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Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
- jl6 9mo agoInteresting that World War 3 never happened; instead, we smoothly transitioned to War World, where war is just something that happens all the time, randomly, intermittently, undeclared, and interminably.
- delis-thumbs-7e 9mo agoI’m not so sure. This War World is very similar to the geopolitical game played by the great European - and increasingly US as well, especially in SA - powers in the 19th century. That Belle Epoque was of course what drove the global politics into the first Great War.
- aebtebeten 9mo agoKissinger maintained his goal was to avoid stumbling into another Great War; we may or may not believe him, but at least he took the trouble to rationalize his actions.
- aebtebeten 9mo agoOceania has always been at war with Eastasia! > "Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare"
- gsf_emergency_6 9mo agoNeither XJP nor Trump are semi-divine by the benchmark of BB, but perhaps the "political structures" (non-pyramidal) are
- aebtebeten 9mo agoGood point wrt BB; I think "pyramidal" was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism#/media/File:1984_Social_Classes_alt.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oli... (I have a friend who is a PRC citizen; I don't know her background precisely but her habitus reminds me of nothing so much as the slightly younger women I'd met at a boarding school in Palo Alto, so I think it's safe to say that socialism with chinese characteristics has at least one non-prole class :-)
- aebtebeten 9mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493504 has another take on inner party psychopaths essentials outer party clueless interchangeables proles losers everyone else
- greekrich92 9mo agoVenezuela's major crime is having natural and human resources that it won't allow multinational corporations to exploit.
- chrisco255 9mo agoVenezuela has had plenty of recent multinational support in recent years from China National Petroleum, Anhui Guangda Mining, Rosneft (Russia), and Iran.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- elfbargpt 9mo agoChinese envoy was meeting Maduro just hours ago in Miraflores. Wonder how that factors into the situation
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- svara 9mo agoShould be on the lookout for major upcoming domestic news they're trying to bury.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- andrewflnr 9mo agoIt doesn't have to be upcoming. This is still a distraction from Epstein.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- underdeserver 9mo agoPrediction: this headline will be renamed "US invades Venezuela" very soon.
- richardatlarge 9mo agoI think the strategy is more by creep. Desensitization. This will be just another inching forward Or maybe not :(
- immibis 9mo agoPrediction: it won't. HN is very touchy about things that make the president look bad, as well as about bold statements, as well as about politics (except when it's good for VC money, then it's apolitical).
- madaxe_again 9mo agoIt doesn’t make him look stupid, it makes him look like a criminal. Like Reagan. But they’ll find some guy, I don’t know, Bob South, who will take the fall.
- khazhoux 9mo agoNo, not actually. But the mods do remove political content, so this whole thread will be gone soon.
- well_actulily 9mo agoAll content is political. Some gets removed.
- tomhow 9mo agoNothing gets “removed” unless a user specifically asks us to delete an earlier post. Some things get downweighted in accordance with the guidelines and community expectations but everything can still be found.
- 9mo ago
- fzeroracer 9mo agoFootage is quickly spreading, looks like strikes on military bases as well as a bunch of low-flying helicopters, so a strike + a ground invasion? They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent for a war against Venezuela. Wonderful.
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoTrump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Plus, the more of a splash, the more Epstein stays out of the news.
- cmurf 9mo agoMAGA: It's not really a war if they can't retaliate. No doubt the regime will come up with a "special military operation" equivalent to avoid calling it what it is.
- dragonwriter 9mo ago> Trump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Or, he could acknowledge that their is a conflict, and pretend he didn't start it but Venezuela did. Like he could claim that Venezuela invaded the US first (oh, wait, he actually did that last March, using it as the pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.)
- fortyseven 9mo agohttps://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions-intl-hnk https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions...
- avidiax 9mo agoWe don't need to manufacture consent anymore. The days of protest ending a war that the US is engaged in are long gone, if they were ever here. Even the ballot box isn't enough. We don't have an anti-war party in the US. Our news media are largely captive to the military, with the embedded reporter system. Congress has abdicated broad war powers to the president, and the courts won't intervene. The global community can't do anything to the US. Sanctions are very unlikely.
- dekrg 9mo agoIt will be pretty amusing to watch all those westerners who, not so long ago, were talking about "rules based order" pretend nothing is happening or to justify it.
- potsandpans 9mo agoIt's unreal.
- ncallaway 9mo agoAs a westerner, who believes in the rules based order, I would give anything for our leadership which is launching this illegal war to be sent to the Hague. Our leadership are war criminals, and should be treated as such. Some, specifically, are war criminals who have committed crimes that carry the death penalty, and should be arrested, tried, and (if found guilty) executed.
- stinkbeetle 9mo agoPresumably also the ones who invaded Iraq and occupied Afghanistan, carried out extrajudicial executions, droned weddings, deposed Libya's leader and laid ruin to the country, trafficked arms and money to cartels in South America and ISIS / "JV team" terrorist groups to destroy the Levant Or was that "rules based order"? I think you've been had with the whole "rules based order thing". You can keep winding the clock back and it's the same thing. Iraq 1, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Somalia. When exactly would you say this alleged "rules based order" was great?
- ncallaway 9mo agoEvery war criminal should be arrested, and tried. I think they should also be hanged, but they generally don't do executions at the Hague is my understanding.
- stinkbeetle 9mo agoYes, lots of the ruling class should be hanged for a lot of reasons, and they're not going to do it themselves at their Hague.
- coffinbirth 9mo agoAlways remember the role of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in preparing this unprovoked and illegal (under international law) attack on Venezuela by awarding the prize to María Corina Machado. Julian Assange actually filed a Swedish criminal complaint against Nobel Foundation officials, alleging misappropriation of Nobel endowment funds and facilitating war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to María Corina Machado, and it seeks immediate freezing of funds and a full investigation: https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-complaint-against-nobel-peace-committee/ https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-co...
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoFIFA looking awful silly right now.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- khazhoux 9mo agoWhat's the FIFA connection here?
- toomanyrichies 9mo agohttps://inside.fifa.com/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/news/president-trump-peace-prize-football-unites-the-world https://inside.fifa.com/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/...
- jiggawatts 9mo agoTheir peace prize… …that they invented from whole cloth this year just so they could award it to Trump, the most deserving president of a fake prize from one of the most corrupt organisations on Earth.
- rvz 9mo ago...and the Nobel Committee awarding the 'Nobel Peace Prize' to Maria Cornia Machado for 'democracy' and now will be used for the toppling of a leader in another country and creating another war. [0] This is why the Nobel Peace Prize has become completely meaningless. [0] https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-complaint-against-nobel-peace-committee/ https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-co...
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago"The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was presented with the inaugural 'FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World' by FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026™ at the iconic John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC" [1]. [1] https://inside.fifa.com/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/news/president-trump-peace-prize-football-unites-the-world https://inside.fifa.com/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/...
- StefanBatory 9mo agohttps://vxtwitter.com/FaytuksNetwork/status/2007338956241985774 https://vxtwitter.com/FaytuksNetwork/status/2007338956241985... Not Venezuelan helicopters...
- mdhb 9mo agoI think something like The Hague is the moderate position with this administration.
- biggestlou 9mo agoName a government in the OECD that’s fundamentally opposed to this intervention
- smashah 9mo agoTranslation: "Name a Zionist-holocaust-of-babies-supporting-pedophile-rapist-infested-government in the OECD that’s fundamentally opposed to this intervention" Great moral measuring stick...
- hermanzegerman 9mo agoDenmark? They already condemned it, and are also repeatedly threatened by the schoolyard bullies
- _pferreir_ 9mo agoMost European governments have already, in their own (weak) way expressed that this intervention isn't legitimate according to international law.
- biggestlou 9mo agoWhich international law? Where's the book of international law?
- _pferreir_ 9mo agoSeriously? There you go: https://legal.un.org/avl/studymaterials/handbook/english/book_1.pdf https://legal.un.org/avl/studymaterials/handbook/english/boo... That's just book one, BTW.
- 9mo ago
- immibis 9mo agoThey're American aircraft. It sure seems like after repeatedly threatening to invade Venezuela, Trump is now invading Venezuela. For what though?
- tguvot 9mo agolast unredacted copy of epstein files /s
- drexlspivey 9mo agoSame reason USA invades anything.
- verzali 9mo agoThe largest oil reserves in the world are in Venezuela
- m4200 9mo agoDon't know why, this link gives me: Access Denied Our apologies, the content you requested cannot be accessed.
- rf15 9mo agoWorks well, maybe it was a small hiccup?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- sedan_baklazhan 9mo agoIt is definitely not Russia unprovokenly and illegibly attacking its neighbor, so why even care?
- StefanBatory 9mo agoHow does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine? We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about ideals like liberal democracy or allies, but is a warmongering corporatist autocracy.
- conradojordan 9mo ago"We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about <thing USA has never cared about>, but is a <things USA has always been>"
- computerex 9mo agoIt’s not any different. I have totally lost my faith in America as an American.
- 4gotunameagain 9mo agoNow you did ? You should've been keeping scores on US' wars and regime changes, you'd had lost faith long time ago.
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoWell considering Taiwan's independence and Putin's absolute obsession over NATO, it seems like the score ought to reflect the whole story. I'm not saying it's great, but it's gotta be better than historical comparables.
- 4gotunameagain 9mo agoI am against China attacking Taiwan, I am against Russia attacking Ukraine, but I am also against Ukraine wanting to join NATO. The war started because of NATO and the US, and it almost fucked us over here in Germany when the US helped the Ukrainians blow up Nord Stream. I am against any offensive action which leads to the misery and impoverishment of people, for some stupid power games of power hungry idiots.
- tonyhart7 9mo agoafter Iran and now venezuela Iran, I totally understand that if they want to acquire nuclear weapon but Venezuela ???? what are they want to do in Venezuela ????? Oil ??
- logicchains 9mo ago[flagged]
- sedan_baklazhan 9mo agoActually Trump has stated very clearly that Venezuela has "stolen American oil which resides in Venezuela".
- kevin_thibedeau 9mo agoOil. We also have a crusade in Nigeria next on the docket for project 2026.
- smileson2 9mo agoI think it will be regarded as a poor move long term to so boldly put the us stamp on what will undoubtedly become a chaotic situation over the next decade or two I'm admittedly somewhat ignorant of all the details but I don't see what the real benefit is my only guess is that it's to disincentivize the Russians and Chinese from being more involved in South America but it feels like it could do the opposite and act as an annoying wedge
- mdhb 9mo agoYes, I’m sure a US invasion will help the local populace finally understand that they should be friendly with Uncle Sam and his freedom loving ways rather than the Russians and Chinese who brought mostly shady investments as a way of building influence.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> will undoubtedly become a chaotic situation over the next decade or two It will be a small miracle if it doesn't spark a refugee crisis.
- eternauta3k 9mo agoVenezuela already was a refugee crisis ~5 years ago, until they liberalized the economy slightly some years ago. Not sure what the current status is. I could foresee * some US-backed pro-business president coming to power * GDP going up * still no completely liberal democracy but anyway better than Maduro * less emigration or maybe people start coming back The main casualty is the notion that the US follows rules instead of doing whatever it wants. I'm not sure if I'd say democracy is a casualty as well, because (AFAIK with my non-leftist sources) Venezuela wasn't a real democracy.
- HDThoreaun 9mo agoSpark? Venezuela has already been undergoing a refuge crisis. That crisis is the biggest reason for this invasion, trump hates refugees.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoSo, uh, anyone seeing any educated guesses as to what we're bombing?
- rf15 9mo agoanother country, without justification, again after we promised not to do that after the last dozen similar cases, duh.
- tonyhart7 9mo agoand Trump said he want nobel peace prize, such a joke
- biggestlou 9mo agoWithout justification?
- rf15 9mo agoidk, is "drug trafficking" enough justification to topple a country? I don't really think so. And the claim is rather spurious anyway...
- biggestlou 9mo agoIgnoring the results of an election seems like a reasonable justification to topple a specific leader (no country is being toppled here)
- biggestlou 9mo agoIt’s looking like very carefully selected military targets
- throwaway2026-2 9mo agountil things go sideways, which they always do. We haven't won a war since WW2.
- littlestymaar 9mo agoIs that the beginning of a three-days special military operation?
- morninglight 9mo agoGotta get those gasoline prices down before the midterms.
- anonymous908213 9mo agoCombat footage is coming out by the minute. Watching it, I don't understand how Americans can be so fundamentally evil. Watching helicopters gun people on the ground down. What makes you so sick in the head that you would do this? How could you obey these orders and feel nothing as you slaughter innocent people? There isn't even any possible pretext to this invasion. They know what they're doing and still choose to do it. It's utterly incomprehensible.
- spencerflem 9mo agoGenuinely, I think ~30% of Americans just like it when other people suffer. This might also be true of people in general
- cmurf 9mo agoYep. It's the illiberal authoritarians. The people who need hierarchy, for domination and submission. This is why equality is an scary abomination to them. All societies have such people. But civil societies prevent them from gaining significant power. Failing that, it's going to be expensive. This society elected a known abuser. Of course this society will be abused. But also because of this society's global power, the world will also be abused.
- The_President 9mo agoI'd like to see a study or more information that backs up this ~30% statement - That is alarming!
- ric2b 9mo agoThere was a large scale self-reported study in November of 2024. It was actually way over 30%, if you ignore non-respondents.
- The_President 9mo agoLet's see it - Sounds like it would be easy to find?
- Animats 9mo agoDid this thread get down-rated on HN due to too many comments? Please keep one main thread on this alive. Thanks.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoFlags. It's still on /active [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active
- BoredPositron 9mo agoSo the USA is officially a roque state internally and externally and was brought down by its very own law and order party. Poetic.
- biggestlou 9mo agoMore rogue than ignoring the results of a presidential election?
- BoredPositron 9mo agoInvading a country is worse than having a constitutional crisis yes.
- biggestlou 9mo agoSo people should live under prima facie illegitimate governments forever with no recourse?
- BoredPositron 9mo agoI bet the one that gets implemented by an invasion force will be great. It's a crisis that has to be handled internally by the populus of the country. Not by a country which leader implied he wants the natural resources of the country they are now "freeing from a dictatorship" or whatever cope you are coming up with in your mind.
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo agoIf this results in Maduro leaving office with a small number of mostly military deaths, followed by the swift return of Venezuelan democracy, I would concede that the hawks made a good call this time. It is extraordinarily uncommon for US regime change wars to go that way and I don’t think this is going to be the exception. (E: Honesty compels me to come back and say that it is looking somewhat likely I was wrong and will have to concede to the hawks.)
- 9mo ago
- clot27 9mo ago[flagged]
- sgt 9mo agoYou're obviously just trolling. The US is still a solid democracy - a country you disagree with, sure. In a couple years Trump will be out and life goes on. As for Maduro, he's a dictator - he needed to go. He works closely with Iran, Russia and with China doing very nefarious things. I agree however that Trump is largely self centered and this is a risk. Oil should not be the goal here, it should be the freedom of the Venezuelans.
- bogzz 9mo agoIt is not a solid democracy if the only two political parties are largely aligned on most issues, leaving citizens helpless to change the way the uni party functions. As for foreign policy, yes the United States is a terrorist state and has been for a long time.
- sgt 9mo agoYou can literally go to DC and hold up a board saying "United States is a terrorist state" and not be arrested. That should tell you everything you need to know.
- int_19h 9mo agoIt tells me that doing that is a meaningless performance. If it weren't, they'd actually try to actively ban it. Look at all the anti-BDS legislation for an example.
- clot27 9mo agoUSA bombed iraq, killed thousands of civilians USA bombed libya, killed thousands of civilians USA funding israel, killing thousands of civilians USA bombed vietnam, killed thousands of civilians and the list goes on. I am not trolling, USA is built on white supremacy by genocide of native americans and is sustained by war because military industrial complex needs to sell their weapons so some american can afford starbucks. America is a terrorist state, far from democracy where avg citizen doesnt even know the crimes of their govt. Just few days ago their whole leadership was revealed to be sinister pedophiles and americans basically did nothing. Americans are the most propagandized people ever
- kacesensitive 9mo agoStatement from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela https://x.com/i/status/2007359985546674407 https://x.com/i/status/2007359985546674407
- dredmorbius 9mo agoYou might want to directly link the tweet in question. And use xcancel.com rather than the largely-inaccessible source.
- sedan_baklazhan 9mo agoThat easily makes a Nobel Peace Prize. An attack on Iran will make it into the world's first Double Nobel Peace Prize. Now, it's also very important to even further unite the entire world against Russian agressive war.
- madaxe_again 9mo ago[flagged]
- NomDePlum 9mo agoMilitary action on a sovereign state is an act of war. Is that not correct?
- madaxe_again 9mo agoSarcasm is dead on the internet.
- whatsupdog 9mo ago[flagged]
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo agoI rejoice any time something doesn’t go Donald Trump’s way because he frequently says that he hates me and wishes to do me harm. I separately agree that Nobel Peace Prize awards often don’t make much sense.
- unnamed76ri 9mo agoTrump takes time out of his day to specifically say he hates you and wishes to do you harm? That sounds really scary, random HN user.
- whatsupdog 9mo ago
- k310 9mo agoIt's the Epstein Distraction Action. Wag the Dog.
- rasz 9mo agoTurns out Douglas Dykhouse really meant this years US New Year wishes when he said "Americans and Russians share the same values".
- epistasis 9mo agoThere has been no congressional declaration of war, no AUMF, no nothing, right? The congress people who are military veterans recently put out a public service announcement reminding those in the military that they must refuse illegal orders, and Trump called that reminder of the law "treasonous" and said the veterans should be executed for reminding people of the law. There should be military tribunals for all involved here to ensure that law and order is maintained. The US is losing its constitution, its rule of law. There is not country if we have two different sets of laws, one for normal people but zero laws for those following rhe president's wishes. That's a monarchy.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> There has been no congressional declaration of war, no AUMF, no nothing, right? No. From an international-law perspective, Trump is stepping into the footprints left by Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, Khamenei and his own predecessors in D.C. From a domestic-law perspective, this is un-Constitutional.
- davidw 9mo agoHe just called it a "war" on TV, and only Congress can declare war.
- thesumofall 9mo agoNo American, but the War Powers Resolution seems to allow for these kind of actions? That doesn’t make them any better but I was wondering the same thing
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> the War Powers Resolution seems to allow for these kind of actions? Which one?
- dragonwriter 9mo ago> Which one? There is exactly one law (Public Law 93-148, originating in the 93rd Congress as H.J.Res. 542, and passed over Presidential veto on November 7, 1973) which has as its official title the “War Powers Resolution”. Since it’s passage, it is also frequently referred to by a less-official name as the “War Powers Act” to emphasize that it has completed the process to become an official Act of Congress. The reference, especially to the exact official name, is not at all ambiguous.
- Earl_Arthur 9mo agoPrediction: the regime will not fall. This will destabilize the country further, not so much the regime itself. There will be a decrease in oil production, marginally boosting world prices. What's probably being taken out right now is the regime's ability to react in any meaningful way to the oil embargo. It will also allow Maduro to throw his hands in the air and blame the US for all of VZLA's ills going forward. More poverty, more suffering, more migration.
- schmuckonwheels 9mo agoWell they just captured Maduro and flew him out of the country, so yes the regime quite literally did just fall minutes after you created your throwaway account to post this.
- energy123 9mo agoPay attention to who is generating the wrong predictions, and what their other opinions are on tangential questions.
- ogogmad 9mo agoIt's a game of probabilities. Even if it does turn out fine, similar things in recent history have turned out very poorly*. But to be honest, I hate Maduro anyway, so I'd be happy for this to turn out well. * - Claims 2 years ago about the removal of Hamas; assassinations of militia leaders leading to peace
- energy123 9mo ago> assassinations of militia leaders leading to peace The purpose of the assassinations is security, not peace. Peace is a bilateral process and it does confer security, but if it's not on the table then you can't force the issue unilaterally.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- enaaem 9mo agoJust checked on r/conservative what the diehard MAGA fans are saying and they seem to be very happy that Trump is attacking the Cartels and Chinese influence in their backyard. That seems to be the current narrative among MAGA right now.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> they seem to be very happy that Trump is attacking the Cartels and Chinese influence in their backyard If Trump had just globalised the seizure of shadow tankers, he could have dealt a serious blow to Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
- big-and-small 9mo agoAnd bring oil prices up 2x-3x to never get re-elected.
- int_19h 9mo agoMAGA is quite literally a cult of personality, so that's hardly surprising.
- slg 9mo agoAs someone old enough to have seen the US invade too many countries, I'm struck by the lack of effort put into justifying this sort of military action these days. There is going to be a lot of debate over whether this specific operation was legal and I have no idea where the courts or history will ultimately land on that decision. But the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far.
- sedan_baklazhan 9mo agoWell, "Venezuela has stolen American oil which is in Venezuela". Isn't that a justification?!
- egeozcan 9mo agoJust like how Denmark and Greenland stole American land that happens to be where Greenland is. Or Canada. Seriously though, even the imperial ambitions from the guy feels racist :) I guess Turkey can stop worrying on thanksgiving days. I have a lot of conflicting views with both the "left" and the "right" these days, but it seems the so-called "conservatives" are not that conservative in their ambitions, no?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far A lot of Americans don't care. They either actually don't care. Or they sort of care, but are too lazy and nihilistic to bother doing anything about it. Like, this entire exercise is a leveraged wager by the Trump administration that this will not cost them the Senate in any of these states next year [1]. [1] https://www.270towin.com/2026-senate-election/ https://www.270towin.com/2026-senate-election/
- tweakimp 9mo agoI think also many dont have the time or ressources to care. If you live a precarious life, you are happy if you can pay for food and your home.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoWell this aged like shit [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100816
- adwn 9mo ago> this aged like shit Your comment was chemically and biologically decomposed by microorganisms and fungi, which extracted energy from it and returned the remaining nutrients to the surrounding soil, providing a fertile ground for the growth of plants?
- arjie 9mo agoI haven't been keeping track of this realm of politics closely. Is there a concise well-informed summary anywhere? Unfortunately everything I find contains a degree of polemic that I find is usually accompanied by low-information content.
- yuppiepuppie 9mo agoJohn Stewart had a good piece about it on The Daily Show a few weeks ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QGzYFjVaU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QGzYFjVaU
- logicchains 9mo agoTrump blamed Venezuela for stealing US oil when it nationalized US oil companies there, and for shipping drugs to America, and for creating Dominion voting machines which he believes were used to cheat in the 2020 election. Some in his administration have also blamed Venezuela for working with Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas. One or more of those could be the reason for the invasion.
- dragonwriter 9mo agoTrump also blamed Venezuela for literally conducting an invasion of the United States (not just in rhetoric, but as his legal justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act in March of 2025.)
- SilverElfin 9mo agoTrump is blaming Venezuela for the fentanyl crisis in America. But it’s actually about stealing Venezuela’s oil and minerals: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-22/oil-gold-and-rare-earth-elements-the-backdrop-to-us-political-tension-with-venezuela.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-22/oil-gold... Once a puppet regime has been established, you can bet Trump-related companies will get contracts to extract this stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> it’s actually about stealing Venezuela’s oil and minerals It's multi-faceted. Venezuela is a hive of Russian, Chinese and Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere. That is–long run–a problem for America. Venezuela is also a brutal dictatorship that is oppressing its people and producing waves of migrants. Finally, Venezuela is rich in underdeveloped mineral and energy resources. (Caveat: Exxon currently pumps those wells.) Venezuela is also not Epstein, so, idk, there's that.
- kaffeeringe 9mo agoNext up: Greenland
- nbadg 9mo agoPutting aside, for a moment, a lot of important questions around (gestures broadly at the political situation in the US), what are the economic implications of a conflict between the US and Venezuela? Is this likely to increase inflation? And what does this mean for FX -- are we likely to see a further weakening of the dollar, particularly against ex EUR?
- thelastgallon 9mo agoUS moves on Venezuela, China moves on Taiwan. With no chips, all AI speculation goes to ..? We live in interesting times!
- topspin 9mo ago> China moves on Taiwan What is the risk calculation one would perform before attempting to invade Taiwan while Trump is calling shots? Whatever else you think about Trump, for better or worse, he is not bound by establishment prerogatives: make the "wrong" move, as Trump exclusively defines it, and anything — literally any conceivable thing plus a distant horizon of things you are cognitively incapable of conceiving — might happen. Maduro is in a cage somewhere pondering this right now. Iran's leaders are all thinking about the threats Trump made not 48 hours ago, possibly to the great benefit of rebels in the streets right now. Federal investigators are closing in on Walz and friends in Minnesota right now: he could find himself in a cell within earshot of Maduro at any time. Don't forget to breathe!
- OgsyedIE 9mo agoIt won't help with oil. The Permian's breakeven prices have crept upwards and, because VZ crude grades are high-sulfur, the US refinery complex can't absorb it without retooling away from the plants specialised for the low-sulfur Permian output. Possibly dragging supply down, with no net effect at best.
- Ancapistani 9mo ago>90% of Venezuelan crude has been refined in China in recent years. This is going to hurt China economically, and in a way that isn’t going to be seen as targeted at China or unfair by international community. Russia’s production and refining capacity has been seeing attrition from Ukraine’s efforts. They’re producing less oil, selling it for less, and for rubles that each buy less. I’ve said before on HN that I thought Venezuela was intended to soak up Russian resources - this is just the next step.
- aqme28 9mo agoIt's a US military invasion. I hope that an unpopular invasion with zero justification results in some level of political consequences for Trump but sadly I remain skeptical
- erxam 9mo ago[flagged]
- drstewart 9mo ago[flagged]
- unethical_ban 9mo agoThat account's history is... Erratic.
- dagmx 9mo agoHell, the current administration doesn’t even see those north of the northern border as worth considering either.
- phtrivier 9mo agoThat's not going to play well with DJT's bid for Nobel Peace Prize. Although I guess invading Sweden would be a solution, and there are probably plenty of reasons to invade Sweden - they must be looking badly at Russia, or he can mix it up with Groenland, or something. That being said, how many continents are we left from being able to call that a bona fide world war ? Can we count Africa as "in a state of war per default", leaving only Oceania ? Should Australians brace themselves ?
- tacker2000 9mo agoHe already has the FIFA Peace Prize, he doesn’t care anymore.
- throwaway85825 9mo agoPeace prize is given by the Norwegians.
- praptak 9mo agoTherefore invasion on Sweden is 100% consistent with US logic.
- throwaway85825 9mo agoIt is the best land border for an invasion of Norway.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoThe land border between Sweden and Norway is what everyone is aware of and expects to be invaded via. It is at the border between Norway and Finland no one would expect a little special operation.
- throwaway85825 9mo agoNorway also shares a border with Russia.
- beardyw 9mo agoVenezuela accuses US after explosions and low-flying aircraft reported in Caracas – live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e... Venezuela accuses US of attacking Caracas as explosions rock capital https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/explosions-reported-venezuela-caracas https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/explosions-rep...
- ogogmad 9mo agoI get why some people were neo-con the first 3 or so times (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) but it's criminal not to learn after failing 3 times over. I want the most severe consequences for the people who have enabled this to happen again.
- throwawaysleep 9mo agoDo any of those people regret those first three?
- drunx 9mo agoPre 2014 no Russian person would directly wish/hope/wait for the annexation of Crimea. Surely some fanatics and crazies existed, but society at large didn't "need" it. One person made a decision. And that started a 11+ years of propaganda, political acrobatics, war, manipulation of the masses, etc etc etc. Lots of things that are good for that one person to be able to stay in power. Back to Venezuela and Trump - it's possible that Trump is testing grounds for a similar play. If he finds an enemy he can keep fighting for a long time - he will stay president for all that time. Elections won't matter. People will vote for those who fight "the enemy". You just need to create an enemy.
- eternauta3k 9mo ago> If he finds an enemy he can keep fighting for a long time - he will stay president for all that time I don't think any latin american country can withstand the US for any amount of time, unless it turns into a guerilla war.
- wiseowise 9mo agoI'm sure you wish well, but > Pre 2014 no Russian person would directly wish/hope/wait for the annexation of Crimea. is just bollocks. > On 21 May 1992 the Supreme Soviet of Russia declared 1954 transfer of Crimea as having "no legal force", because it was adopted "in violation of the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Russian SFSR and legislative process", but because subsequent legislation and the 1990 Russo-Ukrainian treaty constituted that fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Crimea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Crimea Russians were planning Crimea takeover for a long time.
- drunx 9mo agoI talk about people, not government. Unfortunately it's two different things. And of course I don't mean 100% of people. But percentage wise - you wouldn't say that majority wanted to "get it back". And that's my point - leaders less and less represent the people. As for the government - your are absolutely on point. And I don't disagree.
- simianparrot 9mo ago[flagged]
- wesleywt 9mo agoTrump gave one of the biggest drug dealers ever a pardon as well as the Silk Road guy. Time to sanitise where you get your news, you seem to be eating all the propaganda.
- HorseOfCourse 9mo agoThey are likely a troll/AI etc given the name, I suspect most of those posts here are nowadays, and this thread is almost entirely such.
- simianparrot 9mo agoHave you heard about making deals with criminals for intel? Pardoning is a tool. And did Biden not pardon a _lot_ of sketchy people, including his own son..? Come on, try harder
- epistasis 9mo agoDrugs? No. War?! No, words have meanings and that's not what "war" means. Ignoring diplomacy? Are you accusing the US of ignoring diplomacy, because that's the only half ways reasonable interpretation. This is weak and pathetic misinformation. I guess it will take a few days before the propaganda machine gets going to try to justify this gigantic waste of taxpayer money and pointless destruction. Hopefully the pros get involved because this is just sad.
- simianparrot 9mo agoYou can watch even CBS explain why this was done. Maduro was letting the cartel use private planes under diplomatic immunity to traffic drugs and weapons. EVEN CBS. Don't close your eyes and ears now.
- 8mo ago
- aqme28 9mo agoA lot of talk about how the administration didn't even try to justify this, but I think that the administration actually believes they did justify it. They exist in some bubble completely un-tethered from reality. I don't know what that means for the future but it's terrifying.
- ch2026 9mo agoThey don’t need to justify it because Americans who are upset don’t possess the wherewithal to hold them accountable.
- pixelpoet 9mo agoI don't see how they're any less complicit than the Russians living nice and chilled in Moscow.
- notTooFarGone 9mo agoSo the bar is now at least we are as bad as Russia?
- madaxe_again 9mo agosquints at cold war
- pixelpoet 9mo ago[flagged]
- orbital-decay 9mo agoSomeday it will be your country and yourself, and nobody will be outraged anymore, because everybody is the same. Stop this cycle and organize, instead of separating like-minded people with useless lines, standing aside and shouting about how things should be, in your opinion, and how everyone else should do... something, because you know better than insiders. Repeat after me: individuals are not systems.
- runtimepanic 9mo agoHard to draw conclusions from early reports like this. Situations involving explosions tend to generate a lot of noise before verified facts emerge, especially in politically tense environments. Best to wait for confirmation on cause, scale, and impact before speculating, and hopefully accurate information follows quickly.
- arthurcolle 9mo agoTikTok videos showing Apache helicopters shooting missiles at targets. Lots of planes and helicopters flying over Caracas
- arthurcolle 9mo agofollowup: the little black outlines in the video correspond to helicopter-like objects. I just referred to Apache for some reason, most local memory of an attack helicopter. apparently it's something else
- celticninja 9mo ago[flagged]
- runtimepanic 9mo agoI’m not suggesting it’s “nothing” or minimizing it. Just that in the first hours after explosions, reports are often incomplete or wrong. Past cases show everything from industrial accidents, gas explosions, ammo depots, infrastructure failures, or internal security incidents getting misattributed early on. Jumping straight to geopolitical conclusions before verified facts usually adds heat, not clarity. Waiting for confirmation on what actually happened doesn’t excuse anyone’s behavior, it just keeps the discussion grounded in evidence rather than emotion.
- celticninja 9mo agoI think you are wishing on a star.
- ch2026 9mo ago[flagged]
- bsjaux628 9mo agoBefore anyone starts telling us how they are attacking a legitimate president and that the people will defend it, take your time to find your closest Venezuelan (there are 8 million around the world, so don't need to look to far) and ask him how he feels about this, you will find that happy is part of their emotions.
- ogogmad 9mo agoAre they Venezuelans living in Venezuela? I think the ones you have to worry about are the ones still living there. Additionally, might it be that every dictatorship is hated by most expatriates? I think that that was the case for the 2 (or 3) countries that the neo-cons invaded, and I don't remember any of those invasions turning out well. Reckless.
- VBprogrammer 9mo agoI imagine, purely as a thought experiment, if you asked a sample of US expats what their reaction to the "forced removal" of the current president from office you'd get a similar response.
- ErneX 9mo ago8 million is a lot in a country that around 30 million population. Plus the opposition won the 2024 election by a landslide, but it was stolen by Maduro. The overwhelming majority wants the regime to end.
- celticninja 9mo agoSo that juatifies this attack does it? How many dead Venezuelans does it justify?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- wtcactus 9mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jmward01 9mo agoThis is illegal, immoral, unsupported by the vast majority of the US population and requiring immediate action by every US citizen and elected official.
- mupuff1234 9mo agoLet's say best case scenario, zero innocent casualties and a democratic government takes over and Venezuela prospers - would you still consider it immoral?
- 7952 9mo agoWhy stop there? The best case scenario would include prosecution of Trump and his administration.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 9mo agoJust like Iraq. Remember?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tclancy 9mo agoThat isn’t how morality works. It’s expressly the opposite, a restating of “end justifies the means”. It’s a defensible position to hold, but not a moral one.
- mupuff1234 9mo agoIt's a philosophical question, I don't think there's a single objective truth. Regardless I'm curious as to what is inherently immoral in arresting a dictator?
- ErneX 9mo agoWe tried every peaceful way to get rid of the regime, they stole the elections, commit multiple human rights violations, the list of crimes is too long. The majority of Venezuelans wanted this to finally happen.
- canxerian 9mo agoReally??
- ErneX 9mo agoYes, we won the 2024 presidential election by a landslide only to be stolen by Maduro. So please get rid of the regime, the majority of the country wants to go back to democracy.
- newdee 9mo agoI think the democracy you want is not the same as the invaders want
- dannyfreeman 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw
- runtimepanic 9mo agoIf you’re tracking signals around geopolitical events, there’s a quirky one a few folks like to watch: the Pentagon Pizza Index. It’s a real-time dashboard that monitors pizza shop activity near the Pentagon as an informal indicator of unusual late-night activity. Historically people have pointed to spikes in food orders before major operations as a sort of low-tech OSINT signal. https://www.pizzint.watch/ https://www.pizzint.watch/ Obviously this isn’t hard intelligence — correlation isn’t causation — but when combined with more grounded indicators (verified reports, diplomatic channels, satellite data) it can be a piece of the broader picture. Just a fun example of how people try to find patterns in publicly available data.
- DecoySalamander 9mo agoWhy bother monitoring junk food purchases when we can watch videos of helicopters flying over Caracas being uploaded almost in real time?
- jdmoreira 9mo agoYou would expect them to have started baking the pizza inside the pentagon already by now :)
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoOr they order Chinese food to throw it off
- pamcake 9mo agoHmm, I guess delivery app API can provide some useful signals if monitored. (jk, Pentagon OPSEC is TIGHT from what I've been told)
- nutjob2 9mo agoThis administration is lawless to an almost a comical degree. First murdering people with little more than the most obvious figleaf, now invading a country without Congressional approval. Clearly the US constitution is just a list of suggestions to Trump. I guess it'll just be another count added when the Dems start impeachment proceedings on November 4th.
- dataflow 9mo agoIt's explicitly about oil, right? Wikipedia [1]: > Andrew McCabe quotes Trump as saying of Venezuela "That’s the country we should be going to war with, they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” > In June 2023, Trump said at a press conference in North Carolina, "When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We would have taken over it, we would have kept all that oil." PBS [2]: > "We want it back," he added. "They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_United_States_invasion_of_Venezuela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_United_States_invasio... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-we-want-it-back-trump-demands-venezuela-return-land-oil-rights-to-u-s https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-we-want-it-back-...
- HDThoreaun 9mo agoVenezuelan oil is kind of crappy. I would say the two biggest reasons for this are 1. Trump wanting migrants from Venezuela to stop and 2. Ending Venezuelan support for Cuba. Oil is definitely one of the reasons though.
- dataflow 9mo agoMaybe worth mentioning I posted this before seeing the news about Maduro being captured. No idea whether/how that might change the calculus.
- dataflow 9mo agoYup it's the oil. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/03/g-s1-104346/trump-venezuela-maduro-press-conference https://www.npr.org/2026/01/03/g-s1-104346/trump-venezuela-m...
- gbnwl 9mo agoIt is heavy crude but it's what our refineries are set up to use. There was a very informative news report on this recently posted to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgwny1BiCYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgwny1BiCYk Apparently shale oil mostly comes out as light, so our own production doesn't feed our refineries and we've increasingly taken to importing heavy crude.
- Simon_ORourke 9mo agoWhat's the desired strategic outcome here - to remove the incumbent president and his political party from power and replace it with one more favorable to US oil interests? And to do that without putting ground troops in to some Latin American Vietnam? Good luck with that.
- GordonS 9mo agoIt'll be the usual playbook: replace Maduro with a pet dictator. It won't go well for Venezuela and it's people, but since when did the USA give a damn about people?
- paul7986 9mo agoAnd yet droves and droves from south and Central America want to come here and live instead! Also do these countries governments care for their own ppl? Seems like no as if they did ..they wouldn’t be corrupt 2nd to 3rd world countries & their citizens wouldn’t be fleeing to America in droves
- GordonS 9mo agoYou might want to look into the history of why South and Central America have been blighted by corruption and dictators - the USA has had a large hand in it.
- HDThoreaun 9mo agoThings can not get worse for Venezuelans than they were under maduro
- ta20240528 9mo agoI think Venezuela should take this to the ICC. (The ICJ is irrelevant).
- GordonS 9mo agoWhat for? The ICC is only "allowed" to take down criminals with the approval of Western govs.
- ta20240528 9mo agoThe squirming from the vassals would be worth it alone.
- SirHumphrey 9mo agoSo they can write a strongly worded letter?
- abigail95 9mo agoYou don't know what the ICC is for. It absolutely cannot stop the USA from trying him for breaking domestic USA law. That is a foundational principle of what it is.
- isodev 9mo agoI wonder if Tim Cook is enjoying how his “investments” are being spent. As for the rest of the us, I suppose now we should sanction the US
- onlyrealcuzzo 9mo agoWhy wouldn't he? He didn't give Trump a gold CD to invade Venezuela. He gave Trump a gold CD so you didn't have to pay a 30-50% tariff on iPhones, and it worked. If it was as simple as giving Trump a golden CD to stop being a moron, some billionaire would've done that already. Turns out, that problem is much harder to solve.
- bigyabai 9mo agoYep, Cook has worked against his personal interests for decades. He probably feels like a sociopath, but why would that stop him? There's money to be made. Moreover, it's fascinating how both sides of America's political aisle refuse to see anything but the best in Apple. To liberals, Apple is a shining beacon of innovation and social justice that exercises their private cudgel to bring digital offenders in-line. To conservatives, Apple is a stalwart defender of private capital and the halcyon of privacy and free speech for the common man. Neither one can decipher the fact that they've been duped, instead they both hold onto the belief that Apple will fully embrace their politics and vindicate their faith.
- lawrencejgd 9mo agoIt's so hard to talk about this from the perspective of a venezuelan. Venezuela is under a dictatorshipt that has violated human rights massively, in Caracas (the capital) there's a prison know as El Helicoide, that's the headquarterts of the SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia), they are the secret police and the have arrested opposition members, reporters, human rights activists, and even family members of any of the three. Their headquarters is El Helicoide, a prison that is the equivalent of Guantanamo, but in Venezuela; it is the largest torture center in Latin America. On July 28, 2024, presidential elections were held, which were extremely difficult to reach. Negotiations with the government were necessary to allow the opposition to participate. The opposition held primary elections to determine its candidate, and María Corina Machado (MCM) (the previous year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate) won with approximately 90% of the vote. There was also a high voter turnout that the government had not anticipated, so they disqualified her, she then proposed another candidate, but this person was also disqualified, and ultimately, they had to put forward Edmundo González Urrutia (EGU), an stranger in Venezuelan politics, and had to convince him to participate in the elections. During the campaign, the government placed every possible obstacle in their path to prevent them from campaigning, closing roads, arresting campaign workers, and issuing threats. On election day, there were several irregularities, and at midnight, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that Maduro had won. However, MCM claimed there had been fraud and, days later, presented evidence. She had conducted a large-scale operation to collect all the electoral records from every polling station in the country, managing to gather the vast majority, which showed that EGU had won with 67%. This sparked widespread protests and severe repression, including the arrest of many members of Vente Venezuela (MCM's party). She was forced into hiding, and EGU was forced to leave the country, but only after making a deal with the government while taking refuge in the Spanish embassy. His son-in-law was also arrested and remains missing to this day. If you ask any Venezuelan, many agree with an US invasion. The vast majority are against the regime, just like me, although many aren't aware of how dangerous Trump is, or the things he's done in the US. To me, Trump isn't so different from Chávez: he insults those who disagree with him, he doesn't respect institutions, he installs his people in positions of power, and he only cares about loyalty. That's why I'm in a very complicated position, because on the one hand, I want this dictatorship to finally end; on the other hand, I don't like Trump. He's quite capable of trying to establish his own dictatorship in his country. He's not doing this just to liberate us; he's doing it because he has his own interests. There are also many people who have spoken ill of MCM; many have said she didn't deserve the Nobel Prize and that she's just a puppet of Trump. I couldn't disagree more with those statements. I don't completely agree with her; I have a somewhat different ideology than hers, but even I can see how much effort she puts into everything she does. Here in Venezuela, she's greatly admired. I'm not one to admire people or have idols. I even criticize her a bit because she never makes it clear what the plan is for getting out of this situation and always says that freedom will come soon, something that gets very tiresome, but even so, I can understand her. Being in her position is very difficult, due to the alliances the government has made. A large part of the left worldwide has sided with the dictatorship or doesn't denounce its atrocities, and because of that, she has no choice but to ally herself with right-wing people, including Trump. I don't think she agrees with everything he does, and she's even asked him to treat Venezuelans better, but she can't anger him either, because he's the only ally who can help her with this. That's why she told him he should have received the Nobel Prize, to avoid further anger and to try to appease him. It's also important to mention something else: the Venezuelan government has used various operations to manipulate public opinion, both inside and outside Venezuela, trying to portray itself as a legitimate government and claiming that everything the U.S. does is for the sake of oil. While this is partly true, it also attempts to tarnish the reputation of MCM and the opposition. It's possible that here, on Twitter, Bluesky, or many other sites, there are fake accounts trying to promote this narrative, so be careful what you read, because this government has committed atrocities; don't forget that. Talking about all this is very difficult, because on the one hand this is a dictatorship that we want to free ourselves from, but on the other hand Trump is one of the worst things that has happened to the world. Excuse me if my text seems strange, I originally wrote it in Spanish and translated it in Google Translate, although I know English, it was easier for me to do it this way.
- jibal 9mo ago"Venezuela’s authoritarian government has accused the US ..." should be "Venezuela’s authoritarian government has accused the US authoritarian government ..." or (better, really) "Venezuela has accused the US ..."
- hnarn 9mo agoHoly whataboutism. Regardless of what you think about Trump the US system is nothing like that of Venezuela or Russia or any other actually authoritarian state.
- testing22321 9mo agoYet.
- jibal 9mo agoThe "whataboutism" accusation is absurd--that's not even remotely an example of it. All my comment was about was editorial insertions of biased loaded language into a supposed news report. And I didn't say that the U.S. "system" is "like" Venezuela or Russia--that's a blatantly intellectually dishonest misrepresentation ... a) "authoritarian" is broader than the most extreme examples, and b) the Trump regime is acting outside of the "system". And: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy-authoritarianism-competive-survey-political-scientist https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy... "A survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism." That's from April ... the move to a "Department of War" and the actual waging of unauthorized war pushes things considerably further.
- jmward01 9mo agoThis is illegal, immoral and not supported by the vast majority of the country. Every us citizen and every elected official needs to act, now, to stop this.
- throwawaysleep 9mo ago> not supported by the vast majority of the country Votes suggest otherwise.
- _cenw 9mo agoWe both know this is an imperfect statement without getting into a lecture about representative democracy or voting modalities.
- throwawaysleep 9mo agoAmericans have been all for this the last couple of rounds as well.
- KingOfCoders 9mo agoTrump won the electoral vote [edit: and the popular vote]
- squidbeak 9mo agoThis is muddying with jargon. You're insisting on nuance where there is none: Trump won emphatically, and the campaign couldn't have been clearer about what MAGA intended to do in power.
- womitt 9mo agoDemocracy incoming
- KingOfCoders 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
- GardenLetter27 9mo agoLet freedom ring. Every Venezuelan I know is happy for the regime to fall. Let's hope Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Russia follow soon.
- Synaesthesia 9mo agoBombs are not the solution.
- jonway 9mo agoThat’s interesting who are they? The few venezuelas I know hate it too, so like is this a gulf war 1 or Iraq war 2? This usually (never) goes well for the USA. (Source: pick a regime change war.)
- troupo 9mo agoThere's a difference between happy for the regime to fall" and "a superior military invades and starts a war"
- lm28469 9mo agoYes because it went so well for all the other countries the US meddld with lol
- antonymoose 9mo agoWe dropped a lot of ordnance on Germany and Japan and they seem to be doing alright. I suppose South Korea is doing fine as well, so let’s just hope Chinese troops do not flow over their land border with Venezuela. If we need a more recent and perhaps more relevant comparison point, Operation Just Cause had a successful outcome. I know it’s trendy and important to mock Iraq and Vietnam but it’s not all a failures.
- AnonymousPlanet 9mo agoThis is exactly the kind of ignorant chest thumping arrogance that lead to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, destabilised the entire region, lead to the rise of IS, and eventually to streams of refugees heading for Europe. edit: tone
- legitster 9mo agoI almost feel bad for the people who instigated the War on Terror. They did not know how badly it would go - and they worked really hard and tirelessly to build and sell their illegitimate case to the American public. This administration is making the same mistakes - but in living memory of the first, with a less noble prize, and with complete derision of Congress and Americans' intelligence.
- throw101010 9mo agoIsn't this one more related to the "War on Drugs"? The people who came up with these wars against abstract ennemies knew exactly what they were doing, fighting against another country/government is very limiting, once the war is settled you need another reason to start a war. When you go to war with an idea/concept you can continue your forever wars and raise taxes for/increase investment in the War related industries as long as you need to prop up your economy and get reelected. Trump got reelected with slogans like "no new war" and in less than a year he started at least one (arguably I'd say two with the 12 days wars as Israel knew ut couldn't win this one without American bombers) also makes me think none if this is a "mistake", just a long term plan to keep power.
- christophilus 9mo agoThis is about oil and resources and maybe a proxy attack on China more than anything. A friend of mine called this as soon as that huge oil deposit was discovered off a small neighboring country’s coast. He said, “Venezuela is going to try to claim it, and the US will take them out.” I thought he was full of shit when he said it, but now I’m pretty sure he nailed it.
- throw101010 9mo agoOh yeah these are the true motives, I was talking about the usual pretext that they need to sell it on TV and these days on social media too.
- jacquesm 9mo agoIt even has a name: 'the resource curse'.
- shevy-java 9mo agoI guess even the last former voter now understands that a certain orange man is a huge liar. So much for "I'm gonna get the peace nobel prize" by Invasion 2.0. Actually, it is not even an invasion right now - it is just a distraction from certain files. How much has not yet been revealed with regard to that network involving underage people?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- fl4tul4 9mo ago"There's so much oil in here, US is about to invade this dish!" --Chef Ramsay
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- monerozcash 9mo agoMaduro arrested https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115830428767897167 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1158304287678... Considering the general incompetence of this administration, this level of success with such a surgical operation seems completely out of character. Incredibly impressive operation, whether or not you agree with it. Although the ability to operate helos over Caracas with such impunity may very well suggest high-level collaborators in the local military.
- raybb 9mo agoIf you wanna stay up to date on this one just refresh the Wikipedia page. They are on it like crazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_strikes_in_Venezuela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_strikes_in_...
- monerozcash 9mo agoI'd suggest twz, they'll have much better informed takes than wikipedia https://www.twz.com/news-features/explosions-ring-out-across-caracas-as-u-s-special-ops-helicopters-fly-over-city https://www.twz.com/news-features/explosions-ring-out-across...
- lm28469 9mo agoThe army is full of very competent people regardless of who's in charge for the last 4 years, it's not like they start from scratch at every new administration. And most of them just like to blow shit up regardless of the moral aspect of it, as we've seen in the past
- monerozcash 9mo agoI certainly don't doubt the competence of the US army, but the fact that they spent only minutes on active SEAD bombing raids to enable this operation suggests that it wasn't just cool tech or super competent SOF operators that truly enabled this operation.
- gyanchawdhary 9mo ago[flagged]
- amarcheschi 9mo agoTrump was arrested?
- gyanchawdhary 9mo agoNa. He’s the good guy.
- sgt 9mo agoI am critical of Trump, but in this case you're actually correct. Maduro is a dictator. Trump is not.
- jimbob45 9mo agoWhat did y’all think María Machado won the Nobel for over Trump? Does it even matter or is orange man bad all you care about anymore? HN was over the moon to see her win just a few months ago.
- ailef 9mo agoNotice the hypocrisy of the "explosions reported" title instead of "US bombs Venezuela".
- gizzlon 9mo agono, that makes sense. It's probably too soon to be sure what has happened. This is why we need actual journalists and not just tiktok and yt commentators
- pamcake 9mo agoPOTUS confirmed it, first on CBS News and prior to the Guardian posting that, then on his Mastodon server. There is no room for doubt about who bombed where. As this is an evolving situation, the OP headline has now been changed to "Trump claims US has captured Venezuelan dictator and wife" and is basically a different article at this point. The bias in this Guardian reporting is very visible beyond just the headlines. (I don't blame you for being confused btw) Suggesting "US bombs Venezuela" for HN headline (still uncertainties around the "capture").
- hnarn 9mo agoDo you understand what the word ”hypocrisy” means? This is textbook responsible journalism in a scenario where ”common sense” is not yet verified.
- doom2 9mo agoedit: this comment made before two threads were consolidated. Original thread titled "Explosions reported in Venezuelan capital Caracas" While I agree that "hypocrisy" isn't the right word here, I see where OP is coming from. At least in American media, the use of passive voice (or as I've heard it called sometimes "exonerative voice") often obfuscates or otherwise provides cover for authorities. For example, "Tower collapses after missile strike" and "Man dies after being struck by bullet during arrest" are both technically true and yet also leave out important context (the country who fired the missile, the person who fired the gun and why). Even if this headline is appropriate for now, it's not surprising that there should be questions over how it's worded.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- olalonde 9mo agoTrump's post: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115830428767897167 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1158304287678...
- MrBuddyCasino 9mo ago„The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP“
- sakopov 9mo agoTrump just said that Maduro and his wife have been captured and flown out of the country.
- binsquare 9mo agoWtf
- hubraumhugo 9mo agoPolitics aside: If this is all true and was a snatch and grab, it will go down as one of the most impressive military operations in the 21st century.
- rvz 9mo agoand if nobody was killed.
- olalonde 9mo agoSky News reports that it might have been a "negotiated exit". https://x.com/SkyNews/status/2007391354884894820 https://x.com/SkyNews/status/2007391354884894820
- christophilus 9mo agoYeah. Maduro was pretty clear he wanted a deal. I’d believe this angle.
- skibidithink 9mo agoIt'd be in stark contrast to Russia's attempted decapitation strike.
- ErneX 9mo agoimo this was negotiated, we need more details
- paganholiday 9mo agoYou can't really put politics aside when the US was obviously dangling the return of the Monroe doctrine for Ukraine. Let's see what that "deal" looks like.
- fzeroracer 9mo agoSo correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like a new kind of crime committed by the US? We've been involved in a lot of regime change operations but I can't think of one where we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state and bring them to the US. I guess Saddam Hussein but that was after we caused the collapse? Is the goal now to just put Maduro through a televised sham trial as a new cover for the Trump admin?
- baubino 9mo ago> I can't think of one where we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state and bring them to the US. I believe Noriega was captured when the US invaded Panama in 1989. But yeah, this is wild (though maybe not unprecedented).
- perihelions 9mo agoThe US has historically captured and executed heads of states in wars, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2006 (executed by the US-administered Iraqi government), and Imperial Japan's Tojo in 1948. The US extradited, convicted, and imprisoned Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández, for drug trafficking crimes (though Trump, incongruously, pardoned him in 2025). Another notable example, the UK arrested Chile's Pinochet in 1998 on a Spanish arrest warrant claiming universal jurisdiction, though no conviction followed from that. edit: And US Marines captured Grenada's Hudson Austin in 1983, turning him over to Grenada's new government who sentenced him to death, commuted to prison. edit²: Two other heads of state imprisoned in the US were Alfonso Portillo of Guatemala (extradited to and convicted in US courts in 2014), and Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine (fled willingly to the US, convicted in 2006).
- baubino 9mo agoThe US has been in a lot of wars/conflicts (even if they were not officially declared) since WWII. Heads of state have not typically been captured. It’s not unprecedented but also not the norm.
- treetalker 9mo ago
- beardyw 9mo agoVenezuelan president Maduro captured and flown out of country following ‘large scale’ US attack, Trump says – live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
- beardyw 9mo ago"Trump claims Maduro 'captured and flown out of the country' US president Donald Trump claims that the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife have been “captured and flown out of the country”. In a Truth Social post shared only moments ago, Trump wrote: The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP. The Guardian has been unable to independently verify this report."
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ErneX 9mo agoGood riddance! But there are other key figures that need to be captured.
- treetalker 9mo agoregime change starts at home
- ErneX 9mo agoIt wasn’t for a lack of trying. The dead and imprisoned for it are evidence.
- treetalker 9mo agoNo doubt. In the US the phrase has a strong undertone of "we need to change the regime that's undertaking this latest foreign regime change".
- saubeidl 9mo ago[flagged]
- hulahoof 9mo agoLooks like Maduro and his wife were captured https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115830428767897167 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1158304287678...
- aaron695 9mo ago[dead]
- ghusto 9mo agoNon-USA citizen here. What's going on? I just woke up to this madness, and have heard nothing about it prior to today. Has this come as a surprise to everyone in the USA too, or were there murmurings leading up to it? What was the reason given? I'm presuming there was _something_, even if it was clearly nonsense?
- treetalker 9mo agoI figured it was coming because of Dear Leader's ramblings. TBH, I thought it was going to be the focus of the sudden address given on December 17. Instead we got amphetamine-fueled yelling about "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, THE ECONOMY IS REALLY GREAT" and something about a military bonus that was really just a way to rename and tax a pre-existing housing allowance.
- DecoySalamander 9mo agoIt's not entirely unexpected - you must have missed the recent deployment of the US Navy in the region, which looked like a naval blockade. But this operation is certainly daring - far more impressive than simply blowing Maduro up with a drone strike, which I personally expected. It's justified by portraying Maduro as a drug kingpin responsible for the fentanyl epidemic in the US. He is also blamed for some gang activity.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ChildOfChaos 9mo agoSo the US can just fly into a country and kidnap it's president and his wife at will now? Just because Donald Trump feels like it. And most Americans will somehow praise and love it. What the hell? I hate getting too political because it ends up so toxic and divisive, but with what logic is this not insane?
- avaer 9mo ago[flagged]
- password54321 9mo agoIf the last couple of years have taught anyone anything, your country is an open target if it doesn't have its own Iron Dome.
- CapricornNoble 9mo agoOr nuclear weapons. Bin Laden found in Afghanistan? Invade and occupy the whole country. Bin Laden found in nuclear-armed Pakistan? Quietly sneak in with a handful of SOF operators to shoot him in the face then GTFO.
- the_overseer 9mo agoor nukes... Welcome to the new arms race.
- sekai 9mo agoOkay, that was smooth and effective. But now what? Let's hope not another Libya.
- basisword 9mo agoIf countries are able to just fly in and kidnap criminal presidents now will someone be coming for Trump? For the rape and various other crimes.
- arresin 9mo agoSo crazy how all of this is highly probably due to the Epstein files. Has anything like this ever happened in history?
- OutOfHere 9mo agoTrump will do anything for his oil friends.
- _pferreir_ 9mo agoMuhrica gonna muhrica. It's been like this since time immemorial, the "regime" changes but the modus operandi is the same. True for all other empires.
- smashah 9mo agoAll Americans are at fault since it claims to be a democracy. They should all be sanctioned into the ground. This is the M.O they deal with others on.
- ptrl600 9mo agoCaptured? To do what with?
- slekker 9mo agoTune in at the livestream 11am Mar-a-lago time :^) My guess: he will be imprisoned in a 3rd country, he can't be allowed to move back to Venezuela
- rf15 9mo agoTo remove, to prevent martyrdom in death, to force a change of government that sells them better oil. Same thing the US always does.
- maxlin 9mo agoDamn. And no large-scale military activity in play. I hardly see how this could be considered anything but an absolute win, especially where Maduro has been considered being more and more authoritarian, rejecting democracy, and probably would've been willing to sacrifice thousands of lives in a ground war if this increasing threat was handled less finely. Add to this the fact that Venezuela has crazy amounts of oil BUT a totally mismanaged and badly exploited extraction operation and the economy is in the toilet. Unless this somehow leads in to a Libya situation, everyone could benefit from this, compared to the hopelessness of the past.
- tdeck 9mo ago> this increasing threat What threat? There is no threat to the US from Venezuela. This is another Banana war.
- int_19h 9mo ago> I hardly see how this could be considered anything but an absolute win It has only been a few hours, so nobody knows what is going to follow. Even if US does not engage further this may well trigger a civil war in Venezuela with massive casualties.
- pavlov 9mo agoLast month the US president pardoned a Honduran politician who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into America. Whatever is behind this attack, it has nothing to do with drugs.
- nrjames 9mo agoIt must be about oil.
- virtue3 9mo agoIt's always about the oil. Venezuela has a substantial amount of heavy crude oil. which the USA is good at refining. Shocking.
- libertine 9mo agoI believe it's well established that it is primarily about gaining access to the vast oil reserves. It's the new world order preached by Russia and supported by the BRICS. The difference is that the US has the resources to play this game ruthlessly and effectively for the most part. The coherent BRICS reply should be "we pray there's peace". This is scary stuff.
- rainworld 9mo agoThe multipolar world is truly new and terrifying Now, even the USA invades foreign countries! (https://x.com/EventsUkraine/status/2007431899107758263 https://x.com/EventsUkraine/status/2007431899107758263)
- libertine 9mo agoThe only thing I disagree is that "is truly new". It's not new, it's been the prevalent way of being for thousands of years - we had a brief moment of piece with the creation of the UN. But apparently there are a lot of countries that think the UN and international law is cumbersome, and are in the way of securing their "sovereignty" (more like securing regimes) - it was obvious this was going to be outcome. Funny enough, some of those have collapsed or are in the verge of collapsing: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Russia... Let's hope Europe doesn't flip to far right and start their own campaign, history shows they can be quite effective and destructive. The best outcome is that this is just the final breath of those old regimes, and this is temporary.
- unionjack22 9mo agoHere's a trick I've learnt to get an authentic view of events like these, a nice way to parse through the keyboard warrior and ivory tower voices and noise is to hear what Venezuelans, the millions of Venezuelan migrants, and the citizens of neighboring countries who've had to reckon with the legacy of Chavez think about this. You can extend this to anything really with good results. No valuable insight will be gleaned from chat boards and reddit in the immediate aftermath of these sorts of events.
- yuppiepuppie 9mo agoYeah, I agree. But it’s also very hard to gather those voices in one place. Any thoughts on where to find these voices beside a personal network?
- 6P58r3MXJSLi 9mo agoTrue, but it is like saying that to know China you have to ask the nationalists in Taiwan. Or that to understand Italian resistance you have to ask the millions of people in Italy that supported fascism. It doesn't work.
- toenail 9mo agoWe have an ongoing war in Europe because one President tried to remove the President of another country. You can perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify military actions, and depending on who you ask you will always get the answers you want.
- unionjack22 9mo agoI'm not arguing the point you're making. I'm saying that these discussions on these sorts of things on chat boards populated by privileged western nerds and conspicuous progressives have little merit and are merely a reflection of biases/ego of the privileged western nerd when put up against the lived experiences of people in Venezuela and neighboring states.
- toenail 9mo ago
- ldng 9mo agoSo Trump is jalous because it did not have its peace Nobel and take it on Maduro. Shall we give it to a Russian political opponent next year ?
- gradus_ad 9mo agoIf one believes we are moving towards major conflict with China this sort of operation is justifiable given Maduro's closeness to the CCP. It is very unlikely this will be met with anything like a coordinated condemnation from the Europeans given Maduro's closeness to Russia. Hence giving Trump some degree of international political cover for the move.
- z0ltan 9mo ago[dead]
- kopirgan 9mo agoDemocracy being restored, one oil well a day.
- DrBazza 9mo agoAnd simultaneously denying China a source of oil and (yet another) foothold in South America on the USA's doorstep? It's like Cuba all over again.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoOil is fungible. If America takes Venezuelan oil for themselves and doesn't let China have any, China will just buy more from Russia and the Middle East instead. There's no oil blockade to China, those ships aren't being stopped, and the minute such a blockade would be announced is the minute this 5th generation warfare WW3 turns into a 3rd generation war.
- kopirgan 9mo agoTrump himself just now said he is good friends with Xi and they will get their oil.
- abigail95 9mo agoYou need to understand marginal economics and why China will have to pay slightly more for oil as a result of this. Resulting in China having less money to spend on other things. Plenty of things are fungible, that doesn't eliminate scarcity.
- aamargulies 9mo agoHey, show some respect, you’re talking about the first ever winner of the prestigious FIFA peace prize!
- abigail95 9mo agoIs your opinion that we're going to get less oil and less democracy? It seems likely the opposite would be true. Venezuela GDP is all upside - it's practically a free lunch if they stop punching themselves in the face.
- SchwKatze 9mo agoAs a Latino and friend of several people that scaped from Maduro's regime I can easily say that people in South America are happy as ever. Also, some people seems to miss the fact that South America military power is very weak, and we, culturally, are way less proned to fight and die than people in middle east. Yeah, we know this is all about oil, and I'm interested to know what kind of democracy will emerge. But the fact is we don't have a, undeniable, dictator as neighbor, and my friends can see their families again.
- tgv 9mo agoThis is hardly a regime change. Only Maduro has been captured, the rest is still in power.
- kantord 9mo agoit is very early to tell what it is
- tgv 9mo agoIt is, and I understand the hope, but Maduro wasn't a good replacement for Chavez, yet he persisted because of the support of the rest of the regime. I hope for the best, but this is not an auspicious beginning.
- KaiserPro 9mo agoKidnapping a leader is a regime change. When a coup happens you topple the leader. But now we are looking at a civil war, if we are lucky.
- tmcz26 9mo agoDemocracy emerge? Good luck.
- rayiner 9mo agoVenezuela had a democratic-ish government before they voted for Chavez.
- zyxzevn 9mo ago"The oil must flow"
- Western0 9mo agooil price down
- songodongo 9mo agoThere was already an Israeli pundit on Fox News saying that Venezuela harbors Hamas and Hezbollah operatives. My assumption is that they are throwing that out there to garner support from Trump’s “anti-war unless it’s defending Israel” supporters.
- hoppp 9mo agoSo they got Maduro now they gonna commit genocide or why the hell keep bombing??
- booleandilemma 9mo agoThey have stopped bombing and they're not going to commit genocide. The US isn't Israel.
- m000 9mo agoLooks like the bar is set very low in this day and age.
- exabrial 9mo agoThe whole thing is so weird; both sides are coy. Venezuela is playing the usual card about America trying to seize oil; US playing usual card about narcotics. You can believe what you want, or buy into whatever mainstream narrative you want, I’m not here to judge, but I’ve seen these cards played out so many times in my lifetime. Neither makes sense to me for this level of resistance and response from the US. I have a feeling this has to do far more with Iran, Russia, and China, than Venezuela/drugs. For instance next-door, China is active around the Darien gap region, developing roads and highways. Allegedly this is for port infrastructure, but given Chinese history of low intensity conflicts and island building techniques in the South China sea, this could be a land version of that strategy. I need to read up about Venezuelan and Iranian Russian connections and interactions. I think the most underrated piece of news is the seizure of tankers under embargo, with blowing up drug boats as the distraction. One thing is for sure; even the most hard core right of uneasy to support Trump in a new war, and Trump has publicly lamented the expense (of all things) of war. Myself: no thanks. No more wars please.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- thinkpad1000 9mo agoHmm, think about that if China does the same thing to Taiwan tonight as well. Capture the current pretendent and install a new pro-China government.
- bogdan 9mo agoDo as the priest says not as the priest does.
- humanlity 9mo agoheadline: The wicked CCP that openly flouts human rights
- markus_zhang 9mo agoChina does not the capacity to execute such a clean job.
- abigail95 9mo agoChina survives and thrives because someone as dumb as you isn't the one running it. What the actual fuck are you saying? China loses an ally and influence so they decide to flip the table? OK Buddy.
- The_President 9mo agoIn doing so I feel like my mind just tried to divide by zero.
- FrustratedMonky 9mo agoDidn't Trump just pardon a narco-terrorist head of state (Juan Hernandez, Honduras). Now we go to war for a different one. Can Maduro just pay off Trump for a pardon, like Juan did? Or is it really. Honduras doesn't have oil?
- jacquesm 9mo agoIt's funny how many people already see this as a book that is opened and closed on the same day. That's not how these things work. This is like the first stone of an avalanche. It could stop here, or it could roll on for quite a while. It will take months or even years to know whether or not the outcome here was desirable or not and what the final tally is. Remember the 'Arab spring' and what came after.
- markus_zhang 9mo agoI think it has been like this forever, since the beginning of human civilization.
- lvspiff 9mo agoYep - That group of people have something we want (gold, spices, women, revenge or the ever classic we want to replace their religion with ours) and for the last 30 years especially now oil and minerals appear to be on the menu
- random9749832 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- oefrha 9mo agoExcept they didn’t even bother to manufacture consent this time? Or did a very lousy job of it.
- tyre 9mo agoYeah it’s surprising how little justification there’s been for this. As a well-read US citizen, I don’t actually know why we did this. Was it for oil? Socialism bad? To stop drugs? I think you latter is the narrative I’m most familiar with. Immigration would be the most logical, since this administration and political base care a lot about that, but I don’t think they’ve drawn a clear line between economic success and emigration. Logic isn’t exactly a cornerstone for these idiots. I’m guessing we did it to flex and distract from our own economy, but usually there is at least some pushed narrative for why America did the thing?
- the-smug-one 9mo agoThis is a crime to the Venezuelans, the US citizens, and the whole of South America.
- Sprotch 9mo agoIt’s also a crime against the US constitution and the international legal order. By condoning “might is right” Trump has given an excuse to every tinpot dictator, from Putin to Kim, to invade and kill whoever they want
- gtirloni 9mo agoAnd the voters who elected Trump because he promised to stop with "nation building". But with Venezuela's +300bn oil barrels at Trump's disposal now, I bet the gas prices will plummeted. I wonder how the MAGA fanbase will react (probably will be happy to let just this one "nation building" project to slip through their ethics).
- mythrwy 9mo agoIf you remember the aftermath of the Iraq2 invasion (which a lot of people claimed was about oil) gas prices did not plummet at all but the reverse. Gas doubled at the pump, maybe slightly more.
- herewulf 9mo agoBecause the US completely botched stabilizing the country despite 10s of thousands of troops on the ground for years. Meanwhile the indigenous insurgency and the previous to the invasion non-existent but subsequently massed foreign Al-Qaeda in Iraq both ensured no meaningful exports could be accomplished. In Venezuela it's extremely unclear how suddenly creating a giant power vacuum will allow the US to obtain Venezuela's oil. On one hand, this seems classic from the Trump Admin in that rash actions have been taken with no future plans in place (cf. DOGE), on the other hand this does appear in line with the promise of "no forever wars" (no sustained US ground presence) and if the US does actually end up with the oil, then it will be at a very low cost (in terms of US blood and treasure).
- ChildOfChaos 9mo ago[flagged]
- seydor 9mo agoAll in all, probably a good thing. Wishing the new cold war will be equally bloodless all along
- treetalker 9mo agoMeanwhile, One America News Network's front page reporting that Mamdani is undoing protections against "antisemitism"; DOJ is demanding Minnesota voting records; Will Smith accused of sexual harassment of a male violinist; and, of course, polling readers on the question "Does President Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?" http://archive.today/PIvHL http://archive.today/PIvHL So we know what many Red-Hats are seeing right now. The "president of peace," everybody!
- resters 9mo agoit's truly incredible the harm that the psychological need for "strong man" leaders has on the world. What's even more strange, in my opinion, is that the bumbling and incoherent stuff Trump says is actually viewed by anyone as tough or strong. In my view it shows tremendous fear of directness and accountability. To call it womanish would be an insult to women. Similarly, how does picking on much weaker countries (some of whom are allies) seem tough to anyone? In my view it's ugly and shows weakness rather than strength.
- filldorns 9mo agoIt's time for you Americans to wake up. You're supporting the wrong things! National sovereignty is a fundamental principle of international law and cannot be selectively applied according to the interests of global powers. Donald Trump’s threats and aggressive rhetoric toward Venezuela undermine this principle by treating a nation’s self-determination as negotiable. Criticizing this stance does not mean endorsing the Venezuelan government, but acknowledging that sanctions, intimidation, and external pressure rarely affect political elites and instead harm ordinary people, deepening humanitarian crises. Latin American history reveals a recurring pattern of foreign interference framed as the defense of democracy. From a moral standpoint, collective punishment and imposed solutions are indefensible. If such actions would be unacceptable when directed at the United States, they cannot be justified against Venezuela. A responsible international approach requires multilateral dialogue, international mediation, and genuine respect for the sovereignty of nations.
- diego_moita 9mo agoForget it, man. Gringos just don't give a shit. You're preaching to the wind. Do you know what will work? Money. We need to increase our trade with China. Latin America needs to stop depending on the U.S. and China is a golden opportunity.
- filldorns 9mo agoSometimes the wind is smarter than some of them.
- elektrontamer 9mo agoHow on earth was this allowed? Neither the republican nor democrat base wanted this. There wasn't even an attempt at justification, the drugs argument was a complete and utter joke. They could at least do a little false flag attack. If voting does it solve it what does?
- humanlity 9mo agoSomehow, I'm starting to agree with Russia's reason for launching the war because Ukraine wanted to join NATO.
- boramalper 9mo agoTwo wrongs don’t make a right. Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured in an unannounced/unnamed military operation by a superpower is wrong from a principled standpoint, and that it’s destabilising a country with 30+ million people if not the entire region.
- dataflow 9mo ago> Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured (...) Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2] [1] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-maduro-not-president-venezuela/ https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-m... [2] I'm (obviously) being sloppy regarding head of state vs. head of government.
- delfinom 9mo agoWell Russia contends Zelensky isn't the legitimate head of state of Ukraine.
- incrudible 9mo agoYou have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to contend that Zelensky is not the democratically legitimated head of state of Ukraine. For Maduro, it's much simpler: He lost the election, yet he remained in power.
- ofalkaed 9mo agoI just spent way too much time reading through this thread looking for a single post more concerned about Venezuela and its people than the poster's own politics. I gave up when I noticed I was only a 1/4 of the way through thread, should have started from the bottom.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- woooooo 9mo agoWith some charity, you can assume that people have default concern for Venezuelans. The politics are baffling. There hasn't even been a case made that one could disagree with. Why are we killing Venezuelans and kidnapping their president? If this is for the greater good, where is that argument?
- meowface 9mo agoI am perpetrating the exact wrong the parent poster referenced but: this is why liberalism is such a good principle and political position. It's almost a meta-position, and it provides clarity in circumstances like these.
- toxik 9mo agoLiberalism is a reductionist non-answer to realpolitik. See the sibling comment for what actual reasons there are.
- aglavine 9mo ago1. Most people from Venezuela are happy Maduro is out. A striking difference with people from Ukraine about the invasion. This is the most important thing about this and most people here in comments ignore it. 2. Maduro wasn't even the president. He was someone who took the country illegally with cartel people. 3. Why? Maduro was smuggling drugs in USA. Huge operations. And I guess there must be geopolitical reasons. You want China and Russia be there? And people from Venezuela were the biggest migration wave in the World last decades. You want millions of refugees?
- xianwen 9mo agoThe irony is that this is a president of the US that wants to have a Nobel peace prize.
- password54321 9mo agoWell they gave it to a Venezuelan rival to manufacture consent on this invasion instead. Still a good deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Corina_Machado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Corina_Machado
- po1nt 9mo ago[flagged]
- Zigurd 9mo agoThat's an excellent outcome to hope for. The odds are that we have already used up our "stopped clock is right every 12 hours" karma. Not that anyone should feel sorry for Maduro.
- wiz21c 9mo agoas far as Trump capitalizes on Europe's demise, this won't happen
- RealityVoid 9mo agoThe news of Europe's demise are greatly exaggerated. What's it going to do? Sink in the ocean like Atlantis?
- z3phyr 9mo agoThe roman culture of old surely did. I don't see anyone trying to claim the temple of Jupiter anymore?
- RealityVoid 9mo agoBut a third of the world still celebrates Saturnalia!
- ben_w 9mo agoWhile it is possible for modern Europe to repeat the mistakes of Rome, that played out slowly over centuries. I'd be more concerned with making sure to not repeat e.g. the surprise rapid end to the USSR, along with a few other sudden scenarios like "gets invaded".
- amelius 9mo agoNope, nukes will prevent that.
- ulrischa 9mo agoAs a German I see a lot of history repeating.
- gordian-mind 9mo agoThe U.S. did perform a regime change in Germany too, not too long ago.
- codingbot3000 9mo agoWho might be the first European head of state or similar they lift out? Ursula von der Leyen? :-D Air defenses in the EU does not seem to be in the best shape, the way Russian drones seem to operate without trouble.
- egorfine 9mo agoAlright So I'm fully expecting that companies like Visa and Mastercard to promptly exit US market, for the EU to stop issuing visas to US citizens and harsh sanctions on the US economy by the EU. Right? Right?
- seydor 9mo agoThe world is not a 30 line program
- neves 9mo agoUSA, the world's bullying.
- xvector 9mo ago[flagged]
- choult 9mo ago> Dictators will go to sleep just slightly more terrified tomorrow night. The irony of someone who (presumably, from statements) voted for Trump saying this while their own country tortures, disappears and in some cases murders thousands, plus potentially rigged elections...
- xvector 9mo agoI don't see any case of US citizens being tortured, murdered, and disappeared at scale. Source please? Source on rigged elections? I didn't believe it when Trump cried wolf and I don't believe it when people think 2024 was rigged. Edit: "But ICE!" - ICE is deporting (not torturing or murdering thousands of) non-citizens. They are doing a fantastic job (low false positive rate, maybe 10/300,000 with 0 permanent citizen deportations.) I am asking specifically about citizens.
- zaneyard 9mo agoWe have masked men grabbing people off the streets with no accountability. Perhaps you should be asking for evidence of lack of human rights abuse.
- xvector 9mo agoGrabbing illegals* off the streets, which is fine in my book. They also aren't being tortured or killed en masse, so comparing this to Maduro is hysteria at best. Any non-citizens grabbed (very few! shockingly low false-positive rate, given 300k+ deportations) have been promptly let go. We could have had a more formal process if the borders weren't opened to literally millions of illegals, but unfortunately that ship has sailed and this is the only practical way to deal with the problem.
- Upvoter33 9mo ago
- terespuwash 9mo ago“The EU is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela” seriously https://x.com/kajakallas/status/2007405051896123707 https://x.com/kajakallas/status/2007405051896123707
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo agoBoy is trying to outdo both Regan and Dubya. He didn't even try to sell it to us like they did with Iraq. Venezuelans, I'm sorry my shithole country is about to inflict a fascist puppet state on you. Nobody here gives enough of a shit despite all the chest-thumping and "MUH LIBERTY TREE". We'd rather have drum circles and ask for permission to dissent.
- _bypa 9mo agoThe US continuing a long tradition of interference in LatAm: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/world/the-united-states-history-of-intervening-in-latin-america.phtml https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/world/the-united-states-hist... edit: typo
- hexbin010 9mo agoAnd a list of the wider world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... It's a long read but that should not be a surprise to most people.
- krona 9mo agoThe Monroe Doctrine is over 200 years old and simple enough for your average dictator to understand. Don't expect the US to turn a blind eye to investments in key strategic assets of your country by its strategic rivals. I don't think it's a coincidence that a special envoy of Xi met Maduro hours before being captured. It was probably the final straw.
- tsimionescu 9mo agoThat doesn't make it in any way acceptable. No one accepts (nor should they accept) Russia doing the same in its sphere of influence, for example.
- krona 9mo agoSure it might be unacceptable but realpolitik and realism has little to do with anyones moral or ethical principles.
- tsimionescu 9mo agoRealpolitik can only ever be an explanation, not a justification. We don't need to accept this from our leaders, especially if we live in any of the more powerful nations of the globe.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- WesolyKubeczek 9mo agoWondering what and who is going to fill the power vacuum there.
- rayiner 9mo agoYup. Venezuelans voted for the Bolivaran Revolution. This is it. We shouldn’t waste our time with it. Especially because every time we topple a regime like this it creates a refugee crisis and a huge influx of refugees to the U.S.
- decayiscreation 9mo agoThe US already had a huge influx of Venezualan refugees because of the Maduro regime.
- herewulf 9mo agoI didn't know Maduro was responsible for protecting the US border. Perhaps he should be charged with "dereliction of duty"? To go along with his other trumped up charges (ha.. ha..) such as "possession of machine guns and other destructive devices".
- boroboro4 9mo agoThere might be more than one reason for an ongoing crisis, and different takes on who’s responsible. However Maduro is responsible of huge number of refugees fleeing Venezuela, and we (and some other countries around) have some obligations to help asylum seekers.
- dcastm 9mo agoExcept we didn’t and there’s already an ongoing refugee crisis. [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-ii-the-venezuelan-presidential-election/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis
- incrudible 9mo ago...except there already is a refugee crisis caused be the regime that is supposed to be toppled, 20% of Venezuelans have left the country.
- 9mo ago
- csomar 9mo agoI honestly have little sympathy, and not because Maduro is a dictator or whatever label the US has given him. It's because he spent his country's resources on useless, incompetent staff that fell apart before any conflict even began. Say what you want about Iran, but at least they maintain a solid defensive posture. Any country that doesn't invest in its own tech stack gets what it deserves. This is information superiority in action; made possible by the deep proliferation of American technology. The US is now leveraging information warfare for what used to require physical force. The difference is stark. We've seen it with the Hezbollah pager attacks, high-profile targeting in Iran, and now this. Natural selection in progress.
- webtcp 9mo ago[flagged]
- bartekpacia 9mo agoUkraine has a democratically elected government and president who isn’t a dictator. (I’m not trying to justify US action in Venezuela here. Just answering your question)
- lurk2 9mo agoUkraine hasn’t had an election in 6 years.
- nanoparticle 9mo agoThat's true, but how can elections be safely conducted during an active phase of the war? Only during 2025 russian forces launched over 54,000 long-range drones and over 1,900 missiles
- lurk2 9mo ago> Only during 2025 russian forces launched over 54,000 long-range drones and over 1,900 missiles This would be a lot more compelling of an argument if the Ukrainians were not trying to use social media to PsyOp the world into believing that life in Ukraine is going on as usual. I could accept the idea that an election can’t be effectively fortified during a war, but if the war was as popular as the Ukrainian government wants me to believe, why are men barred from leaving the country and being abducted off the streets to serve as conscripts?
- maxlybbert 9mo agoEven though the military was involved, I think this was officially a law enforcement action, much like capturing Manuel Noriega and sentencing him to prison. Nicolás Maduro was indicted for various crimes in 2020. I have a feeling the "possession of a machinegun" charge will be dropped, but the US does have a long track record of saying drug activity affects the US enough that it can arrest and prosecute almost anybody. The invasion of Ukraine, on the other hand, is -- I believe -- a regular military exercise. Putin has claimed that he wants to achieve some unusual goals ("denazify the Ukraine special forces"), but even those goals aren't really law enforcement.
- my1stthrowaway 9mo agoThe Guardian reports that Maduro has been charged with: "narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States." Good to know that possession of machine guns is finally being made illegal by the US!
- GavinNewsom 9mo ago[flagged]
- tbd99 9mo agoand from my little corner of the world: tusk, kaczyński, czarzasty, michnik, lis and their whole gangs
- maztaim 9mo agoI'm horrible at reading between the lines, but this just smells of oil related concerns. It's not about a bad leader, it's not about drugs.
- xeornet 9mo agoThe standard playbook. If its not nuclear weapons, it's the spread of democracy, or "helping people". The global police just securing their natural resources, nothing to see here.
- spacechild1 9mo agoThere's nothing to read between the lines. Trump has stated very clearly that he wants to "take back" the oil.
- otikik 9mo agoI still care more about what’s on the Epstein files
- TrackerFF 9mo agoNot too much info out yet, but I'm guessing one of these happened: A) Maduro negotiated some deal for himself and his family. B) His whole military leadership sold him out. (A) Makes sense if you assume that he had no other exit strategies. If he could have fled to Russia, he'd already done that. I'm thinking that Trump pressed hard on Putin not to take him. With no strong allies left, there's no exit for him. At best he'd be exposed to full-scale invasion by the US, civil war, or other internal power struggles. (B) Makes sense if you assume that someone simply took the bait, and were flown out of Venezuela with the US operatives. But from a military perspective, it wouldn't be easy - any serious country has contingency plans, and there are many moving parts. Obviously one (or many) generals could provide these things in great detail, but there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of military personnel that will stick to their procedures once shit hits the fan. From what I've seen, some airstrikes took out AA systems. And there's been reported some fighting back. I don't know. (A) sounds a bit more likely to me. By any measure, the man was backed into a corner. I think his hail marry was for Putin to offer to save him. But that never happened...a big clue will be how Russia, and the Russian disinformation campaigns react to this.
- mmcconnell1618 9mo agoMarco Rubio needed this for his presidential run in 2028. Does this mean that Putin will look the other way for Maduro as long as Trump looks the other way when Putin captures or kills Zelenskyy? Have they officially agreed to divide the world as spheres of influence?
- vmg12 9mo agoI think people are overindexed on the US's failures to turn Islamic theocracies into democracies. The people in Venezuela want democracy. It's a fundamentally different situation.
- halJordan 9mo agoI don't know if you remember that Hugo Chavez was voted into power, had a legitimate mandate to dismantle the democracy that elevated him, and then his voters defended him against a violent coup to restore that democracy.
- tim333 9mo ago"had a legitimate mandate to dismantle the democracy"... citation needed.
- rib3ye 9mo agoI wonder if you would defend Trump for the same actions, and also don’t forget ‘dismantling free press’ in Hugo’s list of accomplishments.
- jjk166 9mo agoI don't support Trump, but I would not support a foreign power unilaterally abducting him.
- doom2 9mo agoWhat kind of democracy do Venezuelans want and will it be the same kind of democracy Trump wants to install? What if they want a democracy that continues to be friendly towards Cuba and wary of the US? Will Trump accept that?
- vmg12 9mo agoIf your hypothetical plays out I'll say you were right.
- 9mo ago
- SaturnIC 9mo ago[flagged]
- password54321 9mo ago"It (Venezuela) currently exports (oil) about 900,000 barrels per day and China is by far its biggest buyer." Ah ok, so this was about China. MAGA's fixation on China is certainly going to lead to more instability.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoDemocrats and republicans are concerned about China because it has a massive impact on many issues that both parties care about. This includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, Us manufacturing, US ip, immigration, etc.
- sigwinch 9mo agoReplying to your earlier comment: in terms of words spoken during the 2024 campaign, tariffs and immigration tied for first. I think MAGA heard “China” when tariffs was pronounced positively and “Hispanic” when immigration was pronounced negatively.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoHow did you conclude that democrats do not care about china? > Hispanic” when immigration was pronounced negatively. reply I think it means Chinese, Indian, and other ethnic groups too.
- sigwinch 9mo agoI was replying to the comment along the lines of, what does MAGA care about China?
- jmyeet 9mo agoThe one part of this I will agree with is that US foreign policy is uniparty. The disastrous War on Terror spanned 4 presidential administrations, 2 Democrat and 2 Republican. Middle East policy differences between the two parties are somewhere between superficial and nonexistent. Even something like Ukraine where you might say Republicans and Democrats differ isn't true. Had Trump been in office when Russia invaded Ukraine, the two parties would simply be in each other's seats. This is 100% the case when it comes to China too. Oh, and when it comes to Taiwan (and Hong Kong), official US policy is the so-called One China policy [1]. As for US manufacturing, it's dead. Because capitalists killed it by moving it to China to increase profits and (under Regan, in particular) to destroy unions and the labor movement [2]. As for China and IP, US companies did this to themselves knowingly to increase short-term profits and to break unions and suppress wages. At no point will I accept the framing that a Chinese person, a Mexican, an Indian or a person from [developing country of choice] stole someone's job. No, a capital owner made a choice to take your job and give it to someone else so he or she could become slightly richer. I'm not sure how immigration factors into China concerns. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China [2]: https://ourfuture.org/20140930/reagan-set-up-the-death-of-the-middle-class-but-china-was-the-clincher https://ourfuture.org/20140930/reagan-set-up-the-death-of-th...
- phtrivier 9mo agoIf it's to get access to the oil reserve, it is bad news for the shale oil industry in the USA : maybe "drill baby drill" is not feasible any more, and the only way to maintain the level of GDP is to get the oil from somewhere else. Or it's just banking oil to prepare a war with China. Thank FSM some AI-first is going to create fusion any time soon to power the robots solving climate change.
- guerrilla 9mo agoDon't expect the administration to make any sense on this topic. The same time they were signing executive orders and blabbing about the US oil industry, they were telling OPEC to lower prices. There's no coherency to be had with them. They simply don't understand the world or trivial economics.
- phtrivier 9mo agoI can steelman this into a “everything is about oil today, and minerals tomorrow”. * Let’s assume the US is going to stabilise Venezuela quickly enough, that the Venezuelan oil will soon flow around, but only to “selected” countries (basically, …. Anyone but China) * Let’s assume that the US is going to keep the war in Ukraine dragging on (it’s winter anyway), so that Ukraine can continue bombing the Russian oil infrastructure and Then the outcome would be: * USA kept happy because cheap oil will flow from Venezuela to USA, which would help keeping gas price down at the pumps, during an election year * Europe kept obedient, because it’s not guaranteed to be on the list of “selected” countries that will get the cheap oil. Maybe they’ll even strike a “nice” bargain for Groenland, “or else...” * Ukraine kept busy fighting ; and the “coalition of winning” kept “unable” to put boots on the ground in Ukraine (which they only want to do at the latest possible time, as the first “coalition” soldier to fall will trigger a domino effect leading to either WW3, or humiliation * Putin kept annoyed, because they can’t sell cheap oil at all without refineries in Venezuela, and with less and less infrastructure in Russia * China kept annoyed, because they can’t buy cheap oil, or at least not enough to stockpile for a war against USA * OPEC kept “happy ish”, I guess, because they can hike up prices for whoever is not on the “selected” list of countries approved by Emperor Trump ? * Eventually, maybe the USA gets the minerals in Ukraine and Groenland, making them double-happy Of course I’m missing things, this is pure keyboard geopolitics. But my point is just that I don’t need USA to be completely “crazy” to justify what they’re doing. Just “more willing to take bold risks” then we have been used to. In a sense, that’s what USA voted for in 2024. Pray the Emperor may ignore you for long enough.
- ycombinary 9mo agoIs everyone sufficiently distracted yet?
- delichon 9mo agoMaduro is a dictator who stayed in power by force after losing an election. No one who believes in democracy should mourn his fall. Trump's pretexts and potential geopolitical deals especially w Russia deserve scrutiny, but the Venezuelan people deserve a chance at freedom. As with everything Trump does, his motivations will be about personal power and enrichment. This does not contradict that Maduro was an illegitimate thug allied with others like him. However his removal was arranged (deal?) it shakes the global forces of dictatorship. Condemning a nation's people to authoritarianism and repression because of potential bad outcomes after the fall of their dictator is a free world observer's luxury. Democracy and prosperity can never be guaranteed, but the opportunities for them should be promoted. -- Garry Kasparov https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/2007435764678705347 https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/2007435764678705347
- meowface 9mo agoI can understand this position and have always admired Kasparov's principled ideology, but I think this is too narrow of a look. More things could've been done to peacefully attempt to oust Maduro with the cooperation of other countries.
- password54321 9mo agoI don't like our dictator, but I am glad our dictator took out this other dictator (for personal reasons) who was working with other dictators (some of which our dictator supports) because it might mean that we have less dictators even if it comes with the risk of severe instability. Ok, thanks Garry.
- chanux 9mo agoI'm a bit relieved that UN will do something about this: https://youtu.be/9DLuALBnolM?si=Vg56GgJCisLOqvw0&t=146 https://youtu.be/9DLuALBnolM?si=Vg56GgJCisLOqvw0&t=146
- mindcrash 9mo agoAs a European: His voters thought Trump would be different, he would bring the troops home, put the homeland first, and that he would fight the Deep State. In reality, he's building out Imperium Americanum, he is fighting wars without Congressional approval and proper casus bellis, he's not bringing the troops home and it is clear he represents the fucking Deep State even more than any of his predecessors since JFK. Shame on him for renaming the Kennedy Center the Trump-Kennedy Center. Which is absolutely disgusting given the reality of things! Prime example: Invading Venezuela to steal their oil, just like his predecessors did with Syria (if you do not believe me, look where the US Army is located in Syria, and the prime locations of their oil fields). Additionally: Trump's United States now has given Putin's Russia and Xi's China precedent to do whatever they fucking want to whoever or whatever. Because who fucking cares about international law if even the United States government, home of freedom and democracy and the rule of law, currently doesn't even give a fuck? So now fucking what? (And yes, as you might have noticed I AM FURIOUS AS HELL.)
- andsoitis 9mo ago> His voters thought Trump would be different, he would bring the troops home, put the homeland first, and that he would fight the Deep State. A journalist asked him in the press conference just now how capturing Maduro and running the country in iterim is "America First". His simple answer is that a more stable set of countries in the region is good for America.
- mindcrash 9mo agoJust like outright stealing Greenland from Denmark "for national security" in his crazy narrative likely is. And now I wonder what fucking insane manufactured casus belli he will create to invade and annex Canada. So many people thought he was grand standing and just talking shit. But now it looks like he wasn't doing that at all, hasn't he?
- andsoitis 9mo ago[flagged]
- Bombthecat 9mo agoI remember, when people said, that the military would refuse illegal orders. Good times And had a good laugh
- bobse 9mo agoHacker News?
- AnimalMuppet 9mo ago"Venezuelan allies Russia, Cuba and Iran were quick to condemn the strikes as a violation of sovereignty." Right, Russia, who has been attacking Ukraine not just for one night, but for four years, is now going to lecture the US about violations of sovereignty. Their moral high ground, if they ever had any, is long gone. I'm not sad if Maduro's gone. I'm even less sad if this results in actual freedom for Venezuela after 20 years of nightmare. But I am not happy about the president of the US, on his own authority, choosing to remove the head of other countries, on rather flimsy pretexts. (If he presents actual evidence that Maduro was actively and deliberately shipping drugs to the US, or worse, criminals, then I will change my opinion. But I need evidence, not just claims and bluster.)
- 8note 9mo agorussia doesnt need moral high ground to be correct. its not like the US is now banned from supporting ukraine just because they overthrew the Iraqi government and created a migrant crisis in europe.
- neves 9mo agoDoes Americans really believe a chief of a big country is state is a drug smuggler?
- busterarm 9mo ago> Does Americans really believe a chief of a big country is state is a drug smuggler? Manuel Noriega Shit, we did this on the anniversary.
- neves 8mo agoNoriega was the American supported dictator of a very small country.
- jellyroll42 9mo agoThe question is irrelevant as the US just pardoned a major Honduran drug smuggler head of state, not to mention the well documented US involvement in the foreign drug trade (e.g., Afghanistan).
- cramcgrab 9mo agoYay more political posts on the techie news site. Closing the tab for the weekend this time.
- pluc 9mo agoRighteous Americans are coming! They are here to fix the whole world!
- sega_sai 9mo agoEspecially parts of the world with large oil reserves.
- 47293629278 9mo ago[flagged]
- JoeAltmaier 9mo agoWhat a publicity hound. Ratings plummeting? Nothing like a foreign war to pump the numbers. Best it be a puny helpless country, so nobody (important) gets killed. Just some brown folk from South America, nobody cares about them. Anything to serve the ego; absolutely no crime or moral outrage is off-limits. Long as it serves that endless pit that is ego.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mystraline 9mo agoWow, the chief idiot just said on Fox News that Maduro is on the Iwo Jima. Like, holy classified military secrets Batman!
- uncletoxa 9mo agoI understand the point that some dictators are so bad he damages the whole region. The world invented the procedure to resolve it through the UN and the international institutions. Yet one superpower decides to do it itself because no one can stop it. I think that makes world more chaotic, it is the opposite of restoration of the order ax it was declared.
- tunapizza 9mo agoRead: https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-us-is-attempting-regime-change https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-us-is-attempting-... Prof. Philips P Obrien's analysis is an interesting one, also highlighting Cuba's reliance on Venezuelan oil, which complicates the situation further.
- geraltofrivia 9mo agoI grow tired of the might makes right world we inhabit again. If you are not a citizen of a hegemon, or their allies, all the best envisioning a stable environment to thrive for your children when you know that the price of sovereignty and nationalised natural resources is a US invasion.
- hypeatei 9mo agoMaduro has apparently been indicted in New York on various drug trafficking conspiracy charges and gun charges[0]. Seeing how various other cases have went (James Comey, Letitia James) in this administration run by loyalists, what are the chances that he's acquitted due to prosecutorial incompetence? 0: https://xcancel.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007428087143686611 https://xcancel.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007428087143686611
- guerrilla 9mo agoThis is pretty standard for America, nothing new. https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...
- aurareturn 9mo agoI'm surprised Github let something like this to stay up.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago>The US empire currently maintains an imperialist network of over 800 military bases in 70 countries. (For comparison, all other countries combined have only 30 bases) If this is a list of atrocities, I am already somewhat underwhelmed. Almost all of those bases are present with the consent of the host country, except for Gitmo. Besides Gitmo, the US always leaves when requested in the cases I have been able to find. (Why do we still have a base in Gitmo? Because Florida is a swing state. It sucks.) To be fair, the rest of the list looks like an excellent argument for closing all the bases.
- lovegrenoble 9mo agoHypocrisy is the greatest western value. And the west really likes its values
- g8oz 9mo agoIf Maduro had paid the going rate to the right lobbyists it wouldn't have come to this. He should have learned from the example of the ex Honduran president who was recently pardoned by Trump.
- bilekas 9mo ago> Nicolás Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States. I'm sorry but "possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States." When did this happen exactly ?? https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live?page=with%3Ablock-6958ff7e8f083c44d70ded3c https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
- xkbarkar 9mo agoI suggest reading the few south american comments in this thread hidden by the usual whatever Trump does vitriol fro EU/US commenters. r/venezuela is one placce to start. Very different tone there than the ill informed commenters here ( and I say that with detest for “that other site”) Hopefully the Venezuelan people will have a fighting change to restore their country now. Time will tell I suppose.
- testing22321 9mo agoIf by “restore their country” you mean “have their oil reserves taken by force without compensation”.
- zoklet-enjoyer 9mo agoI just called my representatives and told them they need to do their jobs and put a check on the executive branch and stop this illegal, undeclared war. Please do the same.
- singularity2001 9mo agoAnyone arguing that we cannot legally capture Putin may reconsidered their stance.
- 0xcb0 9mo agoFrom the standpoint of international law, this is an unprovoked attack, it's a war crime and act of terror. Trump and United States of America can now be officially treated as a terrorists and terrorist state!
- yalogin 9mo agoThis is just sad. We have a long history and lots of data to know this will be catastrophic for the Venezuela. Hope it doesn’t go that way but feels inevitable. The us is never expected to learn from its mistakes so nothing new there, with the administration desperate to distract from the Epstein files has decided war is the way.
- cedws 9mo agoTrump is acting exactly as an agent of Russia would. Pissing off allies, trying to break up the EU and NATO, creating a distraction war to cut aid to Ukraine.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- andsoitis 9mo agoIf you're wondering WHY, good to read the Maduro indictment from 2020[1] and the press release at the time[2] [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819579-Maduro-Indictment/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819579-Maduro-Indic... [2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros...
- mattmaroon 9mo agoThat’s not why, it’s just the official justification and the charges we’ll use to keep him.
- monerozcash 9mo agoI mean the real answer to "why" is probably going to be pretty boring considering the nature of this administration. That's not to say that the steelmanned "why" isn't much more interesting than the real "why".
- jacquesm 9mo ago[flagged]
- csolorio 9mo agoWhat a well reasoned take.
- jacquesm 9mo agoLet's hear your well reasoned alternative take then.
- FergusArgyll 9mo agohttps://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-N... Read the following section Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- hmate9 9mo ago"Venezuela has ~2.7× as much proved oil as the UAE (303 / 111 ≈ 2.73)." Pretty incredible
- hmate9 9mo agoAs expected: "Trump now turns now to oil. He claims the oil business in Venezuela has been a 'bust', and that large US companies are going to go into the country to fix the infrastructure and "start making money for the country"."
- aswegs8 9mo agoLooking just at the facts, the action to take over Venezuela seems to be a good decision. 1. Public opinion isn't as important anymore, as Trumpism has found a way to flood the zone with so much shit, they have many more options 2. International environment looks way harsher and less cooperative, stressing the need to gain resources/influence 3. Resource rich, unstable country that has been in the headline and run down for years, right on the doorstep of the US If they really gain access to all that oil the challenges US hegemony is bolstered up again. Seems low risk high reward. If they give it the facade of legitimacy by installing a local puppet government, they might get away with it.
- monerozcash 9mo agoThe big difference is that the oil in UAE is easy to extract and use, the oil in Venezuela isn't.
- epolanski 9mo agoI will spare saying the obvious illegality of such actions and how serious this is. I will just say something else: I grew up as a kid between the 80s and 90s, when the world felt like it was going towards a brighter age of peace and respect. Berlin wall falling, China opening, Apartheid ending in South Africa, even Palestine and Israel were moving towards a more peaceful future. But since then the world has just progressed toward darker and darker ages. General public not caring anymore about any tragedy, it's just news, general public being fine with their press freedom being eroded, journalists being spied and targeted, more and more conflicts all around. I just don't see nor feel we're heading where we should considering how developed and rich we are. We should boast in how well we raise our kids, how safe and healthy our cities are, but it's nothing but ego, ego, money and money. This is all turning worse and worse.
- thenaturalist 9mo agoYeah as someone being born in the early 90s to Eastern European parents who experienced generational joy when Causescu and his wife were shot dead, the globalization that followed hasn’t exactly delivered for people - mostly so in the West. Yes, millions of people in the poorest nations have been raised out of absent poverty since, but beyond that, wealth has flowed to the top 1% any country you look at (check median wealth ownership in the US, basically plummeted for the average Joe since the mid 80s), the environment has gone to shit and the generational promise that the children will have it better than their parents has gone over board with asset prices ballooning. I‘m right there with you, the societal promise of meritocracy and the middle class was broken in the early 90s and so far there is no replacement in sight.
- timmg 9mo ago> Yes, millions of people in the poorest nations have been raised out of absent poverty since... That... seems like something that shouldn't just be waved by. And if you include China and India it's more like hundreds of millions. Like, if you think about the people of the world and not just "the West" the standard of living since the time Causescu was overthrown has increased dramatically.
- unangst 9mo agoAbuse of power by a self-serving oligarchy, redux. “ Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny out of the most extreme form of liberty.” ~ Plato (The Republic)
- mattmaroon 9mo agoAnd we wonder why rogue regimes seek nuclear weapons. My biggest concern in geopolitics is non-proliferation and every little thing we do like this works against it.
- guerrilla 9mo agoI wish more people understood this.
- mattmaroon 9mo agoThe worst part is the people who make these decisions understand it and they do it anyway because the proliferation will occur in someone else’s term.
- redleader55 9mo agoEven democratic regimes should start acquiring nuclear weapons - ie. every EU country, given Trump's comments and stance about the EU.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway1389z 9mo agoEvery sovereign nation should do. The notion that uppercase D "Democracy" is the only valid type of sovereign state is uppercase L liberalism propaganda.
- mattmaroon 9mo agoThat sounds like something written by an uppercase C Chinese bot.
- robryan 9mo agoNot easy though, the US has to basically allow it.
- locallost 9mo agoIt brings joy to my heart every time democracy is brought to an oil rich country, no matter what the price is.
- diego_moita 9mo agoYeah, sure. It is called "Mission Accomplished"[1], right? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech
- pjmlp 9mo agoSo we are back to the 1980's CIA actions destabilising South America, each day feels more like Cold War is here.
- pparanoidd 9mo agoYeah because a communist dictatorship is so stable /s
- pjmlp 9mo agoThat isn't the problem, but you know it.
- braiamp 9mo agoNo dictatorship has been communist. They use the mantle, that it's for nation and country, but they don't even pay lip service to communism ideals and mechanism. They are just crony capitalist, where the head of the state is the one that uses the state to control the economy rather than the rich doing it by proxy.
- OCASMv2 9mo ago> the head of the state is the one that uses the state to control the economy That's the exact opposite of capitalism.
- sergiotapia 9mo agoBolivian here - no tears will be shed over this scumbag. Check tiktok live and people are celebrating in the streets. Believe venezolanos, and neighbors, and not redditors lol.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoImagine the terror felt by those in the capital as American warplanes flew overhead launching munitions.
- csantini 9mo ago<< America needs to be at war so that Trump can halt normal domestic process and procedure under war powers acts etc. This is the next step. >>
- rixed 9mo agoWhat I find interresting and would like to see discussed more, is the psychology at play that makes us believe this is another "exception to the rule of international law". I wonder if one could generalize the terror management theory (TMT) to social obedience?
- rixed 9mo ago"Be the change yo want to see", I guess. So, my pet peeve theory is that "the rule of law" is not something the ruling class needs to cover their track; it's something the ruled class needs to cover their shame. Shame of being ruled, but also terror of being ultimately subjected to arbitrary power. For instance, I believe that in the feodal past lay people used to genuinely believe that kings got their authority from God; not because kings were good observants of the precepts of religion (they were not), but because that protects the self-esteem and helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes. I find it surprisingly hard to try to convince myself that there is no such thing as "rule of law", that for instance the overthrown of a non-aligned regime could be just about the oil and competition with China, although I know that's how future historians will deal with that non-story; There is some surprising amount of resistance from within to this idea. It's interresting to do the experiment.
- aebtebeten 9mo agoHave you read Thucydides, "The Melian Dialogue"? Or Zweig, „Schachnovelle“?
- rixed 9mo agoZweig yes, but I can't remember it well enough to connect it to this story. Could you elaborate a bit just to give me a clue?
- aebtebeten 9mo agoPart of Schachnovelle as I remember it is that Dr. B as Weltbürger is driven crazy by the dual facts that Czentovic is both a primitive brute and yet succeeds at chess via brute force, which perhaps is meant to be compared with his earlier imprisonment in 1938, by people who succeeded at politics not by subtlety but by brute force. The idea that cosmopolitan, educated, and cultivated people could be left like deer in the headlights by brutes setting themselves through by force reminded me of your description of TMT, or at least the ego-protective "helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes" part of your explanation. Does this unpacking make any more sense? (meanwhile, the Melian Dialogue is the source of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479662 )
- ahmetomer 9mo agoLaws often fail to matter in cases where they should. If a country as powerful as the USA wants to handle a problematic country (from its perspective) by whatever means, they will do so and with a glaikit smirk on the faces of its leaders and politicians. "Here's democracy and justice on your face," has been a typical American foreign policy for a long time whether we like it or not. A lot of people thankfully do see through this pretence, but also at the same time, the fierce followers of Cheneyism are trying hard to find possible explanations to legitimize this.
- ternaryoperator 9mo agoIf you think this is primarily about drugs and authoritarianism, don't overlook this one important dimension: the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world is...Venezuela. [0] https://www.baidarcenter.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/8yuyf-scaled.jpg https://www.baidarcenter.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/8...
- torlok 9mo agoIt's not just oil, it's heavy crude oil; the type US is equipped to process, and rapidly running out of.
- jjtheblunt 9mo agoa nice visual in support of your comment https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-oil-reserves-by-country-in-one-visualization/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-oil-reser...
- regenschutz 9mo agoThat's a terrible diagram. I would have assumed that Iran and Saudi Arabia have the biggest oil reserves from looking at that diagram, since they are front and centre on that visual. Why aren't the shapes uniform? And where is the legend? What do the colours mean? Why are Libya and China the same colour?
- jjtheblunt 9mo agoall good questions but you'd have to ask the site that published it. ..i thought it unclear that Venezuela was biggest from the graphic too, had to really stare at it to figure it out. it seems the colors are continents.
- ronbenton 9mo agoTrump pardoned a drug kingpin exactly one month ago. Of course this isn't about drugs.
- Deprogrammer9 9mo agoMy entire life, we have always been at war. :| “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.” ― George Orwell
- jmyeet 9mo agoI'm old enough that I grew up (well) before 9/11. Many in my age bracket will describe the 90s as the last great decade. I feel sad for those who are younger who never experienced that world, the world between the Cold War and the War on Terror. It was a time when you could walk up to the gate in an airport before the TSA. A lot of younger people don't realize that's how it actually was. They think it's one of those things made up for movies. Houses were cheap. Rent was cheap. Cars were cheap. Gas was cheap. Food was cheap. A friend of mine had college buddies who shared a 4 bedroom house in Iowa for $175/month. Not each. Total. I rented a 2 bedroom apartment close to a train and the city center for a little over $200/month. I lived as a student just fine on $200/week (in 1995), including paying for rent. My degree cost me about $10,000. The other side of that was the Cold War when we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. I think this was generationally traumatic to people who grew up in the 50s (way before my time) but by the 80s? It wwas like background noise. There was a lot of optimism with the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Union. On reflection, much later, I think this was terrible for the world. When the USSR existed as a counter to the US, the US was forced to at least do something for its citizens. The Red Scare destroyed collectivism and the US does things like the War on Terror now and, well, capturing the Venezuelan president, with complete impunity. They're open about it too: it's for oil. A handful of billionaires will get richer as a result of this. The Big Lebowski is, to me, the most 90s movie of all time and it just gets better with age. Oh, the output of HOllywood in general was amazing in the 1990s. At that time I used to go see movies once or even twice a week. There was always something good on. Goodfellas and Terminator 2 spring to mind. There just seemed to be more hope then. Now? I feel for anyone who was born after 2000. Crippled with debt with limited prospects of any kind of security. It's just so different to how it was. EDIT: qualified that the $200/week figure was in 1995, not the 1980s. That's like $430 in today's money by the same inflation calculator.
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo agoProject "don't talk about Epstein" is well under way.
- dolphinscorpion 9mo ago"US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Venezuela that strong action would be taken if Guyana is invaded or an attack is launched on ExxonMobil's oil assets in the Stabroek Block." https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/032725-us-warns-venezuela-not-to-attack-guyana-exxonmobil-oil-interests https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news... Why take a chance?
- DivingForGold 9mo ago[flagged]
- le-mark 9mo agoJust wait a few years for Trump to pardon you as he did for the jailed former Honduran president recently, same charges even. The hubris of this administration is off the charts.
- Mistletoe 9mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 9mo agoYou think it’s a good idea for foreign countries to overturn domestic elections? The Bolivarian regime came to power in a free and fair election.
- Den_VR 9mo agoI’ve heard Maduro was not elected in free and fair elections… The official results reported Maduro winning with about 51 % of the vote. European Parliament resolutions and reports explicitly described the process as lacking transparency and integrity such as not publishing detailed polling station results, meaning the results could not be independently verified, and concluding the election was neither free nor fair. You may recall María Corina Machado was barred from running shortly before the election itself.
- CDRdude 9mo agoMaduro was reported winning with 5,150,092 votes, or 51.20000% of the vote, and the main opposition had 44.20000% of the vote. These are considered suspiciously round percentages.
- rightbyte 9mo agoWhich election. I find no source for that. And even if that where the case, it wouldn't be too far fetched to think someone computed votes from rounded percentages when writing an article.
- Den_VR 9mo agoThe Carter Center has a 43 page report that goes into the facts of the 2024 election in detail. For example “A few minutes after midnight, with 80% of the votes counted, the CNE declared Nicolas Maduro the winner, with 51.2% of the vote, followed by Edmundo González with 44.2%. The CNE did not publish the results by polling station, claiming - without providing evidence - that a cyberattack had made it impossible to upload the results to its website. However, the CNE did not release the results by any alternative method. The lack of detailed results prevented independent verification of the overall results announced by the CNE The CNE canceled three postelection audits that could have verified the alleged cyberattacks. This included a second citizen verification exercise. The integrity of the elections was damaged by the lack of transparent information. In a parallel effort, the opposition - through party representatives, observers, and citizens — collected and published online more than 80% of the results forms produced by the voting machines. According to these results, González received 67.1% of the vote, and Maduro received 30.4%. The Venezuelan government claimed - without providing evidence - that the results forms published by the opposition were forged. However, the result forms published were deemed legitimate by external auditors and academics. The Carter Center reviewed the data in the results forms and found it to be accurate.”
- stickfigure 9mo agoBefore jumping in with an opinion on this event, it's a good idea to bone up on the modern history of Venezuela. I recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 From a few days ago, "The Crisis in Venezuela. Explained." It's from Warfronts, one of Simon Whistler's projects. If you're looking for bias, he is neither American nor lives in the US.
- DarkNova6 9mo agoIt also helps to know why the US is so desperate for Venezuela's oil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgwny1BiCYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgwny1BiCYk
- Sporktacular 9mo agoNo Interpol or ICC warrant, no answer to sovereignty or jurisdictional issues, no justified claim of extraterritoriality. Can't we call a kidnapping what it is?
- booleandilemma 9mo agoMaduro had it coming, although I'm not surprised the bleeding hearts on HN can't see that. The guy was a dictator. Fuck him. Well done USA and happy new year.
- Baader-Meinhof 9mo agoTo steel-man and provide a more charitable interpretation of last night: 1. Maduro stole an election. He is not legitimately in power. Many other people in power, like the military and other political factions, opposed this and wants him removed. 2. These people quietly oust Maduro in the middle of the night. 3. With the tacit approval of these folks, the US arrests Maduro for previously indicted crimes. 4. The US bombs some bases, providing plausible deniability to Venezuelan military. This was coordinated and the Venezuelans abandoned these sites ahead of time. 5. There is still stability because most of the people in charge are still there. Only the illegitimate president is gone. Venezuela can have a real election now.
- mempko 9mo agoWhat about Trump wanting to accelerate global warming by taking all the oil? EDIT: Instead of just downvoting, tell me how I'm wrong.
- jennyholzer3 9mo agoAlright well now we know what Joseph Goebbels has to say about this whole thing
- saubeidl 9mo agoAlternative explanation: The election was stolen overnight by US barbarism, prepared by years of reactionary rhetoric by the election stealer in chief.
- afavour 9mo ago> Venezuela can have a real election now Assuming the US wants and will allow that. Which isn’t at all clear, given the desire to get a hold of Venezuelan oil.
- Kallikrates 9mo ago> ... we're making that decision now. We can't take a chance on letting somebody else run it, just take over where he left off. So we're making that decision they have already signaled that this is not what will be allowed to happen
- wnevets 9mo agoWhat a disgrace
- Scubabear68 9mo agoI’ll bet FIFA feels pretty silly now about their peace award.
- k310 9mo ago1. It's distraction on a grand scale from the Epstein Event Horizon, also on a grand scale. 2. Trump: (2018) We don't want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18 [0] > President Trump on Monday said the U.S. should no longer serve as the “policemen of the world.” > “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. > “We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,” he said. > Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars. [0] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385521-trump-we-dont-want-to-be-the-policemen-of-the-world/ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385521-trump-we-...
- modeless 9mo agoI am in favor of leaders fighting each other directly instead of sending millions of their citizens to die in their stead. I can only hope there's a plan for what happens in Venezuela now. But I'm certain that as long as it isn't a protracted war with millions dead, it is better for everyone than what's going on in Ukraine.
- redleader55 9mo agoThis sounds fine, except it is not what happened here. I would give Maduro better odds than Trump in a 1:1.
- modeless 9mo agoI'm not advocating cage matches here. Just that the objective of any military action should be capturing or killing opposing leaders as efficiently as possible rather than any other objective.
- jjk166 9mo agoThe problem with having leaders fight eachother is you get a situation like feudal europe where all your leaders are soldiers whose chief qualifications are skill in combat and extracting resources from their subjects to keep them combat ready. You really want to stop unnecessary wars, make the leaders dig the latrines for any forces they want to send off to fight.
- afavour 9mo agoIt’s incredibly depressing to watch the same mistake made again well within my own lifetime. Regime change by chopping off the top failed in Afghanistan and Iraq and it’ll fail here too. Many will die. It doesn’t matter how bad or illegitimate the deposed leader is.
- horns4lyfe 9mo agoDon’t forget Lybia
- guax 9mo agoA lot of Venezuelans are happy about it. Maduro is not good for Venezuela. The US should not be the decider of who stays in power on another country. The president should not have the power to apprehend a countries president IN THEIR COUNTRY without a process thats more than just "I really want it". The US is giving another clear message that it does not care about global order, just global control. We're back in the 70s. There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans, its a power play, if maduro played by the US rules, he would be in power regardless of crimes. Pinochet, The Brazilian regime are all here as testament to that. I hope the power change turns out better for the Venezuelans. I hope this is a catalyst of change for a better government. Ideally one that does not sell itself to the US for legitimacy. I don't think that is the likely outcome.
- QuadmasterXLII 9mo agoConceptually, tariffs could help manufacturing. The policy Trump actually enacts, massive and unpredictable tariffs on manufacturing inputs, turns out to destroy manufacturing. Conceptually, removing Maduro might help the people of Venezuela…
- guax 9mo ago"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition" And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go into Venezuela" Never the US has been so honest around so many lies in the same speech. I am still curious about the whole side bar about Washington being now safest and free of crime.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoFantastic news. Hope Venezuelans are able to have their Democracy back.
- toss1 9mo agoUnless Maduro was somehow actually deposed BEFORE the US mil came into the country, or at least into Maduro's residence, Trump just changed the standing international order of centuries to allow kidnapping of heads of state So, Putin could now legitimately go grab Zelenskyy for "crimes", or Xi could go grab Trump for "crimes". This so-called administration is insanely bad at thinking ahead.
- thrance 9mo agoThe USA are a blight on the Americas and the larger World. Their fanatic population will immediately jump in to justify a violent, naked attempt at stealing this country's mineral resources. This already happened dozens of times, always with terrible outcome, yet here we are again. The fall of the American empire can't happen fast enough. Your enlightened president, a few minutes ago on Fox News, when asked about Venezuelan oil: "What can I say? We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we're going to be very much involved in it."
- wseqyrku 9mo ago"Officials from the United States and other countries have questioned the legality of the strikes." Look, this is getting tiring. You have no idea what the people in this country went through and they might as well see it as a "good thing". I think the same applies to Iran, an intervention by the US could be the best thing that ever happened in these countries, so the "legality" issue doesn't quite sound warranted in my opinion.
- galleywest200 9mo agoIm not sure we want the president to be going around bypassing congress in regards to the military. I would prefer a congress that took back its power from the executive.
- wseqyrku 9mo agoI'm not well informed on how this came to be, but to consider this with regard to US's own interests, I think it is simply a problem to be dealt with sooner than later. You definitely don't want to ignore it until it's a "real problem". edit: I'd also add that this was also a message to the Supreme Leader -- he seems to be oblivious to the consequences of the threats for his own people and, quite frankly, counts on the percentage of people who disagree. The sheer volume of the lies that is going around is astonishing and you have to live it to know.
- jimt1234 9mo agoEnds justify the means is bad policy in any context.
- 8note 9mo agoa chinese intervention to overthrow trump i think would also be quite welcomed, but still not the best thing to do
- diego_moita 9mo agoWhen Russia invaded Ukraine it was imperialism, regardless of their "reasons". When Trumpistan invades Venezuela it is also imperialism, regardless of its "reasons". It seems that every 20 years the Americans forget the lessons from the wars 20 years ago. I only hope a lot of Americans die, if that is the price to pay to avoid them to invading other countries and stop their imperialism.
- cromka 9mo agoCan somebody please explain how was he able to do that without Congress approval?
- ThinkingGuy 9mo agoPresumably under the War Powers Resolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Provisio...
- evan_ 9mo agoEasy: he’s the Emperor of America. The Republican-controlled Supreme Court said that laws don’t apply to him and the Republican-controlled Congress disbanded itself. Are you honestly surprised that he’s just doing whatever he wants? Based on the speech he just staggered through he genuinely believes he’s emperor of the west. “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Wonder who we will we bomb tonight. Mexico? El Salvador? New York?
- abigail95 9mo agoWtf kind of dumbass answer is this. It's not even out of character for the USA to do this. The brain-rot seeping from this comment. The guy committed crimes in Venezuela and USA. Now he's going to be tried for him. They could have just killed him - they didn't. He will be tried and spend the rest of his life in prison. And for cleanly executing that we have people talking about an emperor and disbanded congress.
- ArlenBales 9mo agoTrump does whatever he wants. He ignores the courts and congress. Approval only matters if a power exists to hold him accountable (enforcement of laws). It doesn't. Trump has the military and law enforcement in his pocket, so there is no power capable of challenging him.
- bigyabai 9mo ago> CNN, citing a source: The Trump administration justified Maduro's arrest to Congress by stating that President Trump is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
- softwaredoug 9mo agoOn the legality front Congress practically matters when significant mobilization, boots on the ground, money, with high likelihood of many lives lost. Iraq. Not random one-off adventures. Otherwise modern Presidents have done this thing for decades. I think it’s more an effective argument to question this as a policy. As in “is there a plan for what comes next”. Congress should be holding hearings and performing oversight to understand whether theres actually a plan and to allow debate.
- iandanforth 9mo agoThis is a crime. It is an unlawful act of aggression which may defacto trigger an international armed conflict. There will be paper thin justifications of course but those are merely to give loyalists talking points and a thread to grasp to in their mental gymnastics. In normal parlance, this is an act of war.
- MrOrelliOReilly 9mo agoFor everyone defending these actions on the basis of Maduro's own corruption and the desires of Venezuelans, I would encourage you to research the history of American intervention and regime change in Latin America. It is impossible to anticipate the second and third order effects of this change, and how it will be absorbed in the local politics. We are witnessing the return of American military intervention in Latin American, nothing more and nothing less. To everyone proclaiming that we should turn to Venezuelans to assess these actions, how dare you assert that Americans have no autonomy in the actions of their own government. It is tremendously unfortunate that congress has forfeited all decision making authority to the executive branch, but as our democracy was intended this would amount to an act of war, which would require authorization by congress.
- pengaru 9mo agoOil's a hell of a drug
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- irusensei 9mo agoMaduro is a dictator and a murderer but I'm sure most people should now be uncomfortable with the way this was handled. Its undoubtedly the whole region will be better off without its hold and no there won't be regime remaining because Maduro doesn't have popular support it requires to do so. I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do or if it will have negative implications in the future. I didn't liked when Russia invaded Ukraine and sure as hell would not like to see China invading Taiwan. I have a different opinion about Venezuela though. Having said that, international law is a myth. At the power level of nation states what we have is basically anarchy where interests is what matters. Not saying its right or wrong but it is what it is.
- xpe 9mo agoArguments over definitions really bore me. To any reasonable person predicting the future, international law is an important factor. It cannot be simply waved off because it is flawed and unevenly enforced. Any predictive model I would construct about geopolitics does include international agreements such as treaties and laws. I challenge anyone to build a predictive model that ignores these factors. I’ll make this bet: any such model you come up with could be improved by including notions of international agreements and laws.
- MisterMower 9mo ago> International law is an important factor I mean, if you ever needed smoking gun proof this is a lie, you got some today. Countries appeal to international law when they don’t have enough power to achieve their goals through brute force alone. Countries that do appeal to international law but also have the wherewithal to do what they want only make those appeals to conceal their naked ambitions under the guise of the rules based order. It’s just good marketing. Nothing more. The model you should construct should assume treaties and agreements are stable insofar as the incentives for players to maintain them remain in place. It’s all about national interest, always has been, and at this point I’m surprised anybody can be so dense as to not be able to see this.
- 9mo ago
- ekabod 9mo agoIf USA can attack Venezuela for oil, why other countries, like France, couldn't do the same to Qatar or Koweit for example? France has more needs for oil that USA.
- annexrichmond 9mo agoThey attacked Venezuela because it's ruled by an illegitimate leader who allegedly commands a drug cartel responsible for smuggling cocaine and fentanyl. It's also not difficult to see the broader strategy: every US adversary (China, Russia, Iran) has been taking a piece of Venezuela over the past several months. They were already "conquered". This could also give the US an upper hand in ending the war in Ukraine as it further weakens Russia as it loses access to cheap oil.
- insane_dreamer 9mo agoSurprise, surprise, US still the country of regime change and military intervention, when control of or access to valuable natural resources are at play. US flexing its muscles and showing that it's in charge of its "backyard", just as it always has been. Please don't insult our intelligence with comments about how this is about justice, drugs, or democracy. I've lived long enough to have seen this movie many times.
- jmonty900 9mo agoHuh. I thought Greenland was going to be the 51st state.
- jimbohn 9mo agoThat's Israel
- chaosbolt 9mo agoIt's funny how all the comments are discussing it from a "was Maduro good or bad" point of view. This is an invasion for oil, nothing to do with drugs since they come from Mexico, and that propaganda is weak. And nothing to do with Maduro being a dictator or anything similar since each one of our politicians is objectively worse than him, I wish this was an exgeration, but when you look at the Epstein files, even the few unredacted things found there (and most of them are redacted) make it obvious that we are literally ruled by criminals. Now you either look at it as it is, and accept that Santa isn't real, and that life is hard, and we are greedy, and we don't care about other people, and then you stop the moralizing when you do nothing about it, or you keep gobbling up the lie after lie, that Murica is the good guy, and everyone else is evil, and that all Murica's wars are moral and bringing freedom and liberating those third worlders. TLDR: free your mind before you talk about freeing others (which is ironic because I'm doing the same thing, but I'm also writing this message for myself).
- maximgeorge 9mo ago[dead]
- globemaster99 9mo agoJust commenting here to see how many American clowns justifying these actions based on my down votes. American anti human parasites are curse of this planet.
- javier2 9mo agoAt best this is a violation of international law, at worst we have seen many times how badly things can turn when leaders are removed by foreign power.
- annexrichmond 9mo agoAnd Maduro was never in violation of international law? Why didn't anyone enforce the law?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- fnoef 9mo agoIt’s mind blowing how many people here justify this because Maduro is “bad for Venezuela”, as if the US was appointed to be to police of the world. Such self centric view that usually leads to dark places.
- calf 9mo agoIt's run of the mill conservativism. I wonder if it is just an age group thing or what.
- Kinrany 9mo ago(I'm not American) I think all that's required here is that Maduro had such bad relationships with everyone both inside and outside the country that there was no one to defend him. If the UN calls for a vote to condemn the US, it will likely fail even without veto power.
- tsoukase 9mo agoWe have seen the same scenario. First military occupation, second a puppy US-phile government, third oil infra rebuild by US oil companies. Simultaneously a clear sign to Russia/China who the boss is in South America.
- windex 9mo agoSummary: Venezuela just lost its oil.
- hackerdevops1 9mo agoarabs and iran you should now team up and do something about your collective security, because US is now openly started kidnaping the future of countries. team up with pakistan and ensure it's economic stability and make some NATO like agreement and get atleas 10 Nukes each otherwise you will also see the same day as maduro. i beleave you have very little time.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- yousif_123123 9mo agoResponsibility for the aftermath is with the US. They previously didn't do a good job in Afghanistan or Iraq after they assumed defacto control, without really trying to make the countries stand on their own. Life is not much better for the average person there. Venezuela has lots of oil and drugs. If different factions fight between themselves there's no reason you couldn't end up with a divided and dangerous country that in some ways could be worse for the people than Maduro. The best way for "oppressed" people to be liberated is through some joint effort by parties that really want to help out and assume responsibility, or by supporting a revolution that naturally takes over. I don't think there's been any cases of success from this process of forcibly removing the dictator, and crossing your fingers that things will go well.
- nag34 9mo ago[dead]
- nag34 9mo ago[dead]
- nag34 9mo ago[dead]
- xpe 9mo agoClaim: according to any sensible definition of international law, this action was illegal. See [1] for example. Would anyone care to offer a genuinely held counter argument? Preferably based on legal expertise. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/is-there-any-legal-justification-for-the-us-attack-on-venezuela-trump-maduro https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/is-there-any-l...
- chrisco255 9mo agoThere is no international law. Who enforces it? There are loose treaties that change all the time.
- xpe 9mo ago> There is no international law. This is incredibly confused. A reasonable person can say international law is unevenly enforced. This does not mean it does not matter. Both positive (what exists) and normative (what is ethical) considerations matter. Communicating well matters. The above style of exaggeration is unhelpful if one cares about making sense of the world. Try to predict what happens in the future without factoring in international agreements and laws. Predictions from such models will be inferior, relatively speaking, to a version that does include paying attention to law.
- xpe 9mo ago> Vice President J. D. Vance suggested on X that this morning’s incursion is legal because “Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism.” But as my colleague Conor Friedersdorf has noted, this logic would mean that the president can order an invasion of “any country where a national has an outstanding arrest warrant.” - The Atlantic
- AnimalMuppet 9mo agoWorse, it means that any country that the US wants to invade, it can justify it by manufacturing an indictment against the ruler.
- FergusArgyll 9mo ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 9mo agoVigorous foreign policy? You realize that this kind of vigorous foreign policy that you are a fan of is going to rebound massively? Or have the last 80 years worth of lessons learned passed you by? Plundering Latin America is not just going to be unpopular with European HNers, it will be with the vast majority of the world. You are hoping for 'exciting times', you fail to realize that 'may you live in exciting times' is a curse, not a blessing.
- FergusArgyll 9mo agoBroadly speaking, you can shape the world, or decide to sit it out and let everyone else try. We should absolutely do everything in our power to make the world a better place for us. The last 80 years taught me we can take down the USSR if we try, we can build europe back up if we try etc. I don't know what lessons you've learned from the past but there were many who were anti fighting (not literally, but through proxies, economics - soft power) the USSR and they were wrong. It's possible to win! & yes, I'm happy we have that spirit again
- testing22321 9mo agoI assume you’re completely ok with other countries doing the same for their own self interest? I.e. 9/11
- FergusArgyll 9mo agoThey already do. I don't understand? Russia invaded Ukraine under a U.S. President that believed (and talked about often) in "international norms". Due to which international law violation did the Japanese attack pearl harbor? Do you think the reason China didn't attack Taiwan yet is because "well, America is acting moral, we can't go around disturbing the global order"
- Trasmatta 9mo agoOrange man is, in fact, bad.
- cdrnsf 9mo ago1. This distracts from the Epstein files. 2. President for peace he never has (silly FIFA award aside). 3. They’re more interested in oil than any other stated goals. 4. This is straight out of the republican playbook of tanking the economy and using a war to distract from it and prop up defense contractors. 5. US regime changes are always a disaster.
- zug_zug 9mo agoCrazy how far down I had to scroll to see this. Yeah, the timing of it is an Epstein thing. He knows he's gonna get impeached again and files will be released in 2026 when he loses midterms, and needs to concoct an emergency. Here's how to know if I'm right -- since this isn't high enough drama, he'll make it amp up by a factor of 1-5 with false-flag attacks on America or something else to try to create a real sense of emergency in the next year.
- gip 9mo ago“You know as well as we do that justice, as the world goes, is only a matter between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” From Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. I personally think this quote explains the Trump administration’s worldview far better than anything Trump himself would say.
- guywithahat 9mo agoThank God, Chavez turned the richest country in south america into the poorest and Maduro continued his legacy with the average person losing 17lbs in a year when the price of oil fell. Although I'm surprised Trump is getting involved in world affairs we're at least at a point where the situation can't get any worse. Hopefully Trump will end socialism and bring back democracy to Venezuela
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago> we're at least at a point where the situation can't get any worse. That is incredibly optimistic and completely wrong. It can and probably will get worse. You just don’t create a power vacuum and hope for the best.
- cols 9mo agoI can't help but think this is going to end so poorly for the innocent men, women, and children in Venezuela. I feel for them. While Maduro seems to not be loved, these periods of violent transition can result in horrid outcomes for the local populace. I can only hope my fellow Americans start to see the light and vote the current administration out of office. I'm not hopeful.
- OCASMv2 9mo agoMaduro and Chavez before him are the horrid outcomes.
- Jolter 9mo agoChavez was the result of democratic elections, before he grabbed dictatorial powers.
- OCASMv2 9mo agoYes, let's pretend this didn't happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1992_Venezuelan_coup_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1992_Venezuelan_coup_...
- Jolter 9mo agoI didn’t pretend that. Still, he was elected and the 1998 election is largely uncontested as far as I’m aware.
- Rover222 9mo agoAnd the election he stole last year?
- Jolter 9mo agoWho, Chavez? He died in 2013.
- CafeRacer 9mo agoInternational law does not exist. Regardless of how retarded maduro was, "i felt like it" should not be justifiable reason to kidnap a president of a different country on their own turf. Maybe i felt better about that if trump wasnt in bed with another dictator.
- MangoToupe 9mo agoInteresting that they chose to capture him alive. Surely this poses a great problem to the administration. Maduro didn't exactly commit any crimes.... This is a horrifying way for any country to act, and millions of people will be hurt. Truly a travesty of the greatest order.
- stevenhuang 9mo ago> Maduro didn't exactly commit any crimes Lol. Lmao even
- MangoToupe 9mo ago[flagged]
- stevenhuang 9mo agoYou can start by listening to what any Venezuelan thinks of the situation. Those on the low end of the bell curve do tend to think highly of themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474353
- MangoToupe 9mo agoOk, lets also inspect the thoughts of Venezuelans who aren't abusive shitbags
- youhatetheleft 9mo agoAm I going to see Venezualan flags pop up all over European capitals like I did when Putin did the exact same thing in Ukraine that Trump just did? I had highly doubt it. I guess invading foreign countries is fine if it’s „our“ side doing it.
- abigail95 9mo agoIf you have the view that all military action is bad - you will remain as confused as you are right now. A more mainstream view has a different opinion.
- malcolmgreaves 9mo agoUS declares war on Venezuela without Congress. The republicans have really destroyed the constitution.
- dubeux 9mo agoI get slightly desperate realizing how people are lead to such naive discussions, even in a place with supposedly instructed, informed persons. Maduro may be a dictator, a murderer, whatever. This has absolutely no relation with the reasons for US invading, bombing and killing Venezuelans, or whichever country. For about a century, US has been doing it all over the world, not because they wanna live in a better, peaceful world - quite the opposite, they've been doing it for supporting coups and stablishing dictatorships that favour their supremacy, their role as the most powerful country in the world. Do you really, really believe Mr. Donald is very concerned about the lives of poor venezuelans? Or, just to stay in the region, he supports El Salvador dictator because he's a very nice fellow?
- seizethecheese 9mo agoIronic comment. El Salvador’s president has extremely high approval ratings and was definitely elected democratically. The US hasn’t ousted a democratically elected government since the end of the Cold War (as far as I know).
- whatwhaaaaat 9mo agoUh what? I’m all about American hegemony but let’s not stupid. Mossadegh Arbenz Allende Goulart Lumunba And Maduro was elected as well though you can go on with it being corrupt if you want. These are just the ones we directly overthrew who were elected. There are 20 more or so we’ve done so indirectly.
- seizethecheese 9mo agoYou missed the part of my comment that said “since the Cold War”. All of your examples are during the Cold War, of course. (Other than Maduro, and I don’t think most people believe he was democratically elected.)
- whatwhaaaaat 9mo agoUh you had ww2 there first no?
- I_am_tiberius 9mo agoThe only interest Americans have is oil. nothing else.
- abigail95 9mo agoPut your bet here re: oil inflows from Venezuela to the USA. Put a number on it. Stop talking shit.
- I_am_tiberius 9mo agoAren't you watching the news? Trump himself says it.
- mikaeluman 9mo agoThe world is complex... It is a fact that Chavez and Maduro have completely ruined Venezuela. That doesn't mean things can't get worse. I pray the majority of Venezuelans really have had enough of socialist dictatorships and can find a way to govern themselves. The US should not govern Venezuela - but neither should Maduro or his cronies.
- ultim8k 9mo agoEU is just headless chicken. They will just blindly agree to whatever Trump says
- lokar 9mo agoHow much equity in chevron will the federal gov get for this? 20% seems fair. Will BP want “their” fields back?
- testing22321 9mo agoThe fed gov gets nothing. Trump personally gets the 20%
- integricho 9mo agoSo they are taking the oil reserves, that's why they came, oh the hypocrisy is unbearable, the democratic powerhouse terrorising a weak country the same way for what they condemned Russia for.
- ideashower 9mo agoReplace Venezuela with Iraq, and Maduro with Saddam, and read this whole comment section. We never learn.
- abigail95 9mo agohow can you possibly make such a call so early on
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dystopiandevel 9mo agoIt is early in the news but I also read about the US working on directly having the nation transition. Gives me bad vibes as someone who lived through the invasion of Iraq. TBH, I am not very knowledgeable but I assume there's less sectarianism and lack of infrastructure so it is a different situation. Although with all things Trump, it's his execution and competency following through after the immediate ready decision.
- ideashower 9mo agoYeah, I also read that in the news, which was the thought behind my comment honestly.
- jopsen 9mo agoThat was different. There was an ultimatum, there was a coalition. Yes, the recreational wars were dumb, wrong, illegal and just all around bad ideas. But there was a solid attempt at giving them legitimacy. This matters.
- ideashower 9mo agoYou’re describing how Iraq was sold, not why it was justified.
- jopsen 9mo ago
- belarusianin 9mo agoY'all never lived under a dictatorship, and it's felt. "Fuck venezuelans, how can you capture a dictator, that violates a law no one gives a fuck about". You should be really happy how Trump treats putin, like a dear friend, not violating any law. I hope marines will raid kremlin next.
- flowerlad 9mo agoThis takes the American Oligarchy to the next level. Trump is now enabling his billionaire friends plunder another country, no doubt Trump will get a cut of the profits.
- drumnerd 9mo agoIt’s so simple to understand. There are tens of dictatorships around. Why this one? Shit is fucked more a lot more in Congo. Why is the US not interested? This is not about human rights. This is about oil.
- russellbeattie 9mo agoSo many people in the comments arguing as if the U.S. government made a rational decision based on specified goals and policies. Trump is a pathological narcissist and sociopath. He admires dictators like Putin and wanted to emulate his invasion of Ukraine. Stephen Miller is pure evil, and Hegseth is a fool, so they came up with a pretext to attack Venezuela. All of this conveniently distracts from the Epstein files. Nothing that's happened is justified, legal or rational. It's just the egos of idiots who should not be in power. We need regime change in the U.S. immediately.
- 8note 9mo agothere are other people behind these decisions proposing them to trump as options, and its following the current US strategic plan about militarily dominating the americas. its gonna be some other central and south american countries next like panama, the on to conquering greenland from the danes and greenlanders, then canada there is a rationale, even if you dont like it
- kwar13 9mo agoThat's one way to bring down energy inflation...
- cbeach 9mo agoMaduro was a monstrous dictator who was guaranteed to kill more people than this US strike did. And there is an opposition party which has been suppressed by Maduro, but is otherwise ready to go. There is much hope to be had for this beautiful country and its people now. Hopefully this act will also have a chilling effect on other vile left wing dictators like those in North Korea and Cuba
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- sleight42 9mo agoWhy are comments allowed on these posts? What is the point? What is ever gained? Conservatives question and deny. Liberals point out the multiple laws broken. People from the rest of the world tell those of in the USA that we have our head up our ass. How are any of us better for this? How is this better than Facebook's engagement-bait? Peace. Out.
- perfmode 9mo agoReading through this thread is disturbing not because people disagree, but because of how the disagreement is happening. What I'm seeing is a breakdown in the ability to hold consistent principles across contexts. The same people who condemned Russian actions in Ukraine are now making "realpolitik" arguments about Venezuela. The same people who claim to oppose foreign intervention are now calculating whether this was "done cleanly enough." Positions seem determined entirely by tribal affiliation rather than any coherent framework about sovereignty, international law, or the use of military force. There's also a striking historical amnesia at work. The US has been running this exact playbook in Latin America for over a century. We have extensive data on how these interventions typically unfold, what the second and third-order effects tend to be, and how the initial justifications relate to the actual outcomes. Yet that entire body of evidence seems to have evaporated from the conversation. People are reasoning about this as if it's a novel situation requiring fresh analysis, rather than a well-worn pattern. Most concerning is the casual normalization. We're discussing whether it's "justified" to invade a sovereign nation and kidnap its leader as if this is a routine policy question. The window of what's considered shocking has shifted so far that outright imperial aggression gets the same treatment as a zoning dispute. When someone points out we didn't even attempt to follow Constitutional requirements for declaring war, the response is essentially "yeah, we stopped doing that decades ago, so what?" The nihilism is the most insidious part. "What are we supposed to do about it?" Well, at minimum, we could refuse to let the Overton window keep drifting. We could maintain some continuity of ethical standards. We could recognize power plays for what they are instead of generating elaborate post-hoc rationalizations about democracy and narcotics. The question isn't whether Maduro is a dictator (he is) or whether this particular operation succeeded tactically (it apparently did). The question is whether we've collectively lost the capacity to see what we're actually doing and where this pattern of behavior leads.
- pandaxtc 9mo agoI completely agree with you on all points. It's terrifying to see these things you've described playing out.
- throwaway-11-1 9mo agoThe US is completely cooked man, the right has fully committed to mashing the gas pedal towards fossil fueled 'based' racist authoritarianism while the so-called-left is writing strongly worded op-eds. Even if Dems win again, they've proven to be way too cowardly to fix anything, this democracy is 100% done. Personally I just hope California is able to secede and do a Nordic Model before the entire country becomes Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but I'm pretty doubtful anything good can ever happen here. Good luck everyone.
- perfmode 9mo agoThis is a unilateral invasion and regime change operation with no Congressional authorization, no UN mandate, no coalition. It's unprecedented in its brazenness—not because the U.S. hasn't done regime change before (Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, etc.), but because there's not even the pretense of justification or coalition-building. The "narco-terrorism" charges are a legal fig leaf. The real drivers appear to be oil (Venezuela has the world's largest proven reserves), geopolitical positioning (removing a Russian/Chinese/Iranian ally from the hemisphere), domestic politics (Trump wants a "win" and to appear strong), and what seems like a personal vendetta given how publicly Trump has obsessed about Maduro. What's disturbing goes beyond the act itself. Trump literally said the U.S. will "run Venezuela"—not "support democracy," not "help transition"—run the country. That's colonial language with no euphemism. There was no Congressional authorization. This violates the War Powers Act at minimum. If a president can unilaterally invade a country, kidnap its leader, and declare we're taking control, what's the limiting principle? Where does this stop? The mask is completely off. Previous imperial adventures at least performed the ritual of justification, built coalitions, went through motions at the UN. This is naked power. Trump explicitly mentioned oil, saying American companies will "invest billions" to "refurbish" Venezuela's oil industry. He's just admitting it openly. What we're witnessing is the final abandonment of even the performance of international norms. The question isn't whether this is legal or justified—it clearly isn't. The question is whether there are any remaining constraints on executive power when it comes to foreign military action.
- abigail95 9mo agoMan, the guy probably broke a ton of Venezuelan and American laws. Maduro is responsible for the break down in diplomacy - what did he think was going to happen if he kept breaking the law? There's no extradition treaty - how else does the USA bring him to trial? Go to the courthouse when he gets convicted and yell about how clearly illegal it all is. You'll look like a nutcase. I'll just celebrate that he's going to die in prison. What law are they breaking by forcefully extracting a criminal? Why does he get away with it because he's a president? He's not even the president of Venezuela, it's disputed - chiefly by Venezuelan's themselves. Now we get to hold him to account in an open court. This is just good ass news. You don't get to declare the whole thing illegal and unjustified. He will get returned in 20 years and probably tried for murder by the people he repressed. Finally - he's a really cool thing about the US legal system, if his rendition was illegal, as you say, he can claim that in court. It won't work because it wasn't.
- i_love_retros 9mo agoGod bless America and God bless President Trump! This can only be good news for the Venezuelans, having lived in such poor conditions for so long. Soon they will be able to go to McDonald's, drink Starbucks, and maybe one day if they really prove themselves to have that special drive and spirit that only Americans have, apply for US citizenship!
- YouAreWRONGtoo 9mo ago[dead]
- lbrito 9mo agoThe other day there were people here seriously arguing that China was more interventionist than the US. The latest US mass theft and aggression is far from surprising to anyone that studied south American history. Trump just drops the humanitarian pretexts, but the act itself is exactly in line with how US treats South America.
- pbhjpbhj 9mo agoTrump's handlers have proven the USA military don't care about the Constitution. They're happy to enforce the dictators will even though they know it to be unlawful. Seems like that is a significant movement that opens the door for Trump to be even more evil. They've rallied to the sex offender, they probably have to follow through now to avoid joining him and his cohort in jail.
- abigail95 9mo agoThe Constitution isn't that long - state the violations here plainly for all of us to see and critique.
- geoka9 9mo ago> "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition" How do you run a country without invading it or at least having a puppet regime already in place?
- stevenwoo 9mo agoIt’s wild to me that (at least for now) Trump has publicly repudiated the second (or first if one swings that way) place vote getter in last election as unqualified even after she brown nosed Trump hard. He apparently needs a bigger sycophant in charge like his cabinet members https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-03/nobel-winner-machado-left-out-of-trump-s-venezuela-plan-for-now https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-03/nobel-win...
- rifty 9mo agoThis part of the situation is the interesting thing to me. Is this US administration establishing itself as the effective dictator of Venezuela indefinitely? What does running that country have to look like directed by the US president and what changes will they make to restrict the position to prepare it for transition? Is the plan to make no changes to the position and then forever make a mockery of their elections by only letting people run in the future who suite US interests? It feels like this situation has the potential to turn into a colonial-like relationship always under threat of direct US military intervention.
- zmmmmm 9mo agoIt's hard to think through the implications of living in a world where it is accepted that countries with more power simply invade each other and take land and possessions from those with less power. I can't think how it doesn't ultimately lead to broadscale instability and ultimately, war. In turn it depresses me that this is toxic to the humanity progressing and solving its bigger picture problems.
- lbrito 9mo agoNo imagination is necessary: we've been there. The 1800s were exactly that and culminated in two world wars on the next century.
- augusto-moura 9mo agoYou can even go further, _all_ human history had stronger groups taking things from weaker groups. On the classical era of Aristotle and on the paleolithic pre-history. We sometimes forget that humanity can be cruel and work only for self-interest, we like to think that war and pillaging is something from the past, but it will be forever with us
- bdangubic 9mo ago[flagged]
- culi 9mo agoThis isn't universally true. There are actually a very large amount of cultures where we have ZERO evidence of violence. E.g. for the Sámi in southern Scandanevia we have zero evidence of violence. Similarly the Tripolye culture in modern Ukraine/Moldova/Romania is famous for building megaworks and housing for up to 15,000 people. But despite this large population there is virtually zero evidence of walls/forts/moats/any defensive fortifications. Not specialized weapons. Evidence of large-scale warfare in prehistoric periods is also extremely rare in general. Most violence we have evidence for seems to be driven by personal conflict. This could just be due to decreased population densities but the conclusion that humans have always widely used war or organized violence is certainly not supported by the existing evidence
- Buttons840 9mo agoMaduro is alive and charged with crimes in a US court. So, we will see evidence presented I guess. This is new. I'm surprised Maduro wasn't just killed, and wonder if he might somehow die in US custody. The US will have to make a case in court while the whole world watches. That will be embarrassing I expect. https://youtu.be/ijFOLv17RX4 https://youtu.be/ijFOLv17RX4
- Phelinofist 9mo agoThis is immensely funny (actually it's not) that the US trials Maduro when they do not accept the ICC. I guess US law is the ultimate law.
- abigail95 9mo agoIf they have evidence he violated US law smuggling weapons and drugs into the domestic USA, he should be tried under such law. It's neither ironic, funny, strange, or anything else. What law should he be tried under if he did these alleged things? They extradited him by force because Venezuela wouldn't. They don't have an extradition treaty. If Venezuela doesn't want this to happen again - negotiate a treaty. The USA doesn't "accept" the ICC because it's not a party to the agreement. There are not-insignificant constitutional problems with the USA being a party. It's because they have such strong civil protections that those issues come up. The ICC is also complementary - you misunderstand what it is for. If the USA is able to prosecute this guy themselves, you don't need an ICC, because it doesn't apply in this case.
- Phelinofist 9mo agoOk, war crimes are illegal too. So I guess someone extracting some US military people by force and trialing them somewhere else is fair game then? Anyway, your whole comment is just word-sauce.
- jacquesm 9mo agoOh, it seems Mexico is next. I'm afraid to go to sleep these days, you never know what kind of world you will find in the morning.
- throw-12-16 9mo agoTaiwan is doomed.
- modzu 9mo agobush: theres uh, nuclear weapons.. we gotta stop him and free the country! also hes a jerk and i hate him trump: drugs or something. but mainly we need the oil so if they won't give us the oil we'll just take the oil. who's gona stop us, canada? lol
- rdm_blackhole 9mo agoThose who rejoice today with the fall of Maduro may not rejoice when China or India or any other regional player decides to topple the government of another country and kidnap their leaders and then install a "friendly" regime in their place. Regardless of how you feel personally about Maduro and his regime, this sets the precedent that it can be done and that the rest of the world and especially the EU who is always so quick to remind everyone of the rule of law will do nothing and let it happen. Will the EU sanction the US and cut it off from SWIFT? Will the EU arm the Venezuelans should they decide that their new leaders are not legitimate? Either the rules apply to everyone or the rules don't exist. If it's not acceptable for Putin to go to Kiev and remove Zelensky and if it's not acceptable for Xi to go to Taiwan and remove their leaders, then what happened is simply not acceptable. You can't have it both ways. Finally this will remind everyone that the only real protection you have in this world is nukes. If Venezuela had nukes then the US would probably not have been so quick to invade.
- baxuz 9mo agoFuck these imperialists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
- vedmakk 9mo agoSo the US will be excluded from the SWIFT banking system? Heavy international sanctions will be put in place? Europe will send weapons and money to help Venezuela defend itself? No? Oh... just checking.
- Phelinofist 9mo agoThe key difference is: tHe Us BrInGs DeMoCrAcY
- jeltz 9mo agoIf the EU could we would.
- jopsen 9mo agoIt would be fun to station a few French nukes on Greenland as a response :) But probably the wise choice is doing nothing publicly. Behind the scenes stop buying US weapon systems.
- abigail95 9mo agoThey extradited a guy for crimes also illegal in Venezuela. What would the point of sanctioning actions like this be? This is about the cleanest extraterritorial action you can take. A guy probably did some seriously illegal stuff in your country and his, who was probably illegally elected, who probably had people killed. Why not do this? Why not say to Venezuela, hand him over or we'll take him ourselves? He's not going to gitmo, he'll have the same due process that every other American gets. Rights Maduro denied to millions. If you asked me to describe "justice" - I have to give this as a good example. He's going to die in prison like Noriega, after a fair trial.
- ccvannorman 9mo agoBy your reasoning, Putin invading the US and kidnapping President Trump for his crimes is equally valid
- mnewme 9mo agoTrust in the US is officially broken
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dostick 9mo agoWhy U.S. army takes orders from a mentally ill person
- mocmoc 9mo agoTrump ballon d'or 2026
- BrandoElFollito 9mo agoMaduro was captured by Trump Hernàndez was captured by Biden. Trump pardoned him because Biden bad. This world is a shitshow. Honestly, I am GenX and always read of wars and tensions as historical artefacts (there were wars, but localized and far away from France). Now I am seriously wondering if this is going to end well for us over here. I do not work that much about myself, I had an interesting life, but rather about my children whom I now start to regret. I did not expect to hand them a world like this one. I know, global warming was there but I was 30 and was looking my close surroundings. My bad. This said, if I know what the world would be today I wrote reconsider having them.
- curseofcasandra 9mo agoRules-based global order, right?
- amrocha 9mo agoI hope the rest of south america doesn’t let this stand. Heavy sanctions on US, maybe even military intervention. The US can’t go to war with an entire continent.
- abigail95 9mo agoAre you from South America? Do you think the neighboring countries are happy about all the Venezuelan refugees? What about Guyana - do you think they would join sanctions in support of Venezuela? Military intervention? Some farmers with sticks? Do you even know what the Rio Treaty is?
- amrocha 9mo agoYes, I am, and yes I don’t particularly mind the immigrants. Even if I did mind them, venezuelan immigrants are preferable to the US military invading my neighbours. The TIAR? The one that says an attack on one is an attack on all, which both USA and Venezuela are members of? Fat lot of good that did to protect them. But I don’t know why I bother to reply to you when given your “farmers with sticks” comment it’s clear that you’re a racist asshole.
- WalterBright 9mo agoThere's precedent in the 1989 invasion of Panama and the capture of Manuel Noriega, who was indicted for drug trafficking in the US.
- zug_zug 9mo agoIf it wasn't a man suspected of being impeached over a looming child-sex trafficking scheme so deep that it makes watergate look like a game then maybe we'd pretend drugs has anything to do with it.
- WalterBright 9mo agoWatergate does seem rather trivial these days. I doubt you'll ever find anything against Trump in the Epstein files, as Biden had those files and would have used such against Trump.
- jjk166 9mo agoWe've already seen plenty of stuff that Biden could have used against Trump but didn't. Regardless of why it wasn't used, there's no reason to believe there isn't more.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoTheir close relationship is a matter of public record, and Trump is all over the files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_and_Jeffrey_Epstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_a...
- WalterBright 9mo agoThere are probably a hundred books written about the JFK assassination coverup, but so far no credible evidence. I'm not holding my breath.
- ceejayoz 9mo ago
- robomartin 9mo agoThe reaction on HN to what just happened in Venezuela is exhausting and revealing. People who have never lived under socialism, communism, dictatorship, or military rule speak with total confidence while dismissing those who have. More than 8 million Venezuelans have fled their country, one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. They are celebrating. You are being critical. That alone should give pause. Those condemning this action (and almost defending the oppressors) have never: - Lived under a dictatorship where dissent leads to prison, torture, rape or disappearance - Watched the military and police become criminal enterprises - Seen private property and entire industries seized by the state, as happened under Chávez and Maduro - Experienced the collapse that follows decades of corruption, repression, and ideological control Latin America knows this story well. Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Venezuela have followed different paths with the same outcomes: repression, exile, fear, and destroyed civil society. Venezuela didn’t “fail suddenly.” It was dismantled over decades through nationalization, purges, censorship, and military collusion with organized crime. If you claim to care about migrants, human rights, or the oppressed, you cannot only care after people escape. You cannot oppose every serious attempt to end regimes that jail, torture, and kill their own citizens while calling yourself humanitarian. That is not morality, it’s distance. Is oil involved? Of course. Venezuela’s oil industry, built with foreign investment, was expropriated, looted, and mismanaged into ruin. But this is also about state-backed criminal networks, narcotrafficking, and regional destabilization that have killed hundreds of thousands beyond Venezuela’s borders. If you had lived under these conditions, if your family had been broken by fear, disappearance, or exile, you would not be citing abstract “international law” to defend your oppressors. You would be hoping, every night, that someone powerful enough would intervene. What’s missing here isn’t compassion. It is context. Before defending dictators from the safety of a functioning democracy, have the self-awareness to ask whether you understand the reality you’re judging. Otherwise what comes through isn’t moral clarity, it’s ignorance dressed up as virtue. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=venezuelan+celebrations https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=venezuelan+cele... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reacciones+de+venezolanos+alrededor+del+mundo https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reacciones+de+v...
- dzonga 9mo agoyeah might is right. if you wanna bully citizens like dictators do - now they fear some big bully might come snatch them in the middle of the night like bully does to its citizens
- jamesfly 9mo ago“If we [Economic Hit Men] falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the military.” John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
- the_sleaze_ 9mo agoTrump is solidifying control over (North and South) American oil to ensure oil reserves in the event of a global war. China's first move would be to control middle eastern and russian oil - choking manufacture. There is a war coming. A larger war.
- SilverElfin 9mo agoDang - is there a way to view all the comments on a story in a single page?
- janalsncm 9mo agoThere was a time in my life when I would spend a few hours learning about US-Venezuela relations and the Venezuelan government and related topics so I could have a skin deep understanding of it and play an internet expert in threads like this. I’m not going to do that today. It’s sunny, and I want to spend time with family. Being naive about this topic doesn’t affect the core of things I want to be knowledgeable about. And the reality is, having a vote only gives me nominally more agency over US foreign policy than someone who can’t vote. I am mostly just observing.
- throwaway1389z 9mo ago[flagged]
- janalsncm 9mo agoI would love to hear what you are doing differently.
- throwaway1389z 9mo agoNot patting myself on the back for accepting some kind of notion that "I am too stupid to consider what is this all about and go about my life with that understanding."
- janalsncm 9mo agoI see. It seems you’ve done just about as much as me, but you’re choosing to use the little agency you do have to be rude to people online.
- asacrowflies 9mo agoCuckoldry is not a good thing to most people. The rude thing is trying to project your spinelessness to everyone else.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoThis is a masterpiece on how to sidestep a national debt crisis. 1. Don't acknowledge the problem directly. 2. Take over Venezuela's GDP by benevolent force or whatever he is calling it. 3. Pay off the debt interest with new funding windfall. 4. Profit
- abigail95 9mo agotell me the direction the bond market moves then, and show me your positions. this is the dumbest thing i've read in this thread.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoLong on bonds, what's your point?
- golem14 9mo agoIf this is all true, then China has been pretty much given green light to invade Taiwan, in my opinion.
- erxam 9mo ago[flagged]
- poszlem 9mo agoThere are two possibilities. Either we live in a rules-based international order, in which case China would be punished for invading Taiwan. Or we live in a world where power decides outcomes, in which case China would still be punished, this time by the United States, which is arguably still the strongest actor. Unless, of course, you’re suggesting that Trump effectively gave China the green light. Which is not out of the question, but I would find quite surprising.
- Rzor 9mo ago>Unless, of course, you’re suggesting that Trump effectively gave China the green light. Which is not out of the question, but I would find quite surprising. There's someone else in this thread suggesting that the quid pro quo was exactly that. My brothers in Christ, I am worried.
- golem14 9mo agoWith the US being now engaging her Navy in South America more, I am not so sure that America can really match a Blitzkrieg-style invasion, and it is probably not quite able to project enough soft power to get the 'vassal states' to effectively help. So while I am by no means pro-Taiwan invasion, I do believe that there is a very significant downside wrt China with this move. N.B. I'm no military wonk or political strategist, far from it. I just call 'em as i see's 'em.
- kshacker 9mo agoOr maybe it is a message that we have a madman at the top with a finger on the trigger. Do not even try.
- 9mo ago
- whoisthemachine 9mo agoIf you're ever confused by Don's actions, just remember: all he cares about is gaining more wealth (and power if possible). This was done to enrich Don and the oil barons who funded his campaign. [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-exec...
- horns4lyfe 9mo ago[flagged]
- deepsquirrelnet 9mo agoRead that article and it makes most of this conversation irrelevant and pointless. I have to say this is the only thing that even makes sense.
- hexbin010 9mo agoDo people struggle with the concept that an old ruthless businessman continues to be a ruthless businessman? I don't remember him setting up a foundation and giving away all his money and assets prior to getting into office! Though I don't like it as explanation or topic as it ventures into "it's just business" and "business as usual" in a way that normalises it
- Huntsecker 9mo agolooking through the comments one thing I find strange that no one has picked up on is that maduro had met the chinese hours before being captured. To me I think the initial plan was to just let the economy tank by blockading the economy, chinese stepped into help and trump goes nuclear and kidnaps the guy. still pretty shocking that they wont hand over power to the party who won the election and plan on setting up a puppet state and steal the oil, does seem USA has become some despot country albeit with a large army.
- rkuykendall-com 9mo agoI don't think people didn't "pick up" on it, I just don't think anyone thinks it matters. There is no smoke-and-mirrors back-room strategizing here. It looked cool on Fox News. Then the president went onto Fox News and talked about how cool it looked on Fox News. The text is text. The subtext is nonexistent.
- kylehotchkiss 9mo agoNo surprise Pam Bondi can just use her Grok subscription to make an incitement appear out of thin air, but what jury is going to be fair and unbiased here? How are American citizens Maduro’s peers? How could a judge have jurisdiction over him?
- andsoitis 9mo agoEmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic: "The Venezuelan people are today liberated from the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro and cannot but celebrate it. By seizing power and trampling on fundamental freedoms, Nicolás Maduro has committed a grave affront against the dignity of his own people. The transition that is now opening must be peaceful, democratic, and respectful of the will of the Venezuelan people. We hope that President Edmundo González Urrutia, elected in 2024, can ensure this transition as soon as possible. " - https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/2007525843401154891 https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/2007525843401154891
- tmnvix 9mo agoVery disappointing to see some of the arguments being put forth in favour of this blatant aggression. After reading through quite a few comments I'm left with the impression that very many people seem to hold some pretty dubious opinions: 1. That previous justifications in the lead up to this event are now irrelevant or to be ignored or forgotten about ('narco-terrorism', 'it's our oil', 'sanctions busting', etc). - These were all weak to begin with (but are still relevant because the truth is in there and stated almost explicitly - i.e. 'US interests'). 2. That this attack on Venezuelan sovereignty was done for moral reasons ('bad regime'). - Even accepting that the government of Venezuela is a 'bad regime', this is insufficient - there are many arguably much worse governments in the world. 3. That might is right. - Correct in some sense but morally bereft. All in all a lot of post-facto nonsense on display. I'm frankly appalled at the self-serving moral blindness on display here. I refuse to believe that people are arguing in good faith here. Disappointing to see from the otherwise thoughtful commenters on this site. To anyone making the above arguments, let me ask you - what do you think of the saying "do unto others as you would have done unto you"?
- realaaa 9mo agowell maybe the world is indeed back to different spheres of influence, as per the latest US security policy overall it should make the world a bit more stable hopefully, and locally of course it would make more sense for Venezuela to be in bed with US, rather than far away giants hopefully the country doesn't plunge into endless domestic conflict / war, we have enough of that happening already everywhere..
- fallingfrog 9mo agoThis will lead to a long drawn out guerilla war in the name of oil. Thousands or tens of thousands will die. And trump does. Not. Care. At. All. Neither their lives, or yours or mine, have any meaning to him and his cabinet. They simply do not care.
- fallingfrog 9mo agoWhat's to stop Russia from simply abducting whoever we install in his place? If we can do it, anyone can. The arrogance is unbelievable.
- ManuelKiessling 9mo agoA boy receives a horse as a gift. Villagers say, "How wonderful!" The Zen master replies, "We'll see". The boy falls while riding the horse, breaks his leg. Villagers say, "How terrible!" The master says, "We'll see". War comes, all young men are drafted, but the boy is spared due to his leg. Villagers say, "How lucky!" The master says, "We'll see".
- zoklet-enjoyer 9mo agoWhen is the US military going to start going after all those Venezuelan fentanyl labs?
- jenders 9mo agoWhat does this have to do with technology?
- Slava_Propanei 9mo ago[dead]
- SanjayMehta 9mo agoRules based order. The other takeaway: if you have oil, and no nukes, in due course, the US will come to steal it.
- gsky 9mo agoBrazil, Iran and China should be prepared for the worst now
- gorgoiler 9mo agoIt can’t be fun running HN right now. Sorry, dang et al. It’s like you’re the owners of a particularly popular pub that’s suddenly filled up with Johns, Jameses, Evas, and Annes, all loudly making their thoughts known while ordering a nice normal Western drink at the bar. Vodkas, baijius, and sojus all round! (To be fair, there are probably some Coors Lite and Stella drinkers here too.)
- taejavu 9mo ago[flagged]
- throw-12-16 9mo agoI don't have the ability to be a giant meteor
- taejavu 9mo ago[flagged]
- throw-12-16 9mo agoGuess that means throwing rocks at passing cars
- taejavu 9mo agoWith an attitude like that, no wonder you feel so superior to your fellow humans
- throw-12-16 9mo agoWho said anything about being superior? I deserve to be washed away along with the rest of us.
- taejavu 9mo agoI did. It’s clear you feel that way, despite your words.
- johnnyanmac 9mo agoI didn't know Eren Yaeger was a hacker.
- tomhow 9mo agoDon't troll on HN. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484803 and marked it off topic.
- freakynit 9mo agoAggregated the discussions for easier reading: https://hn-discussions.top/venezuela-maduro-captured-us-strikes/ https://hn-discussions.top/venezuela-maduro-captured-us-stri...
- why-o-why 9mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 9mo agoThis is a completely unacceptable comment on HN, and we have to ban accounts that post abusive comments repeatedly. HN is for people who have higher standards than this in what they think is appropriate to post online. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- toomanyrichies 9mo ago"Overthrowing a dictator sounds morally right. No one mourns a tyrant. But international law wasn't built to protect the good, but to restrain the powerful. That's why it prohibits force almost without exception: not because it ignores injustice, but because it knows that if each country decides whom to 'liberate' by force, the world reverts to the law of the strongest. The problem is not Maduro. The problem is the precedent. When military force is used to change governments without clear rules, sovereignty ceases to be a limit and becomes an obstacle. Today it is 'overthrowing a dictator'; tomorrow it will be 'correcting an election', 'protecting interests', 'restoring order'. The law does not absolve dictatorships, but neither does it legitimize unilateral crusades. The uncomfortable question is not whether a tyrant deserves to fall, but who decides when and how. Because history teaches something brutal: removing a dictator is easy; building justice afterward is not. And when legality is broken in the name of good, what almost always follows is not freedom, but chaos, violence, and new victims. The law exists to remind us of this, even when it makes us uncomfortable." -Jose Mario https://bsky.app/profile/cristianfarias.com/post/3mbjlwkmb6c24 https://bsky.app/profile/cristianfarias.com/post/3mbjlwkmb6c...
- PlanksVariable 9mo agoIt’s estimated there are over a million Venezuelans in the U.S. who fled the country. Over 600,000 are currently under temporary protected status with asylum claims. 7 million in neighboring countries. Who gets to decide that this is good, but removing the dictator behind this is bad? Who gets to decide that we must live with this chaos because taking action might not reduce the chaos. > Today it is 'overthrowing a dictator'; tomorrow it will be 'correcting an election' Why? Those are two completely different things. We have the capacity to evaluate whether overthrowing a dictator is good or bad on its own terms.
- tmnvix 9mo agoThere is more than just one person behind Venezuela's misfortune. The external pressure to undermine the country has been immense and shouldn't be discounted. As always, not black and white.
- 9mo ago
- AbraKdabra 9mo agoAll your "moral" comments don't matter, I live in Argentina and the ABSURD amount of venezuelans that migrated here in the last 10/15 years is nothing you'll ever see. I have 3 venezuelan friends here and a couple more that I only know (one is an Uber I once took and have a couple neighbors in the building), all were able to escape the dictatorship and left their family there, I just can't express with words the JOY I saw in their statuses from WhatsApp and Instagram today when the door to maybe go back to their country finally opened. One of my friends is my motorcycle mechanic, met him in 2015 when I bought my first KTM, still my mechanic to this day. A lot of the bike services I stayed with him talking while he worked, I listened to a lot of his stories from back in the day, why he had to run, why his family stayed, how he had to send money to them to eat and some other horror stories. In the name of my friends, if you think what happened today is bad, you can respectfully go fuck yourself.
- yanhangyhy 9mo agoCan china use that excuse to do the same thing to Myanmar?
- richardatlarge 9mo agoMy AI summary of these 4k comments Yes—there are very clear, recurring *themes*, and what’s striking is how consistently people keep circling the same fault lines from different angles. I’d group them like this: --- ## 1. *Legality vs. Morality* *Core tension:* > Is overthrowing a dictator morally right even if it violates international law? * One side argues law exists precisely to restrain power, not to reward virtue. * The other argues moral urgency overrides abstract legalism when human suffering is extreme. * This becomes a meta-question: Who decides when morality trumps law? This is the philosophical backbone of the entire thread. --- ## 2. *Precedent Anxiety* *“Today Maduro, tomorrow anything.”* * Fear that once unilateral regime change is normalized, the justification becomes infinitely elastic: * “correcting elections” * “restoring order” * “protecting interests” * Libya and Iraq function as *cautionary archetypes*, not historical footnotes. This is less about Venezuela than about *future permission structures*. --- ## 3. *Outcomes Over Intentions* *Ends don’t redeem means if outcomes are catastrophic.* * Even commenters who despise Maduro emphasize: * removing a dictator is easy * building a functioning state is hard * Post-intervention chaos (ISIS, slave markets, fragmentation) is cited repeatedly. * There’s deep skepticism that this time will be different, even when facts are “better documented.” This is pragmatic pessimism rather than ideological purity. --- ## 4. *American Power & Self-Deception* *A recurring, uncomfortable self-indictment.* * Several comments converge on the idea that: * Americans benefit materially from interventionism * but psychologically disavow responsibility for the costs * The line “Americans want this but don’t like knowing they want it” resonates strongly. * Counterpoint: lack of agency within political structures blunts individual responsibility. This becomes a debate about *collective guilt vs. structural impotence*. --- ## 5. *Realpolitik vs. Institutionalism* *Power acting directly vs. power constrained by process.* * Appeals to ICC, UN, asylum frameworks represent belief in institutions. * Skeptics argue those institutions are deliberately weakened by the same powers invoking morality. * Others argue asylum and invasion are orthogonal issues—and conflating them is rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Underlying question: Is global governance real, or decorative? --- ## 6. *Lived Experience vs. Abstract Judgment* *Who gets moral authority?* * “Those who’ve never lived under dictatorship say this.” * Counter: “Those who never lived through US intervention say that.” * Venezuelans in-thread complicate narratives of total collapse or total liberation. * Firsthand testimony destabilizes neat moral binaries. This creates epistemic friction: *whose suffering counts as evidence?* --- ## 7. *Cynicism About Motives* *Oil never disappears from the conversation.* * Even when people argue it’s not literally about barrels of crude, they frame it as: * control * leverage * profit flows * contractor ecosystems * What’s new is not cynicism—but how brazen the cynicism feels. Several commenters note the lack of even performative moral cover. --- ## 8. *Democratic Exhaustion* *A sense that democracy is no longer the brake it claims to be.* * Rapid escalation vs. slow electoral correction * Legislatures perceived as compliant or irrelevant * No clear mechanism for popular restraint short of catastrophe This feeds resignation rather than outrage. --- ## 9. *Historical Echoes & Decline Narratives* *“We’ve seen this movie.”* * Arab Spring * Iraq * Libya * Panama (Noriega) History is invoked less as analogy and more as *warning fatigue*—people feel trapped in a loop. --- ## 10. *A Deeper Subtext: Loss of Moral Coherence* Perhaps the most important theme: > The argument isn’t about whether Maduro is bad. > It’s about whether the system judging him is still capable of moral credibility. That’s why the thread feels less like debate and more like *collective unease*. --- ### If you zoom out: This isn’t really a Venezuela thread. It’s a conversation about *power without trust*, *law without enforcement*, and *morality without consensus*—and whether any of those concepts still function in the current world order. If you wanted to fictionalize this, it wouldn’t be a war story. It would be a story about *people arguing at the edge of legitimacy*, trying to decide whether the rules still mean anything once the strong stop pretending they do.
- andretti1977 9mo agoI really don't understand one thing: is there a single american who still think this has been done to liberate a country from a dictator in the name of freedom? Seriously? This has been done for economical and power interests and USA is the most destabilizing power in the world and a source of war and desperation and death: they supports israel to get political power in middle east, they invaded countries as done in Iraq, they push Nato to the border of Russia and provoke war (not to say Putin had right to invade Ukraine but what would have done usa if mexico Canada or Cuba had russian weapons and support? Oh yes, we knew about Cuba). And the president Trump: he’s just a ridicolous bully like the ones you can find at high schools. Please US citizens, grow up. There had been a time when you were admired and respected, now your country is killing the world.
- jopsen 9mo ago> they push Nato to the border of Russia No, former Soviet satellite states begged and pleaded for NATO membership. And their immediate Western neighbors advocates for it. They didn't do that because the US asked them to. They were motivated by other concerns. The US does bad things, yes, but the death toll is nothing like Stalin or Mao. And the US don't tend to stick around occupying a country for half a decade. I wouldn't dare to justify this. But it's not the same as Russia or China.
- andretti1977 9mo agoI’m not saying former soviet countries lived better under soviet imposition, but no one can be so naive to think US did that to help and free people. When a mobster comes to you and free you from your previous mobster, it’s not because he is a good man and wants you to live freely: he does it to impose you his will and power exactly as US have always done.
- TiredOfLife 9mo agoI live in one of the former soviet republics. We begged to join NATO because we experienced the joy of living under 50 years of russian occupation
- fleroviumna 9mo ago[dead]
- Rover222 9mo agoIt’s interesting to see how Americans assume Venezuelans aren’t happy about this. People are so clueless. I’m in South America right now and everyone is happy for the Venezuelans. Especially the Venezuelans. It’s been 25 years of hell. They don’t really care at the moment if Trump did it for oil. You think Russia and China just wanted the recipe for Arepas? That’s the common saying. Venezuelans just wanted a chance to live a normal life. This is not a society like Afghanistan that cannot function as a democracy when autocrats are removed. The world failed to solve this problem for decades. Trump is a loose cannon, but this shot was a good one. Of course it’s TBD how things play out. But at least there is hope.
- calf 9mo agoAmericans may lack theory of mind of Venezuelans, but that doesn't invalidate thethe concerns of outsiders, as you yourself says it's TBD how things play out, especially with global ramifications and in the long run for all nations affected by this American action.
- Rover222 9mo agoAgreed. But… the other alternative is continued repression and suffering of millions of people. Iranians are wishing their captors would fall next. Not that people will see those posts on blue sky.
- IAmGraydon 9mo ago>It’s interesting to see how Americans assume Venezuelans aren’t happy about this. People are so clueless. I’m in South America right now and everyone is happy for the Venezuelans. It doesn't matter at all. Venezuelans may be over the moon about this, but the fact remains that Trump broke international law and committed an act of war without the authorization of Congress. You don't see the problem with that? This is the slippery slope of authoritarianism. They start by doing illegal things that seem like they're good things, but which break down the rule of law. Once they've normalized this, they start doing it with less popular things. Humans are so stupid with their ideas of "my team won so it's OK!". It's not ok. This is how the system begins to implode, and it's by design.
- markjchambers 9mo ago1. Take over the oil companies 2. Reduce price of Gas in USA. 3. Everyone will celebrate 4. Next election. > 80% majority.
- nirui 9mo agoWhat kind of visa Mr. Maduro was using when he entered the US? I'm guessing it must be very good since, let's just say he kinda fits the profile which President Trump might describe as "worst of the worst", and yet the US Customs still just letting that guy walk right in. But anyhow I hope Mr. Maduro don't illegally overstay because if ICE found out about it, there's a chance they'll deport Mr. Maduro to Venezuela.
- Sporktacular 9mo ago24 hours and no zionists complaining about how this is not tech news/flagging the post. Thank you, I guess, for allowing the rest of us to talk about whatever we want.
- TedHerman 9mo agoDrill baby drill.
- pknerd 9mo agoIt is not about oil but... blue gold[1] [1] https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11372/ https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11372/
- spacechild1 9mo agoWell, this thread certainly hasn't aged well. Lots of people here trying to spin this as an act of liberation while the real motivation has been more than obvious. Turns out the Trump administration doesn't even bother to change the regime as long as it is willing to give up the oil reserves. They just kidnapped Maduro to set an example and coerce the regime to cooperate. Trump and Rubio aren't even trying to hide it, they are saying it plain and clear on national TV!
- kaycey2022 9mo agoMaybe the whole attempt is to bully the current government into giving the Venezuelan/Cuban faction in the US government exactly what they want. They want an entry into the society, and to open it up, maybe among other things. With this USA is essentially saying that "see I can just walk into your home and no one will stop me, so better do as I say". I will be surprised if USA tries to land ground troops into that country. Running the country, I suspect, will be extremely ugly for USA. OTOH, if they can just coerce the existing government into giving them exactly what they want, then it would certainly be mission accomplished. It's all a huge gamble, and will depend on how obstinate the Venezuelan setup is.
- lunias 9mo agoLots of people seem to expect that the map will look exactly the same a thousand years from now; but the last hundred years of relative - historically speaking - stability are the exception, not the rule.
- fallingfrog 9mo agoHe needs the oil to fuel the military as they invade Canada and Mexico and Greenland. He wants a north American empire. Come back in 3 years and tell me if i was right.
- seertaak 9mo agoThis is going to make the US look less predictable to adversaries, and that's, on balance, perhaps not such a bad thing. It will be interesting to observe how the aftermath unfolds. If the US succeeds in installing a gov't which gains some level of legitimacy, perhaps by stoking the economy, then this will be a significant win for the US. If not, it will be a strong "the US is the newish sick man" signal. That said, it's one thing to pull this in Venezuela, another thing to annex Greenland.
- amai 8mo agoThey should have done the same stunt in Iran and remove Chamenei. Dictatorships without a dictator don't survive long.