darkcalling

It's from Season 26, ep 8, "The Curse of Fenric", specifically part 3.

The Doctor reveals that faith or strong belief repels "hemavores" or vampires and repels a bunch by closing his eyes and believing in something. A higher ranking Soviet soldier that landed with a group of such soldiers in England during the second world war (reasons I forget) ends up separated from most of his troops who are still on the beach and instead with the Doctor, his companion Ace, and a priest. He insists he must go back for his men. Ace (the Doctor's present companion) asks him to teach the soldier "the singing" to scare them off. The Doctor states he either really believes in something or he doesn't to which the Soviet soldier replies he believes in the revolution. Some scene-cuts later the soldier, leaving the church is confronted by a group of these creatures and pulls out the pin, focusing on his belief in the revolution and they clutch themselves and start screaming as he walks slowly through them.

Someone made an edit with the Soviet anthem playing layered over it but in the original show it's just dramatic music stings with some ringing noises like those that accompanied the Doctor's actions earlier, no anthem plays.

And as mentioned elsewhere a priest in the episode can't repel them because he lost his faith due to the war.

Seems like Magneto is kind of in the same vein too. He seems like a mutant Malcolm X who does heinous shit to justify opposing his otherwise sensible objections to the slow liberal reformism of the X-Men.

I don't think they were. They wanted an attack. They may not have expected the scope of it, hoped for something less humiliating and problematic that gave them justification to speed up the genocide without angering the domestic population of settlers so much and scaring some off.

Beyond that though there's that IRA quip about those on the defensive needing to get lucky every single day whereas those on the offense need only get lucky once. It's the same thing here. Maybe Hamas got "lucky" just as after many attempts to kill Nasrallah they got lucky and got him (I still think they followed the Iranian he was meeting with or some amount of commanders and concluded he was there). The pager thing is just unfortunately something that Hezbollah didn't account for being a possibility in their operational security. Also it's quite possible it was impossible to spot the small amounts of explosive without opening the batteries which few are going to do. They're going to at most check for bugs or unauthorized hardware.

Now that further attacks succeeding serve no purpose militarily or politically they're going to use their intelligence effectively. Though if they start losing the western crowd I wouldn't put it beyond them to stage an atrocity of some sort happening to get the narrative of victimhood back. So far there's no sign of a need for that.

Well obviously. But I didn't feel like writing for hours. Any geopolitical analysis of this scale that is only two paragraphs is going to be simplified.

Whether it's overly simple, I don't think so. I think I captured the gist of how things seem to be going. Of course I can't know the future, there are twists and turns and happenings no one expects.

But I do know this. Europe is bound to the US by the bonds of white supremacy and settler-colonialist legacy and the threads of neo-colonialist interest they still have. Their interests are one in certain ways and that makes it exceptionally hard for them to truly gain independence from the force that's been occupying them (literally) and bailed out their capitalists at the end of WW2. Like a bunch of evil Captain Planet planeteers through their powers and colonial legacy, tricks, and support combined the US became capitalism's consolidated champion as well as the global defender of the white supremacist world order.

Let's not forget the NSA was spying on Germany's prime minister among many others. It's not just that they have troops in these countries, it's that hey have dirt, leverage, ways of pushing people into or out of power when it comes down to it if they really need to make a change. They haven't used these for decades because they're unseemly and don't fit with their new image so it's a problem if they're caught and because the EU is close enough in interests to them that it's never been a problem. Gladio is a reminder of the tip of the iceberg of how far they'd go. Much as Google keeps Mozilla funded and alive to stave off challenges of monopoly the US allowed Europe some independence to lend legitimacy to their claims of different opinions and the idea that the EU and western Europe and most of NATO aren't just a bunch of vassals for the US.

As Parenti once quipped, if you never go beyond where you're supposed to go you never notice the tug of the leash, it's only when you stray that you feel that and realize the limits imposed on you.

The Nordstream bombings was the tugging of the leash and we saw Europe very obediently heel and they've with a whimper accepted the US narrative lie about it being Ukraine that did it.

That's not happening. This is meaningless talk.

They're still withholding the machines and maintenance to the top end processes from China on national security grounds. They've already committed economic suicide. Germany is blaming Ukraine for the Nordstream attacks.

They lost their chance for independence this decade with the blowing up of Nordstream and when they all jumped onboard with anti-Russia sanctions and supplying weapons. The US has an interest in keeping the war in Ukraine burning or ending in a Korea type situation without a clear winner to keep Europe off Russian gas and reliant on US gas. Meanwhile the US poaches their talent, empties their industry into its pockets (some goes to China but that's the way the cookie crumbles), and so on.

The idea of an independent Europe is laughable, it was happening but in too weak a way to ever succeed and the us sabotaged it easily and will again. After Ukraine the US is going to use Taiwan as an issue, there will be a big thing about it declaring independence, Europe will of course have to "stand with European values and democracy" and antagonize China and commit more economic suicide in decoupling from China to abide by US suggested sanctions, and so on. Europe is cooked. They're going to go to the hard right parties after that happens since the left is not allowed at which point they'll either start doing imperialism with the US while brutalizing migrants or they might actually take a more skeptical stance against the US and adopt a more mercenary position under the banner of white supremacy and reaction. Either way I'm sorry to say I don't see socialism in Europe this decade or probably even the 2030s.

Lots of people saying that Oct 7, Palestine, the genocide kicked this off.

I disagree. It kicked it into over-gear but what made it palatable for liberals was the Russiagate hoax and the concept of disinformation they've been so successfully sold from 2016 onward. That there is this cartoon villain or villains like Putin and China and so on who just have these armies of bots and trolls who conjure out of thin air as if evil sorcerers the dread disinformation which creates people (again out of thin air) who want to vote for Trump or who hate the covid vaccine, or who deny modern medicine, or who reject the imperialist narrative on Ukraine. And on and on. It broke enough brains to really get things moving. These liberals are in total denial that anything is wrong in the US, it can't be that we're in an atomized society with many left behind, with corporate lies all over, with an inconsistent, hypocritical political/economic system that breeds conspiratorial thinking or that we're founded on white supremacy and structural racism, it must be those dastardly outsiders and their false narratives and propaganda that have created all this trouble and if we get rid of them we can go back to brunch and the problems will be normal problems again like they were before.

And this is not new. I think James Baldwin was the one who said "when the south has trouble with their [black people] they blame the north, when the nation has trouble with them, they blame Russia" it's just that back then the information control was simply controlling the TV news and newspapers and there was nothing they could practically do about word of mouth campaigns, about discussions between people happening on college campuses and in various public places. But now with most discourse online and centralized behind gatekeepers the opportunity presents itself to actually institute some control.

So they were already moving this direction with the Russiagate hoax narrative and the anger and accusations towards social media for not censoring enough, it's just that Oct 7th and the loss of control of the Palestine narrative has not only panicked them but it's gotten the GOP zionists who were of course skeptical if not outright derisive of this campaign when it was just an anti-Trump thing onboard now with the need for control and a crackdown. The loss of control of the narrative on Ukraine in the global south has also significantly propelled this as we see as these arch imperialists are very frustrated with RT as Russia hasn't collapsed or been as isolated as they'd like and the war is going south in Ukraine so now it's time for blame and power-grabs.

In their opinion it doesn't matter.

Firstly because either the US is going to war with China within the next 8 years or it's not happening because the US would be at such a disadvantage and like all bullies they won't pick a fight with an evenly matched opponent. Secondly because military drone systems used by the US are not really like those used by other countries. For example, Russia and Ukraine are using near off the shelf kit and standing in a field while US drones are controlled from a bunker or command shack or place on a US navy ship from a system that looks like it's from a Dave and Busters racing game with the whole big seat, multiple monitors, joy-stick and additional controls. US is just not interested in that kind of drone warfare. They've gone all in on the idea of semi-autonomous "AI" systems and swarms controlled by 1-2 trained people per swarm from a great distance. Thirdly the US has long had this image of it's military as this highly trained, highly disciplined, elite force while simultaneously seeing Russians/Chinese as "hordes" of under-trained, under-motivated, under-equipped canon fodder so they turn up their nose to certain types of tactics as being for those others.

Fourth, the US is worried about domestic insurrection and discontent over worsening economic conditions. The worse thing you want to do in that situation is empower the ordinary people to wage insurrection using the type of tactics and methods (drones) field-proven by unconventional militias and militant groups across the middle east. These types of drones and easy cheap access to them is also a nightmare for operational security of military bases and internal security forces operations.

Unironically the US wants and is working hard on killbots they can fire and forget for attacks and area denial. They know among other things they can't fight China navy to navy over Taiwan so instead the plan shifts to this idea of naval and aerial drones, semi-autonomous that are basically killbots or self-propelled targeting mines that they'd unleash in the hundreds and thousands in the straits to deny China the ability to send landing craft or support ships near Taiwan and buy them time to hold the island and strike at and destroy China's navy from beyond the horizon. This is actually not a bad answer to the problem of traditional mining that mine-sweeper ships can just clear an area, mine-sweepers don't work if the mines actively hone in on and swarm your clearing ship when you get anywhere near any of them.

The US military is not agile in the way the Russian military or the Ukrainian bandits are. It's a big, expensive, lumbering machine and that's the way they like it and that's the way it's going to be because it produces more profit for Raytheon and because it suits their self-image.

The real losers are local EMS, fire, cops, even the FBI who get hit in the budget much harder acquiring drones now.

These are ATACMS and Stormshadow missiles supplied by the US and UK and France and so on to Ukraine. They are long range. They are made in the west and shipped in regularly. And importantly their launchers are known to be crewed by literal NATO soldiers from those countries. The targeting data and intelligence for their targets is supplied via US intelligence networks from US spy satellites.

The point is to use these weapons to like destroy an apartment building in Moscow and terrorize civilians. The point is to blow up a train station full of civilians. They might also hit some rear line Russian stuff like airfields I guess but mostly soft targets IMO.

They literally have been unable to use them for attacking deep into Russia because the US has said no and they control the missiles, both the supply and the people doing the firing and the people supplying necessary targeting data.

So they kind of are sitting on a cache of weapons, nicer missiles which are harder to intercept, which travel further, which are more evasive, etc. It won't alter the course of the war but will impose a higher cost on Russia which has been the goal of the US all along, to bleed Russia, to weaken them, to sap their interest in further entanglements and make the Russian public and leadership war-weary and wary of standing up to the west in future.

All this said, a problem with Putin is he's always talking big then backing down which unfortunately just encourages the west to continue to push these lines. If you're constantly threatening but not backing it up you start to lack credibility and others look for ways to salami-slice their way to backing you into a corner. Which is inherently dangerous and likely to lead to nuclear war.

He's really, really not a confrontational guy or a tough guy in these terms. I mean he got played for 8 years with fake peace talks as things continued to escalate before finally acting and even that act was at first just an attempt to intimidate Ukraine into surrender by going for Kiev but not actually trying to take it so much as apply pressure which resulted in an offensive that had to retreat later when the peace talks were predictably sabotaged by the UK.

They are already beginning to plan one for the west. When it goes down theirs will be up in short order. That EARN-IT act is an escalation in the whole 'disinformation' censorship saga we have going on, a probable move to outright banning encryption. Once you do that and cut off VPNs the west can very effectively prevent the small amount of people who want to venture beyond its propaganda outlets from doing so without extreme effort as well as just straight up prevent Chinese/Russian/African/LatAm IPs from using social media platforms, etc in the name of "combating disinformation". At/before that point they of course purge non-western aligned media from social media entirely in the name of that combating disinformation. The west /HAS/ a soft 'firewall' for info but it's becoming harder and will only get more so as the decline accelerates and the reaction turns inwards.

Yeah honestly anyone who thinks California would turn into some sort of socialist state if it split off the main US is drinking some sort of toxic waste with mind altering properties. This state and its people are mentally colonized by the landlords, the construction industry, and the techbros.

If someone is willing to murder over religious offense, over a depiction of a holy person the issue is theirs. Blaming the victim for doing something that incited them to murder (especially when there is no argument of "fighting words" causing direct escalation, we're talking premeditated murder planned at a distance in response to hearing about something indirectly and executed after more than enough time to regain a cool head) is disgusting.

As someone brought up in this thread, the whole Mohammad cartoon controversy reminds me of the perennial debate “why would a black person get violent if you call them the n-word, it’s just a word.” Context matters, when you purposely provoke an oppressed minority by shoving the thing they find most offensive in their face, you may get a violent reaction.

Do not act like this disgusting act of murder is some sort of expression of righteous rage on the behalf the oppressed, like it is some blow against imperialism, colonialism, capitalism etc.

The teacher gave warning, allowed Muslims students to leave if they would be offended or to avert their eyes. The student chose not to, chose to demand their religious sensibilities be imposed on everyone else.

Also for point of lazy comparison. It might be different (in minecraft) if the teacher was themselves a racist and using the N-word or showing the class say a racist cartoon with an approving tone. But this is akin to a teacher in the US showing a picture of someone holding a sign saying the n-word in the context of a freedom of speech discussion, which whether you're a liberal in favor of US freedom of speech or not, is a fact on the ground, but before doing so telling the students it might be triggering and offering to let students of color leave the room if it would be too hurtful for them to view. Let's not even get into how rare such a show of sensitivity in the US would be for PoC.

It is religious fundamentalism and extremism pure and simple. Now the root causes of that as Marxists we can analyze and discover the connections back to material conditions and so on of course (poverty, alienation, breed extremism and fundamentalism, the effects of colonialism, etc). However, these terrorists and hooligans as China would refer to them would have no qualms butchering a communist who lives in a nation that has never engaged in imperialism for doing the same.

And importantly the n-word was used as a hateful word, as a denigration against enslaved people, to other them and to demean them, it was spat hatefully for decades by white supremacists (often accompanied by actual spit) on black people in the US as part of the systemic brutalization and dehumanization of a people that started with the importation of slaves and the system of slavery, continued formally with Jim Crow, and continues to this day in less up-front ways. It was created and popularized and used as a slur. The comparison to that in this instance is quite offensive.

This is quite literally a result of a teacher within a class showing a cartoon that contains a depiction of a religious figure that some people believe is against the rules of the religion and against the laws of their god. The teacher was attempting to teach liberal secularism and to be sure I of course object to liberalism but not as much to secularism, there was no intent of offensive nor could any reasonable person take enough to cause them to become violent. And importantly as I stressed above the teacher went out of their way to give students who might be offended the chance to not see it.

Whence and where has Muhammad been used as a symbol, signifier, etc to oppress Muslims or colonized peoples? I do not recall the British or French erecting giant statues or paintings of Muhammad to demean and demoralize and other Muslims or colonized peoples. I do not recall instances of it being a thing found closely in association with any structures of oppression. In fact there are a number of depictions, paintings, etc of Muhammad that originate from the middle east of many centuries ago during a different age when it was not quite seen as so forbidden. The depiction of Muhammad on the US Supreme Court for instance was not put there to demean Islam or Muslims but as a show of secularism with other "great law givers". There has not been much in the way of systemic attempts at destroying Islam by colonizers historically as the culture of black people was destroyed.

If anything colonizers tried to get in the good graces of local religious leaders (or install their own) to keep the populace in line, to use the religion to keep a certain order, to get it interpreted a certain way to benefit them (and before you try and use that last point, Christianity and all other religions have been equally subject to this). Now of course this was not a respectful depiction of Muhammad, this was an incendiary cartoon. The problem with cartoons that satirize is they're rarely respectful to their subject. Jesus of the Christian religion is often depicted in unflattering ways and by many of the same publications, as are other religious icons from the Buddha to Hindu gods and I would not be surprised if insensitive cartoons of other religious figures were also shown (it wouldn't probably even bear reporting if an image of Jesus in sado-masochism gear was shown as an example). Unless you're trying to argue that atheism and religious criticism is itself a western colonizer construct at which point I am going to laugh at you and point derisively given the history of disbelief and the number of Arabs from past centuries who wrote blasphemous works of mocking.

Yes attack France for its blood drenched colonialist history but defending this reaction as some sort of knee-jerk response is inexcusable. These men did not kill for the sake of their community, for the sake of justice, for the sake of a better world, for the sake of punishing someone upholding a historical evil, for the sake of someone upholding bigotry. THEY KILLED FOR HONOR AND GOD Period. Honor is a horrible concept and I'm not even going to get started on the amount of murder done in the name of a god or gods by people.

Now, should society allow such incendiary things that cause tensions? I don't know. China would say no and they have some solid reasoning and a solid-track-record. What I do know is France as a liberal capitalist state, as a colonizer, as an imperialist nation cannot use the tools that China uses successfully to bring about harmony and peace. And as a result they're bound to do smooth-brained and foolish things as they are doing.

And you must remember France was once heavily Christian but has a different concept of secularism than the US or most of the west which is enforced secularism, that religion is a private thing, not something to wave around in public, that it must be kept out of schools to prevent division and religious sectarianism and strife, that in public all French persons are basically secular and what they do when they go to the Church, Mosque, Synagogue, etc are separate from what they're expected to do in school, at work, in public. Of course this is somewhat naive. Religious people who are actually religious cannot just put away their beliefs but anyways that's their system and the teacher was not being insensitive nor was the lesson as I understand it particularly problematic for a liberal nation.