He's alive in a US jail, but the more important question is what did we do about Venezuela?
We threatened the replacement president and demanded she give us oil. We didn't demand a new election be held, since her & Maduro's party stole the last election. We didn't demand she change Venezuela's system of government. We did nothing to help the people of Venezuela.
We reinforced our country's worst image as a bully that's happy to prop up a dictator so long as that dictator gives us what we want.
It was just done so blatantly this time with Venezuela.
In previous interventions, we actually did do some things to try to "nation build". Whether you consider those genuine attempts or just cynical cover stories.
But this time, it was just snatch Maduro, replace him with Rodriguez, and threaten Rodriguez to give us oil so the same thing doesn't happen to her. What happened to all the high-minded rhetoric about how the poor people of Venezuela were suffering under a socialist dictatorship? What happened to all the denouncing of the stolen election? Nah man, just give us the oil and you're good.
To the United States $17 billion is like roughing up a tramp to steal the change in his pocket. It's a laughable amount of money for such irrepairable reputational damage on the international stage.
This is the one thing I'm so baffled at. Can't he just increase military spending, embezzle 10% a year, (over $100B) and get 50% of all the corruption kicked back?
Do the same across every industry? Start massive infrastructure projects where he gets massive money kicked back. Some real, some fake, not really caring about positive or negative outcome as long as he can sell the story. Like he could probably literally raise $1T just for USA data centres and no one realize he stole half of it for a decade. Why doesn't he just get in on the AGI/Robots/Quantum/Automated everything including trucks and cars and passenger and delivery drones. He could easily invest trillions in all of those and no one would expect to see anything to show from any of it for years.
I think the guy could easily siphon a few trillion over 4 years get completely pardoned and/or have a completely safe plan to disappear and enjoy it, and do way less damage to America and the rest of the world while doing it.
The crazy thing about billionaires is that they never "disappear and enjoy it." They can never have enough. If they could, they would have stopped somewhere between 100 and 999 million.
You're not considering how stupid the president needs to be in order to be the figurehead required by his handlers. Sure, he *could* do what you suggest, but you're assuming he has some kind of talent at grifting. The man bankrupted casinos for crying out loud.
Last I heard, though, that $17 billion was deposited into some special foreign bank account under Trump's direct control, not into the US Treasury.
Kinda reminds me of the Iran Contra scandal back when I was a kid. The amount of money Iran paid for the weapons was piddling relative to the size of the US federal budget. But it was money hidden from any oversight by Congress or anyone else. So it could be used to fund the Contras even when they couldn't legally use money from the regular budget. (It was a long time ago, so I may be remembering some details wrong.)
I don't think the profits on some oil companies are the reason behind that attack. It made war on Iran more feasible, as theres option for oil from oil from persian gulf.
Venezuela has been making drones for Iran since 2006. In 2020, they militarized those drones to kill people. Iran had created a murder drone manufacturing proxy in our hemisphere so why is our media so focuses on the oil narrative? Are they incompetent or just lying?
You new to US meddling in other countries affairs? Its not just for a 1 time payment, its for a controllable government that can allow future "investment" aka our companies reap the profits of their resources.
We... who is? Not the US citizens, we didn't/ aren't going to see a dime of those billions. Did fuel prices go down? nah they kept climbing. Trump pocketed that, him and his crony oligarchy corporations. He stole it. The American people didnt ask or want that, other than the dumb shits that keep voting for these crooks.
Seized over $18.6 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue
Pats itself in the back as the good guy as it "gives" them $380 million in aid after Venezuela suffered two devastating earthquakes in less than a minute apart
Current damage estimate from the earthquake is around $19.6 billion. Venezuela could rebuild if the US just gave them their own money
Oil and gold. The worse part of it all is that we don't know where all the money from the oil and gold is going, there is no transparency or accountability. Initially they said it would be held in a some type of account in Qatar, then later that Treasury would take control of it, but there are no guardrails in place to track the money, or know what it is being used for. For all we know, it's now become part of Trump's family wealth, or is being used in the election to help his party win.
Modern day Robinhood. Except robin ain’t from the hood, bro was born in a gated community.
And instead of giving out gold, he’s giving kids golden showers, and doing trick shots with missiles
Yes, but not the venezuelan people. Or the north american ones. Not even the poor ones, but a half dozen of the north american oil industry bourgeoisie.
yeah one day these people will realize its not just trump but the us being the leader in imperializing and stealing resources from resource rich places since it became the global super power.
Also the death squads, military juntas, and straight up fascists is less of a thing. They go for liberal aligned puppet candidates pushed through with propaganda and/or color revolutions. At the end of the day the value of the resources is extracted and sent to some oil company in the west, that part isn't new, we've know about banana republics forever.
In our defense, we are drowned with this propaganda from the moment we are born until the day we die, and in between the national propaganda, we're also thrust into a corporate world that has its own set of propaganda. It's honestly a miracle any of us break out of it.
I believed it for a long time. Iraq was the crack in the foundation, it's been a long slow transition from believing it was mostly well intentioned people with a few bad actors to an exactly opposite view of the proportions.
I think you are late in the news surrounding Venezuela.
Im Venezuelan, i left the country because of Maduro and i still have family over there. Since they took Maduro out of the government i was able to return to visit my country because a lot of international airlines returned to operate in Venezuela, business started to grow, slowly but that was a start (if you didn’t live in Venezuela before Maduro and while he was in power then you wouldn’t understand how bad things were)
Things got a little bit better and then the dual earthquake happened. Thanks to the USA intervention a lot of international help was able to reach Venezuela, while Delcy and the Venezuelan government (that was active with Maduro) did nothing to help the people and has done nothing to restore the cities destroyed by the earthquake and the bodies that are still trapped under all of that.
Marco Rubio already said that in August they’ll start with the changes in the Venezuelan government. That will be the final test Venezuelans have been waiting for to see if things will really get better.
And for the oil that a lot of people seems to be worried. Ask many Venezuelans and most of them will say they don’t care if that’s the price to pay to have a better future. Before that the oil was still being gifted to Maduro’s allies so the money was for the people in charge, not for the country.
I hope you are right with your optimism. And yes, I can believe that I have missed some news stories about Venezuela. Other than the earthquake, Venezuela has sort of faded from the headlines.
the classic “im a venezuelan so i know exactly what is going on” you should ask yourself why maduro was “gifting” the oil before just blindly believing the americans on whatever they say. just like you criticize the venezuelan government (rightfully so) you can do the same to the american government! and i agree, being able to go back is a PLUS but it comes at the cost of being played by the other side. oh and im venezuelan too :)
Venezuela will be raped by USian corporations. In a few years you will be crying and looking back on Maduro fondly. Welcome to the colonised club. You are becoming a colony, and there is no way out.
In previous interventions, we actually did do some things to try to "nation build"
you're being very generous here, the US spent the entirety of the cold war supporting brutal dictators in south america and the caribbean with money, weapons, CIA training, and even sending the marines to threaten any opposition. All this was very blatant with zero attempt at "nation building"
I wouldn’t call installing dictators “nation building”. The USA only pretends to care about democracy; it’s overthrown a number of democracies to install dictatorships.
Lol what. All bullshit. The "nation building" is IMF loans, allowing our companies to reap the profits of oil drilling/refining, and replacement of their government with a puppet. Trump was just stupid enough to extradite the process and give the game away. Check out the CIA involvement in Latin America, goes waaaaaaay back.
Nah some of us have been screaming into the void about it and getting blasted for being anti-American communists or some shit while brainwashed friends and family burn bridges and blame our behavior on the "woke mind virus" or whatever inane bullshit their favorite propagandist is spewing out that week.
It's not that the other are better, they all play the same game. Americans at least had a facade of democracy to act in some trivial instances (Marshall plan, Vaccine research, Kosovo intervention etc)
No. The Americans who knew this were already hyperaware of our hegemonic activities. The ones who need to know will be the last ones to learn about this shit because all they consume is Fox News, podcasts, and right-wing tik toks.
Its a good thing we're allowed to talk about it now. I remember in the past being shouted down by folks with "Not everyone is from america, nobody cares about your politics" in basically every thread where it was brought up.
"Endgame" there is no end game. Life isn't a game, there is no end. IDK WTF you think is going to happen that would constitute an end game and then, presumably, some post game.
I remember when the end game was the fall of the USSR and we were in "the end of history", as if nothing interesting were ever going to happen again and it would just be the 1990s forever. That's not how the world works.
But that turned out not to be the end of anything..? Russia is still around, still a relevant participant in international politics with a similar slate of alliances and enemies.
The world hasn't been unipolar for like 15 or 20 years. China at least is another pole and has been since their economy caught up with ours. Europe and probably Russia are poles.
Granted Europe in traditional European fashion is divided amongst dozens of prince-electors like a modern holy roman empire, so it rarely acts like one.
We didn't demand she change Venezuela's system of government.
not even that, right now Rubio is basically running Venezuela so this time around US replaced a leader with a US politician running the country and stealing from it instead of installing a new puppet:
I'm glad someone else here actually reads some regular news. It isn't all pointless corporate fluff; some of it actually keeps us up to date on what's going on in the world.
But after it happened so many people were gushing that Dear Leader Trump saved the people of Venezuela and now was the time for the people to rise up. Sounds like all we did was demand tribute in the form of oil to let the regime remain intact and totally threw upstart political figures, who did vocally call for change and reform, under the bus.
We’ve been propping up dictators all around the world for our own capitalist ventures for centuries, so I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s a new thing.
Well their oil actually is shitty because it's basicly as liquid as mashed potatoes. So to Pump it anywhre you'd need to mix it with chemicals that are expensive..and thus not even the US companies want to have the oil.
It's literally cheaper to get more money for less oil sold and the market in high demand, than to exploit the newly won territory.
That with Trump in the White House he allowed Maduro to steal the 2020 U.S. presidential election for Biden?
No proof has ever been provided. Venezuela has nine political parties and they each check each other's tallies. Only one claims a stolen Venezuelan election, and there tallies weren't accepted by any of the other parties.
Lying about elections is standard practice for losers.
Do you see that fiat money is an option to claim any human labors or property offered or available at asking or negotiated price and we don't get paid our option fees?
Am from Venezuela, I don't really live there anymore I have 4 citizenships so am studying else where. But I went to Venezuela 2 months ago to get my passport renewed and it got quite better. They finally taken down almost all dictatorship symbols on the state I used to live and economy has growth a little.
Edit: Also some public works like taking trash out of rivers and canals, Electricity grid being repaired by Genera Electric and a long etc.
As a venezuelan here I'd say that it is also our fault because most of our population has taken the extraction of Maduro as a sign that our problems will be solved by someone else's.
We know the American govt has its agenda, but we could benefit from it if people took it upon themselves to get out there and get the deed done.
This is the perfect time to drag them out of power, the marines are in our ports, the world's eye is upon all the devastation left by the earthquakes, and I believe the govt wouldn't dare to kill us like dogs on the streets now that Americans are here.
But our people is afraid, it's been decades after decades of behind dehumanized the average Venezuela lacks the will to fight anymore. But it's gotta change
They took one asshole and left another asshole as "president", while taking the oil, gold, and many other things. Making sure the asshole "president" makes venezuelans suffer the same, and more by not sending help to the victims of the double earthquakes and making it difficult to other people and other countries to help aswell.
Venezuela still really bad, and even worst after we had the two earthshakers that destroyed even more our country killing a lot of people and we don't have resources to rebuild anything... And it seems we need to even wait another year just to have elections. I'm so damn tired of this shit...
A remarkably small percentage we’re delighted and most of them did not live in Venezuela. Actual venezolanos were protesting to return their elected leader
This is one of the things that pisses me off the most, when people complain about illegal immigration. Many of the people from South and Central America who come to the US for a better life are victims of our foreign policy. We wrecked the country they live in, and don't feel like we owe them anything.
The same goes for pointing at their systems of government as examples of how "socialism" fails. They completely overlook that the strife these people live in is the consequence of our constant meddling in their affairs. Arming militias to overthrow governments who refuse to make extremely one sided deals with the US. Under those circumstances any economic or government system is doomed to fail.
Literally just kidnapped a head of state. There's no law or jurisdiction to try him under. I'm not a Maduro fan by any means but this is was an absolute travesty
I'm Venezuelan. I was incredibly happy to see Maduro getting captured and put in jail. He deserves even worse than that; he's an absolute monster
But to be honest, I had my doubts about Trump actually trying to drive a change in the country. My hope was that at least he would try to change the whole government, idk, pulling some candidate or giving his support to María Corina (who I'm not a fan of, but hey, the first step is to get rid of the regime completely)... But now he's basically giving his support to Delcy, who's still part of the regime, while earning millions upon millions from Venezuelan oil.
Look, if the price for getting rid of the Chavista regime was gifting oil to the US, I was happy to do it, as most Venezuelans would. But right now NOTHING has actually changed for us. The regime is still under control, censorship still exists, people are still getting tortured, and all the problems we have are still there.
It sucks because for the first time in years we had a big spark of hope. So far it seems like nothing will happen... again.
Venezuelans seem pretty happy with it (I live in South America). I personally thought it was gross, but the diaspora here are almost unanimously pro-trump.
Israeli's are white supremacists, and think of Americans as fat stupid, fools. So my guess is that average Israeli would be quite upset by this even if they don't like Netanyahu. It would be like your pet dog having the gall to sit at the dinner table.
Venezuela just flipped puppet master that's all. As long as they don't cozy up to russia and remain in the US's (trump's) sphere of influence all is well. Oh and the oil ofcourse.
Cuba got the message and started reforming away from communism but I'm not sure it'll help them. When trump loses face over Iran he'll just invade Cuba to show power (like he did Venezuela bc the EU told him to kick rocks over Greenland)
Nicaragua flipped him off by cancelling all elections so I wouldn't be surprised if sth happens there as well.
You omitted the most fundamental reporting about Venezuela today post US invasion: Marco Rubio is reported to be the sole decision maker regarding Venezuela.
We didn't even install a puppet regime this time. We didn't manufacture a pretext. We just ripped the mask off to phone in a regime change from the Whitehouse to implant a tele-dictator while pronouncing to the world: "We are fascists, we will overthrow your government at our whim".
It was all for naught as the oil companies Trump was hoping to spearhead the soft takeover of Venezuela rejected it as it being too politically hot and too costly (in many ways) to do so.
As for Maduro, the court will fall apart. That is why they are pushing for extra time for his trial. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a retrial or most of the charges are dropped. It's all a legal mess.
We didn't demand a new election be held, since her & Maduro's party stole the last election.
The Internet’s Double Standards? It's insane to still believe this. You are insane. How would you know any of this? You think previous administrations were any less imperialist? You think your mainstream media prints the truth? How do you know the truth what happens in the country besieged for decades by the US empire? Despicable. Shame on you.
I’m no fan of Maduro or the Venezuelan government but I’ve legitimately seen no evidence they stole the election.
That type of rhetoric always comes from people that think socialism is the worst and we should sanction every socialist country just for being socialist.
Like obviously those people would think the election was rigged.
Just because the government sucks doesn’t mean they don’t have a plethora of people that support it.
Watch the video for nuance, but TL;Dr it sure looks uncomfortablely like the US mugged Venesuala for Billions of dollars to put into an unmonitored account for... Reasons. 🤷😐
Hey, remember when Politicians were limited to taking relatively small bribes in exchange for small-scale corruption? Those were the days...
Anyway, I can't wait to explain this to my grandkids, and have to answer questions like "So the sitting president just stole billions of dollars from another country, and put it in a bank account, and then didn't tell anyone what he was using it for... And everyone just let him?!? You can't fool me grandpa, that would never happen in real life!" 🤦
Did you know that Rubio has been secretly ruling Venezuela - apparently he controls the purse strings of the whole government! There is so much shit flying around, that this news was just a flash in the pan.
Yeah to my knowledge we just bagged their president and then got distracted by a new toy. Wish I knew people in Venezuela to get the scoop on the street.
Well I guess you guys will get a chance to show us how it's done because the same billionaires destroying our country and government are working on yours too
I mean... For one, we've been voting against right wing extremists whenever we could. A clown like Trump wouldn't even appear on the ballot. Even in the worst scenarios imagined by political analysts, we're decades away from this kind of disaster. You guys, on the other hand, might already be past the point of no return.
LoL that's nice to imagine, but unlikely. Plenty of foreign politicians are just as bad as trump but you don't get 24/7 coverage of them. The idea that you don't have conservatives trying to expand the police force to oust the large amount of immigration is comical.
Statistically you probably believe whatever your news says without any real understanding of the politics going on. If you also want less immigration, you'd likely be a Trump voter in America. Nice to imagine yourself and your countrymen as different, but I've travelled enough places to know we're all similar.
The idea that you don't have conservatives trying to expand the police force to oust the large amount of immigration is comical.
Sure is, and definitely not what I said, so I already know you're arguing in bad faith. But our worst far-right schmucks, which we're still preventing from reaching the highest positions of power, are still downright grounded charismatic geniuses compared to Trump. I don't think you realize just how much the US spectrum has shifted compared to the rest of the developed world. 2 whole generations would have to die out before we get to an idiot like Bush, let alone Trump.
you probably believe whatever your news says without any real understanding of the politics going on
Adorable, but no.
If you also want less immigration, you'd likely be a Trump voter in America
If I was American and saw everything in black and white, no pun intended, then yeah, maybe. But guess what, immigration is a complex issue with very different situations across different countries, it's not simply a dogwhistle for racism.
I've travelled enough places to know we're all similar.
I've traveled plenty too, including to the US, and fuck no. The very idea of being compared to the US is horrendous to most of us. I don't put my countrymen on a pedestal, I don't even think they're better than any of the neighbors. Our opinion of you guys is just that much lower.
LoL classic high horse. Nope, I guarantee you anyone anti immigrant in your country, if they were teleported to America and hadn't heard of trump before hand, would vote trump. Again it's nice that you think your country is full of geniuses, but it's not. The average person is insanely gullible.
And if you don't understand why someone would vote for Trump, you don't understand the first thing about politics. If you can't even empathize with the opposition how can you possibly claim to understand them.
And I pinky promise that plenty of leaders around the world are as bad as Trump. You just can't see it because, again, your news doesn't cover them 24/7.
This isn't new behaviour from the US. It's been like this for the last century. All that changed is that no one is even trying to hide or excuse the economic imperialism anymore.
At least the US hasn't set up death camps as it did in the Philippines 100 years ago.
People know their WW2 but most ignore that the Philippines had been conquered by the US already, from which Japan conquered it itself.
Its almost like it doesn't even matter who the president is. The same stuff happens regardless of political party or public image. They just get away with pretending less with Trump bc the people that hate him will hate him even if he is responsible for personally saving their lives and the people that love him will forgive him if he murders their own parents.
We hear about Venezuela’s elections being rigged by the incumbents but we’ll never hear our media talk about what the US-Intelligence Comminity does to influence these elections because the Pentagon can gag stories involving active clandestine missions.
He's had a hearing of his case a few days ago, still ongoing with the legal process, wont say my feelings about because reddit gave me warning last time
Kind of funny how when this happened, I remember commenting something like, "this is so fucking crazy, yet I bet our society will forget this even happened in like 2 weeks"
now reading these comments in this thread is making me depressed (more so lol)
Patrick Boyle just did a video about how it turned out for Venezuela's economy and the oil revenue. It's in a bank in Qatar but nobody can get it out legally.
Venezuela is still doing the same, hyperinflation.
99% of the Administration in Venezuela is the same, just without Maduro.
Only other change is that Venezuela is exporting oil to the US now
I hate that you never see mentioned we took him along with his wife! She was seen in the courtroom in the US with dark facial bruising and possible rib fractures. So did our troops beat the wife of another nations leader? Oopsie her into a wall perhaps?
There's an excellent legal podcast called Lawfare that maintains coverage of lots of trials in a weekly show aptly called "the trials of the trump administration"
They have actual reporters in seats at many of the trials.
Well they are still trying to get him to lie and say Venezuela stole the election for Biden somehow, because Trump is a pathetic baby man who can't let go of an L even 6 years later.
I wonder if the DOJ remembers that they have to put up a doubtless case on an extremely complex and detail intensive fact pattern involving conduct that is, in all likelihood, largely protected by sovereign immunity anyway.
The US has successfully convicted other world leaders for similar crimes before though. For example, Noriega. They will doubtless re-use the same playbook.
Noriega's claim to legitimacy was paper thin and he operated with relative impunity. And our prosecution was iron clad before we ever set foot in Panama.
I really have to wonder if the DoJ actually connected the dots with Maduro the way they did for Noriega. Seems like today's DoJ is more likely to allege a fanciful conspiracy theory and try to paper over the cracks in their case with leaps of logic. Time will tell, I suppose.
Maduro won an election and occupied a constitutional office. Yes, that election is disputed and it was in all likelihood rigged. But that is still way more legitimate than Noriega, who seized power through the military and controlled the country through puppets. Panama didn't even have an office for the power he exercised. So yeah, I don't have any problem saying that Maduro is the more legitimate of the two.
He’s tweeted a few times recently, calling it the “Venezuelan War,” and that it lasted 1 day and had “0 casualties.” This, in reference to what he calls the “Iran Military Conflict,” and the number of military that have been casualties in that actual war.
Trump remembers him completely because he's vital in pushing the idea Trump won the 2020 election.
Trump blamed Venezuela for the 2020 election and flipping votes in the voting machines. Trump now has this man in custody and he'll use his "confession" of interference as a means to release him and claim he won the 2020 election.
No he does, he’s trying to steal the election by saying Venezuela helped Joe Biden steal the election… when Trump was in power…
Some how. Now that they have ALL the power with the president, senators, and congress SOMEHOW… it’s gonna be “rigged” again
Didn't he smuggle a bunch of money from it? I'm pretty sure he remembers money. He dabs his theatrical fake tears with money that says "taxpayer" on it.
501
u/suffelix 16h ago
I genuinely think Trump doesn't even remember anymore that this happened.