alt Hacker NewsTrump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
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I 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.
The US continuing a long tradition of interference in LatAm:
https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/world/the-united-states-hist...
edit: typo
I 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.
Two 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.
I 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.
If 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-exec...
A 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.
And 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.
Prediction: 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.
Here'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.
Maduro 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.
"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.
"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/3mbjlwkmb6c...
This is pretty standard for America, nothing new.
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...
Let freedom ring. Every Venezuelan I know is happy for the regime to fall.
Let's hope Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Russia follow soon.
Maduro 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.
A 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.
If this is all true, then China has been pretty much given green light to invade Taiwan, in my opinion.
It’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.
As 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.
I 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.
Should be on the lookout for major upcoming domestic news they're trying to bury.
Notice the hypocrisy of the "explosions reported" title instead of "US bombs Venezuela".
"There's so much oil in here, US is about to invade this dish!"
--Chef Ramsay
So 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.
It’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.
I 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?
If 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.
I 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.
My 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
“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
So we are back to the 1980's CIA actions destabilising South America, each day feels more like Cold War is here.
I'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.
At 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.
Read: 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.
A 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".
On 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.
Replace Venezuela with Iraq, and Maduro with Saddam, and read this whole comment section. We never learn.
Venezuela accuses US after explosions and low-flying aircraft reported in Caracas – 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-rep...
We 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.
Can somebody please explain how was he able to do that without Congress approval?
Hard 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.
If 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/2022/06/8...
Hmm, 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.
That'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 ?
I 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.
There's precedent in the 1989 invasion of Panama and the capture of Manuel Noriega, who was indicted for drug trafficking in the US.
I 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.
It'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.