Bulletins and News Discussion from December 23rd to December 29th, 2024 - The War on Christmas: Hypersonic Holidays

Image is from Futurama.

Happy holidays, fellow godless communists. We are in year three of the Five-Year Plan to eliminate all Christmas cheer and create a world free of the joys and festivity of Christmas. Nobody should have to be reminded that in our concrete brutalist communist strongholds, NO ornaments are allowed in December. Please report any Christmas trees, snowflakes, baubles, and presents to the evil secret police, and anybody caught violating their Volcel Pledge by having a tentative kiss under a mistletoe will be shot on sight.

Developments lately have been grim. Our Supreme Communist Dictator Brandon is being removed from office by Christmas-loving patriots, and soon, Christmas will adorn the White House for another four years. This is obviously very disappointing, but while Christmas joy is strictly prohibited, good vibes are still strongly encouraged. Revolutionary optimism (a term we only bring out when things are going very badly and we need to be delusional) shall triumph over defeatist rhetoric by stooges of the Christmas regime.

We must have hope. Our foreign allies aiding us in destroying Christmas now possess hypersonic weaponry, allowing us to compete with and overcome the engine technology powering Santa's sleigh. Abroad, they have destroyed factories and hit cities with missiles travelling at unimaginable speeds into precise targets, while the Christmas regime struggles to produce their own such missiles, as they are still reliant on aircraft bombing campaigns. Precision has a quality all its own, or something along those lines. We just have to hold out another two years or so, and I swear to you: we will live in a world without this accursed holiday.

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697 comments

During Carter's presidency, the U.S. continued to support Indonesia as a cold war ally, despite human rights violations in East Timor. The violations followed Indonesia's December 1975 invasion and occupation of East Timor. Under Carter's administration military assistance to Indonesia increased, peaking in 1978. This was antithetical to Carter's stated policy of "not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world".
The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, known in Indonesia as Operation Lotus (Indonesian: Operasi Seroja), began on 7 December 1975 when the Indonesian military (ABRI/TNI) invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism and anti-communism to overthrow the Fretilin regime that had emerged in 1974. The overthrow of the popular and short-lived Fretilin-led government sparked a violent quarter-century occupation in which approximately 100,000–180,000 soldiers and civilians are estimated to have been killed or starved to death.
- IIRC Carter also started running guns to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan?
  
  Yes.
  In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf, as well as the existence of Pakistan. These concerns led Carter to expand collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which had begun in July 1979, when the CIA started providing $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance (e.g., "cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters") to the Afghan mujahideen.
  Carter imposed an embargo on grain shipments to the USSR, tabled SALT II, requested a 5% annual increase in defense spending, and called for a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was ultimately joined by 65 other nations. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher enthusiastically backed Carter's tough stance.
  In early 1980, Carter determined the thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war: he initiated a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to match U.S. funding for this purpose. Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions.

697 comments