US strikes Venezuela and abducts Nicolás Maduro

[.db.]

The Venezuelans who were protesting in Manchester over the last few years will be celebrating this.



For those without Instagram so can’t see what it says in that post:


They’re actually meeting at 3.30pm this afternoon outside Media City. And it won’t be to protest against USA.

 

[Bazzmand Show]

'It was like watching a TV show'.

 

[blueinsa]

Not only is what the US has done wrong, it won’t work either.

Regime change by force never works because there is never a plan on what comes next.

Feels like a distraction and very much something to keep a domestic audience happy rather than any sort of world order need.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Not only is what the US has done wrong, it won’t work either.

Regime change by force never works because there is never a plan on what comes next.

Feels like a distraction and very much something to keep a domestic audience happy rather than any sort of world order need.

@Brewster's millions and @tweety please see above for the perspective of a lefty.

Oh, what’s that? @blueinsa ISN’T a lefty? Well, I’ll be damned.

Maybe this isn’t about wings after all. Mike Lee isn’t a lefty either and he doesn’t seem too pleased.

My biggest worry is precisely that there is no plan for what comes next because, per my earlier post, with Trump, consequences beyond the very immediate are almost never a consideration, as his entire history demonstrates.

 

[better dead than red]

Not a great fan of Daft Donald, but I doubt very much America needs shitty Venezuelan Oil when they have so much of their own, he'd be better off invading Scotland. Wonder if Our American Cousin is still on at the Ford theatre.

His mother was a British Citizen, born in Scotland. Maybe he has family connections?

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

For those that don't get the oil debate - type versus quantity here you go ...(not sure i buy the currency argument completely)

 

[mosssideblue]

'It was like watching a TV show'.

The US have a child as their president

 

[Uptop]

Its a very odd situation in that Maduro is effectively a dictator who has ruined the country, is all but proven to have lost the last election in a landslide but retained power by force and has committed numerous crimes against humanity against Venezuelans. Maduro himself was threatening and signed a law to invade/annex Guyana beside them last year.

None of that really gives justification for the US to step in and depose him, especially considering Trumps reasoning isnt even related to these crimes but just vague drug trafficking claims.

I wouldnt be surprised if most Venezuelans are actually happy this has happened. The problem is nobody is going to trust the US to provide any stability or planning what happens next.

 

[i kne albert davy]

Venezuela has the world's largest reserves.
If you were US Oil you might prefer to keep your own reserves if you could get Trump to provide access to Venezuelan reserves.
Chevron is the oil company currently drilling and extracting oil from Venezuela.

Maduro interview published yesterday makes interesting reading.

Venezuela's Maduro offers talks, oil deal with US | Latest Market News

Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro asked for dialogue with US president Donald Trump whenever and wherever after the US has continued to increase military pressure on his government.

www.argusmedia.com

The thing some people will do to try distraction from Epstein.

Back in the 80s when we still had heavy industry we built some refinery equipment for the Yanks and Bill the inspector they sent over told me then they had more oil than they knew what to do with, but while world prices are low why use your own. Suppose nothings changed.

 

[dronefromsector7G]

Good. They sound bloody awful at football matches.

 

[blueinsa]

The US have a child as their president

Narcissistic bully and misogynist at a minimum with the very real possibility he is guilty of even worse.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Fair enough..Then given that oil is not the issue and that Venezuela is way down the list of narcotrafficing countries what exactly is Trump up to?

Are you assuming that Trump actually understands oil quality? I'd wager that he's just been told it has lots of it, and the rest is pesky science that he's not been told about/doesn't understand.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

 

[Vic]

They've lived in a left wing dictatorship for years!

Point spectacularly missed. How old are you?

‘Pregnant women were abducted, babies taken away’ - The dirtiest World Cup ever

A look at why Argentina in 1978 is perhaps the most notorious tournament since the competition’s inception.

www.the42.ie

 

[MillionMilesAway]

'It was like watching a TV show'.

He absolutely gets fixated on violence, explosions and deaths caused whenever he talks about it - glorying in the violence.

 

[Vic]

Its amazing how Iraq (and it's "WMDs"), Libya, Afghanistan, and now Venezuela were all an existential threat to poor old US and it's European lackeys, and they simply had to unleash war and untold miseries on tens of millions of civilians.

But NATO, expands all the way across Europe to Russia's borders, with the prospect of ballistic missiles and extensive hostile forces right next to it, and it's all hunky dory, Russia should have just accepted it and gone for peace.

TRT World - Russia could have joined NATO. But why didn't they do it?

The victorious Western alliance saw Russia as a crumbled post-Soviet state and did not make enough efforts to let Moscow join the power bloc.

www.trtworld.com

 

[i kne albert davy]

That's exactly what trump wants. Venezuela nationalised the oil industry in 1967. American companies were the biggest losers. They still have facilities in the States to upgrade the oil.

Trump has said many times that the oil was stolen from them.

We'll have to see how it works out for the Venezuelans the guy they had in charge wasn't exactly Mr nice guy and living standards have dropped through the floor.

 

[BlueNomad]

I'd have no problem whatsoever, indeed I would be quite proud if our FA were to decline to complete, with apologies to Mexico and Canada

Just tell them you’d love to compete, but will not play ANY games in the USA. Canada & Mexico? No problem. USA? No chance.

Will never happen, of course.

 

[blueish swede]

'It was like watching a TV show'.

2 thoughts on this:
1) Trump had to have his "Bin Laden" moment. A cliché, but Obama lives rent free in his head, and White House Correspondents Dinner is one of the defining events of Trump's life.

2) Why was Maduro even sleeping in the Presidential Palace? Especially after the attack on the harbour a few days ago! Did no-one in his proximity see this happening?

 

[Strangerepublic]

You forgot to mention that quite a few new NATO members joined because of Putin's aggression against Ukraine. Self inflicted paranoia on Putin's part.

Most of the pre Ukraine expansion happened by the early 2000s, when Putin was barely in power and the Russian army was pathetically weak.

Russia became "paranoid" when NATO went all the way to Ukraine, organised a coup to overthrow a democratically elected Ukraine leader and started attacking Russian majority regions in East Ukraine

Most of the non- US bloc world have a good reason to be paranoid about the US bloc, as this week's events, or multiple previous invasions have shown.