USS Gerald R Ford’s arrival marks the largest US military presence in the region since the invasion of Panama in 1989
The US navy has announced that the USS Gerald R Ford, regarded as the world’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, has entered the area of responsibility of the US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.
The deployment of the ship and the strike group it leads – which includes dozens of aircraft and destroyer ships – had been announced nearly three weeks ago, and its arrival marks an escalation in the military buildup between the US and Venezuela.
The regime of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, meanwhile, announced what it called a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off its coast.
22 Comments
n_dimension@infosec.exchange · 27 pts · 294d
@MicroWave
The US is getting ready to steal that sweet sweet #venezuela oil.
Gunboat "diplomacy" V3.0
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 294d
Yes they are. I know you probably weren’t referring to this, but it is the opposite of sweet. It’s very heavy crude which is far more costly to extract and refine. SA oil is light and actually deemed “sweet”. Venezuelan oil is dirty, BUT (of more importance) it seems their reserves are the largest in the world. And even if it is crappy, it is oil and we seem hellbent on using every last bit of it. Apparently petrochemical industry profit supersedes the health of the planet and the entirety of its occupants.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 294d
Plus, it's much closer and Venezuela is weak. Republicans are bullying them like the bullies they are.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 294d
Refineries need a mix of both. Light oil like what America produces is good for light distillates like gasoline but is inefficient for heavy grades like lubrication or diesel fuel. Heavy dirty oils are best for the latter types of distillates and the two are often mixed to get an ideal crack ratio for the desired outputs.
gdog05@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 294d
*The US Citizen's Largest Warship
That's ours. We own it. And we own any travesty that might unfold because of it.
(I feel like calling it The "Pentagon's" removes our ownership of the whole thing. Yes, I know it's our Pentagon as well, but I feel like it's easy to artificially distance ourselves from this with that language).
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 294d
Are you under the impression that the US Government and electoral system represents its citizens?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 294d
Gotta wonder what just parking all these gas guzzlers on the south side of the Equator is costing us.
Not that it matters, since we have unlimited money for stupid military bullshit. But I'm about to hear a bunch of hawks tell me the US Treasury is out of money and we can't afford Medicaid anymore. I can't help see this next Glorious Christian Invasion of a recalcitrant petro-state as a big hole in my pocket leaking money.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 294d
This is a really weird criticism in an article about a nuclear-powered carrier.
Davel23@fedia.io · 11 pts · 294d
Aircraft carriers don't operate alone. They have whole flotillas of support ships, few of which run on nuclear power. Not to mention all the non-nuclear-powered aircraft an aircraft carrier carries.
Linktank@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 294d
Are the planes nuclear powered? Are the other boats? These things don't travel solo.
lividweasel@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 294d
Even more weird for an article about the vessel parking north of the equator.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 293d
all the aircraft and support ships burn oil though
DaMummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 294d
https://lemmy.world/comment/20124409
Arghblarg@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 294d
Colombia's next... someone snapped a photo of one of the admin's goons with an open folder and pics of both Venezuela's and Colombia's leaders on the same page. I don't have the link but it was posted a few days ago.
DaMummy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 294d
There's a page carried by John Bolton from Trumps first term mentioned something like 5k troops to Columbia if I remember correctly, so it's been in the making for a while now, they're just using this as an excuse now, even though no fentanyl comes from Venezuela. Not little, literally none. And it'll be enough to even get the AF crowd to go along with another regime change war. And the elected Democrats will support it.
zd9@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 294d
Can we just... not? I know Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumamn, Raytheon, BAE, L3-Harris, etc. need their blood sacrifices to keep the military-industrial complex growing, but... can we just not? Can we have nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro energy and free healthcare/college? It would cost the same if we just cut the US DOD allocation by like 70%.
Even if we scaled back only 25%, that's still $850B * 0.25 = $212 BILLION to put towards all that stuff.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 293d
shit, we could get that allocation by just by cutting our health
careprofit subsidies for universal healthcaretornavish@lemmy.cafe · 7 pts · 294d
Yawn… US military personnel will gladly drop bombs on Venezuela’s innocent citizens. If you are in the military… you're trash.
DaMummy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 294d
What the hell is in those files? He better have someone in them pay for all this.
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 294d
The Epstein Files? Apparently it’s way, way worse than anyone could imagine…
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 294d
Let me know if anyone sees them holding a picture of Carney, or if an American warship enters Canadian waters.
GaryGhost@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 294d
I hope that stupid thing gets hit by lightning