Trump Says Maduro Captured After US Airstrikes Hit Venezuela

I don't know if we can wag the dog any harder, he's starting to come apart....

It's definitely still be posted as a respond from the left.

The right is showing they don't care about kids getting diddle just like back in the day. Maga after all means back to a time when it's the victims fault.

When you have the US military on your side, you can do anything you want.

Why so many people are missing this obvious threat is beyond me. All nations should be shoring up their military defense, and fast.

Maduro is not a good person. But that's not what matters here. Plenty of countries have evil people at the helm.

What matters here is MAGA, with by far the world's most powerful military, is imposing its will on the United States and the world. If you think this kind of successful operation is ever followed up by "ok guys we got everything we wanted, let's stop now", give your head a shake.

We will know Russia traded Venezuela for Ukraine in the next few days. I bet the EU is in pure panic mode now. Would not surprise me to see a move on Taiwan too.

An old man with everything to lose if he ever steps down from power, the political and diplomatic literacy of a temper-throwing child with the nuclear launch codes.

It's not like Putin hasn't tried that…

Never mind Zelensky, if I were Taiwan's president I'd be looking at the US creating a big naval distraction for itself at the same time as affirming that heads of state are fair game with more than a little trepidation...

Well no, they did the same in Panama with Noriega

Imperialism and general fuckery, no.....but to my knowledge this is the first time the US has opened a conflict by just straight up taking the head of the foreign government.

Unless, of course, you've got something that says different.

......okay.

How about, instead of presupposing what he's lying about and why, we try and actually find out the truth? Reality still does matter, y'know.

Personally, I'm quite ready for an independent New England. We only get back 80% of what we contribute in taxes and manufacturing.

ah yes, the famous opening line of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

I wonder if AI and it's possibilities for mass surveillance and mass manipulation will make a difference and allow empires to sustain themselves and control it's people.

Westerners don't have a clear perception of this since they have lived in either the great power (US) or one of its vassal states (NATO) for the last 30 years.

They're not used to a world of multiple great powers / poles, even though that has been the case for most of human history.

Yes and no.

As a last resort, the threat of violence (or enforced consequences more generally) is ultimately behind the authority of any institution.

But legal and institutional frameworks can persist if power to inflict consequences is distributed and governed by rules, the incompliance with which is again sanctioned, and so on. The system is then kept stable by preventing consolidation of power with few actors and not tolerating arbitrariness in how it is welded. The fact that any authority is ultimately rooted in the threat of violence does not mean that we as social and reasonable animals cannot find reasonable and stable arrangement that should prevent us from actually having to resort to violence all too often.

And we have absolutely slipped up in this regard. Relying on one party (the USA) as the primary locus is power in NATO and the world to keep peace. Allowing big social media platforms to consolidate and grow beyond any reason. Turning a blind eye to violations of international law

Did I say that hasn't already been happening? Please don't assume what I think. Obviously, letting Israel get away with bombing Gaza and other Palestinian areas is part of that trend.

What I mean is:

After WW2 many agreed that something like this must never happen again. The UN security council was founded in 1945. European Convention of Human Rights 1950. Treaty of Rome which established the EEC in 1957, and so on, and so on. Despite the cold war, international affairs in the latter half of the 20s century were not a free-for-all. This was a strong era of international law and legal regimes were added and became increasingly more binding, not the other way around. When the USSR collapsed and Germany was unified 1989-1991 many started to envision an 'end of history' as the world would converge into a global liberal order etc. The mood in 2000 was generally one of great optimism; a new millennium for humanity, a new chance after the difficulties and horrors of the 20th century had been overcome. For the first time, the world set overarching development goals, the millennium goals, to be reached by 2015.

This general trend towards and joint vision of more international cooperation, universal free trade and a rules based order has slowly been dying since...? I'm not sure when exactly, probably 2010ish. But what has been a subtle turn for the longest time has accelerated noticeably since ca. 2020.

That was my point.

Yeah, this is watching the Limits to Growth charts. You know they're will be resource conflicts and problems, just not in what form they'll manifest first.

Oh yeah, I'm totes sure Kamala would also be trying to annex Greenland /s

I've lived in the US my entire life. I wish I could tell you your wrong.

I can't.

Some of my earliest memories revolve around watching the evening news, listening to them say that "X amount of American lives were lost" and wondering why "American" lives were substantially different or worthy of note. A life lost is a life lost. And that's a tragedy no matter how you slice it. Where that life started or where it lived has no bearing whatsoever on it's value.

At least... that's what I believe. The current state of things has me thinking I might be in the minority on that one.

As to revolution, protest, anything that could even prove an inconvenience to the status quo... I'll believe it when I see it. Not to make excuses, but I think forces in the American culture have been working to defang popular protest since at least the civil rights movement, or perhaps even earlier. Even if it's demostriably wrong... I can't begin to tell you how demoralized I feel. My government just... went and did this. It's illegal. The very shape of our government is supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. And yet... here we are. One illegal invasion and (apparently) kidnapping of a sovereign head of state later.

...I wish it were otherwise, but it feels like there's very little that can be done about it. Americans just... don't seem equal to the task of holding their government to account. The one thing we are supposed to be good at.

I can't even begin to tell you how many outrages there were up to this point. Too many. Far too many for concence to allow. This... feels different. Is different. Has to be different, then the way we've been allowing things to ride.

But... I've been disappointed before. I'm certain I'll be disappointed again. I hope this will be different, but...

...I can point to plenty of times it should have been different before. Times that would have prevented this from happening. It's... hard to maintain hope in the face of that.

but unless thousands of Americans start returning in body bags, there won't be enough critical mass to stage any revolt or even protests worthy of Trump's attention.

that happened during the invasion of Iraq, and nothing happened anyway… most Muricans are just chicken hawks

Unfortunately that' just human nature, tribalism, nature is cruel and the life that evolved out of it is the product of this cruelty

There are many social circles. The most immediate is Family, then extended relatives, close friends, then neighbors, then your village/towm/city, then region, then nation, then its the planet.

Humans aren't really capable of really caring about thing happeneing far away.

This isn't unique to the US. I think every country is like that, especially those struggling.

It's not like people consciously choose to be evil, this is just biology, they can't help it.

When your family is struggling, its hard to care about neighors, and especially harder to care about someone in another town/city.

Nationalism just extend the circle a bit, people care about their own country's suffering more than others. Don't even have the time to catch a break and think when your role in this system is just a wage slave.

This is a lie. This reeks of someone looking to claim they're the only person who cares about Gaza

Those europeens countries that keep licking the US boots? They are so happy to see Maduro abducted

You don’t stop it (on your own), you work with other people who are trying to stop it.

You figure out what you’re good at and have time for and do that. In a group. Collectively. No-one is saying ’why doesn’t traxex fix this’.

If you want to take on deprogramming cult members yourself there are resources available to anyone to get you started.

This is ONLY about oil. Trump doesn't give a rats ass about people dying from drugs. He only wants control of the largest oil reserves on the planet. That's 100% what this is about.

We don't know that the sun will come up tomorrow, but it's a safe bet.

FEEL THE WRATH OF OUR FREEDOM

When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

Now, that’s a verb☝️

Its also somewhat witty way of saying that what is happening right now seems so unbelievable it must be somekind of mistake.

Dark times make dark humour and jokes are often easiest way for people to start process things and it does not equal inaction.

If you dont want to see remarks like that, you should maybe stay of internet.

Eek barba durkle…

The allied fleets moved from China to Venezuela already.

Do people care about that bullshit any less than they used to?

The United States has negotiated "Pax Silica" so that it doesn't need Taiwan for chips....

Two differences in your analogy.

1. Kentucky agrees that it is part of the US. Taiwan does not believe they are part of China.

2. The rest of the world agrees with the US that Kentucky is part of the US. The rest of the world does not agree that Taiwan is part of China.

Yea, that is actually not a good analogy...

I guess they would just kidnap, I mean "capture", the president of Taiwan to be charged in their courts. No need to invade, it's just "law enforcement" without a warrant like what Trump is doing now.

Because Taiwan is where the only opposition to the ruling Chinese party lives.

Yes, the PRC claims that there is one country and Taiwan is a part of it. They also know that a seperatist group maintains control of Taiwan. If the confederacy lost all but Kentucky in the civil war, the US would still need to regsin control by military means. I'm not sure it would be called an invasion though.

There’s also a massive fraud behind the fraud: there was a huge fake polling and disinformation campaign designed to make it look like there’s more support for the capitalists and right wingers than there is. Like…yes…the election was fake…but where the fuck are these 80% support for his opponent numbers coming from? None of these numbers match what’s on the street.

If you dig through the bullshit…elections would be close…far from the landslides either side promise.

All that we’ve learned here is that in Latin America the USA really really doesn’t like losing its investments. A lesson we already learned 20 times. Soon most of it will just be Puero Rico with less influence.

Now it's going to be a Civil War, and we will back whichever side will allow Trump to take control of the oil.

He's draining the swamp with a soda straw.

The ONLY thing this is about is Trump taking control of the Vemzuelan oil fields, the largest oil reserves on the planet. He wants to be the equal of the Saudi Royal Family, and stealing the planets largest oil reserves will do that for him.

He doesn't care about drugs, he just PARDONED the ex-prez of Honduras, who was convicted in an American court, and was serving decades in an American prison, for doing the exact same thing of which he is accusing Maduro.

This about Oil. Nothing else.

Even before that, look at what Obama did to Libya not too long after they voluntary dismantled their nuclear program.

North Korea seems to be doing pretty well in creating their nukes.

It’s this. Europeans don’t understand this part of being American because they have healthcare and worker protections. They will understand soon if they keep voting for facists though

Now that's what I call distraction from the Epstein files.bmp

Doing the lord’s work my friend, thank you.

That would be bad news, because then a US-Venezuela war (as opposed to a series on one-sided strikes) would still be on the cards.

I don't know enough about Venezuela to make a good guess.

There's also the question of how quickly (if quickly at all) they could organize reasonably un-manipulated elections. An armed attack has likely triggered special circumstances in Venezuela, and nobody can demand elections right now.

If Maduro's allies try holding on to power, it could end with faction A ruling one province and faction B ruling another...

Greenland is part of Denmark which is part of NATO

Canada is part of NATO

What happens when a NATO member attacks another NATO member?

🤔

I didnt knew its meaning, sorry

He literally won the popular vote

Go cry somewhere else

Just saying the US has some highly competent, well trained, badass special forces making impossible feats possible. Delta Forces