoda. (Colin Brittain is also joining Linkin Park as their new drummer, with Rob Bourdon not returning.) She joined the band on stage for the first time on September 5, and will feature on their new album From Zero, out November 15. But Armstrong’s addition has already been controversial, as fans scrutinize her history with Scientology and convicted rapist Danny Masterson.

What’s Up With Linkin Park’s New Singer?

Related:

Linkin Park’s Emily Armstrong Apologizes For Danny Masterson Support

Beyond Leah Remini: 25 Musicians Associated with Scientology

Listening to Linkin Park