alt Hacker NewsTrump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
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How much equity in chevron will the federal gov get for this? 20% seems fair.
Will BP want “their” fields back?
I 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.
Does Americans really believe a chief of a big country is state is a drug smuggler?
Dang - is there a way to view all the comments on a story in a single page?
Maduro 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.
Maduro 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
I 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.
It is not about oil but... blue gold[1]
They're American aircraft. It sure seems like after repeatedly threatening to invade Venezuela, Trump is now invading Venezuela. For what though?
I think something like The Hague is the moderate position with this administration.
No 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?
Don't know why, this link gives me:
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Can china use that excuse to do the same thing to Myanmar?
Brazil, Iran and China should be prepared for the worst now
The 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.
It'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_invasio...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-we-want-it-back-...
Wtf
Wondering what and who is going to fill the power vacuum there.
looking 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.
Huh. I thought Greenland was going to be the 51st state.
That's one way to bring down energy inflation...
The 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!
So 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.
Marco 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?
Gotta get those gasoline prices down before the midterms.
1. 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.
There 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.
Just 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.
What a disgrace
Trust in the US is officially broken
arabs 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.
If 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.
So 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?
It’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.
Venezuela's major crime is having natural and human resources that it won't allow multinational corporations to exploit.
Trump'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.
Yup. 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.
Very 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"?
USA, the world's bullying.
Maduro 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
So 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?
It brings joy to my heart every time democracy is brought to an oil rich country, no matter what the price is.
I 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.