I agree with you (not that it means much from me, an ignoramus on Venezuela) but regardless of the topic, I think the tone on hexbear needs to be more patient and low-pressure than this. If a comrade is wrong, that's a teachable moment, for them and you and everyone else here. If you're patient and respectful, then the person you're speaking to has emotional space to consider your idea instead of potentially feeling pressured to defend themself by attacking it reflexively, which is not a constructive result.
The other reason I care is that, when we are hostile toward each other, it doesn't just affect the person we are speaking to, it can start to create an overall hostile atmosphere on the site, which tends to become a feedback loop: a hostile atmosphere makes people defensive, and then they protect themselves with hostility, which makes the atmosphere even more hostile, and so on.
If someone says "control of oil is control of Venezuela," maybe there's a faulty mindset but that is first and foremost a concrete statement of belief that can be addressed with a concrete rebuttal. For example, maybe the counter argument is: "The Venezuelan people can always recapture their resources in the future, as long as revolutionary consciousness and theory are still prevalent and they are not crushed by a (potentially infeasible) ground war or prolonged fascist junta," and then maybe you make a comparison to another state that recaptured its resources from foreign capital -- or whatever your argument is.
My point is, we all learn from each other, that is how the ideological consensus on this site emerges and evolves.
Anyway, sorry for tone-policing and inserting myself into this uninvited.
Yeah, at best (at worst), they have their foot in the door and can escalate more easily in the future. Seems like not much is happening yet. Feels like plan B after regime change failed.
Lula da Silva calls sale of rare earths mining company to US disgrace
RIO DE JANEIRO, April 23. /TASS/. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has blasted the sale of Brazilian rare earth metals producer Serra Verde to the American mining company USA Rare Earth. He accused former governor of the Goias state Ronaldo Caiado, who signed the agreement, of abuse of authority.
::: spoiler more (5 paragraphs)
"Caiado has entered into an agreement with American companies, which he has no right to do, since the issue of resources [is the responsibility of] the federal government. If we don't move proactively, people like him will sell Brazil. We cannot allow this," the Brasil 247 portal quoted him as saying.
The head of state said the agreement was a disgrace, but did not indicate whether the federal government would try to review it. The Brasil 247 portal added that "sharp debates about national sovereignty" and control over strategic resources have already arisen in the Brazilian government.
As stated in article 20 of the Brazilian constitution, mineral resources, including those in the subsoil, are the exclusive property of the Union. According to the ninth paragraph of this article, the disposal of these resources is the responsibility of the federal government. This provision of the country's basic law calls into question the legality of any independent agreements between the states of the country and foreign companies covering mining strategic raw materials such as rare earths.
About the deal
USA Rare Earth struck a $2.8 billion deal to acquire 100% of the shares in Serra Verde in an effort to help the United States and its allies reduce their dependence on rare earth supplies from China.
The Brazilian company is the only major manufacturer outside of Asia capable of supplying the four main elements needed to create permanent magnets: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Serra Verde is expected to account for more than 50% of the supply of heavy rare earth metals outside China by 2027. The deal is supported by the US government and includes a 15-year contract with fixed minimum prices for the metals.
Berletic and Medhurst are arguing that the US will try to cut off China's access to energy by creating a "blockade at a distance" that would be difficult for Chinese military power to reach.
The takeaway here is, if this war really is about strangling and collapsing China, this war against Iran is not going to stop. It will not stop, nothing will stop it, because, as long as it's taking place, China is being strangled, in terms of energy imports. China knew this -- this is what forced the US to launch it in the first place -- they [China] were rapidly moving toward energy independence, faster than the US could close the trap. So they [the US] have rushed, and they have done this, the outcome is unpredictable, this was reckless, and everyone is going to pay, finding out how this all ends.
Maybe this is why this war simultaneously looks like 5D chess and panicked flailing. In Berletic's analysis, it's both.
Former senior Biden advisor Amos Hochstein said during an interview on Sunday that the Biden administration had been preparing to bomb Iran if they had won re-election in 2024.
Hochstein was asked by Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, “In July 2024 Secretary Blinken claimed Iran was one or two weeks away from having enough fissile material breakout capacity to eventually make a weapon if Iran had decided to do so. There were indirect negotiations that the Biden administration did, but it went nowhere. So when President Trump argues that he did what no other president would, is it just simply that the bill was coming due and it fell on his watch?”
“I do think there’s a certain element to that, and that’s why I was supportive of President Trump joining in in June to take the strikes that we had thought internally in the Biden administration, we may have to take if there was a second term,” Hochstein replied. “We thought that the spring, summer of 2025 was probably, we may have to be there in the same place. And we did, we did war games. We did some practice runs on what it would look like to look into it, because that may have had to happen under our watch as well.”
Hochstein, for the record, is an Israel-born IDF veteran who reportedly played a major role in the Biden administration encouraging Israel’s horrific bombardment of Lebanon in September 2024. And his narrative that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “may have had to happen” under a theoretical second Biden term is false.
In March of last year, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” contradicting both the claims of President Trump and of Antony Blinken the year before.
But even if you accept that Iran was a nuclear risk, there was nothing stopping the Biden administration from simply restarting the nuclear deal that the Obama administration secured with Tehran in 2015. The JCPOA was working fine while it was in place; anyone who says otherwise is a lying warmonger. Trump and his handlers torched the JCPOA in 2018 because it was the primary obstacle preventing them from getting to war with Iran, and the Biden administration refused to reverse this move because they wanted war too.
Democratic partisans have been pointing to Trump's war for weeks to chide Hasan Piker and anyone else they blame (read: everyone but themselves) for losing in 2024. But it turns out the Biden admin was planning to attack Iran if they won a 2nd term
The Democrats were beating the drums of war for Iran well ahead of the 2024 election. Here’s an excerpt from the official 2024 Democratic Party platform explicitly attacking Trump for not going to war with Iran in his first term:
“All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”
Kamala Harris, who controversially replaced the dementia-addled Biden as the Democratic candidate late in the race, labeled Iran the number one enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.
The war with Iran was always planned. Analysts like Brian Berletic and Richard Medhurst have been laying out solid arguments that this American war is more about attacking the economic and energy interests of Russia and China in a last-ditch effort to retain planetary hegemony than it is about assisting Israel. This places the United States on a dangerous trajectory toward increasingly hostile escalations between nuclear-armed powers.
These moves were planned years in advance, and would have been rolled out regardless of what impotent meat puppet happened to be wheeled into office in January 2025.
You don’t get to vote out an empire. Whether or not the US will continue working to dominate the planet will never be on the ballot. We will continue seeing reckless US wars of immense human consequence until the empire falls, or until the American people bring the revolutionary change to their country that the world so desperately needs.
That's true, but I'm not talking about seizing ships, or attacking just Iranian ships, I specifically mean damaging or sinking ships belonging to nations the US is not openly at war with. If the US wants a global blockade, munitions scale better than boarding ships with helicopters. Currently, afaik, most shadow shipments do not get seized. It would need to be a robust blockade, affecting more than just Iran. China is already 85% energy self-sufficient, and 20% of their oil imports are from Russia, a nation willing to operate a shadow fleet and potentially fire back if fired upon by the US.
Not in this century, but they are visibly building up their military as fast as they can. If someone tells them "You can't have oil anymore unless you stop the BRI and submit to vassalage," maybe that would be their red line.
I just mean "politics" as shorthand for "everything that might happen." Politics is a negotiating layer to mediate all the other leverage nations and constituencies have, or think they have. If the US started targeting the shipping of 3rd parties, stuff would happen, threats would be made, some relationships may shift, it's a question of how it all balances out in the eyes of the US. Nations that might not stick their necks out for Gaza or Iran may do so for themselves. Or they might not -- that's why I posted this thread, to hear everyone's takes.
Just to play devil's advocate, possibly foolishly -- If the US breaks the taboo on sinking or damaging cargo ships, can't anyone with a fleet of nuclear subs do the same? As Boise_Idaho mentioned, Russia and China combined have quite a few more subs than the US, and greater industrial capacity to replace cargo ships and build more subs as needed. Russia has demonstrated willingness to take military initiative when cornered, and China is building up its military at breakneck speed in apparent anticipation of war. Also, China may depend on US consumers but doesn't the US likewise depend on Chinese producers?
Maybe I'm just logical enough to be annoying but I don't really grasp the situation, if so I apologize lol
I agree with you (not that it means much from me, an ignoramus on Venezuela) but regardless of the topic, I think the tone on hexbear needs to be more patient and low-pressure than this. If a comrade is wrong, that's a teachable moment, for them and you and everyone else here. If you're patient and respectful, then the person you're speaking to has emotional space to consider your idea instead of potentially feeling pressured to defend themself by attacking it reflexively, which is not a constructive result.
The other reason I care is that, when we are hostile toward each other, it doesn't just affect the person we are speaking to, it can start to create an overall hostile atmosphere on the site, which tends to become a feedback loop: a hostile atmosphere makes people defensive, and then they protect themselves with hostility, which makes the atmosphere even more hostile, and so on.
If someone says "control of oil is control of Venezuela," maybe there's a faulty mindset but that is first and foremost a concrete statement of belief that can be addressed with a concrete rebuttal. For example, maybe the counter argument is: "The Venezuelan people can always recapture their resources in the future, as long as revolutionary consciousness and theory are still prevalent and they are not crushed by a (potentially infeasible) ground war or prolonged fascist junta," and then maybe you make a comparison to another state that recaptured its resources from foreign capital -- or whatever your argument is.
My point is, we all learn from each other, that is how the ideological consensus on this site emerges and evolves.
Anyway, sorry for tone-policing and inserting myself into this uninvited.