As opposed to the highly cohesive and unified way Large corporations with thousands of developers work. A hive mind of likeminded individuals all working towards a single blissful objective with no distractions or competing ambitions. Not a single legacy being kept without reason, only purpose.
"Where was the emphasis on compatibility over design"
Im confused by this line, standards are meant to promote compatibility, not design. They're a way to, well... standardise processes and things. Its almost a given that you'll have to compromise on design to be able to include enough variance to appease the majority of use cases. It is also desirable, I think, of a standard to not give in to edge cases and niche uses and stay as simple as it can to the general use. There will be other niche standards for those and that is a good thing.
Standards survive and die for the same reason they're created, they make things cheaper, faster and easier. Once they fail at those, they give in to newer entrants. Physical standards can also make things safer, but safety must be enforced as people often are bad at judging risk and prefer the other features to a fault.
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.
Yeah, I was mostly surprised about the brazenness of it all. So the plan is to take over the government, take over the oil industry, sell the oil and in infinite grace give the Venezuelans some part of it back (minus of course the "compensation" for the years in which US companies were kept out of the country)
And all that as official doctrine, not even some secret strategy paper or covert ops campaign.
Edit: I had to chuckle at his "reviewing" of the Monroe doctrine as DONroe doctrine. There is "on the nose" and there is "punching someone in the face"...
> minus of course the "compensation" for the years in which US companies were kept out of the country
I don’t want to sound like I’m running coverage for the Americans, but wasn’t a lot of that infrastructure built by foreign multinationals and then expropriated by Chávez in 2007?
> built by foreign multinationals and then expropriated by Chávez in 2007?
If you follow this reasoning - after what happened today - you will get Iran 2.0: Venezuelan boogaloo
I have zero optimism that after this - ordinary Venezuelans will have better outcomes in 10 years time.
Current USA government is some weird klepto-oligrachy. Hates brown people. It’s not doing it out of benevolence to Venezuelans. Venezuelans will get either colonialist resource extraction treatment or some power vacuum will bring just another despot.
It blows my mind anyone can hold this opinion after 10+ years of Trump very publicly spewing racist garbage. Let's just review a few recent examples:
- Claimed Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors' pets
- Currently claiming Somalian immigrants have setup vast networks of fraudulent daycares
- While he's worked diligently to stop immigration from, what he calls, "shithole countries" like Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan, he's advocated for increased immigration from "nice" or "beautiful" countries like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He also specially carved out a special South African Afrikaner refugee status for white South Africans.
- Repeatedly called SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese virus, "kung-flu", etc.
- Told four congresswomen of color (3 of whom were born in the U.S.) to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". A bipartisan resolution was passed in The House condemning these comments as racist.
- And we can go back a long time ago, and remember the Central Park Five, where he relentlessly attacked five innocent black and latino children, calling for the death penalty for them. Even after DNA evidence proved their innocence, Trump never apologized or acknowledged wrongdoing.
Each of these you could try to individually explain away as a misunderstanding or whatever. But there's an abundantly clear pattern of racism, not just with Trump, but much of his administration.
Your comment triggers so many thoughts, but the first one is I'm so friggin' naive, which is embarrassing. In my fantasy world corporations make investment decisions based on risk. They invest in a country like Venezuela and part of the due diligence is evaluating whether things may go sideways, like in any investment, and what plan b is if they do. And if plan b is getting the government to backstop you with money, guns and/or regulations then that would not be a viable strategy.
But, at every level in the US, that plan b is viable. And it's used over and over and over again, from small local businesses with local politicians to the US Federal Government and military for the likes of the oil industry.
At what point do you just accept the truth: that you (me!) are the dumb one because you hold onto this fantasy of how you think things ought to be as opposed to how they are?
Why is plan (b) bad? From my perspective it is certainly how things ought to be. If my property is nationalized in another country by force, I am fully in favor of my country swinging its dick around to get it back.
And what is to say that plan (b) isn't taken into account when doing the risk assessment in plan (a)?
In your world everybody will be at war with each other. The way to deal with the risk of foreign nationalization of your assets is to price it in or to forego the opportunity. Expecting your country to go to war for your private interests is ridiculous. You can go to court if you want and if you lose you'll have to take your lumps.
It must be lovely to exist in a world where you think you can punch someone in the face and nothing will ever happen to you if they don’t respond immediately.
Good thing the window of opportunity for retaliation is now firmly closed and we’ll never see anyone come back years later for revenge.
Unrelatedly, has anyone seen the twin towers lately? I visited NYC for the first time in 30 years and I couldn’t find them anywhere.
Indeed, and that was just a loosely knit organization of US haters that figured if they can't do anything in a direct confrontation maybe an indirect one would work.
One of these days someone is going to set off a nuke in a capital somewhere and we're all going to wonder where that came from...
Incidentally, I believe Bin Laden is in part responsible for Trump's election.
You may have not seen the update, but as per the king we will be running Venezuela.
This isn’t over and out adventures like this tend to create adversaries that bite us in the ass later, even when a competent admin is the one with their hands on the wheel
The US has sent nun rapers all across Latin America, puppet leaders, outright military takeovers, and everything in-between. The people we make enemies with haven't forgiven us for all those things, and I can't imagine there is much remaining unaccounted overlap between people that disagreed with all the other stuff, and those who were ok with the other stuff but not this.
This is one of those weird moments where I have a hard time wondering what new people we can even piss off that somehow weren't already against us from prior LA incursions.
Ordinary citizens were bombed in Caracas. There are videos of such bombings. Please do consider that the loss of the lives of ordinary people is a risk.
I am obviously speaking from the perspective of a superpower or a nation, not my own perspective. To a superpower, the lives of 40 people is indeed "virtually no cost" for the benefit of $17T worth of oil reserves and a favorable regime change.
> Expecting your country to go to war for your private interests is ridiculous.
At the risk of coming across as flippant: Why? I don’t think the math has worked out on most peer conflicts during the past hundred years. The cost of the operation has likely already exceeded the value of whatever infrastructure was left in Venezuela to be reclaimed. But why should we expect courts and bailiffs to enforce the law domestically and not expect soldiers to enforce it internationally?
The benefits definitely do not accrue to you, though. There is no direct or indirect benefit to you supporting the invasion of another country where you can now bomb locals with impunity.
What if military intervention was an explicit part of the investment agreement in the first place? I’m not saying it was, but would it affect your judgement?
Imagine you start a business in another country where the law says your business assets will be seized if you don't file tax form 123(a) before August. That is to say, non-filers don't have any business property rights. And you don't file the form.
Do you:
(Plan A) Realize you fucked up
Or
(Plan B) Send in the military to kidnap the president and take over the country, retroactively claim the law wasn't the law, undo its effects (but only for you) and then change the law so that property rights work exactly the same way they work in your country.
Now you see why people are saying plan B is bad, and would cause everyone to be at war all the time.
> If my property is nationalized in another country by force, I am fully in favor of my country swinging its dick around to get it back.
In this case your property is actually not your property though. Assuming property == oil, then it belongs in Venezuela - you seized control of it but it’s not really yours.
I'm sorry, I can't resist extending your metaphor:
The problem comes when "swinging your dick around" you accidentally get the other country pregnant. Then you have to co-parent the resulting child government, and they are always moody, rebellious, and ungrateful.
As soon as they're standing they run all over the house, painting the walls, breaking things, and costing you gobs of money. You can't ever go out, because the moment your attention wanders even a little they throw a party and invite their hooligan friends over; and wrapping up the party and throwing out their friends is another expensive debacle.
Not to mention the endless shady boyfriends/ girlfriends that parade through the place. They're "just experimenting" they claim: fascism, communism, and dictatorship are just phases they're going through as they explore who they really are.
Eventually they get resentful and want to live on their own. To accomplish this they kick you out of the house, and you end up leaving your car and many other possessions behind, and many times they trash the place as you leave.
If you're lucky, you both mature and you can develop an adult relationship in time. If you're not, they end up beating up their cousins and you have to break up the fights and pay for the broken furniture.
In short: don't swing your dick around, and if you must, be sure to use protection. I'm not sure what that equates to in this metaphor, but it's obvious the U.S. flunked sex-ed.
Of course it's taken into account. Feel like you didn't read what I wrote.
Question back to you: who decides when the government gets involved in getting your property back? You cool with it if they don't do anything to get your property back because of the size of your property; the cost to make it happen; you're not friends with the right person; etc.? Or better yet they don't get yours back but they get your competitor's/neighbor's back? Seems like the thing that happens in these situations is that someone maybe gets their property back and then the dick swings to piss on the people who didn't.
As far as I recall, in Guatemala, United Fruit had undervalued the worth of their land to reduce their taxes. So when they were compensated for the nationalization of their land based on their own valuation, they said that they were under compensated. United Fruit complains helped trigger the US intervention.
That’s the story in every oil producing third world country. Without western countries, and these days China, they would just have oil in the ground because they lack the technology and capital to explore for it and extract it. They want the colonizers to come just long enough to install the oil spigots then leave.
I admittedly don’t know much about the industry, but didn’t most other countries not elect to expropriate the infrastructure? My understanding was that a lot of the problems the Venezuelans are having now arose from alienating themselves from the international supply chains and expertise necessary to maintain the equipment used to extract and refine petroleum.
They just do not want colonizers to steal their country and interfere in their internal decisions. Unfortunately, this is the story with every First World colonizer: they do not agree with that.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. Here, the Venezuelan government invited western oil companies to develop its oil fields. Then they broke the deal and stole the infrastructure the western countries had built.
That’s very different from actual colonization, where countries showed up and expropriated resources the natives were already developing.
Oil companies were apparently compensated, but also allegedly not enough. Companies were awarded further compensation in international arbitration, but Venezuela has avoided fully paying up.
If that's all accurate there are numbers out there for what they owe, and it shouldn't be whatever the POTUS decides.
These countries are also mad at Britain and the Netherlands. In a few decades they’ll be mad at the Chinese too.
If these countries had been smarter they would have negotiated better deals and solicited competition from international companies to get the best terms. But that’s their own fault.
As someone living in a country where all of our oil wealth is being extracted by American corporations - America has a very special talent for "convincing" government officials to sign away their citizen's oil wealth. Not repairing that theft by nationalizing the oil seems more criminal than allowing the corporations to continue
What happens to the infrastructure built or businesses run or labor contributed by “illegal” immigrants who are now deported? Does the USA somehow reverse it and make it disappear?
Such a line of reasoning used to justify this kind of extrajudicial and warlike activity is somewhat similar to France’s nonsensical demand for long term reparations from Haiti for colonial infrastructure.
> What happens to the infrastructure built or businesses run or labor contributed by “illegal” immigrants who are now deported?
I believe “built” here refers to the financiers. Like when someone says “I’m building a house” they mean they’re paying to have a house built, unless they’re actually in the construction business, etc.
You mean the lady that basically called for this invasion, praised Trump and MAGA, promised she would let western companies extract whatever they want in exchange for personal power? Yeah, surely this will end well for Venezuelans.
It’s reasonable for her to say such things in order to get support of the nation most capable of removing Maduro and allowing her to rule. It doesn’t make her a bad person or speak negatively on how effective a ruler she will be.
I missed the part where Jefferson promised Louis the XVIth exclusive access to the colonies' wealth, and then France abducted the King.
Better analogy would be Pinochet's coup. Nationalists calling for the US to coup their own country and place them in charge in exchange for acting like docile puppets to US interests. This is exactly what is happening there, Trump said so a few hours ago.
She could had gotten everything she wanted if she only understood that blowing smoke up Trump's ass isn't good enough anymore. He demands bribes as well.
If $1-6 million buys a pardon, how much buys a country?
Which makes total sense, the military has been Chavismo's strongest asset for as long as it's been a thing
That won't change just because Maduro isn't there, whomever does take control, will need external protection, or the US acting as an unspoken enforcer (Unspoken because "No boots on the ground right now" but "prepared for a second wave")
The military clearly moved (or strategically chose to indicate they wouldn't move) for a paranoid, military-aligned dictator to be captured by a small force with only naval backup exactly when everybody most expected the US to move. Unless there's a faction there that actually likes Machado she may even be lower on the next-leader list than "Maduro pays his captors off with the contents of his offshore accounts, meaningful promises of oil money and empty statements about cracking down on narcotics trade". I assume he has ways of finding out who his loyalists are and who they aren't too...
I suspect there is also consideration of strategy here. The regime's lack of democratic approval is actually a benefit. A client state that has democratic approval has much more leeway to go against its master. A client regime that is unpopular with its population has no other base of support than the powerful country that put it there. This maximizes leverage.
Which implies it's may not be the actual reason. The reason might be as trifling as being salty over Machado getting the Nobel peace prize, and not Trump.
Prepare Canada and Greenland, you can see the standard American right wing response to unchecked war mongering right here.
On a technology note, anyone got any bets on which company gets all the free loot? Did Erik Prince rebrand for the fiftieth time? Seems like he’d be a safe bet.
I'd make the case it depends on who's defining what is and is not a crime.
Consider that the POTUS is a 34x convicted criminal, and yet he not only has total freedom, he literally has the highest quality personal protection ecosystem on the planet, and so much more.
So, who is the criminal here? Which are the crimes? And what is _actually_ going to happen?
He was charged 34 times for the same payment, multiple times per check, because they were entered as payment for lawyer instead of hush money for porn star.
"Falsifying business records" is a not a crime, unless it's done in the pursuit of another crime. The other crime was trying to influence the election (literally his job as a candidate). This is despite the fact that the books were cooked as payment to lawyer in 2017, after the election.
Alvin Bragg, the person who convicted Trump, specifically ran on prosecuting Trump.
It was entirely a political prosecution. If Trump had paid cash, he would have 10000x counts against him, one for each dollar bill.
34x of 4 years means he could have been convicted for a maximum of 134 years. One count for 4 years wasn't enough, they had to give him more time than some serial killers.
The judge specifically postponed the conviction after the election to see if he should receive prison terms or not. He absolutely would have had he lost.
When you're talking about changed laws, are you referring to the civil case against E. Jean Carroll? And when you are talking about "charges that the banks said weren't even an issue" are you talking about the civil fraud case? No banks were victims in the hush money case, which is where the felonies are from.
There was no victim in the hush money case which is why the prosecution was clearly political. Even Andrew Cuomo, Democrat and former NY DA, said that those charges never would have been filed against anyone other than Trump.
What made it a felony under New York law is the claim that the falsified records were intended to conceal another crime, specifically efforts to influence an election.
To a decent approximation, if Trump had not been running for office when he did this, then it wouldn't have been a crime. But then, he wouldn't have cared to cover it up.
Covering up that he got off with a porn star isn't the problem. Like Bill Clinton, it's the actual particulars of the coverup rather than generically that there was a desire to cover up an extramarital affair itself that's the problem.
Technically opening up your neighbor's mailbox is a felony. But in practice you will never be charged for it. Same thing with the hush money case. There is no law that makes covering up an affair illegal while running for office and Trump was not charged with any campaign finance violations. He was charged with the vague crime of "falsifying business records" which, while technically illegal in all cases, in practice is only ever charged if there is a victim who has been defrauded by the falsification. In this case there was none.
The Clinton case is exactly the same concept and is also 100% a politically motivated prosecution. So is the Hunter Biden gun charge. Nobody else ever would have been charged for that.
Yea, I read through the court cases. He got 3rd party valuations on property and just decided to change it on his whim to get a better deal on loans.
I understand that the rich are usually not prosecuted for this fact but if one of us plebs did that and the banks found out, they’d be all over us for fraud.
No, they really wouldn't. People do this all the time. Take the example of the (politically motivated) charges against Leticia James for mortgage fraud. Everybody lies about the house being their primary residence to get a better interest rate and nobody who doesn't piss off politically powerful people are ever charged for it. Fraud is essentially never charged if the loan is paid back.
From what I've heard, "primary residence" is a different issue, something along the line of US banks asking this at time of issue and never checking about updates.
Saying the property is worth more or less than it is… I don't know how this would even happen. The countries in which I've looked at mortgages, the banks don't give an option for a self-assessment. Is the US not like that? Or is it specifically a thing for getting a loan secured on a property that you already own rather than a new purchase?
The point is that in both cases it was a lie on a loan document, which is fraud. Donald Trump's loan was not a simple residential mortgage so the same underwriting process does not apply.
He got materially better rates than he would have based on lower valuations.
Banks have never given me or the other plebs the grace of fucking the risk profile of their investments to our own benefit when it’s found out.
You’re conflating the fact that it’s usually not worth the cost of investigation and enforcement in the event that the loans are paid back, with the idea that it’s not enforced in general
If the bank is stupid enough to give a loan on Donald Trump's own valuations rather than insisting on seeing the third party valuations then they have some employees that need to be fired. The criminal justice system just doesn't get involved in these matters where there are no civil damages, whether you like it or not.
The bank was unaware he had changed the valuation.
Also wasn’t it just for the fraud, it was because this fraud was connected to his attempts to manipulate the election.
If we are going to go further in this conversation I need to know if you can point to an action he has taken that you think is bad, other than appointing someone he turned on later.
You need to stop repeating things that are not true. His charges had nothing to do with the election. They were "falsifying business records". This law has nothing to do with elections and it is not a arguable point. Also, "manipulate the election" is a completely meaningless phrase.
Nope, you can't argue out of both sides of your mouth on the electoral bit.
Yes people are rarely prosecuted for this crime, because its usually not worth finding out and dealing with. His was found because in this particular instance his crimes were found because he was committing them while trying to manipulate the election via hush money payments that were connected.
You're either one of the sanewashers for this guy or the ones who fell for his shtick, but just because he's constantly committing crime all the time, including while engaging in politics, doesn't mean he has an aura of protection because of it
That isn't manipulating the election. It has absolutely nothing to do with the election whatsoever. NDAs to cover up embarrassing personal matters have always been legal.
I don’t have anything to say further to you. I cannot help you reason your way out of an emotional position and if you think the stormy Daniel’s shit wasn’t done to hide the story during a campaign then you are in an emotional position.
Of course it was done for the campaign. But that isn't illegal, which is why he was not charged with any campaign finance related charges. You really can't seem to get that through your head, can you?
You do know that "it" can refer to two different things at different times, right? In this case the action, which had everything to do with the election, and the charges, which had nothing to do with it.
You are confusing different cases. The one he was convicted for was falsifying business records. That was an open and shut case where no banks were involved and no law has to be changed.
There were a couple of dpdgy cases against him but he was not convinced of any of them.
I'm a Norwegian without direct skin in the game, but according to these[1][2] sources it was "§ 175.10 Falsifying business records in the first degree"[3], stated to be a class E felony in New York.
Penal Law Section 175.10
Falsifying business records in the first degree
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof. Falsifying business records in the first degree is a class E felony.
Falsifying business records with intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime.
The 'another crime' was never specified.
I guess he joins all the other people convicted of falsifying business records with an intent to commit another crime unspecified.
It does seem a bit made up for him. I'm sure lots of people have errors in their business reporting and how do you defend against being accused of an unspecified crime?
I'm not really a Trump fan but I think it would have been much better to prosecute him for something real like trying to steal the 2020 election than the above silliness that was just ignored and let him get back into office.
> Consider that the POTUS is a 34x convicted criminal
To be fair, they were political persecutions and show trials just so that people like you could write that sentence and help the Democrat Party keep the presidency.
I’m not saying Trump is innocent in life, so don’t mistaken what I am saying for that. I am clearly and specifically saying that the 34 convictions are a joke and that only the gullible and the zealots buy into them.
Isn't the 34 counts due to the fact that the trial concluded that Trump paid Daniels via Cohen but hidden the payment as "legal expenses" and therefore falsified 34 different documents?
It is not like they invented extra fake actions that Trump did not do, it is all part of the same fraud. Either you recognize that Trump was guilty in this affair, and he gets X counts of fraud, X being a large number due to the number of document involved (and maybe someone can argue on the exact count, but 34 or 28 is not a big difference, so it is a different argument that move the goalpost), or Trump was not guilty at all. You cannot really say "well, Trump is guilty for the first 2 counts, but then not the 32 other counts": how can he be guilty in one document and not be guilty in the other which is basically identical except for the date?
Also, isn't a large number of counts of conviction pretty common in case of fraud? (for exactly the reason I've given: the falsification of each document counts for 1 count)
People who claims that 34 counts of conviction is the result of a political persecutions seems to have no idea that 1) this is usually how it works, this is usually what people get for fraud, there was no special treatment for Trump, 2) pretending that it was maybe 1 or 2 counts of felony but not 34 does not make any sense, 3) even if they wanted, it would not have been possible for the trial to conclude "just 1 or 2 counts", and it is therefore ridiculous to pretend that this number is the result of a political bias where they choose the higher number just to be mean toward Trump.
> and help the Democrat Party keep the presidencty
You're writing your own narrative there bud. I'm not even a USA citizen, I have literally zero ability to influence the USA electorate to any degree. So cut the rhetoric, it's tiring and frankly destructive to real discussion.
I'm neither gullible nor a zealot. Trump has a long standing history of ripping people off for many millions of dollars, regardless of the currency. There's an endless supply of receipts, give me a break.
And that's long before we even consider that he's literally operating illegal wars (not approved by congress), which _is_ breaking USA law.
There are different categories of crimes and violations.
You can call it "The penal code", "Common law", or "Crimes" (as opposed to violations).
And in almost all countries in the world the list is the same and has been for hundreds of years: Murder, robbery, theft, rape, battery and so on.
Do you think people walking the streets of Washington DC are less safe because of crimes such as those Trump was convicted of? Or are their main concern murder, robbery, theft, rape, battery and such?
Edit: Of course my comment nets a hacker down vote instead of a discussion, but for example Nordic countries make a difference between "crimes" and "illegal things" in their laws. And so do South American countries.
The United States has the "felonies" category, which is very comparable. But they also include victimless and non-serious crimes such as tax evasion and copyright infringement.
One batch of crimes is awfully much worse than the other. That is what law takes into account. Dismissing Trump's public safety measures in Washington because he himself has been criminally convicted is what I myself would call "intellectual gymnastics". But sadly also typical of hackers, who seem to forget to feel empathy with the victims of street crime.
Trump definitely killed probably 100s of thousands of people, with how he handled COVID, and USAID. The law doesn’t consider those as murders, but it’s quite obvious that they were.
Also, the laws of the world have definitely not had the same list for hundreds of years, and the old ideas of those things are somewhat different to the modern versions. For example, for most of those hundreds of years, "rape" wasn't just about intercourse, it was about kidnapping (same etymology as "rapture": snatch and carry off). This is specifically why spousal rape, in the modern usage of the term, needed to be added to the statue books: little to no thought given to the idea of a husband kidnapping their own wife.
Also on that list for hundreds of years: charging interest on loans.
Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote sounds like an admission of sexual battery to me. Now, it's important to note that I'm not a lawyer, but here's the thing: lawyers have also said this about that quote.
Even if you ignore all the stuff about Epstein, even if you limit yourself to just that self-chosen set of goalposts, he's a wrong-un.
> Also, the laws of the world have definitely not had the same list for hundreds of years
You're correct. The list has been the same for thousands of years, not hundreds. Since the great Hammurabi. Then it has been added on to, and very rarely redefined. As in the good example you give.
> Also on that list for hundreds of years: charging interest on loans.
Usury is still a crime, but has been redefined away by legislators. Just as rape is again being redefined away in some countries right now.
Now back to the topic at large:
> Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote sounds like an admission of sexual battery to me.
> Trump has lost lawsuits related to sexual abuse
If you go to walk the streets in Washington DC, would you be afraid of Mr. Trump charging out of the White House to sexually abuse you, perhaps grabbing you by your genitals? Or stealing your purse? Or would you be more concerned about your more common criminal doing something like that?
Because the hacker above claims Trumps crimes somehow negates public safety campaigns in Washington DC.
> You're correct. The list has been the same for thousands of years, not hundreds. Since the great Hammurabi.
No it hasn't.
First, I've read some of the code of Hammurabi. Fun stuff like this:
7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death.
…
110. If a "sister of a god" open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.
…
282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.
(Also, bit of fun, number 6: "If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death." - to which I point at the photos of all those documents he was supposed to return after his first term in a bathroom in Mar a Lago).
Second, I've also read Leviticus. Fun stuff like this:
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD.
and
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.
To quote others on this:
The "Law of Moses" in ancient Israel was different from other legal codes in the ancient Near East because transgressions were seen as offences against God rather than solely as offences against society (civil law).[6] This contrasts with the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100–2050 BCE), and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BCE, of which almost half concerns contract law).
> Then it has been added on to, and very rarely redefined.
Oh gods no. Even the Christian Bible has seen significant politicised re-translations, famously with the King James Bible, but also fundamentally the New Testament itself is a refutation of almost all Torah law.
Even just within European Christian nations, there's been huge variations of what was allowed. 1066 England, Normans became a ruling military elite over the now-conquered Anglo-Saxon population, a native Englander killing a Norman triggered severe penalties, but a Norman killing an Englander did not.
And I've not even touched on Islamic law, the range of things in pre-contact Americas, across Africa, across the east Indies, in Asia.
Not all cultures even have a concept of personal property for theft to be a coherent concept. You may object that you said "countries", but go back pre-Westphalia and you don't even find something we'd really recognise as countries.
> Usury is still a crime, but has been redefined away by legislators.
That's tautologically false: if something is "still" a crime it cannot also "have been redefined away by legislators".
> Just as rape is again being redefined away in some countries right now.
"Away"?
At most, I'm seeing a return to the old definition (IIRC, this would include Russia?)
> If you go to walk the streets in Washington DC, would you be afraid of Mr. Trump charging out of the White House to sexually abuse you, perhaps grabbing you by your genitals?
Given I'm not his type, too old and too male, that's a silly question.
If I had a teenage daughter, I'd avoid DC just in case.
> Or stealing your purse? Or would you be more concerned about your more common criminal doing something like that?
I would not fear a common criminal stealing my purse before or now.
Trump, however, I would fear ordering his people locking me up with a demand that I hand over money to make the problem go away.
It's not like he's obeying the constitution or anything.
> Because the hacker above claims Trumps crimes somehow negates public safety campaigns in Washington DC.
Just look at the subject of this very thread: he's essentially just stolen an entire nation.
The run-up to this involved ordering the deaths of 114 confirmed dead plus 1 more missing presumed dead, by way of the strikes on alleged(!) drug boats, when actual convictions even if those boats had reached US waters would not have been death penalties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_alleg...
This, *by itself*, is about twice the difference in DC homicides between 2024 and 2025, 187 -> 128.
I would add that for vast swaths of time in a lot of areas of the world in between Hammurabi and now, there wasn't even a written code of law, it was more based on customs. Rome did not have written laws for the first 300 years of its founding. A friend I was talking about this was in disbelief when I mentioned this.
Good point. That Rome fact raised my eyebrow, but then I remembered how low literacy has been historically, and the eyebrow returned to the usual position.
Because the basic crimes are so universally understood and detested, that there needs to be nothing written. Murder, theft, robbery, etc. Every person knows from birth that those things are wrong, and it takes severe brain washing for people to change their minds on it.
Have inconsistent definitions over time. Hence my example of legalised murder in post-Norman conquest England, and cultures without personal property where theft is a nonsensical concept.
Also, just ask around left- and right-coded answers to "is taxation theft?", or in the US specifically "is abortion murder?" or "is the death penalty just state-sanctioned murder?"
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"
And, pertinently to this thread, when is a military action murder vs. not murder? There's lawyers looking at the videos of Venezuelan boats being destroyed saying "the US murdered those people". Is one of the sides here, pro or con it doesn't matter which, a victim of "severe brain washing"?
Similar disagreements (albeit by non-lawyers) are had regarding all wars I recall in my lifetime.
The existence of grey zones doesn't negate the existence of clear cut cases.
You can argue for or against anything by quoting edge cases. That doesn't mean that every case is an edge case. Very few cases are edge cases.
> There's lawyers looking at the videos of Venezuelan boats being destroyed saying "the US murdered those people". Is one of the sides here, pro or con it doesn't matter which, a victim of "severe brain washing"?
What's the argument being made? That's war, which is of course murder. A soldier's job is to murder the enemy.
As for your examples, they are probably not as certain as you think. Good luck secretly taking somebody's favourite hunting spear from him and then tell him that personal property doesn't exist.
Congratulations on knowing that people have different perspectives on most things, and that these can vary through time and through places. You are not the only person who knows this. What is interesting are the common values which sprung up in different cultures, different times and different places.
If somebody murders your child or your sibling, you are going to be outraged if you are a human. Only severe brainwashing and total dehumanization could make a person react in a different way.
I appreciate your reply very much, it was nice reading. But between you and me, I sense that you might be getting a bit too high on your own supply of intelligence.
Certain crimes tend to be low in dictatorships, so I don't think that's a good indicator of anything.
What about the storming of the Capitol 6th January? The criminals got pardoned and the people investigating the crimes conducted that day were fired. This shows that Trump does not care about law and order at all, only about personal power and control.
The policy that led to a collapse in oil production in a petro state? The policy that led to an economic collapse so severe that 20% of the population has emigrated? That's the policy you call defensible?
That was the policy that allowed him to build a social welfare state for people tired of being exploited. Famine decreased, life expectancy increased, and the HDI became high. Unfortunately, this ended when the country was sanctioned and embargoed.
Why do these strong, socialist countries anyways need US trade to function?
The Venezuelan economy was dying before the sanctions.
Burning the economy to hand out free money isn't good for the people.
Maduro and Chavez fixed the exchange rate, imposed price controls, printed money and did a wave of nationalisation (not the oil infrastructure that was in the 70s). USA isn't to blame for Venezuelan dysfunction.
> socialist countries anyways need US trade to function
Sanctions go way beyond just direct trade with the US; they attempt to prevent all countries on earth from trading with the sanctioned entity, by force of the USD settling system, or as the past week has shown - the US Navy. So it reduces the number of potential trading partners from hundreds to a handful with (near) reserve currencies, and a navy that's not a pushover.
Now I hate your typical south american dictator just like the next guy and know a thing or two from the ground about what sort of instability and crime wave his regime caused across much of South America, but some reality check - if US blocks you from selling oil and you are a regular country and not a china/russia, you practically can't sell oil, not in stable big numbers that can contribute to economy. Yes bits here and there on black market for much lower price, but thats it. And all oil is sold in USD, hence the popular 'petrodolar' expression, and US will fight till its last soldier and missile to keep that status.
Also tells you how serious US is with sanctioning russia and its army of oil&gas resellers btw, which is the primary cash flow financing russian war in Ukraine.
Chavez actually did quite well in the early years. I'm not sure he nationalized oil but took greater amounts of the revenue in tax and used it for positive things for the people. It went downhill after a while with many of the problems common to communist policy though.
He was awful from the start, sending political opponents to prison and transferring oil money to himself and his croneys, but he claimed to be taking from the rich to give to the poor, so the Western left lapped it all up. It took them years to realise what he was actually doing (from the start).
He could give a hell of a speech. I've listened to him make speeches where pretty much everything he said was correct from a policy standpoint. The problem was he was an incompetent administrator running a personality cult.
I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky and what has recently come out about his social time with Epstein. He would talk about how the media only allows leftist thought in public as a sort of controlled opposition. Then he turns out to be exactly what he was complaining about. One moment he's calling Steve Bannon the enemy and the next he is smiling with him and Epstein, in a photo I've heard multiple people describe as "the happiest they have ever seen him".
All this is to say: it's not enough to "say the right things". Your actions have to match.
Chavez was corrupt but the people he replaced were also corrupt. Even when Venezuela was "rich", most of the people were poor and felt like they weren't benefiting from it. The US is probably going push Venezuela to that prior state, where the country is rich on paper but most people are struggling, setting up a call for another Chavez. That assumes the US can just waltz into the country and take complete control, which is probably not going to happen.
> Better some people are poor than everybody is poor
Well, technically it's only better for the few that are not poor, for all of the others, it's the same. It's even probably worse because rich people in a country with mostly poor people tend to be very efficient with capturing most of the value produced by the others.
He also indicated they will work directly with Maduro's second in command, not the putative winning candidate from the last election. This is purely about theft.
In the eyes of the US, the expropriation of American assets in Venezuela [0] and then selling them to Russian [1], Chinese [2], and Indian [3] interests was theft.
Russian-US relations are tense for the same reasons due to the saga of Sakhalin-I's nationalization from Exxon [4] following the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine and Russia's sale of Exxon's stake to Japanese [5] and Indian [6] interests.
The previous administration also stopped Saudi and UAE from invading Qatar in 2017 [7] due to Rex Tillerson's personal interests with Exxon's stake in Qatar's energy infra [8]
That said, assuming the US doesn't attempt a Venezuelan version of de-Baathification [9], this should be a fairly standard transfer of power - US-Venezuela relations only really tanked when Maduro came to power and hard pivoted Eastward, as even under Chavez American business operations continued and the relationship wasn't severely tense. And from the sounds of it, the faction backing Delcy Rodriguez chose to give Maduro up and (reading between the lines) roll back nationalization in return for staying in power.
Almost everything in political science can be modeled using Tsebelis's Veto Player model, Mesquita's Selectorate Theory, Kuran's Revolutionary Threshold, and the Agency Problem.
In a nutshell - "might makes right". Also, Maduro was charged all the way back in 2020 in SDNY [0]. I am not a lawyer, but SDNY is almost always used because most high profile cases have some sort of economic crimes component, which inevitabely leads to Manhattan (Rayiner can jump in and corroborate or correct this statement).
If someone pushes back on DoJ authority, the Trump admin will point to Juan Orlando Hernandez's (Honduras) indictment in 2021 [1] and get an opportunity to bash the Biden admin and call out "double standards" for his base. If not, then this will stand. That's why I find the drug indictment angle interesting - it seems that it is being used in lieu of the now revoked FCPA because it also gives the ability to leverage physical force whereas the former only really gave an economic lever.
Essentially, the rules-based consensus was a 1989-2014 era anomaly, and we already made a return to multi-polar power competition. Most foreign policy leaders under Obama 2 onwards have all been "realists" like Allison, Doshi, Mastro, and Colby and the worry of great power competition has been the primary topic of conversation for almost 2 decades now.
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
This is all irrelevant - it's completely unacceptable for the US President to send the military into another without Congressional approval, and to kidnap a leader at all (especially without a declaration or war or UN authorization).
The War Powers Act actually does allow this. Congress has to be back filled within 48 hours after the action (and they were). He can also station troops up to 60 days without congressional approval.
As Jonathan Turley reports https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt... this operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant (issued by the Biden DOJ and outstanding since 2029) and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega in 1989 - which was tested in multiple US courts. So like it or not there is longstanding court affirmed precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.
Does this mean trump will be pardoning Maduro on receipt of a sufficiently large bribe? That seems like the only explanation for recent pardon of former Honduran president Juan Hernandez.
Even before Trump v. United States, Maduro would have enjoyed immunity as a head of state. They still need him as a source of info on the generals. And if the drug smuggling explanation works, cartel details justifying maneuvers in Mexico.
So a thought experiment: If China were to put out a warrant for Trump's (the most unpopular president in US History, someone the majority of Americans disapprove of, a convicted criminal, and a pedophile who raped young people and has not been brought to account for these crimes as of yet) under the pretense that some of his victims were Chinese nationals and then invaded the Whitehouse to forcibly remove him to China, would that also be legal and justified ? What would you expect the reaction in the US to be ?
To be very clear I do not support this -- out leaders should be held to account to their people, not foreign invaders deciding for us. Even if it seems unlikely that they ever will be, it's our process and people.
This argument doesn't really hold water because the jurisdiction of a nation isn't the whole world.
If we have a warrant for a Sovereign or someone else with Diplomatic Immunity we -- at the very least -- should not invade their territory to carry it out. That's not how the civilized society works, and that's not how we want it to work as evidenced by the thought experiment above.
If we are at war with a nation or people, and reject the premise of their fundamental sovereign or diplomatic nature of course it's a different story since we are talking about a fundamental disagreement of reality. There's a separate process for that weighty decision by the US people's representatives.
well, there are ICC warrants. They do ignore diplomatic immunity. And opinion of many people that, for example, Netanyahu should be at least arrested if he lands in Europe and at most "somebody" should send extraction team to kidnap him
It seems like we should not invade another sovereign country unless we are at war -- a weighty process we should undergo because it's how the will of the people manifest in power.
The US isn't a participant to the ICC, so I'm not sure what exactly your implication is... ?
I do not think we should invade Israel and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of that country should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't think China should invade the US and kidnap it's leader. I believe the people of the US should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't believe the US should invade Venezuela and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of Venezuela should self-govern within their sovereign rights.
i was pointing out that diplomatic immunity (of head of state) that you mention is trashed by ICC warrants (in countries who are party to it. i.e. good chunk of europe).
so, in the moment that something as basic as diplomatic immunity can be violated by warrants for investigation (not for trial), invading another country to arrest somebody based on warrants that you had issued domestically is not that big of leap
You are talking about a after a country has decided that they want to participate in the this process by ratifying their participation intentionally. How does this relate to a unilateral invasion ?
Vienna Convention (1961): This treaty standardized the rules, making diplomatic immunity a binding obligation for its over 190 signatory nations
And then comes ICC (via Rome statue, ratified by 125 countries and half a dozen of them in process of withdrawal) and trashes with it warrants diplomatic immunity.
So in case international law/treaty from 1961 is all of sudden not binding, why wouldn't uniliteral invasion (actually it looks like it more of arrest operation) (which is probably prohibited by some other international treaties) not be ok ?
I do not understand the point you are making. You cite a treaty that countries explicitly agree to protect diplomats while they are guests in another country -- I'm not sure what relationship this has with one sovereign nation using force to rendition someone from another country.
The only country that has agreed to the terms of the ICC here is Venezuela -- but there is no ICC arrest warrant for anyone involved, nor is the US acting on behalf of the ICC nor does it have any authority to do so.
The invasion (which was required to perform the arrest, since it was within the territory) was definitely an invasion and morally wrong.
As noted several times, there are many ways that this could have been done that are in accordance with civil society it. It wasn't, and that is bad.
my point is that diplomatic immunity is international law. signatories to rome statue said that they will violate it (diplomatic immunity of Israeli head of state) because of icc warrant.
this is violation of international law that multiple countries openly stated that they will perform.
essentially it means that international law is not binding and selectively enforced. this is slippery slope.
if you can ignore vienna convention why not ignore whatever other part of international law that prohibits invasion ?
PS. UK and France just bombed ISIS in Syria. Is it also invasion and morally wrong ?
I still do not understand your point because as you state there is no conflict between the two agreements, and further there are no pair countries involved that mutually agreed to the ICC:
- Diplomatic Immunity (through various treaties): Countries that participate will respect diplomats
- ICC: Countries that agree will participate in ICC judicial process
From what I can tell, you seem to be under the impression that there's some conflict here. If that is your position then you are wrong. A country can both simultaneously respect foreign diplomats and work with the ICC to ensure that local citizens are held accountable in the ICC.
BUT, a further point -- international law can never be binding. It's between sovereign peers, and is based on the concept of reciprocal benefit. International treaties give the participants some benefit in exchange for something else. This has to be the case because there is no superior entity to arbitrate violations of the law. If you don't keep up your end of the bargain, you risk the other participants not keeping up their end of the bargain.
This is, for example, why having the top US officials committing war crimes is bad -- it's not because some superior nation will inflict justice upon the violator (because no such entity exists) but because other signatories have no legal obligation to not commit war crimes against us (although, many people are morally opposed to most war crimes and wouldn't commit them anyway).
A further note about your PS, which seems unrelated to the topic is that bombing isn't itself an invasion (it may be part of one), but for my opinion I think that killing people without due process is bad and should be a last resort for defense.
I've had some additional time to reflect on this thread and I think I can spot the core disconnect.
Do you believe that the Vienna Convention requires that countries treat their diplomatic representatives in some special legal way ? For example, do you believe that the Vienna Convention obligates the US to extend diplomatic immunity to the US Ambassador to France ?
If so, that's backwards. It doesn't obligate one country to treat their own diplomats specially inside their own legal system, it defines how participants of the treaty will treat FOREIGN diplomats. The benefit of being part of the treaty is that your diplomats are treated specially when they are in foreign lands, and the cost is you treat foreign diplomats specially when they are in your land.
The currency of treaties is reciprocity.
A treaty can never be binding, there exists no superior entity for which to bring your appeal which can then ultimately use their monopoly on force to extract justice -- each nation is sovereign and a peer in that respect.
Finally, I didn't address your last paragraph but I will now: It does not matter if the USA calls it a law enforcement operation and not invasion, it was still an invasion. It was an invasion because it meets the definition of the word. But ALSO it wasn't a law enforcement operation because the laws of the US do not apply in Venezuela. Also, it's illegal in the US to use the US Military for enforcing US laws except in times of invasion... although it sadly specifies that the US must be the entity being invaded, not just there be an invasion.
So it sounds to me like you are stating that you are okay with the original premise that it would be okay for China to come to the US Whitehouse and forcibly remove Trump to China to stand trial for the crimes he may have committed against Chinese nationals ?
I would love to live in a world where every government was democratically elected by an informed populace and never tried to assert authority outside it's borders.
> not how this works
When you say this, what exactly are you referring to?
Just because something is happening doesn't mean it's according to the law or even morally justified. We are discussing whether it is lawful, not whether it actually happened or whether they are capable of doing it with or without consequences.
You believe in something which has never existed and will never exist. In international relations, there has never been anything besides "might is right". Anything else is an illusion. At most something that leaders pay lip service to, when it aligns with their own goals.
The law of the jungle is reality. World War II was won by terror bombing civilians. It is lamentable, but reality is reality. So to say "that's not how it works" is denying reality.
“Never”? Not once in the Story of Us has any dispute between large groups of humans been resolved by anything other than a superior application of brute force? Strong claim, but I’ll run with it.
And you appear to believe this is a pretext for humans to ignore their own laws and commit atrocities, when they could choose otherwise.
It may be reality that jungle law is currently how humans almost always handle conflict at nation-state scale. Non sequitur that it should remain so.
Unfortunately thats how the politics and economics of violence work when you are the most powerful country in the world (n.b. I am not American and think this situation is deplorable, but the legal facts and construction support Trump’s actions)
You act as if they don't have loopholes for this or that there will be consequences when the military industrial complex is behind things. Were there any consequences for Iraq WMD BS
Why? It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges. In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
This is wrong and hilariously short sighted. Other countries don't respect America due to military might - they do so because of decades of mutually beneficial trade agreements. Soft power is infinitely more useful than hard power.
Both play a significant role. Many countries absolutely respect us because of our military might. They rely on it because they don't want to divert funding from welfare to build out their own militaries. As such, they ally with us, creating inroads to trade et al.
Obviously, there's more than just military might, we have the most innovative and powerful economy on the planet as well.
However, with a country like Venezuela, where none of our allies truly care what we do (sure, they might blow hot air but whatever), we are free to use hard power to achieve our objectives.
People who don't live in a superpower. People who care about international law. People who would rather the most powerful countries didn't act like bullies whenever it suits their interests.
"Who cares?" was glib on my part, I admit. It was obviously stated from the perspective of an American relying on that power, towards other Americans.
However, international law has always been a thin veneer over the reality of international relations. History shows that nations act in their own self-interest, regardless of the "rules."
The concept of one country "bullying" another is irrelevant moralizing. You are applying playground rules (or the rules of civil society) to a global stage defined by anarchy: there is no "teacher" to stop the "bullying" here. It is a zero-sum game of security and power. At this level, "bullying" isn't a meaningful concept, only leverage is.
Should the world be this way? I wish not. Political realism is a grim framework. Unfortunately, game theory tells us that so long as any one superpower believes in realism, the rest of us must as well, or risk getting outmaneuvered. And Russia/China certainly believe in it.
The United Nations was created to avoid future world wars by managing conflicts. If the US decides as the world's superpower to go on an imperialist rampage through the Americas without regard for what the UN, Europe or Russia & China thinks, eventually the rest of the world is going to team up like the Allies during WW2.
The UN is simply ignored by all superpowers, and many lesser powers. Failed experiment. It is, at best, a forum for communication, but with no real enforcement capacity of any "rules."
> "Who cares?" was glib on my part, I admit. It was obviously stated from the perspective of an American relying on that power, towards other Americans.
> there is no "teacher" to stop the "bullying" here.
It's funny how the same person can mention "realism" and then proceed to "leverage" in the same conceptual realm of thought about the present day US. Just wait until three to four (insignificantly) smaller powers collude, target, and act against you like hyennas do, then try applying your leverage of ... what exactly?
"Realism" is not being used in the sense of the colloquial word, but as in "political realism," the framework that governs international relations between most superpowers today and in which "leverage" through hard or soft power is the core concept.
That's explicitly been the case since 45 was elected a second time. Even if we get an adult in charge again, there is no guarantee of stability anymore with the way the population is.
Like who? Biden a puppet with dementia, Obama invading Libya and helping kill Gadaffi (and actually killing his family), as well as drone strikes on individuals in lots of middle eastern countries, Bush and Iraq/Afghanistan, Clinton and .. Iraq? but also war on drugs and Mexico border fence. Previous Bush - Iraq again?? Before that, South America again.
Biden became worse in the last year, but he wasn't a 'puppet', certainly not like the current president is. I'm not a fan of Obama's actions but he at least gave justification instead of inventing it and lying like Bush.
Kamala was the obvious choice and the only adult running in the last election, but she lost largely due to sexism, racism and gullibility of the red state population.
Assuming we get to have another election, we'd hopefully have someone like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren.
Democratic rejected Kamala resoundingly in the primaries, and then the Democratic leadership tried to force her down everyone's throat. That's on them, not the voters. They asked people to eat a sandwich some shit on it instead of a shit sandwich and not surprisingly voters weren't too enthused.
No, it's on the voters, 100%. A primary would have been messy. She may not have been everyone's first choice, but she was 100% the responsible choice. People screwed over the country out of spite, but that's 100% in line with how immature and uneducated the US population is. Not to mention bigoted in various ways.
Obviously she was not everyone's first choice. She was almost no one's first choice. Democrat voters let her know that when they only gave her ~7% support in the 2020 primaries. Maybe a messy primary that everyone feels a part of would have been better than a few leaders of the Democratic party attempting to anoint the next president. Maybe you think it was the responsible choice, but that certainly isn't what Obama thought in 2024, since he was pushing for open primaries before his hand was forced into endorsing Harris.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both performed significantly better than Harris did in the 2020 primaries. Maybe one of them would have been the responsible choice.
> Obviously she was not everyone's first choice. She was almost no one's first choice.
Right, but that's irrelevant. It doesn't matter that she wasn't the ideal choice, it only matters that she was so much significantly better than the alternative.
Clearly that was a miscalculation then. Maybe because when people vote, most people don't think "Who is better - Trump or Harris?", they think "Do I like my party's nominee?"
Bernie Sanders vs. Trump. That would have been interesting. Two populists, but also two geriatric white men. Trump would have the advantage of insults and better media savvy, but Bernie would have the advantage of not being Trump (and not being tied to Biden either).
If Trump successfully stole the election in 2021, I'm sure there would have been many Americans who would be happy for Canada or England or France to capture him and put him on trial..
That will really be up to the new Venezuelan regime to decide whether it was an act of war or not. I don't think Maduro will have much ability to declare it as such.
Is your position that if someone commits a coup, some other country or the international community can't go in and uninstall that person from power?
Regardless of whether the leader of a country was a dictator, elected or not, another country going in and kidnapping the acting leader within the borders of his own country is an act of war.
This doesn't depend on what the successors think. They might later declare this act of war was necessary for the liberation or whatever, but it's still an act of war.
You may agree with the act, but it's an act of war.
Well, I'm certain Maduro considered it an act of war. But he's not president any more. Does the current President of Venezuela consider it an act of war?
> Well, I'm certain Maduro considered it an act of war. But he's not president any more.
It doesn't matter what Maduro thinks. It doesn't matter whether he's a bad guy or a dictator. The situation after the fait accompli also doesn't matter.
What matters is that the military of a country crossing the borders of another country without permission, to conduct a military operation, and kidnapping the (de facto or legal, doesn't matter) leader of said country is an act of war.
There's no "it depends". It might be a justified act of war, but it's an act of war.
It boggles the mind that you dispute this. You seem to be confused, mentally adding "evil" or "illegal" to the words "act of war".
> Does the current President of Venezuela consider it an act of war?
> Is your position that if someone commits a coup, some other country or the international community can't go in and uninstall that person from power?
I find the assumptions behind your question fascinating.
Where did I say anything about what a country can or cannot do? A country can do whatever its military might and ability to absorb repercussions allows it to do.
This is completely unrelated to whether the path the country does decide to take constitutes an act of war or not.
If you're asking me whether I like that the US is playing world police and deciding who must face the law, and take them by force anywhere in the world, weeeell... let's say it's really messy to try to justify the US when it supports some coups, some dictators, and some brutal regimes, but acts against others, and the overall rule seems to be "if they play ball with the US it's ok, if they don't then war".
A small consolation is that the US is seemingly stopping their horrifying practice of extraordinary renditions and torturing suspects abroad, outside the scrutiny of US society and institutions. I think that was Bush era, but maybe it persisted during Obama too.
> It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges.
Invading a foreign country with military force is a war even if the purpose is to effect an arrest. And when the President claims that the intent is also that the US will run the country afterwards, its even more clearly a war.
> In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
Congress had already exercised its power to declare war with an open-ended declaration almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, which covered the operation direct against the head of al-Qaeda.
I have yet to see it in this thread, but the WSJ reported that the "crime" they "extradited" him for is running a drug cartel and dumping tons of cocaine into the US.
I know this is what they claim (well, they also say because of oil and because he was friends with US rivals, but that's less defensible), but anyone really believe this is about drugs? Was there ever any proof Maduro was a cartel boss?
They are getting their message very confused. Is this about drugs? About the Venezuelan elections? About oil? All of the above? None of the above? Who knows anymore.
Bombing a capital city and kidnapping its political leader and hijacking its oil tankers is not the same thing at all. Not to mention Pakistan was and is officially an ally of America, and despite them harboring terrorists, officially Osama was a criminal there too.
Look, you don't just regime change, It didn't work in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. It only really kinda worked in Kosovo, but even then it was touch and go, require lots of troop time and a load of money and ongoing international police.
And yet, it's not a justification for what was done there, and it's not a justification for what was done in this case either. Wasn't a justification in Iraq with Saddam for that matter. I remember the day the Iraqis pulled that statue down, they seemed very happy to be able to do that. And then...
My understanding is that the US military is not so great at the "hearts and minds" game, to put it politely. It doesn't take much time for locals to be outraged by macho assholes acting like they own the place. Makes the recently dethroned dictator look somewhat decent in comparison.
if we’re going to steelman we have to acknowledge that many venezualans liked him too.
we can’t simultaneously say we don’t like corruption of socialist governments while literally bombing another nation and imprisoning political enemies just so we can have its oil for our cronies.
Trump said Machado doesn't have support to be leader and endorsed Maduro's VP as willing to work with the US. It seems unlikely the Venezuelan people are going to see any benefits here. They will get more of the same.
There should be a sitcom where Assad, Yanukovich, Snowden, and the Venezuelan VP are sharing an apartment in Moscow. In the Christmas episode, Putin shows up and teaches them the true meaning of Christmas.
Trumps approval rating isn't great either but I doubt many people would see that as justification for another country kidnapping him in the middle of night to charge him with "has an army with machine guns" before taking American oil
If Trump made himself king and dragged the US so far into corruption and poverty that another country could so easily capture us, yeah I'd be fine with them bagging him.
On top of that, I don't think the common Venezuelan laborer was getting much benefit out of the Maduro regime capturing the oil wealth. From the point of view of the less fortunate, there isn't much difference between a Venezuelan elite enriching themselves off the local oil vs an American elite enriching themselves off the local oil.
Claims of sovereignty are meaningless, what happens is whether those claims hold up in real life, and in this case they clearly don't.
A country is either powerful enough to enforce sovereignty, or it is not actually sovereign; so this hand-wringing about "Venezuela's sovereignty" is meaningless. It's already been proven false, to some extent.
The US is free to do what it wants with Venezuela, or virtually any non-nuclear country in the world. Always has been, really. It simply doesn't exercise said power very often.
Is this then a call to assassinate local politicians you don't agree with? Some might makes right thing? We're all at least momentarily able to overpower or mortally harm one another, but often don't choose to. Why do you think that is?
You seem to be mistaking my comment for a moral stance.
I am not making a call to do anything, I am simply describing the nature of international relations throughout the vast majority of human history (including the current day), in a framework most commonly defined as realism.
Superpowers act in their self interest, ignoring "international law" when the benefit meaningfully exceeds the cost. They can do this because there is no one to stop them. They will do this because it is in their self interest.
Americans will probably benefit from this action, or at least that is the administration's thesis. Is it moral? No, but discussions of morality are irrelevant on the world stage, which is a zero-sum game defined only by leverage.
I think I assumed you're commenting for a reason because it doesn't make sense to make these comments otherwise - they're more or less vacuously true, and there's no value to them outside of an assertion of some sort.
> the world stage, which is a zero-sum game
I'm not at all convinced this is true.
You should think about the question posed in my first comment - why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want?
svnt and HN's misunderstanding of international relations and the concept of "sovereignty" is what my comment is directed at: in discussions about superpowers on the world stage,
(a) moralizing is simply irrelevant, discussions about whether this is "good" or "bad" are childishly naive and have no place - only whether it was advantageous or not; and
(b) sovereignty is meaningless if a nation does not have the hard/soft power (and the will) to back it, just as if you declare your house a "sovereign nation" it will not be respected unless you are able to back it up.
Perhaps this is an obvious/vacuous truth to you, but most HN'ers are clearly failing to grasp this.
> why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want?
Because it is not always advantageous to do so. When it is clearly advantageous, nations tend to do so (as evidenced by virtually all of human history, including the current era.)
So much of the past decade has been the internet infecting the population with 19th century thinking like this. Alliances are a thing, and might makes right is something we have told ourselves for generations that we oppose. I am so tired of this nihilism dressed as edge.
Please leave a substantive comment instead of just calling something a "redditism" and "appalling."
You may not like the framework of realism but it is the reality of international relations today (and throughout most of history.)
Rules-based international order has always been a thin veneer over the fact that nations will always act in their self-interest regardless of what they say.
Finally, game theory tells us that as long as one superpower behaves according to the principles of realism, the rest must as well, or risk getting outmaneuvered.
People don't like to see difficult to accept facts stated plainly. And sometimes equate a statement of unfortunate fact with endorsement of status quo.
More on topic, I hoped there would be some support from Colombia, Russia, and China in place to help with this situation. Instead it seems like Maduro took an exit deal and left the country at the hands of the GOP who openly promulgate the idea that the US should lord over all other countries in the western hemisphere.
There's nothing substantive to the comment I'm replying to.
It's explaining in too many words that might makes right. We all know that.
On the other hand I believe, but I could be wrong, that the many comments of the sort in this thread are a way for some people to cheer these sort of actions without being too obvious about it because they know it's not a good look in some circles, hn being one. So rather than chanting usa usa usa like their gut tells them too, they resort to such emotionally distanced statements, obvious to everyone, pretending to simply constate the gap in military capabilities of the US versus other powers.
There's a massive difference, and that difference is that American oil companies, unlike the Venezuelan state run industry, are actually very competent at extracting oil. This means more good paying jobs, more state revenue, and massive economic growth. Contrary to the claims of most of the economically illiterate morons commenting here, having a functional local oil industry run by foreign companies will actually be great for Venezuela.
your comment sounds alot like nationalist chest thumping, the reason they were unable to do much with their oil is much more related to the usa deciding they would sanction the country meaning basically worldwide they can't sell the oil
Definitely not, but the furthest away the ones profiting from something are, the worse it can get.
It is definitely not a guarantee that a local enriching elite will at some point lead to something better, but most examples that come to mind about "colonies" (places very far from a center of power), resulted in said places to develop much harder.
But neither the Venezuelan elite nor the American elite will tolerate any hint of democracy. And neither elite will be satisfied with merely exploiting the oil.
How about not going there at all for whatever reason, under any circumstances. And there are bigger issues at stake, no amount of drugs "made in Venezuela" inhaled by Americans can kill them as much as one North Korean Nuke.
I'm surprised no lesson the US learnt from similar overthrows in the past, but again this is Trump. The country can get so unstable that by the time Marco start giving out "legitimate" orders, there will be 30 different groups fighting and killing each other. True unchecked anarchy. So what's then? Boots on ground. Are we still in the spirit of sacrificing 150,000 American soldiers in the name of freedom, like we did in Iraq? When we kicked out Russians from Middle East we were not aware they kept islam jihadists at bay, then Al Quaida came to live and we all now how it ended.
I wasn't even thinking about the drugs. Is that a real thing? North Korean nuke isn't a real concern.
Iraq had no goal. The stated reason was WMDs and 9/11, so bogus and unrelated. Stability wasn't our concern either, I mean we funded Saddam Hussein to begin with. US companies did set up oil drilling, but I really don't think the driving motivation was oil, otherwise we'd have gone to Venezuela first.
Afghanistan has no oil. Iraq does, but the US showed no interest in taking it for decades. It was most likely pushed by our "greatest ally" there who also has no oil.
The Kurds are our greatest ally in Iraq and they most definitely have lots of oil in addition to letting US operate on their territory in exchange for protecting the oil interests. I suppose you could say that's not us taking the oil but we still get value like we had taken the oil and provided fair market rate to host bases in exchange.
I said fair market rate to host bases. Saddam was definitely not leasing us military at fair market rate in Iraq (or Syria for that matter, where Kurds also host US base).
> I'm surprised no lesson the US learnt from similar overthrows in the past, but again this is Trump.
Its not Trump, its the US.
Someone always comes along trying to attack/occupy a country. Making big promises.
Years later when nothing is achieved. Someone else will come along talking about how much US is spending, taxpayers dollars being lost, failures etc.
In recent example, Afghanistan and Trump come to mind. Everyone talked about how Afghanistan was a waste of taxpayer dollars. But now here we are.
The only thing which I can say specifically about Trump is that I wouldn't be surprised if the flip towards "Venezuela was a waste of taxpayer money" happens during his administration and he comes out saying "I have never heard of Maduro".
> When we kicked out Russians from Middle East we were not aware they kept islam jihadists at bay, then Al Quaida came to live and we all now how it ended.
I thought the US was well aware of this, since the US was funding the Mujahideen at the time?
Let's not sacrifice anymore Americans in the name of freedom, but the number was substantially fewer than 10,000, not anywhere close to 150,000. Perhaps that many Iraqis died, or maybe even more.
Absolutely, this has been clear for a long time. Countries are only truly sovereign if they have a reliable nuclear capability, otherwise they are always at the whim of another country with a sufficiently powerful military.
> It's an objectively fantastic thing when those presidents are doing things not in our interests
Why wouldn't China do the same in another country whose president is not acting in China's national interest? If you were Iran[1], would abandoning your nuclear weapons program for sanctions relief still be an option?
Of course each of these countries are ignoring international law in various respects and doing things in their self interest.
Anything as brazen as capturing a president? Not yet. But I can absolutely see them doing this if they deem the cost/benefit great enough.
I wouldn't be surprised if China goes further and launches a full-scale invasion of Taiwan in the next decade, they've certainly been preparing for it according to our intel.
> What the fuck do you think China is going to do next time the US does an “exercise” in the china sea?
They will continue to blow hot air but ignore it, unless they truly and sincerely believe it is a real military action worth starting a war over (and destroying both economies over.)
> What the fuck do you think Iran is going to do next time Israel acts up and the US supports it?
They will continue developing their weapons program thinking they can do it in secret, and it will continue to get compromised and/or blown up.
I don't really care what you think of me, but please adhere to the HN guidelines[1] for civil discussion, this sort of fulminating and personal attack simply has no place here (though there are other websites for that, if you so desire.)
Re. nuclear weapons, sovereignty - I am not "advocating" for anything. I am simply describing the factual reality of international relations, and "political realism," the school of thought that governs international relations between superpowers in the current day and throughout most of human history.
That you are ascribing to this description some sort of moral stance on my part is a judgement error on yours.
Who’s we? I’m guessing you’re not a general in the US military, so I don’t know why you’re inserting yourself into this decision.
Do you think a nuclear war would be good for you? Obviously not, so you shouldn’t want your government to threaten to start one. And you shouldn’t support your government when they signal to the world that the only way to be safe from interventionism is to develop nuclear weapons. Or when they signal to other superpowers that they don’t respect international treaties, or the sovereignty of other nations.
If the answer is "nobody" then yeah. Venezuela doesn't have nukes. North Korea or Russia aren't going to nuclear war over a country they don't even have a security agreement with, or even if they did. The US has already attacked Iran, Iraq, and Syria (under Assad).
I'm not the one who brought up nukes and legit don't understand what they meant by that. To answer the other question, yeah I can generally see some valid reasons to remove a foreign leader from power. Not sure about Maduro.
No, but I am one with regard to US foreign policy.
Since you’re not (by your own admission), spend more time reading the globalist (1950s - present) reasons why the US meddles with foreign governments and what forcibly creating a power vacuum does for the local populace.
Then you’ll be better equipped to have a conversation with knowledgeable people about the topic at hand, instead of blithely wondering “hmm, is it actually bad when we extra-judiciously remove a head of state because we want oil?”
> "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."
> "We're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have it"
> "It's gonna make a lot of money"
> "Well, you know, it won't cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial"
I think it’s normalization. If they can ignore Congress, lie to them, break American law, ignore international law, what’s to stop them from violating the constitution? It’s how they will ultimately deport 100 million Americans, like they proposed a few days ago on the DHS Twitter account. Don’t fix things through the political process - just ignore them and use military force.
> And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go into Venezuela"
Venezuela is down to 1 million barrels per day, down from 3 million per day from the 2000s because of the sanctions after Hugo Chavez. They own the worlds largest reserve (about 300 billion barrels worth) and it was always my understanding that we worked with them before Hugo Chavez went the route he went and brought a great nation to shambles for a power trip.
I think Venezuela will recover with our aid, but a lot of their old infrastructure is gone, they will need investors. They will also need to deal with their crime problem and hold real elections for once.
> I am still curious about the whole side bar about Washington being now safest and free of crime.
I heard that as Trump doing his usual thing patting himself on the back while justifying the continued use of our military for domestic law enforcement.
Why is this downvoted? He never misses a chance to say its a good thing that the military is being used on the American population. The recent ruling against the use of the National Guard comes at a time when Kavanaugh is just upset that his name is going down in history for the term Kavanaugh Stops
>>"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"
The new President of Venezuela will be called Fulgencio Batista...
>ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans
I get the impression they are concerned at least a bit with the welfare of Venezuelans. Maybe a secondary consideration to drugs and oil but here's what Trump was saying:
>We're going to run the country until
such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious
transition. So, we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get
in. And we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the
country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious
transition. And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about. We
Bots don't have much of an opinion on these things. I'm disappointed that everyone is so cynical. At least the Venezuelans seem cheerful even if some HN commenters are not and sound like they'd be happier if Venezuela had another twenty years of poverty and dictatorship.
People who remember Iraq and Libya understand the difference between stable dictatorship and unstable warlord era. Removing those dictators left the countries more deadly and poor than otherwise. Libya in particular created the European refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. I suspect one outcome of this will be even more Venezuelan refugees, including illegally in the US.
> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans
100x times this!
US administration doesn't care about the welfare of most human beings in the world (including in the US).
We saw it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Yemen and now Palestine. Having an assumption that this move was made for Venezuelans and now they're liberated from evil is wrong.
Iraq was probably against Israel's interests. (Israel hates Iran, Iraq hated Iran. US taking out Iraq made Iran stronger which made Iran more threatening to Israel)
He didn't say not to attack. It says in there that he told Bush that Iraq was a threat, but that he shouldn't occupy Iraq or try to build a democracy there because it won't work. The rest of the article is 2007 hindsight.
I feel like OPEC scales up/down production on a whim more than Iran produces.
Unless you mean the potential for a boycott like what happened back in the day. However the geopolitical situation has changed enough that i think that is exceptionally unlikely.
I don't think Israel is capable of a ground invasion and i don't think USA has the stomach for it.
I suspect they will just continue to try and economically strangle iran and pick off their allies one by one in the hope of an internal revolution (or wait until there is so much economic damage they aren't relavent anymore)
The psyops online is quite amusing and insane, painting this as a victory for Venezuela. And weirdly by pro-Israeli account on Reddit.
By now my radar assumes Israel is somehow connected like many other events we've witnessed in the past. Venezuelas president was quite staunchly against Israel and it's interests, close with Iran too.
Israel is just an extension of the US in the middle east under the branding of Judaism. The desire is to weaken and eventually ignite the region in conflict. Already taking place between Saudi, UAE, Yemen etc. Weakening takes time.
Funny list of countries. Ask women in Afghanistan how they were treated with US presence vs. now. Ask jews in Palestine how Hamas treated them vs. Israel. Ask people in Yemen how they are living right now, but be sure to talk to them directly instead of writing to them, because barely anybody there can read. Their leaders just love them so much, they don't want them to read any bad news.
If you ask women in Afghanistan you will hear different views. People in the cities had a better life during the American occupation but in rural Afghanistan women were often worse off than under the Taliban. The US propped up warlords, some of them real monsters, and those controlled a lot of the country side. There was no good side in Afghanistan and the US should have stayed out, instead of propping up one group of oppressors to try to defeat another.
I don't think I understand what your point is? Are you implying that the US should have what? Stayed in Afghanistan forever? What solution would you have proposed there?
I see a lot of people posting about a lot of Venezuelans being happy that Maduro is out, and many using that as providing moral justification for the action. But this seems murky to me. If say the majority of the US population would be happy if trump is gone, does that justify some other country coming in and kidnapping him (leave aside the ability and consequence of this)? It doesn't seem like it.
It looks like propaganda. Day after, and then all the American news sites post stories about Venezuelans celebrating? Looks like propaganda. Almost no dissenting stories, no real discussion. Blackhawks and missiles at night, and hooray, spontaneous street parties, and news reporters just happen to be there to capture their "spontaneous" rejoicing. Reuters, Bloomberg, ABC, NBC. Rejoicing, dreams of democracy, yatta. CBS seems like one of the only sites that actually carried somewhat balanced coverage of people burning US flags, and no to American war.
My vote had absolutely zero impact on the election, and I haven't been able to vote for a person I actually liked, supported, and believed represented my interests in any national US election.
I'm mostly wouldn't like an external coup because it'd activate all my neighbors and we see a whole lot of violence in that struggle. I imagine I'd feel the same way if I lived in another country and some 3rd party deposed my government for arbitrary reasons.
That's explicitly not true. The vast majority of your life is managed by much more local politicians where your vote matters a lot more. Not to mention, if the only time you vote is once it's "red vs. blue", you've missed the primaries, which is your chance to say which red or blue you want to see up there.
Having been involved with local governments and served on city council committees, my experience has been that they literally only care about things that are legible to them. If I have an idea about parking or a preference for landscaping, they are pretty responsive. If I want them to remove flock cameras they tell me I am a crank. And all the canidated running feel the same way.
But honesty, national politics are very local for me.
Because you can answer this question, maybe:
in what way did my vote in rural Colorado effect -any- election at -any- level in a way that I could have avoided this situation where I go to weekly protests against ICE?
Cause, hoss, I hate this shit. There is literally -nothing- more that I would love to believe than I could just, like, vote for a better local school board.
I am almost 50 and I am in the streets with kids because I know for a fact that mass deportations which started under Obama are the root of what we are seeing.
Or how about this:
literally what voting action have I have taken that makes me responsible for the two children who were kidnapped from my community by ICE, for whose sake I got pepper sprayed by DHS Federal Police and ICE, and who we were unable to prevent from being stolen.
Because while I feel culpable for not following up on all actions that I had at hand, I don't think that it was voting that led the feds to assault me and 20 of my comrades.
So you're smart- tell me how my vote caused that in a way that I can "do better next time".
I think Maduro almost certainly cheated. All history and our current geopolitical relationships indicate that does not matter to the US unless you oppose them.
Even pretending to follow international law when you don’t actually do so is, to some small degree, support for international law. What the US did is essentially state kidnapping of the sitting head of an another state. This is going to be vastly more stabilizing than Maduro cheating.
> The US should not be the decider of who stays in power on another country.
As opposed to what? Who "should" be the decider? China? Russia? Maduro? The Venezuelan Military?
The alternative is not that Venezuelans choose who stays in power democratically. The alternative, as we just saw until now, is that the Maduro dictatorship maintains power through force.
You seem to think US did this because Maduro was a dictator. They themselves clarified it's because of oil.
Why they don't attack Saudi Arabia then? Saudi's even had a role in 9/11.
Decades of lies shaped the narrative that all invasions US do is because countries have dictators, it's being the narrative even now when they explicitly say it's because of oil.
They didn't do it because of oil (well to take for ourselves). They did it because Venezuela has been cozying up way too much to Russia and China, and sending both of them a lot of oil.
The President of the United States quite literally plainly stated on national TV that we did it for oil and will be sending US oil companies in to steal their oil to sell for ourselves.
He even went so far as to say it was “our” oil a few weeks ago. That was quickly forgotten among a stream of other outrageous things that happen daily.
Today seems like a day to rewatch Team America: World Police
Maybe try learning something about oil extraction before making insane claims that it is even possible for an oil company to just roll up and "steal" oil and send it back to the US.
I'm no fan of Trump, and I believe he's basically gone rogue, but, literally, he never said what you say he said. If I missed something, please provide a reference, but I doubt you'll find anything. You simply misheard. He's been extremely brazen in mentioning such a crass topic as American interest in Venezuelan oil, which normally would be pushed vigorously under the rug, but he didn't go as far as saying that's the reason. The official (and preposterous by itself) reason is still the drugs.
My take concords with what @JumpCrisscross said elsewhere in this thread:
"HN sometimes has trouble understanding coalitions.
Some support for oil. Some want to unseat a dictator. Some are concerned about Venezuela being a hive of Chinese, Russian and Iranian activity. Some did it to destabilise Cuba, or lay the groundwork for hitting Iran. Still others are just plain psychopaths and like blowing things up."
I would add that personal pique probably had as big a part in this decision as anything else.
"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so," Trump said.
Yes, and? Read my comment and the comment I was replying to. Nowhere did Trump "literally admit" they went in "for the oil". Nor that they plan to "steal the oil". I'm not saying that that's not part of the reason (probably is, but not the only one). Trump though, didn't "literally admit it". This whole adventure is outrageous and misguided enough as it is, without us needing to bend the truth to make it feel even more so.
HN sometimes has trouble understanding coalitions.
Some support for oil. Some want to unseat a dictator. Some are concerned about Venezuela being a hive of Chinese, Russian and Iranian activity. Some did it to destabilise Cuba, or lay the groundwork for hitting Iran. Still others are just plain psychopaths and like blowing things up.
Yes, and oil will now flow to Florida - for as long as an obedient US puppet lives. The gal who actually won the election is not obedient enough for Trump since she doesn't have "support and respect" of the nation according to Trump.
Oh, I don't think the US should just topple all dictatorships!
If the US could press a button and have all dictatorships automatically become stable, liberal democracies, I'm pretty sure they would do that and we'd all be happy.
But the US cannot just topple the government of all dictatorships at once. If it tried that, it would just cause immense chaos, and all those countries would unite against the West.
The US has to ally with some dictatorships against other dictatorships, like it did with the USSR against the Nazis and how it does with Saudi Arabia against Iran.
Iran hates us since the Islamic Revolution (when we supported the Shah), and finances multiple terrorist groups such as Hesbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, but at least it's not a revisionist state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_state) and has a more peaceful objective towards its neighbors.
If the US refused to ally with dictatorships, the only country in the entire Middle East that it could ally with is Israel. It would have to fight all other countries at once.
They don't pay us anything to sell their oil. We have a relatively small partnership with them, but that's about it. And they're part of OPEC, which is deliberately designed counter to US interests.
As hard as it is to watch a people suffer a dictatorship; that's the Venezuelan's task, not the US's, not Russia's and not China's.
International law clearly states that a sovereign nation has the right to self-rule, without external intervention. The UN Charter doesn't differentiate between democractic and non-democratic nations - it's up to the people of a nation to select their leadership.
We've seen this principle violated before, when the Ukrainian people took the streets for months to topple their leader in 2014. Russia to this day takes this as an excuse to question Ukrainian sovereignty, framing the events as a "US coup" to justify their violent invasion of Ukraine.
The argument you make just plays in their hand. "There was a violent coup - we need to remove the coup government and bring back democracy to Ukraine", they say.
Because in your framing leaves open who gets to decide what it means to be democratically legitimized.
What if the US decides that it will not recognize the government of Denmark as democratically elected and moves to liberate the people of Greenland from their despotic dictatorship?
You're argument opens the door for unlimited military intervention.
I think you have some good points, but you take it too far. The UN charter is the way it is not because it's the optimal approach, but because non-democratic countries had too much power for it to be otherwise.
As an example, the American Revolution had support from France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Britain saw this as shocking interference in an internal matter, as did loyalists in America.
Personally, I think it was a good thing, helping a people determine their own fate. Applying the same measure here, I simultaneously think it's great Maduro is out, but that the manner of it is terrible. As well as being foolishly shortsighted, both for the US and the world more broadly.
The charter limits the powerful nations. Rule #1 is nations cannot start wars. Starting a war is a crime.
The charter requires some consensus by the international community to authorize use of force against another country.
Article 51 acknowledges the right to self-defence. The only country that has a right to violence is the defending nation and those who aid it from aggression.
And this is, once again, American aggression. We aren't doing it because it's right. We're doing it because we can. In violation of international law.
I doubt there is any other "optimal" approach, but do say what you would propose.
There will always be indirect interference anyhow (think social networks, books, press, people talking, tariffs, visas, etc.), so there is some possibility for states to push things in their direction.l
I think imagining there can be some "authority" that could decide when "direct interference" is allowed or not will be a disaster at some point, because even if at first is OK, as a society we don't seem to be at a point where we can have organizations that work well for hundreds of years.
I think the last part of my post makes it clear that I do. But if not, let me just make clear that we have to struggle through the Harding administration as best we can, but better days are ahead.
> As an example, the American Revolution had support from France, the Netherlands, and Spain
But to what extent did they do it to "free" america vs to take Britian down a peg because they worried Britian was getting too powerful?
I think most people here are doubtful of Trumps motives or that this coup will actually lead to a free Venezuela.
America worked out really well. There are many many examples in history where imperial powers interfering in a local power struggle worked out very poorly for the average person of the country.
Are these really separable? Even a an individual I generally have multiple motivations for an action. That has to be even more true for whole nations.
And I don't think there's any reason to be doubtful of Trump's motivations. He's a would-be tyrant and has made it clear that this is about world dominance, Venezuela's oil, and enriching American businessmen. He has no interest in a free, democratic Venezuela. If this does work out well for Venezuelans, it'll be more due to Trump's flaws (arrogance, laziness, increasing dementia, and the TACO phenomenon) than any intent on his part.
My read of your argument: international law says don't intervene in foreign government, and by intervening we legitimize future violence.
I'm not sure this argument makes sense. Maduro stole an election to force his way to dictatorship, is widely blamed for running the country into mass poverty, and continues to hold onto power through threat of violence. The Venezuelan people don't have any recourse here.
Also, in your example of Ukraine you indicate that Russia frames the uprising as a "US coup", suggesting that the reality of whether there even was external involvement isn't so important.
Even so, if some nation tried to use this strike on Venezuela as further justification for violence wouldn't they be violating the same international law you cite anyway?
Obviously the US has a rough track record of replacing foreign governments (a much stronger argument against this kind of act IMO), but so far this mission has looked pretty ideal (rapid capture of Maduro, minimal casualties, US forces instead of funding some rebel group). There is opportunity for a good ending if we can steward a legitimate election for Venezuela, assist with restoration of key institutions (legal, police, oil), and we avoid any deals regarding oil that are viewed as unfair by the Venezuelans.
You are deluding yourself. This is not some kind of "humanitarian" intervention, this is about controlling Venezuela and its resources[1]. Venezuela will not become a proper democracy after that, instead it will be an imperial US protectorate.
Whether Maduro stole the election or not is exactly and only the Venezuelans' issue. No one but them as a standing in the matter.
I did not mean to suggest that our motives were purely humanitarian. As I understand it there are numerous geopolitical implications with Venezuela, from China's loans-for-oil relationship to the Iran assisted drone manufacturing facilities. And of course we'd like some of that oil, too.
I'm just not convinced that removing Maduro is some horrible violation of international law. As I said in my original comment, I'd be more sympathetic to the argument that the US has a horrible track record with regime change.
Regardless, given the geopolitical significance of Venezuela's relationships with China and Iran it is ignorant to suggest that "[only Venezuelans have] a standing in the matter." And the illegitimacy of Maduro's election is not a topic of serious debate as your phraseology might suggest. He stole the election, he's bad for Venezuelans, and he's good for our geopolitical rivals. It is yet to be revealed whether our intervention will be a net positive.
Panama has done fine since a similar intervention.
The US didn't loot Iraq or Kuwait.
Trump is supremely transactional, so he doesn't do anything for free, but the high likelihood is that the US as a whole will spend more than it gets back in revenue, especially government revenue.
Panamá is doing "fine" because they actually own their fucking canal. If the US had its way and reestablished the Canal Zone, the rest of the country would collapse in on itself.
Which is exactly what they want to do with the Venezuelan oil.
Today, the Panama Canal is owned and operated by the government of Panama.
> The US first built Panama, and then built the canal.
We can concede that the US played the most significant role in the construction of the canal and applying pressure for Panamanian secession from Colombia, but Panama’s national identify predates the United States.
I love the USA too, but please chill with the rhetoric.
Right. I'm not disputing that the canal is, in fact, owned by Panama today. Nor am I suggesting the US should take it back even though I think it was pretty stupid to give it away.
The North did not attack the South; it was the Confederates who initially succeeded from the Union and fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in 1861.
Yes it does matter because by succeeding they broke the US Constitution, and by attacking the US military they committed an act of war against the United States military. Your comparison to the current situation in Venezuela doesn't hold because the US Civil War wasn't a foreign intervention, it was a domestic constitutional conflict.
Ok! Imagine the North was the one to fire the first shot to end slavery. In a hypothetical different timeline. Apparently you would oppose this and would just support letting slavery exist indefinitely in the south?
the south was already signed onto the law for ending slavery, and were part of the same union.
you havent made a good enough hypothetical yet.
there's no lack of slave states around, including ones that the US does business with happily. i think yes, if you made your hypothetical "what if the US had a slaver neighbor" yes, the US would be leaving them alone, other than some economic pressures here and there
You’re assuming that’s the only thing at issue here. When the US starts these wars for resources we always make statements about “spreading democracy” so we can hide behind that bailey. But Trump actually explained what it was really about in his speech: restoring access to cheap Venezuelan oil. Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt here. He’s doing the sane thing George W Bush did.
> Because in your framing leaves open who gets to decide what it means to be democratically legitimized.
That was already the case. Our enemies don't care about the concept of hypocrisy. They aren't waiting for some moral high ground. They are going to do what they want to do regardless.
> You're argument opens the door for unlimited military intervention.
No it doesn't. If it is bad to invade somewhere, we can simply not do that. And we can judge this based on the situation and the consequences.
Your tut tutting isn't going to get Maduro back in power. That's what the guns and helicopters were for.
Additionally, if you want to actually figure out what was right or wrong, Id recommend that you go talk to some actual Venezuelans about this. The opinions are quite universal.
> International law clearly states that a sovereign nation has the right to self-rule, without external intervention. The UN Charter doesn't differentiate between democractic and non-democratic nations - it's up to the people of a nation to select their leadership.
I really wish people would accept that political realism is how the US really operates, rather than buying into the fantasy that there is some rules based order and quoting the UN Charter.
> The argument you make just plays in their hand.
Any argument made on this site by anyone here will have absolute no effect on the outcome in anyway. That has been the case for all of human history and will never change.
"Article 1 (2) establishes that one of the main purposes of the United Nations, and thus the Security Council, is to develop friendly international relations based on respect for the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”. The case studies in this section cover instances where the Security Council has discussed situations with a bearing on the principle of self-determination and the right of peoples to decide their own government, which may relate to the questions of independence, autonomy, referenda, elections, and the legitimacy of governments."
It isn't. There isn't a force standing behind to enforce the charter.
With politics and most importantly international politics, there is no law and no right & wrong. It's basically actions and consequences and whether the advantage you gain from your actions is worth the consequences.
People and groups of people (nations) will press their advantage. We press our advantage every day. Most people driving frequently exceed the speed limit - why? Because you can get away with it. If one could skip paying taxes and get away with it we would have done it. The reason the tax skipping doesn't happen often is because the consequences of doing it are high compared to the advantage.
The US just pressed its advantage today because it could get away with it and with minimal cost.
Pieces of paper don't do anything. They are not magic spells that enforce anything, and they only matter in so far as they are enforced by other actors with real power.
If you want to talk about what other countries with a military or trade power might do, go ahead. But the piece of paper is rarely relevant at the international stage.
That was certainly the case on The Walking Dead with the various surviving communities. But we should hope the actual world would operate a little more lawfully than a post-apocalyptic free for all.
So Russia's invasion of Ukraine will be legal if Russia wins? I doubt most people in the West will see it that way. Might makes right has never been a good basis for law.
I would argue that the concept of "legal" has no meaning in this setting. But if Russia wins in Ukraine, everyone will call it illegal, and nobody will do a damn thing to push them out. Eventually the world will recognize it as Russian territory just like they recognized it as Soviet territory and part of the Russian Empire before that. So yeah, it will be legal.
International law is real. It has discernible content, people who professionally study it, and it does influence (however incompletely) the behaviour of the world’s governments
This idea that law can’t exist if it doesn’t have a clearly identified enforcer is very modern-a lot of traditional/customary law (e.g. the Pashtunwali in Afghanistan or the Kanun in Albania) never had a clear enforcer but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, people sometimes paid attention to it, it influenced how people behaved even if they sometimes got away with ignoring it
Law is defined as "a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior".
International law is defined as "the set of rules, norms, legal customs and standards that states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generally do, obey in their mutual relations".
When people say that international law is not real, what they mean is that "international law" is to "law" as a "guinea pig" is to a "pig".
The primary differentiation is enforcement.
People bastardize the term law, because they like to throw the word "illegal" around and imply "evilness" without being arbitrary. But guess what: Trump can be evil, without his actions being "illegal".
Without international law, actions would be the same (Serbia gets punished, Rwanda gets away), but you would have to argue for morality individually. Instead, people can point to some tome some unelected people wrote and say "this book says you're evil and you can't argue with it". The book says it's illegal and that's that.
Yep, the "great cost" is something that seems to get lost in the shuffle sometimes in conversations about this. No leadership realizes the error of their ways before a lot of suffering.
Not to justify what happened here, but your argument would mean that the US would likely have remained a British colony given that French intervention on behalf of the colonies was a contributing factor to the success of the revolutionary war. It also would heavily imply that once the allied forces had beaten the Nazi's back behind German borders, that they should have stopped there. An extreme non-interventionist policy might be the best default policy, but it is implicitly an endorsement of might makes right as well. There are almost certainly times when a country should feel justified in intervening in another country's "regime change", but those times should be very carefully considered and (IMO) never ever viewed as a first or easy step, only a last (or nearly last) resort.
Your argument is perfectly well suited to justify the imperialist Russian aggression against Ukraine.
My point is that there's no entity with the authority to declare a government illegal - besides the UN security council. Next thing you know China invades Taiwan and it will be hard to argue with "sovereignty of nations". Nobody - not even the US - cares about it anymore, right? We just declare a government as illegitimate and presto - no need to justify it anymore. Here we go for some more foreign wars.
This is not about "liberating Venezuela" from a dictatorship. It's just about placing a new dictator at the head of Venezuela, equally illegitimate and equally authoritarian. Venezuela has become an US protectorate for the foreseeable future. At least until the oil runs dry [1].
> Your argument is perfectly well suited to justify the imperialist Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Once you accept that there may be cases where you need to interfere with another country’s internal affairs, you can make up all sort of justifications to interfere (or not) in any given case. So yes, Russia would argue that the specific circumstance justify their actions. I would argue they don’t, but clearly Russia doesn’t care about me (and frankly wouldn’t care even if my opinion was that there is never a justification for interfering).
> My point is that there's no entity with the authority to declare a government illegal - besides the UN security council.
Now that’s an interesting claim. Why does the security council have this authority? From where do they derive that authority? Just 15 nations can declare your government “illegal”? Unless of course the government you want declared illegal happens to be one of those 15 I guess. So some nations internal affairs are more sacrosanct than others? And what happens when the UN declares your government “illegal”. Can anyone just waltz their military in and overthrow your government despite the fact that no one is supposed to have the right to interfere with the internal affairs of another country?
> This is not about "liberating Venezuela" from a dictatorship.
You appear confused because I never argued that it was. I merely objected to the idea that there was never a justification to interfere with the internal affairs of another country.
The principles of self defense say that once you are no longer being attacked, any further aggression on your part is no longer defense. For example, you can use lethal force to protect yourself from a person attempting to cause you grievous harm, but once they stop attacking you and start retreating, if you chase after them and beat them or kill them, you’re no longer acting in self defense and are now committing a crime. By that same token, once the axis forces had been pushed back behind their own borders, invading them becomes an act of aggression rather than defense. Once they’re behind their own borders, fascist war mongering governments are an “internal affair” for the affected peoples to deal with.
Now you might argue that a declared war is no longer a situation where “non-interference” applies, but war can be declared unilaterally. So you might say that only the initial defenders have a right to engage in regime changes, but does that mean that the Ukrainian people have a right to overthrow the Russian government in response to the current war? Do the Palestinians have a right to overthrow the Israeli government? Do the Irish have a right to overthrow the British monarchy for their previous aggressions? Do the British have a right to overthrow the US government for the American Revolution?
Which ultimately is just a long way of getting back to my point that “non-interference” might be (and IMO is) a good default policy, it’s also an unrealistic one for all situations. At some point something about the current political landscape requires a nation to interfere in the “internal affairs” of another country. But that is a dangerous game that should never be the default.
Ukraine was a US coup too, decades of involvement. Otherwise, either Russia wouldn't have invaded, or US wouldn't have been afraid to directly fight Russia over it. The sad reality is that countries in this situations will get captured or proxied by someone or another if they don't play things exactly right.
Yes, so let's imagine for a second there was no US involvement (there was minimal, in an advisory and intelligence role); Would Yanukovich still be in power? Would 2014 would've gone any different? Do you know what events happened preceding the shootings? The police violently beating the protesters? Obviously not on all counts. So to say that the Maidan was a result of US involvement is a russian talking point on a good day and a blatant, filthy lie on any other.
If you imagine that there was no US involvement and Ukraine's leadership did not in fact repeatedly state its intentions to fully join NATO in the 2000s, sure. I won't claim that the US materially supported the Maidan uprising, because there's no evidence.
Now going with that, it means Russia invaded Ukraine in an act of pure aggression. Instead of the halfway support Biden gave, we should be directly fighting Russia over this. Putin won't start WW3 over us stopping a totally unjustified expansion, unless he's already intent on WW3 anyway.
Now we're in agreement. Boots on the ground by 1st March 2022 would've saved us a whole lot of trouble in the long run, and a whole lot of lives. A bully never stops when he remains unchallenged.
Except that didn't happen in 2022 or later, so something in this story doesn't add up. And there's no reason to ignore that Ukraine kept expressing interest in joining NATO, that's actually a big deal.
Ukraine was NEUTRAL and NON-ALIGNED when russia invaded in 2014.
Putin's "NATO expansion" excuse is a barefaced LIE, and it's time more people called it out.
"From 2010 to 2014, Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy, which it terminated in response to Russia’s aggression. In June 2017, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted legislation reinstating membership in NATO as a strategic foreign and security policy objective. In 2019, a corresponding amendment to Ukraine's Constitution entered into force." (https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/partnerships-and-cooperat...)
2014 yeah, only under Yanukovych who was on Russia's side. 2005-2010, Yushchenko publicly stated that he wanted Ukraine to join NATO and was taking steps towards it, while both Bush and Obama supported expanding NATO to Ukraine.
"I welcome the decision by President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and Parliament Chairman Arseny Yatsenyuk to declare Ukraine's readiness to advance a Membership Action Plan (MAP) with NATO" -Obama
Before 2005, there were already smaller steps taken, including granting NATO military access. 2005 was a disputed election with both Russia and US involved.
Why does history have to start in 2010 for a 2014 war? You're picking a Russia-backed presidency that was getting ousted before Russia attacked. There's no way they were going to stay nonaligned. That 2010 law was just a law, signed by the president, undoable by the next (and it was undone).
"Russia then occupied and annexed Crimea, and in August 2014 Russia's military invaded eastern Ukraine to support its separatist proxies. Because of this, in December 2014 Ukraine's parliament voted to seek NATO membership, and in 2018 it voted to enshrine this goal in its constitution." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations)
A full ten months elapsed before Ukraine finally decided to change its constitution. That rather destroys your argument.
Russia attacked directly after Ukraine removed their nonalignment leadership. I'm not saying Ukraine changed its constitution before the attack, just that the 2010 law was evidently possible to reverse.
Even if Russia didn't attack, Ukraine would've gone back to NATO alignment just as they were doing pre 2010. Maybe even more seeing how the entire point of the 2014 revolution was to push away from agreements with Russia, and the protest leaders were all loudly pro-NATO politicians. How could this possibly have led to nonalignment, aside from "this is a Russian talking point"?
You have to think of the long-term consequences of blatantly abandoning the rule of (international) law for might makes right. The end doesn't justify the means.
Not to mention that the "end" here is first and foremost enriching the administrative "elite" and extending their power. If they cared about democracy, they'd stand firmly behind Ukraine instead of humoring Russia.
I think a coup was forming regardless. Fort Tiuna where Maduro was is not near the coast. So basically no one heard/saw/detected the US forces coming that far inland. Also, most importantly, no one stopped them from leaving with their president.
The whole "we got him" is a bit fishy. I think the Venezuelan military (and the current vice president) wanted Maduro out. A coup would have been messy. So the US comes in and does them a favor.
Part of the function of the fleet sitting off the coast for the past month would have been first intimidating then cultivating relationships with collaborators. Collaborators are far easier to find if there's a credible chance that things are about to change.
If that is you actual view of society, than you reject the concept of law itself. Just because people are able to act against the law (and get away with it) doesn't make law obsolete. In fact if they wouldn't act against it, there would be no reason to have a law.
And to be fair nearly happened in July 2024 as the last item of a long list of incident involving U.S. Presidents starting from Lincoln all the way up to the July 2024 episode and of course the last successful hit being JFK in 1963 and the last successful injury being the one suffered by Ronald Reagan
Socialism = tyranny? Wow. I guess you prefer the freedom of being bankrupted if you get injured, and getting taken by masked men from an unmarked van if you got some tan on your vacation, and then dropped to El Salvador.
At least he's honest, even if it's more like he lacks an effective filter. "bannana republics" and "bigger gun diplomacy" don't quite describe Trumps approach to foreign policy. One thing i can say about the operation is that it's a lot cheaper and less bloody then a ground invasion.
Someone should tell him Iran has loads of oil and China is getting it all...
IMO this has nothing to do with Maduro. This is just the first step. It is about the US securing large reserves of oil. Don't get caught into the propaganda.
The US doesn’t need large reserves of oil. The US is an energy exporter. The country is limiting investment in solar and wind, ON PURPOSE.
This is crony capitalism. This is Trump shoring up support from oil companies.
Mr Trump has purposefully depressed the value of non-petroleum energy sources in the US, which props up the value of US oil Producers and processors.
And now, This is a territory takeover by a mafia don, so he can hand favors to other rich guys. Maduro wasn’t doing the deal Trump wanted, so this is what Trump did.
If solar and wind were thriving in the US (as they could be!) then this new oil territory would be worth less. That’s why Trump hates wind. He cannot convert clean energy into a benefit for himself.
It’s not about drugs or fentanyl. It’s not about democracy or corrupt elections in VZ.
On the relative upside, Panama was a 10X smaller country. The US had some long-term skin in the game with the Canal. And Bush Sr. was in the Oval Office - making it not-too-hard to imagine that sane grown-ups were in charge.
Vs. "70s" sounds far more like Vietnam. And a whole load of other bigger/uglier/longer conflicts, under Presidents whose moral and military leadership seemed rather lacking.
Cuban forces with the help of Russia, Iran and China took control of Venezuela over 25 years ago, effectively looting that nation, and no one bitched about it.
As a brazilian, could you clarify what you mean by "The Brazilian Regime"?
Genuine question, the decades long dictatorship backed by the US military in 64 or the recent pressure Trump made to try and put Bolsonaro back into power despite his crimes?
It is so crazy that he is not turning around and putting the World Peace Prize winner in place. Everyone can get behind that and it is probably the fastest way to getting oil companies in there anyway.
Apparently, the Venezuelan vice president has sold out her country or is acting out of duress because she has allegedly offered full cooperation with the US. That could be a viable way to a US-led military/CIA dictatorship there, if the Venezuelan military and police around her allows it to happen. She seems to be in the line of succession. That seems to be the current "plan."
Yes, she has no democratic base since Maduro took power via election fraud. Watch the media to see if they just copy the feeds from the press agency, or that they will do the work they should actually be doing and put what-is-actually-going-on in focus.
That information is outdated by now. The assessment was based on Trump's claim that the US will work together directly with her instead of Machado, whom he considers unfit to be president right now. It was an attempt of giving a rational explanation of Trump's and Rubio's press conference. I assumed that in order for their statements to make sense there would have to be some backdoor deal with her. However, she has given a speech now condemning the attack and refuting the US narrative (although, leaving some door open for diplomacy).
I can't edit the original comment any longer so I hope people read this one. In any case, the situation is still very fluid.
> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelan
Depending on how cynical you are, you could say that all American administrations are like that. (I don’t think that’s quite true—I think Reagan/Bush had a genuine ideological vision of using foreign policy to promote democracy and capitalism around the work. But it’s certainly a common criticism.)
Maduro stole the election and no one in Venezuela could do anything about it. How exactly was Venezuela going to take care of it themselves?
Ultimately it's going to be outside actors, and no matter who it was, even the UN, Venezuela could just say we don't recognize your authority and nothing would happen
> Ideally one that does not sell itself to the US for legitimacy. I don't think that is the likely outcome.
Lol this is already proven false.
The put the Vice President in power who is now coincidentally supporting what the US is doing, including sending oil companies in to as Trump put it “sell oil to the Chinese”.
Trump also did not even inform the armed services or foreign affairs committees. He spoke to FOX before he spoke to Congress. It is not clear if he's done or if we just declared war. His public statement that the US will now be majorly involved in Venezuelan oil is both very telling and very mysterious. How the hell are we going to assert power over their industry without foisting a new, friendlier government?
Easiest path from here on for the US is to cooperate with existing power structures in the resources grab/"sharing" + forcing some concessions, like increased efforts to fight against drug trafficking.
The institutions work if all countries abide by their rulings. The US doing this sort for things is destroying the institutions we have, chief of all the UN and the ICJ, put in place at the end of World War 2 to avoid a repeat. We have not learned.
JFK tried to build up international institutions on the basis that "Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside", but then both he and NSK got cancelled...
Yes, the UN was founded in 1945, and the Geneva Conventions originated all the way back in 1864, but some US administrations have tried to bolster international institutions, and some to tear them down. JFK, having said, "If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved" was among the former.
In 1962, he and NSK managed to arrive at a diplomatic cooperation; the reward for both of them was being cancelled.
That would be the UN. The last time the UN invaded a nation was in 1950. That happened because the Soviet Union boycotted the UN, so it wasn't able to veto it.
For the UN to ever fix a international issue it would require that country to anger all 5 UN powers. Venezuela has Russia and China on its side, so nothing would have happened.
>> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans,
I don't think this was a humanitarian mission. I'm speculating from Trump's perspective, Maduro was a major de-stabilizing factor. The Western world also seems to tacitly agree that the man had to go -- I don't think Maria Machado's recent Nobel Peace Prize was coincidence.
Conceptually, 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…
Must? its a choice. Even more of a choice when you're on top.
Trump might not have a choice not because they don't exist, but because he is incapable of understanding them. He's clear on not believing in win/win scenarios.
He respects them to the extent that you must for competent opponents. Sometimes, you have to play politics. You have to try to get what you want with compliments before you rush to sacrifice American lives and treasure over what might have been settled diplomatically. And sometimes, you have to bide your time for the right moment to show your full hand.
Perhaps people forget that countries are sovereign and can do whatever they want. The "global order" has always been based on strength: the stronger do what they want and the weaker do what they can.
What the US have just done is not something new because of Trump.
We are told about "international law" and "norms" so much that we perhaps forget that this is mostly BS.
This is the attitude that permits world wars. In the aftermath of WW2, a lot of people genuinely believed in the power of international law to prevent WW3. Now, it seems like a ton of people think that's just BS, and the fact that so many people think that is what makes it BS. If a strong majority of people actually believed in international law, it would be "real".
> Everybody that is cheering this on has a significant gap in their education.
Macron, President of the French Republic, for reference, says:
"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."
> > If a strong majority of people actually believed in international law, it would be "real".
International law has always been BS, what works is fear of retribution by the offended party or retribution from the observers thinking they might be next and getting together to enact preventive measures
If international law had any effect people would believe in it. You're mixing cause/effect. This situation has been going on for years and the lack of response by international organizations makes people lose all confidence in them.
"International law" are voluntary agreements but countries remain sovereign. The only way to force something is to have bigger guns and/or more economic power than the other countries and, as it happens, the US are #1 on both.
Edit: The best protection we have against WWIII is not "international law", it's that the big guys can instantly nuke each others.
I don't think you're wrong, but it's one of those facts that's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy, like "the bank is failing" (which, if people think is true, quickly becomes true) or "money has value".
The US is a superpower of course, but world wars are multilateral, and US alliances are not what they were just a year ago.
You forget that the cold war wasn't won by the US alone. But by the alliance systems which centered around the US.
The US is no longer a credible partner, and without coalition forces the recreational wars in the 2000s would have been a lot less "fun".
I'm not so sure you want a global order based on strength. You don't want small countries with little to loose arming do with nukes. But voting for it is suddenly very attractive.
That's interesting because the post-WWII Western alliance system at large is largely born of the US military and economic might: most of those countries were invaded by the US and then helped economically by the US. Obviously a commom adversary (the communists) helped but it was, and still is "led" by the US for a reason.
The global order is based on strength, both military and economic strength. I am just stating the obvious here.
You and I are subject to the law. This is not voluntary and it will be enforced against us by the state.
On the other hand, countries are sovereign. They are not subject to "laws", and if they do it is on a voluntary basis. Ultimately it boils down to military and economic strength for a country to be able to stand its ground and do what it wants. We never left this behind, this has always been the case.
From the replies it seems that commenters believe that countries are subject to "laws" the same way that they are...
The goal of the rules based international order was to subject countries to laws, yes. Those laws could have been (and were various times in the past) enforced by larger organizations in the same way the state acts on citizens. Westphalian Sovereignty is not any more real than the rules based international order - clearly Venezuela's sovereignty did nothing for them here.
There was a time when Germany thought just like that. In the aftermath we decided that maybe it's not such a good idea, this might-makes-right thing and we strove for a world where transitions are peaceful because we realized that our power to kill had grown to proportions unseen in our history and because some of us - rightly, in my view - felt that the human race itself was now in the balance.
If you toss that out you have to at least acknowledge all possible outcomes. People - even powerful people, and powerful countries too - should be subject to the law because no single person and no single country stands above all the others.
Actually, what has happened to Germany is exactly an expression of what I described in my previous comments.
> powerful countries too - should be subject to the law
Perhaps so but that is idealistic. Again, countries are sovereign, there is no such things as "laws" in the sense that applies to individuals that apply to them, only voluntary agreements. Practically you would also need a level above countries with its own overwhelming force to enforce it, and that simply does not exist.
I am trying to discuss the world as it is, including indeed in the legal sense, not as it might be in dreams because that's pie in the sky and totally unbounded in scope.
Yes, you're pretending to be a 'realist' who is wise because of your grounded worldview, but you totally miss the forest for the trees: if we don't want to end with blowing ourselves up then we have to depart from the might is right and 'how the world is' mentality because that stops us from changing into a future where we will not blow ourselves up.
Your worldview is essentially a pessimistic one, mine an optimistic one: I think we are capable of change. We just make the stupid mistake of putting egomaniacs in positions of power all the time and then we are surprised by the outcomes.
Some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history were 'I have a dream'. Dreams are good, especially if they are dreams of a better world and we all should strive to create that world, not to declare it a pipe dream and get on with the business of raping each other.
I would suggest that you take a look at the "Politics and the English Language" essay by Orwell. The person you are responding to is making a fair point that this is well trodden ground, albeit not in the most diplomatic terms. It would be helpful to engage with the arguments presented, otherwise we are just spinning our wheels here unconsciously relitigating issues from the 1930s.
Strange oblique accusation as neither Venezuela nor my comments have anytging to do with the "the 30s" or even politics (or Germany's past). Perhaps there is a lack of perspective and indeed realism in the reply or a Pavlovian reaction to "Trump" conditioned by some media (Trump is a fascist, Musk a Nazi, etc).
As said there were no arguments presented nor anything to discuss about the geopolitical situation so I don't know what to engage with.
An interesting discussiin might be about the reasons for the US' actions and their reasons for this course of action (capture) vs more classic coup.
If so, what’s the next step and how long do you think it will take for a world in which no country is above the law… but no mechanism to create and enforce such law?
Einstein had some interesting thoughts about this, I don't have a reference handy but it boils down to a UN with teeth, effectively a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.
Even so, there is a lot of potential for abuse there too and it will most likely never happen because human nature is what it is.
> a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.
I assume you would want such a world government to be some form of democracy? If so, it would mean near-zero voice for Australians (0.32% of world population), Germany (1%), The Netherlands (0.21%), UK (0.83%), France (0.83%).
It would, however, mean much more say for Russia (1.7%), China (17.2%), India (17.8%).
What moral code should such a democratic world government adopt? Would it be secular or religious?
Even if we thought that end-state is ideal, I have a very hard time seeing practical steps that get us there other than through bloodshed (similar to how many current nation states got formed). One exception might be a common enemy that unites the vast majority of humans, e.g. an alien invasion.
Given the huge coordination problem of forming and maintaining a single world government (top-down), I would prefer a more bottoms-up, federated approach where secular, democratic, free-ish market, values continue to spread.
Agreed on all of that and yes, there are obviously some very big problems that would need to be resolved. We are no closer to that today - and probably further from it - than when the UN was founded.
No, at the time they were the biggest kid on the playground, their mistake was to think that the playground would be a constant. If Germany had just taken over Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland they might have gotten away with it too. The lack of consolidation and Hitler being drunk on power caused them to continue to set higher goals.
Then once the theater of the war shifted to Global and Japan brought the USA into the war things changed rapidly.
Forget Venezuela, this is a major problem for America. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth lied to Congress a couple weeks ago when they explicitly said that this is not about regime change. Entering an illegal war, committing acts of international piracy, and pledging to take over another country’s resources is completely illegal and a violation of American laws as well as international laws.
And right now, the entire right wing is cheering on this situation. These are people who wanted an isolationist America that does not start new conflicts. Spineless Republican senators and legislators are staying quiet as they allow this horrific dictatorial action to go on without any criticism. And meanwhile, tech billionaires like Elon Musk are continuously tweeting sycophantic support for this illegal act of state terrorism.
How will America recover? Its political system is broken. And its international reputation is shattered.
I’m wondering if the entire right wing has gone insane. Watching Elon Musk tweet a bunch of racist stuff for several days, followed by weird pro white ethnicity posts, followed by several fawning posts about how this attack was a good thing, is pretty shocking. But also the open hypocrisy of all of these everyday people in social media who have been saying they have not voted for more wars, now turn around completely and say that this war is OK is pretty shocking. And all of the other Republican politicians are either silent or basically claiming that the president has the full authority to do whatever he wants, is also pretty shocking.
I’m sure it is easy to say that this is what everyone should have expected, but I feel like the conduct has gone well past what people expected. The scary thing is I don’t think it will be easy to do something about this. Half the country thinks everything that is happening is completely justified and completely legal. And in practice that means it is effectively legal. So are there any remaining checks and balances that are functioning?
There is still tomorrow. What Trump has shown me is that the crap just never ends, one thing after another. Some guy in this thread is happy about 'vigorous foreign policy'. You really can't make it up.
I don't think there are any checks and balances that are still functioning other than the ones that have served us well to get rid of evil people since thousands of years ago and sooner or later these assholes will be gone. But they will always be replaced by new assholes with the same ambition: to own and rule over a disproportional share of the world.
When this happened during the Bush years I saw a lot of the a same behavior. All these people shut right up when the economy crashed, they went and hid in their caves for a year or so until they pivoted towards hating the Black guy (Obama). The reason being they finally felt a bit of the pain. When the inevitable crash comes from this era, they will all go back into hiding for a while.
Unfortunately this behavior has been a part of a portion of the country for a long time and we will be dealing with these people for the rest of our lives. EU, Canada and the rest talk a big talk about making moves to disconnect from the US. It would be nice to have independent democracies that can take up the mantle if things here need time to correct themselves.
This next time it feels like those same people will hate more than just the Black guy. Many seem to be supremacists who hate all other races and want them deported as a whole - not just the president. The world’s richest person is posting bizarre and disturbing pro white memes daily. And many young GenZ males who follow certain voices on the right seem intent on keeping the flame of racism alive. I agree it will last our whole lives.
Its a losing battle. I guess people don't really know this but Gen Alpha, who are the kids of millennials born 2013-2025 are the first non White majority generation. Its already over and they are just trying to prolong the inevitable for a few more years while the oldest die off.
I don't know how Gen-Z males will fare long term but at this point all available evidence that I've seen shows they are really done with supporting Trump. Will that reflect in long term shift to Dems? Well Bernie type candidates have always done well with Gen Z but what happens if they play games again. I think a major crash that appears to be coming will correct Gen-Z males for a while.
I know, I don't disagree with your ideas on good faith journalism, I just have so little time right now. I am more or less waiting out what happens with the MN fraud investigations. I think it has blown up to such a huge amount that Walz is not running now. All I can say is that a 23 year old kid was able to make that video and a few weeks ago everyone blew a nut because Bari Weiss dropped a 60 minutes investigation on CECOT (A Boring Ass Dead Story).
60 Minutes in 1990 would have DREAMED of breaking the MN scandal story. I remember them breaking a story like Gasoline pump fraud in the 90s and it didn't do any research other than recording gallons pumped into Gallon Water jugs - but they still posed it as fraud.
> And right now, the entire right wing is cheering on this situation. These are people who wanted an isolationist America that does not start new conflicts.
Well, they said they wanted that. But maybe Trump wasn’t lying to them as much as lying alongside them.
Which Venezuelans? I ask because this exact same argument was used to justify the many failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs debacle and sanctions on Cuba where many Cuban Americans were anti-Castro.
Now that might've been true but consider the source: many Cubans in America fled when Batista was ousted or in response to that. A famous example of that is Rafael Cruz, the father of Senator Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz famously said he hates communism because his father was tortured... by Batista [1]. And it's a failure in journalism that he wasn't challenged and lambasted for this idiotic take.
There are a lot of Venezuealsn in the US who justifiably fled the chaos there. But why was it chaotic? The US will try and tell you it's because of Maduro. But what about the sanctions? As a reminder, sanctions are a nice way of starving "we're goign to starve you and deny you medicine in the hopes you do what we want to the administration we can't otherwise topple".
Also, the US doesn't actually care about any of the crimes they accuse Maduro of. This is the same country who deposed Allende and installed Pinochet into Chile, who was a brutal dictator. That too was about resources. Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil. Or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The list goes on. This happens so much there's a Wikipedia page on it [2].
So, for anyone who celebates this (and I mean this generally, not at the commenter I'm responding to), you will see no benefit for this. A few billionaires will get richer, probably. The US was probably pour countless billions into supporting some puppet, probably Machado but we'll see. And I would be surprised if the lives of Venezuelans gets any better.
And if the lives of Venezuelans does actually get better, it's probably by lifting sanctions and you should be asking why we were starving them in the first place.
As a reminder, the US knows the effects of sanctions. When confronted by a report on sanctions killing 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State responded [3]:
> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”
> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
All which are currently in foreign countries and are free to express their voices without fear of prosecution. I live in spain with my venezuelan girlfriend, and everybody here from her venezuelan bubble is celebrating and cheering - hoping this is a first step towards freedom. You can turn on your TV to "rtve Telediaro", it is a spanish 24h news channel where they also show venezuelan expats getting together and celebrating from within spain. Other cities in latin america are the same, just watch some news channels from the spanish-speaking world.
They were probably also cheering in the streets in the US, if they weren't afraid of ICE deportations.
Because that worked out so well for the people of Chile (under Pinochet). And Libya (post-Gaddafi). And Iran (1953 onwards). And Iraq (post-Saddam).
Whatever your (valid) criticisms of Maduro, it's important to remember that:
1. The US was intentionally starving Venezuela through sanctions. If conditions improve because the sanctions now get removed, it's not because Maduro is gone. It's because Venezuela's oppressor (the US) just stopped opressing (as much).
Let me put it this way. If I take all your people and put them into a ghetto in Warsaw and build a giant fence around it, letting nothing in or out. And I then decide to let food in once you've given me all your valuables or given up some leader and you now have something to eat, I'm still not the good guy because I later let food in after looting your people and I'm still responsible for starving you in the first place.
2. 20+ years ago the US would lie and say they're doing this to spread democracy and that the people would welcome them as liberators. This was the exact script for Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though it was all about oil they'd never say that. Now they don't even pretend. Trump has outright said that it's about oil and they're going to govern until a suitable puppet is put in place, who will let Western companies loot Venezuela's natural resources.
So good luck with the coming brutal dictatorship and kleptocracy your girlfriend and her countrymen are now celebrating.
In the 90s I had a professor from Ukraine for a math class. He grew up during Stalin and Khrushchev and worked during the Brezhnev years. At a party a group of us decried Pinochet. His response, “What is the big deal. So he killed 10,000 people. In Ukraine we would gladly kill 10,000 people to have their economy.”
I'm a Venezuelan in the USA and I think what happened is an absolutely illegal travesty. Trump and his acolytes are nothing better than criminal thugs and this needs to be fought and protested.
Are you suggesting Maduro should be restored to power in Venezuela? Would that be good or bad for Venezuelan's (regardless of what happens with oil or anything else). Would you be willing to live in Venezuela under Maduro?
Its too late for that now. America has created a mess and will now be responsible for cleaning up that mess (or eschewing responsibility when things don't go as easily as Trump thinks they will, which is probably more likely). There is already a huge power vacuum that is going to be filled with chaos, it is too late to just bring Maduro back since the damage has already been done.
It's important to note only the top of the pyramid was removed here - not the entire government. Most everything will continue as usual for quite some time, or forever.
Just like removing the President of the United States wouldn't mean the country descends into chaos.
It does send a very clear message to whoever becomes the top of the pyramid next, however.
> Just like removing the President of the United States wouldn't mean the country descends into chaos.
Oh, it would definitely. There would be a power vacuum, people would wonder if the remaining government would obey the constitution or ignore it, etc...before Trump I would have said the process would have been resolved smoothly, now I have no idea.
Removing the head of a government doesn't break the government, but it definitely creates chaos before the top is filled. If the government has transitioned into a top-down autocracy, the chaos is even worse, as government agencies would have lost their ability to act independently over time. At that point, various factions start shooting at each other to try and take control of the country (aka a civil war). Throw in one or two foreign militaries in the background and there is even more reasons to start shooting.
> before Trump I would have said the process would have been resolved smoothly, now I have no idea.
Kind of absurd to say this. Even with Jan 6. - things still ran like they were supposed to, and will continue doing so. The government is huge and filled with millions of people. It would take an unprecedented level of coordination to not do what is supposed to happen.
Venezuela has a VP, and a rightfully elected President (not Maduro). I guess we'll see what happens there. The US has committed to maintaining order during the transition - so it seems unlikely to devolve into a civil war as anyone initiating such a thing would have to contend with the US military.
Time will tell... regardless - it seems clear as day Venezuelans will be better off without Maduro. The amount of money that is about to flow into Venezuela will be stunning. Yes, oil companies will swoop in, but the money spent there will rebuild a failed economy, provide untold numbers of jobs for Venezuelans, and lead to a more prosperous nation over time - like it was before Chavez/Maduro.
are you Venezuelan? did you know the country had like a 70-90% deep poverty rate before Chavez? Guess who the oil profits used to go to? Guess what Chavez lowered that poverty rate to before oil prices crashed?
Venezuela was on edge even before Trump did this, do you think they are going to be able to hold it together while the US military is demanding to take control and the people are anxious? Time will tell, but I bet this will wind up like every other case of American regime change in the last 30 years.
> Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil.
It was about the Soviet Union. The British convinced the US that Mosaddegh was going to align himself with the Soviet-proxy communist party (Tudeh) to stay in power. The British, on the other hand, did it because Iran had nationalized British oil fields. The US' oil interests were in Saudi Arabia.
Also the way people describe this is rather twisted. The Shah was not installed by the US. The Shah had been in power since 1941. He was installed by the British, same as his father. The coup replaced Mosaddegh with Fazlollah Zahedi, not the Shah.
Moreover, Mosaddegh's government was not remotely democratically elected. There's a rather in-depth State department memo from the era that describes how those "elections" worked in Iran which made clear that the people voting had little to do with who won. Elections were full of ballot stuffing, bribery and just outright manipulation by pretty much everyone - the Shah, Mosaddegh, Tudeh, foreign governments, etc. [1]
Plus, Mosaddegh had halted Parliamentary election counting early to prevent more opposition from getting elected risking his majority (his party controlled the more urban areas of Iran which finished "counting" earlier). He began ruling with emergency powers and jailing his opposition. That led to mass resignations in Parliament - to the point where they couldn't even form a quorum. Mosaddegh then dissolved Parliament and granted himself full dictatorial powers and ruled by decree after another sham election where 10% of the population "voted."
And it's at this point that the coup happened. The Shah, using his power under Iran's constitution, wrote a letter dismissing Mosaddegh. He was replaced with Fazlollah Zahedi and the Shah started to take a far more active role in government.
Mosaddeq sought fairer royalties for oil from what is now BP but what was then the AIOC after decades of tension and a decrease in Iran's royalties (with increasing British revenues) in the 1940s, ultimately culminating in the nationalization of AIOC in 1951 [1].
Relations deteriorated. Britain isolated Iran through sanctions and oil embargoes. The US sided with Britain but initially rebuffed attempts at a coup, I believe initially under Truman but Eisenhower was also initially reluctant.
Britain did argue that nationalization of oil and other British interests in Iran was Soviet-led and made an argument to Eisenhower's SEcretary of State that a coup was in the interests of fighting communism, something the administration was likely more receptive to given the Truman doctrine and "containment". The Korean War was ongoing at the time.
So did Britain argue this was to fight commmunism? Yes. Was it really? No. It was about Britain's oil interests and colonial ambition. It was no more about fighting communism than invading Iraq in 2003 was about spreading democracy.
Fears of the USSR played a much bigger role in the 1979 Revolution where the US got their then ally, Saddam Hussein, to release the Ayatollah Khomenei from prison to try and make Iran fundamentalist rather than falling into the Soviet sphere of influence.
As for any election abnormalities, nobody cares about that. Like, at all. It's undeniable that Mossadeq was immensely popular in the early 1950s for his stance that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians, first and foremost, rather than a colonial power.
> So did Britain argue this was to fight commmunism? Yes. Was it really? No. It was about Britain's oil interests and colonial ambition. It was no more about fighting communism than invading Iraq in 2003 was about spreading democracy.
More than one party was involved. They had different reasons for their involvement.
The United States' reason was to fight against communism (read: the Soviet Union). As quite a few internal memos make clear, the US did not particularly care about Britain's oil issues and wished to stay out of it. Rather, the US was almost single minded about it's fight against the Soviets. Britain used that to manipulate the US into getting involved.
> As for any election abnormalities, nobody cares about that.
If no one cared about it, people would stop stressing he was "democratically elected."
> It's undeniable that Mossadeq was immensely popular in the early 1950s for his stance that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians
And he was incredibly unpopular by 1953 as he was blamed for the deterioration of the economy caused by the British refusal to ship Iranian oil and he went full autocrat.
Indeed, had Mosaddegh remained popular, the Shah never would have agreed to go through with the coup. After all, he had seen what had happened after Mosaddegh resigned in 1952.
Tell that to the Chileans who endured Pinochet, Iranians who endured the Shah and the Ayatollah and likewise for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Guatemala, etc.
All a puppet would've done was be a brutal dictator who suppressed and disappeared anyone who resisted while enabling Western companies to loot the natural resources and the local populace would see no benefit from that at all.
You might say that Cubans would be better off if Castro had been deposed. Is that because you'd expect the sanctions to be removed? If so, the problem is the sanctions. You're basically saying "you would've been better off if you let me install a puppet dictator and loot your natural resources because then at least I would've stopped intentionally starving you".
And if you can't see the problem with that statement, well, I'm not sure what to say.
The current Iranian regime is a direct result of US involvement in Iran. We are largely responsible for it, for two reasons:
1. By overthrowing a democratic government in the first place to make the Shah a dictator, creating the seeds of revolution; and
2. When it becamne clear that Iran was "lost" (to the West) and fearing a takeover by the Communists and Iran falling into the Soviet sphere of influence, the US got Saddam Hussein, our then-puppet in Iraq who we used to stoke a war for a decade killing more than a million people as an aside, to release the Ayatollah Khomenei from prison in the hopes that the Islamic fundamentalists rather than the communists would win the revolution.
He was imprisoned in Iran, then went to Turkey and from there to Iraq iirc, but it is long ago, so I suspect the GP meant after he was arrested by the Shah.
As far as one can reasonably know something it’s clear that Maduro was not the fairly elected president. Chavez and Maduro were disastrous for Venezuela and millions now have hope for a better future.
Your perception about Iran in 1953 is badly wrong.
Guessing it’s what he said in 2002? But the Tablet EIC made these remarks last week. Not really equivalent, although you’re entitled to your media choices.
A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99 per cent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[83] According to historian Mark Gasiorowski, "There were separate polling stations for yes and no votes, producing sharp criticism of Mosaddeq" and that the "controversial referendum...gave the CIA's precoup propaganda campaign to show up Mosaddeq as an anti-democratic dictator an easy target".[84]
A person has to be very gullible to believe 99% of the vote went one way in a fair election involving 2+ million people.
I think most people agree about Maduro being horrible to Venezuela, but this has nothing to do with that. If this is legitimized, any president can be kidnapped by the US at will. This is a very dangerous precedent which a lot of people will regret when the bully turns against them and not their enemy.
Well for starters he quite clearly stole the election so he is not even the legitimate President. Beyond this he faces indictment for a large number of crimes in the United States and has been extradited to face trial for them.
It's just an excuse to remove an opponent from power and install a puppet. Believing that that's the reason is of extreme naivety. This does not mean that Maduro being out of power is a bad thing, but believing this has anything with law or democracy is ridiculous.
A country indicted a foreign leader for crimes their nation will not prosecute.
Just the other day, half of the Maduro supporters here on HN were expressing outrage over US interference regarding just this the same thing, in a reversal of principles and roles. What we are witnessing on this board is a raw demonstration of politics and power. Who or what principle you support merely depends on where folks sit.
Both sides of this debate make fair points-- what's regrettable is that so many participants seem unwilling or unable to recognize they are reflexively taking the position opposite the US, or Israel and lack any sounder organizing principle.
yeah it feels like the sort of thing that will go sideways easily, I get the "optimistic" angle who doesn't love strong men being removed from power, but it seems more like a recipe for civil war that we're forced to be heavily involved in
will all of the military and paramilitary forces there suddenly become to compliant? will other nations try to turn it into a proxy war to drag the us down possibly as payback for Ukraine?
maybe everyone moves on I have no idea, I'd personally rather just not be involved
Sorry, can't trust claims from a brand new account created in response to a contentious political event. I saw a lot of non-organic stuff like this when the US invaded Iraq too.
Reasoning like this is part of the reason why history keep repeating itself. Completely ignoring how previous US led decapitations turned out, and just hoping this time will be different.
It should not be contentious at this point, the US only cares about the geopolitical value of Venezuela, and if supporting another dictator helps towards this end, then that's what will happen.
The sheer ignorance . To form such an opinion, with such confidence and literally the only grounding is a few women he/she has dated. We are living in an idiocracy.
And the sentence "What really stood out to me was how intelligent Venezuelans are"... no shit, Sherlock, people are intelligent, we're all one species, what did he expect?
He expected what commonly tweeted “IQ by race / country” memes say on X, which is to say they regurgitate old debunked scientific racism that is now popular once again due to confirmation bias.
Significant IQ differences DO exist across countries, with key factors being education, health & nutrition, socioeconomic status, environmental factors (more controversial), the Flynn effect.
Dude, theres not much point in arguing that. You see this kind of 5th column in the aftermath of most popular revolutions, from Iran to Chavez in Venezuela. A whole horde of folks who were part of the previous elites (or more likely, their functionaries) who decamp en masse to the US, where they proceed to spout unhinged propaganda ad infinitum.
A tell tale is how they tend to completely overlook (to the point of pretending it isnt happening) the role of economic sanctions, blockades & other forms of coercive pressure on the economies of those countries. Instead, putting it all down to local actions by local actors.
There won't be much mention of any of the social improvements & economic uplift which Chavez in particular was able to do, before the external economic pressures became overbearing.
When you can control the narrative on both sides of the equation to this extent, kidnapping the leader of a sovereign (until today) country seems almost normal.
Jeffery Sachs summed it up best a couple of hours ago. The US is not even pretending to be a constitutionally-governed state any more, and this is just 1 sign of that.
I think I kind of understand why the Soviets were able to industrialize that fast and win an existential war against the mighty Wehrmacht.
The so called purges from late 20s to to the 30s were Stalin eliminating these 5th columnists.
The Soviets had a lot of Western assistance with industrializing. Ford in particular played a huge role in the Gorky factories.
The Wehrmacht lost because numbers kind of matter in war. When you look at the natural resources Russia had, the population disparity between Russia and Germany, and the size of territory the Germans attempted to conquer, it really wasn't a close contest at all.
Stalin's purges had absolutely nothing with removing any "5th Column." The White Movement was thoroughly defeated by 1921 as were the Mensheviks etc. Stalin purged his officer class because he was supremely paranoid. And while he killed many of the officers, many were sent to the gulags and recalled to service after the German invasion in 1941.
The entire concept of a 5th column is just fear-mongering by most countries who faced defeat due to their incompetence. And the term was used by countries to impose draconian controls and oppression.
Didn’t Trump explicitly say the US is putting Maduro’s second in command in charge? If so, that makes any benefits to the people from removing Maduro pretty unlikely. Besides removing sanctions, assuming the new dictator kisses the ring.
How much of this is if Hong Kong "friends" abroad hypothetically backed the UK invasion of Hong Kong, I just have no respect for this "my friends from that country validate simplistic politics" type of ad hominem. Victims and escapees of oppressive systems are filled with bitter and anger but that doesn't make their solutions automatically the right one.
> 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".
"I really want it" is not the reason. Come on! Maduro is indicted in the Southern District of New York. Both charged with conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US.
The military operation was merely to lead the operation to allow FBI to arrest. Now, the oil issue certainly can be argued as the real reason for the strike and capture, but frankly they were OUR oil fields (funded by US companies) before Maduro seized them and nationalized them.
You’re not wrong about the motives, but others are:
The U.S. has all the oil it needs right now.
The message from the U.S. to the world is: don’t nationalize our businesses infrastructure and then use it against our interests (even if they are on your sovereign territory) - we do not forgive and we do not forget.
Why would it signal that? The loud and clear message would be "do not let American companies get involved in your infrastructure, government or any other system where government requirements would come into open conflict with their profits".
First line: My whole point was the opposite, not sure how you had that reading. Wrong thing, might "maybe" and hopefully turn out good for Venezuelans. The only good outcome trump seems to care is his ego and oil interests.
Second line: You presumed that out of feeling? I did not write anything hinting at that.
Thank you for articulating this outside of the regular "HN myopia" lenses.
This event will also serve as a measure of how strong China actually is. Venezuela is very important strategically for them, they can't let it slide unless they're weak.
Surely, they won't go as far as direct US confrontation, but if they don't make Venezuela into a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there, one can draw the conclusion that China isn't as strong as many make them (including me, I confess).
But it wouldn't be that surprising if Venezuela turns out being a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there...
Swap China for Russia/Iran and Venezuela for Syria/Yemen if you want an idea how that plays. Spoiler: not well for the proxies.
Without some sort of underlying religious ideology to neutralize being concerned about the likely outcome of hellfires dropped on you from 20k feet if you kill American soldiers, I can’t see many stepping up.
A "proxy" is someone who primarily serves someone elses interests first. Their own interests are subservient to that (if they come in at all).
Venezuelans who may end up fighting for Venezuelan freedom to rule themselves as a soveriegn free nation, with the right to fully benefit from THEIR own natural resources, are NOT proxies of anyone. Regardless of who helps them.
When you're a closet imperialist who thinks nothing of stealing other peoples land, resources, dignity & even lives, then everyone opposing you starts to look like a terrorist, an insurgent or a proxy.
> This event will also serve as a measure of how strong China actually is.
Chinese intervention in Venezuela is a suicide mission by every rule of warfare. You are surrounded, you have no supply line and you can't amass your material at the front since America is already there.
I don't know, I guess there's all kinds of tricks. It's not as if US presence made the territory magically impervious to everything. Last time, weather balloons fooled the US military good enough.
I mean, the US can't even keep migrants from illegally crossing their borders with dangerous drugs. Are you really making the case that as soon as the US have boots on the ground, that Venezuela's borders are a 100% secure? America, fuck yeah!
OpEx means that if demand for your service goes down, cost goes down, your hardware does not become a capital liability since it depreciate fast. Way easier to justify changes to it too, you don't need a purchase project to get new instances, you're already "approved" and the contract was already signed with fluctuating costs. Needs more hardware? press a button, no need to research vendors, get contract negotiations in place.
AWS makes the life of finance and leadership a lot easier because they spend a lot of money justifying their superiority in ways that you don't have to think too hard to use and be taken seriously. They're to CTOs what think tanks and lobbyist are for lawmakers.
"No one got fired for buying ibm" for the new era.
There is a lot of truth in AWS propaganda, they're great for many things. But some of it is built on lies, cost being one, performance another.
Opex looks nicer on the sheets than capex for large deployments.
Incredible high investment from AWS on luring in C level with "white-papers" and promises of cost and governance magical revolutions.
I've heard the promise of cheaper, faster where you can focus on "innovation". I am yet to see any of it become a reality.
Modern IDEs will show you the type of anything at all times. I do not understand your point unless you're doing raw text editing of Java source.
Those keystrokes are not just saved on writing, they make the whole code more legible and easier to mentally parse. When reading I don't care if the variable is a specific type, you're mostly looking whats being done to it, knowing the type becomes important later and, again, the IDE solves that for you.
> Modern IDEs will show you the type of anything at all times. I do not understand your point unless you're doing raw text editing of Java source.
The word "String" "Integer" et al. + "var" is too much real estate for being explicit. Sometimes, I'm looking at the decompiled source from some library that doesn't have a source package available.
> Those keystrokes are not just saved on writing, they make the whole code more legible and easier to mentally parse.
This is incorrect. Repeating it doesn't make it true. For trivial code (<10 lines) probably seems fine at the time. Lots of bad practices start with laziness.
Changing practice because an author thinks a function is small enough when it was written, is a recipe for unclean code with no clear guidelines on what to use or expect. Maybe they rather put the onus on a future reader; this is also bad practice.
To me var is what makes modern java somewhat readable and more bearable.
It was always a joke that it takes too long to write anything in java because of the excessive syntax repetitions and formalities. To me that joke is heavily based on a reality that modern Java is tackling with this quality of life features.
I get the attraction to var, but I, personally, don't use it, as I feel it makes the code harder to read.
Simply, I like (mind, I'm 25 year Java guy so this is all routine to me) to know the types of the variables, the types of what things are returning.
var x = func();
doesn't tell me anything.
And, yes, I appreciate all comments about verbosity and code clutter and FactoryProxyBuilderImpl, etc. But, for me, not having it there makes the code harder for me to follow. Makes an IDE more of a necessity.
Java code is already hard enough to follow when everything is a maze of empty interfaces, but "no code", that can only be tracked through in a debugger when everything is wired up.
Maybe if I used it more, I'd like it better, but so far, when coming back to code I've written, I like things being more explicit than not.
Yes, well expressed. For that case using var is not a wise approach.
It does help when writing:
var x = new MyClass();
Because then you avoid repetition. Anyways, I don't ever use "var" to keep the code compatible with Java-8 style programming and easier on the eyes for the same reasons you mention.
I have the opposite feeling. var makes it easier to write but harder to read/review. Without var you know the exact type of a variable without going through some functions for example
While I was there I did some search around and it seems that the wind, weather and soil is just part of it. The largest reason is sheep. They'll eat any tree before it has any chance of growing. So you get naturally sparse growth already, add the sheep, you get grass everywhere. Which makes everywhere very walkable and surreal at the same time. Plenty of trees on cities and gardens.
> It's traffic that is completely below ground which means that no streets above are burdened with it, it's all electric so no emissions
So are modern subways. Cost is a major point tho, subways are designed to move waaaaay more than 30k people a day for much less, but costs of building are much higher.
This is only 1.7 miles and a novelty, I would not know If the differences hold for Tesla on other places or when scaling up. My suspicious is that it does not.
I also wonder that if you use the same tunnel they did but modify the cars to run by themselves using traditional techniques, would the operation get cheaper but the shortcomings be more glaring.
Vegas now has 5 stations and is 2.2 miles. Can you realistically compare it to a billion dollar a mile sub at line that would take a decade to build (or more)?
30k a day is a nearly a million a month and costs are low by comparison (no expensive subway cars etc).
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