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Actually SIAP this time. I'm still like 7 pages behind on this thread & wanted to get it out there asap. Malcolm Nance sums it all up: 'The only thing that's changed is that Maduro has left the country'.

So good. One of very few videos of this type that I found to be worth my time to watch it. Moves quickly. Full of good info. I'm sure some of you already knew this guy. I didn't. Dude knows his shit. Great listen.

Edited by wood

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49 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

My favorite part of all this won’t come until later, when the Republicans and neocons tell us all why it was wrong for Xi to do the exact same thing to Taiwan.

Yup.

How the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Reinforces Xi’s Vision of Power in Asia
The U.S. assault on Venezuela points to a world where big powers seek to call the shots in their regions, an idea Beijing knows well.

Just hours before American commandos seized President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in a daring raid, a senior Chinese official had met the Venezuelan leader at the presidential palace, a show of support for one of Beijing’s closest partners in the Western Hemisphere.

The speed with which U.S. forces acted afterward to capture Mr. Maduro sent a blunt message to Beijing about the limits of its influence in a region that Washington treats as its own. China now risks losing ground in Venezuela after Saturday’s assault in Caracas, despite decades of investment and billions of dollars in loans.

But the assault also reinforces a broader logic that ultimately favors President Xi Jinping’s vision of China and its status in Asia: when powerful countries impose their will close to home, others tend to step back.

The White House has framed the Maduro operation as part of an updated Monroe Doctrine, or as President Trump describes it, the “Donroe Doctrine.” A globe carved into spheres of influence — with the United States dominating the Western Hemisphere and China asserting primacy across the Asia-Pacific — and where might makes right, regardless of shared rules, could benefit Beijing in a number of ways.

Stephen Miller, a top aide to Mr. Trump, articulated this doctrine in an interview with the CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

It could keep the United States and the brunt of its military forces away from Asia. And it could undercut Washington’s criticism of Beijing when Chinese forces elbow their way across contested waters of the South China Sea and menace Taiwan, the island democracy China claims as its own.

The assault on Caracas “does further erode the norms against great power use of force that have steadily weakened in the last two decades, which works just fine for Beijing,” said Rush Doshi, a China expert at Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations. “More important, if it distracts the United States by tying us up in Venezuela, all the better for Beijing too.”

Beijing has long railed against what it calls America’s strategy of containing China, which includes stationing troops in Japan and South Korea, and deploying U.S. naval ships in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. And it has criticized Washington’s moves to deepen security ties with India and help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines.

Mr. Xi has depicted China as a reliable and powerful pillar in the region, in contrast to the United States, as he sought to court neighbors to his side in a trade war with President Trump.

In a speech at a high-level Communist Party conference on regional diplomacy, Mr. Xi called for the region to be governed by “Asian values,” Asian supply chains and an Asian security model where countries shared “weal and woe.”

On Monday, Mr. Xi once again appeared to underscore the contrast between the Trump administration’s assault and China’s “neighborhood diplomacy” in a meeting with President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea in Beijing. Mr. Xi, casting China as a benevolent major power, said Beijing and Seoul were able to achieve “harmony without uniformity” by “resolving differences through dialogue and consultation.”

In fact, China has not hesitated to use its massive economic power for coercion and its ample modern military to intimidate its neighbors.

Just last week, China fired more than two dozen long-range rockets into waters around Taiwan and surrounded the island with bombers, fighter jets and warships in a two-day show of force aimed at intimidating the island’s leadership. China has also punished Japan economically for showing support for Taiwan.

None of this means Beijing is calibrating its approach to Taiwan based on events in Venezuela. Chinese leaders have long treated the island as a domestic issue to be resolved on their own terms, independent of U.S. actions elsewhere.

China has sometimes been explicit about how it sees its power in its own neighborhood. At a meeting with Southeast Asian officials in 2010 over the South China Sea, China’s then-foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said: “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

That blunt view of power helps explain both China’s confidence in Asia and its vulnerability farther afield, as Venezuela has made clear.

China will not easily give up on Latin America, a region where Beijing has been expanding its economic and political influence for years, buying soybeans and minerals and investing in ports, telecommunications networks and space infrastructure. It has aligned itself with Brazil, Colombia and, of course, Venezuela, in being willing to stand up to Washington’s bullying.

Led by socialist strongmen who dared to defy the United States, Venezuela shared an ideological kinship with China’s communist leaders. The South American nation has been the region’s largest recipient of Chinese loans and the largest buyer of Chinese military equipment. In 2023, Beijing elevated bilateral relations with Caracas to one of its highest tiers, known as an “all-weather strategic partnership.”

China’s stake in the country, which includes around $10 billion in outstanding loans, could now be at the mercy of the Trump administration, which indicated on Sunday that it would assert leverage on Venezuela’s leadership by imposing a military “quarantine” on the country’s oil exports.

For Beijing, the timing of Saturday’s strike only compounded the blow. China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, had met with Mr. Maduro in Caracas at Miraflores, the presidential palace, earlier in the day on Friday, their meeting shown on local broadcasts.

“The United States took such action at a time when China’s delegation was visiting Venezuela. For China, it is very embarrassing,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. He said that the attack would affect relations between Washington and Beijing.

That it took place during the Chinese delegation’s visit also pointed to a potential failure of China’s intelligence services and its diplomats, said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

Beijing has condemned the U.S. strike and said that it was “deeply shocked” by the “blatant use of force.” In what appeared to be his first remarks on the matter, Mr. Xi on Monday criticized what he called “unilateral bullying actions” that he said were “severely undermining the international order.”

It is unclear how much contact Beijing has had with Caracas since Mr. Maduro was deposed. Even as the two administrations remained close, China had grown frustrated by corruption and the mismanagement of the country’s resources by the Maduro government, which came to power in 2013, analysts say. As billions of dollars in unpaid loans racked up, China effectively stopped lending to Caracas more than eight years ago.

“Venezuela is a headache now for China, but it’s a headache worth having,” said Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Beijing saw Maduro as a complete clown, but in many ways, he was their clown as long as he remained in power.”

1 hour ago, austingirl said:

Oh shut the fuck up, Megyn. You voted for this shit; your kids should be first in line. "I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade" because now it could affect me personally. Fuck you.

Ok but she’s not wrong. We don’t have enough troops to fight Russia, China, and Venezuela, and that’s what the neocons would love. I have a 16 year old son so I get it.

1 hour ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

unfortunately this is the only way to get change - pain, or at least the threat of it. despite all the shit going on, we still live very cushy and protected lives here and many of the people cheerleading all the atrocities being committed by this regime have simply not been in the path yet. eventually they all will be and it will be up to them to speak out. MK helped create this, but she can also help undo it. let's not discount that.

I predict we will see more of this after the midterms when Trump is much less of a threat to the lifer and aspiring-lifer Republicans. It seems like a few orange lame-duck feathers have already started to sprout. None of these people have any real principles and they will abandon Trump if they think it’s the route to power.

Just one idiot’s opinion of course.

Just now, Buzzrock said:

Ok but she’s not wrong. We don’t have enough troops to fight Russia, China, and Venezuela, and that’s what the neocons would love. I have a 16 year old son so I get it.

Sure, she's not "wrong" in not wanting her kids to die. Same can be said for almost any person in history. But this is a lady that said she's ok with the sitting president being a pedophile because at least her kids wont be on the same sports team as Trans persons.

Personally, I hope her children are on the front line.

19 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Ok but she’s not wrong. We don’t have enough troops to fight Russia, China, and Venezuela, and that’s what the neocons would love. I have a 16 year old son so I get it.

I predict we will see more of this after the midterms when Trump is much less of a threat to the lifer and aspiring-lifer Republicans. It seems like a few orange lame-duck feathers have already started to sprout. None of these people have any real principles and they will abandon Trump if they think it’s the route to power.

Just one idiot’s opinion of course.

17 minutes ago, Foosters said:

Sure, she's not "wrong" in not wanting her kids to die. Same can be said for almost any person in history. But this is a lady that said she's ok with the sitting president being a pedophile because at least her kids wont be on the same sports team as Trans persons.

Personally, I hope her children are on the front line.

What @Foosters said. I have two boys, 17 and 13, so it's very real to me, too. But these MAGA assholes who only disagree with Trump when it might make their lives a little more difficult can fuck right off. She and her ilk are the reason we're in this mess so I'm not going to entertain any grumbling from them when things they voted for get real.

1 hour ago, wood said:

Actually SIAP this time. I'm still like 7 pages behind on this thread & wanted to get it out there asap. Malcolm Nance sums it all up: 'The only thing that's changed is that Maduro has left the country'.

So good. One of very few videos of this type that I found to be worth my time to watch it. Moves quickly. Full of good info. I'm sure some of you already knew this guy. I didn't. Dude knows his shit. Great listen.

It's even dumber than this. All evidence points to him agreeing to all this. He somehow knew *wink wink* that the case against him in NY was going to be botched and that he would would walk free or with the tiniest sentences. He is laughing it up that he knows he is going shopping in NY.

The SAM system shut down and not hit by bombs, fighter jets were not blown up in the ground, all this is circumstantial evidence that he was packaged.

Lastly being out in the open for extraction instead of the presidential palace deep in downtown.

Lastly it was mostly Cubans that were offered up to be butchered.

This is all a con, a scam. People did not need to die for this rodeo show. But Trumps ego wanted a violent spectacle

3 hours ago, bolverk said:

Meet the billionaire Trump megadonor set to make a killing from Venezuela attack
One of President Donald Trump’s top billionaire donors, who has spent the past several months backing a push for regime change in Venezuela, is about to cash in after the president’s kidnapping of the nation’s president, Nicolas Maduro, this weekend.

While he declined to tell members of Congress, Trump has said he tipped off oil executives before the illegal attack. At a press conference following the attack, he said the US would have “our very large United States oil companies” go into Venezuela, which he said the US will “run” indefinitely, and “start making money” for the United States.

As Judd Legum reported on Monday for Popular Information, among the biggest beneficiaries will be the billionaire investor Paul Singer:

In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Singer donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition.

Singer is also a major pro-Israel donor, with his foundation having donated more than $3.3 million to groups like the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Israel America Academic Exchange, Boundless Israel, and others in 2021, according to tax filings.

In November 2025, less than two months before Trump’s operation to take over Venezuela, Singer’s investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, inked a highly fortuitous deal.

It purchased Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion—a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments.

The court-appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Elliott Management hailed the court order requiring the sale in a press release, saying it was “backed by a group of strategic US energy investors.”

Singer acquired Citgo’s three massive coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations at a “major discount” because of its distressed status. Advisers to the court overseeing the sale estimated its value at $11-13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated it at $18 billion.

As Legum explained, the Trump administration’s embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States bore the primary responsibility for the company’s plummeting value:

Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.

It is the preferred modus operandi for Singer, whose hedge fund is often described as a “vulture” capital group. As Francesca Fiorentini, a commentator at Zeteo, explained, Singer “is famous for doing things like buying the debt of struggling countries like Argentina for pennies on the dollar and then forcing that country to repay him with interest plus legal fees.”

Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez called the sale of Citgo to Singer “fraudulent” and “forced” in December.

After the US abducted Maduro this week, Trump named Rodriguez as Venezuela’s interim president—and she was formally sworn in Monday—but he warned that she’ll pay a “very big price” if she refuses to do “what we want.”

That is good news for Singer, who is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of an oil industry controlled by US corporations, which will likely not be subject to crippling sanctions.

Singer has reportedly met with Trump directly at least four times since he was first elected in 2016, most recently in 2024. While it is unknown whether the two discussed Venezuela during those meetings, groups funded by Singer have pushed aggressively for Trump to take maximal action to decapitate the country’s leadership.

Since 2011, Singer has donated over $10 million and continues to sit on the board of directors for the right-wing Manhattan Institute think tank, which in recent months has consistently advocated for Maduro to be removed from power. In October, it published an article praising Trump for his “consistent policies against Venezuela’s Maduro.”

He has also been a major donor to the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), serving as its second-largest contributor from 2008-2011, with more than $3.6 million.

In late November, shortly before Trump announced that the US had closed Venezuelan airspace and began to impound Venezuelan oil tankers, FDD published a policy brief stating that the US has “capabilities to launch an overwhelming air and missile campaign against the Maduro regime” that it could use to remove him from power.

Singer himself has acted as a financial attack dog for Trump during his first year back in office. In June, he contributed $1 million to fund a super PAC aiming to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who’d become Trump’s leading Republican critic over his Department of Justice’s refusal to release its files pertaining to the billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

A super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson, another top pro-Israel donor who recently said she’d give Trump $250 million if he ran for a third term, also reportedly helped to fund the campaign against Massie.

Massie has since gone on to be one of the most vocal opponents in Congress to Trump’s regime change push in Venezuela, joining Democrats to co-sponsor multiple failed war powers resolutions that would have reined in the president’s ability to launch military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and launch an attack on mainland Venezuela.

As the Trump administration has asserted that American corporations are entitled to the oil controlled by Venezuela’s state firm, Massie rebutted this weekend that: “It’s not American oil. It’s Venezuelan oil.”

“Oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, and the deals were canceled by a prior Venezuelan government,” he said. “What’s happening: Lives of US soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

Massie said that Singer, “who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”

Fiorentini added that “Paul Singer’s shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup.”

Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion

Apparently, he needs more money for the few years of life he has left. If countries topple, countries topple. If people suffer, people suffer.

.

Edited by yoladu

2 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

MK helped create this, but she can also help undo it.

YARN | Well TANKS for nothin! | Caddyshack (1980) | Video gifs by quotes |  eacda23e | 紗

4 hours ago, C-Man said:

Things appear to be going about how you'd expect down in Venezuela.

Maduro’s motorcycle thugs go door to door in hunt for Trump supporters

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/01/06/venezuela-police-door-to-door-maduro-arrest/


Civil war fears grow as heavily armed far-left militias take over streets of Caracas

Daily Express US
No image preview

Civil war fears explode as heavily armed militias take ov...

Gunfire was heard across Caracas last night as tensions remain sky high after the US raid captured the country's president

Venezuela Braces for Economic Collapse From U.S. Blockade

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/world/americas/venezuela-us-blockade-economy-oil.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CVA.ofZQ.legN67dIncUj&smid=url-share


Our troops will be greeted by a shower of flowers and chocolate! America is always a force for good!

This is one of the reasons we're more respected around the world more than ever before.

Edited by RomaVicta

29 minutes ago, linux said:

It's even dumber than this. All evidence points to him agreeing to all this. He somehow knew *wink wink* that the case against him in NY was going to be botched and that he would would walk free or with the tiniest sentences. He is laughing it up that he knows he is going shopping in NY.

Yep. Nance talks about a lot of this in the video.

8 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

us taxpayers pay for chevrons expenses

Exactly, they have nothing to lose, the treasury is basically dear leader's slush fund account, as is the mechanisms for taking on more national debt, for the benefit of his rich buddies. The O&G companies won't have to pay a fucking dime and will take in any and all profits (except those going to trumpco and family). They have nothing to lose even if maga ever loses power (which itself is dubious because trans people).

1 hour ago, Buzzrock said:

Ok but she’s not wrong. We don’t have enough troops to fight Russia, China, and Venezuela, and that’s what the neocons would love. I have a 16 year old son so I get it.

I predict we will see more of this after the midterms when Trump is much less of a threat to the lifer and aspiring-lifer Republicans. It seems like a few orange lame-duck feathers have already started to sprout. None of these people have any real principles and they will abandon Trump if they think it’s the route to power.

Just one idiot’s opinion of course.

Don't worry, there will be an exemption from the draft if your son votes republican when he hits 18 and if you and all of your family do as well, so hopfully you voted full maga the last ten years. Otherwise its front line, or if he resists, denaturalization and El Salvador gulag. It's only fair, either worship the regime, or fuck you.

56 minutes ago, yoladu said:

YARN | Well TANKS for nothin! | Caddyshack (1980) | Video gifs by quotes |  eacda23e | 紗

3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

*nuttin'

Kinda what got her in that predicament

3 minutes ago, Upgrayedd said:

Kinda what got her in that predicament

except!

27 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Exactly, they have nothing to lose, the treasury is basically dear leader's slush fund account, as is the mechanisms for taking on more national debt, for the benefit of his rich buddies. The O&G companies won't have to pay a fucking dime and will take in any and all profits (except those going to trumpco and family). They have nothing to lose even if maga ever loses power (which itself is dubious because trans people).

Don't worry, there will be an exemption from the draft if your son votes republican when he hits 18 and if you and all of your family do as well, so hopfully you voted full maga the last ten years. Otherwise its front line, or if he resists, denaturalization and El Salvador gulag. It's only fair, either worship the regime, or fuck you.

What do you think they serve in a Salvadoran gulag? Think there's a lady out there that makes some money selling prisoners pupusas?

Edited by SimonBolivar

3 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

What do you think they serve in a Salvadoran gulag? Think there's a lady out there that makes some money selling prisoners pupusas?

Did 'Soylent Green' get 2022 right? | ASU News

Soylent Green Quote GIF by Top 100 Movie Quotes of All Time

Edited by Evil Bill Obrien

1 hour ago, yoladu said:

Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion

Apparently, he needs more money for the few years of life he has left. If countries topple, countries topple. If people suffer, people suffer.

.

He’s apparently the guy that “owns” Alito

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Yup.

How the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Reinforces Xi’s Vision of Power in Asia
The U.S. assault on Venezuela points to a world where big powers seek to call the shots in their regions, an idea Beijing knows well.

Just hours before American commandos seized President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in a daring raid, a senior Chinese official had met the Venezuelan leader at the presidential palace, a show of support for one of Beijing’s closest partners in the Western Hemisphere.

The speed with which U.S. forces acted afterward to capture Mr. Maduro sent a blunt message to Beijing about the limits of its influence in a region that Washington treats as its own. China now risks losing ground in Venezuela after Saturday’s assault in Caracas, despite decades of investment and billions of dollars in loans.

But the assault also reinforces a broader logic that ultimately favors President Xi Jinping’s vision of China and its status in Asia: when powerful countries impose their will close to home, others tend to step back.

The White House has framed the Maduro operation as part of an updated Monroe Doctrine, or as President Trump describes it, the “Donroe Doctrine.” A globe carved into spheres of influence — with the United States dominating the Western Hemisphere and China asserting primacy across the Asia-Pacific — and where might makes right, regardless of shared rules, could benefit Beijing in a number of ways.

Stephen Miller, a top aide to Mr. Trump, articulated this doctrine in an interview with the CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

It could keep the United States and the brunt of its military forces away from Asia. And it could undercut Washington’s criticism of Beijing when Chinese forces elbow their way across contested waters of the South China Sea and menace Taiwan, the island democracy China claims as its own.

The assault on Caracas “does further erode the norms against great power use of force that have steadily weakened in the last two decades, which works just fine for Beijing,” said Rush Doshi, a China expert at Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations. “More important, if it distracts the United States by tying us up in Venezuela, all the better for Beijing too.”

Beijing has long railed against what it calls America’s strategy of containing China, which includes stationing troops in Japan and South Korea, and deploying U.S. naval ships in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. And it has criticized Washington’s moves to deepen security ties with India and help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines.

Mr. Xi has depicted China as a reliable and powerful pillar in the region, in contrast to the United States, as he sought to court neighbors to his side in a trade war with President Trump.

In a speech at a high-level Communist Party conference on regional diplomacy, Mr. Xi called for the region to be governed by “Asian values,” Asian supply chains and an Asian security model where countries shared “weal and woe.”

On Monday, Mr. Xi once again appeared to underscore the contrast between the Trump administration’s assault and China’s “neighborhood diplomacy” in a meeting with President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea in Beijing. Mr. Xi, casting China as a benevolent major power, said Beijing and Seoul were able to achieve “harmony without uniformity” by “resolving differences through dialogue and consultation.”

In fact, China has not hesitated to use its massive economic power for coercion and its ample modern military to intimidate its neighbors.

Just last week, China fired more than two dozen long-range rockets into waters around Taiwan and surrounded the island with bombers, fighter jets and warships in a two-day show of force aimed at intimidating the island’s leadership. China has also punished Japan economically for showing support for Taiwan.

None of this means Beijing is calibrating its approach to Taiwan based on events in Venezuela. Chinese leaders have long treated the island as a domestic issue to be resolved on their own terms, independent of U.S. actions elsewhere.

China has sometimes been explicit about how it sees its power in its own neighborhood. At a meeting with Southeast Asian officials in 2010 over the South China Sea, China’s then-foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said: “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

That blunt view of power helps explain both China’s confidence in Asia and its vulnerability farther afield, as Venezuela has made clear.

China will not easily give up on Latin America, a region where Beijing has been expanding its economic and political influence for years, buying soybeans and minerals and investing in ports, telecommunications networks and space infrastructure. It has aligned itself with Brazil, Colombia and, of course, Venezuela, in being willing to stand up to Washington’s bullying.

Led by socialist strongmen who dared to defy the United States, Venezuela shared an ideological kinship with China’s communist leaders. The South American nation has been the region’s largest recipient of Chinese loans and the largest buyer of Chinese military equipment. In 2023, Beijing elevated bilateral relations with Caracas to one of its highest tiers, known as an “all-weather strategic partnership.”

China’s stake in the country, which includes around $10 billion in outstanding loans, could now be at the mercy of the Trump administration, which indicated on Sunday that it would assert leverage on Venezuela’s leadership by imposing a military “quarantine” on the country’s oil exports.

For Beijing, the timing of Saturday’s strike only compounded the blow. China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, had met with Mr. Maduro in Caracas at Miraflores, the presidential palace, earlier in the day on Friday, their meeting shown on local broadcasts.

“The United States took such action at a time when China’s delegation was visiting Venezuela. For China, it is very embarrassing,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. He said that the attack would affect relations between Washington and Beijing.

That it took place during the Chinese delegation’s visit also pointed to a potential failure of China’s intelligence services and its diplomats, said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

Beijing has condemned the U.S. strike and said that it was “deeply shocked” by the “blatant use of force.” In what appeared to be his first remarks on the matter, Mr. Xi on Monday criticized what he called “unilateral bullying actions” that he said were “severely undermining the international order.”

It is unclear how much contact Beijing has had with Caracas since Mr. Maduro was deposed. Even as the two administrations remained close, China had grown frustrated by corruption and the mismanagement of the country’s resources by the Maduro government, which came to power in 2013, analysts say. As billions of dollars in unpaid loans racked up, China effectively stopped lending to Caracas more than eight years ago.

“Venezuela is a headache now for China, but it’s a headache worth having,” said Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Beijing saw Maduro as a complete clown, but in many ways, he was their clown as long as he remained in power.”

I'm not a fan of Maduro but grabbing him would be no different from Putin grabbing Zelenskyy or Xi deciding that he disliked Philippines' actions and taking their President.

There's always the time immemorial idea that if you're powerful enough that no one will stop you, special rules apply to you. Didn't Saudi Arabia hold the Lebanon PM against his will with zero repercussions. And we know about Saudi's murder of the journalist, or Russia shooting down commercial flights.

There's also the precedent of the US invading Panama in '89 to depose Noriega. I believe that was several weeks before Noriega surrendered and we had actual US casualties.

9 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Putin grabbing Zelenskyy

he tried. he didn't coordinate with Z for an all expenses paid shopping trip on 5th avenue beforehand or maybe he would have been successful.

23 hours ago, tchookem said:

Crazy thing is, while I don't believe the story about Trump seeing Maduro dancing and that being the final insult that led to the invasion, I see this as 100% true and accurate.

His death won't solve anything in this country, but every morning I hope it's the news I wake up to.

about the dancing ....

10 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I'm not a fan of Maduro but grabbing him would be no different from Putin grabbing Zelenskyy or Xi deciding that he disliked Philippines' actions and taking their President.

There's always the time immemorial idea that if you're powerful enough that no one will stop you, special rules apply to you. Didn't Saudi Arabia hold the Lebanon PM against his will with zero repercussions. And we know about Saudi's murder of the journalist, or Russia shooting down commercial flights.

There's also the precedent of the US invading Panama in '89 to depose Noriega. I believe that was several weeks before Noriega surrendered and we had actual US casualties.

Oh, I agree. Both Noriega and Maduro were asshole dictators, but at least the US tried to put up some pretense of a legal basis for Panama. It was still the US swinging it's big dick around.

csb: I was a teenage exchange student living with a family in France when the Panamanian invasion took place. One evening, I came downstairs, and my host parents were watching news coverage of it. They turned around when I walked into the room and asked me why America invaded. Everyone in Europe at the time was basically paying zero attention to whatever was going on in Latin America, seeing as the Berlin Wall had just crumbled only a month before. The news had been all about the Iron Curtain falling, so I was hard-pressed to come up with an answer because I’d only vaguely remembered hearing bad stuff about him before heading off to Europe. So I just stared at them dumbly for a moment and said, "We don't like him." Of course, looking back at that moment, I must've sounded like the most arrogant American asshole of all time and am still ashamed of it, but within a week, I'd grabbed a copy of Time down at the newstand and tried to get caught up so we could have some semblance of a discussion, though I still couldn't adequately explain it or defend it. /csb

Anyway, this has a good discussion about some of the legal differences between the captures of Noriega and Maduro as food for thought.

https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/comparison-of-us-capture-of-nicolas

Edit: This probably should've gone in the Greenland thread instead, but it's still relevant here, I guess.

Click through for a thread on this one from December 2024, recalling that Jack Posobiec runs the End Wokeness account:

Edited by bolverk

23 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Oh, I agree. Both Noriega and Maduro were asshole dictators, but at least the US tried to put up some pretense of a legal basis for Panama. It was still the US swinging it's big dick around.

csb: I was a teenage exchange student living with a family in France when the Panamanian invasion took place. One evening, I came downstairs, and my host parents were watching news coverage of it. They turned around when I walked into the room and asked me why America invaded. Everyone in Europe at the time was basically paying zero attention to whatever was going on in Latin America, seeing as the Berlin Wall had just crumbled only a month before. The news had been all about the Iron Curtain falling, so I was hard-pressed to come up with an answer because I’d only vaguely remembered hearing bad stuff about him before heading off to Europe. So I just stared at them dumbly for a moment and said, "We don't like him." Of course, looking back at that moment, I must've sounded like the most arrogant American asshole of all time and am still ashamed of it, but within a week, I'd grabbed a copy of Time down at the newstand and tried to get caught up so we could have some semblance of a discussion, though I still couldn't adequately explain it or defend it. /csb

Anyway, this has a good discussion about some of the legal differences between the captures of Noriega and Maduro as food for thought.

https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/comparison-of-us-capture-of-nicolas

The NYT Daily podcast had a pretty good comparison and contrast between the legalities of the Noriega incident and Maduro. Basically under international law both incidents are pretty clearly illegal. Under domestic law, both were probably illegal too, but Bush had a slightly better argument.

From the transcript:

"The United Nations charter makes it illegal for a country to use force in another country’s sovereign territory without its consent, a self-defense rationale, or the permission of the UN Security Council. None of these are present here. This was an arrest operation. So probably illegal as a matter of international law. As a matter of pure domestic law, probably legal. The FBI, the DEA has the ability to go arrest people who are facing charges. It has affirmative authority from Congress to do that.

Statutes don’t say that that authority stops at the edge of the United States. Military can provide support to law enforcement in carrying out its authority to arrest people. So maybe that’s OK on a domestic law level.

But just to add the final twist, there’s the question of, well, what about the fact that the UN Charter that makes it illegal as an international law matter is a ratified treaty in the United States? And the Constitution says ratified treaties are the supreme law of the land. As a matter of domestic constitutional law, was this unlawful because Trump had a constitutional duty to obey the UN charter? And so this is the mess you have to sort through to make sense of this extraordinary operation. And here, a precedent in American law and geopolitical history is important as a guidepost to sorting through what just happened this weekend.

And that precedent is the 1989 invasion of Panama by the George H.W. Bush administration for the purpose of arresting Manuel Noriega who, like Maduro, was a leader of that country facing drug trafficking charges back in the United States.

I don’t think very many people think that the 1989 invasion of Panama was legal as a matter of international law. It was declared unlawful overwhelmingly by the United Nations General Assembly. A majority of the UN Security Council voted to condemn it, but the United States, of course, vetoed that resolution. So to the extent that the Panama invasion fairly clearly violated international law, President George H.W. Bush got away with it. There was no one to say you can’t do this in any effective way.

So the trickier question for Bush back in the day was what about domestic law? And what happened back in 1989 was that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel took a look at this issue. And it was then run by a young lawyer named Bill Barr, who would someday become attorney general for Bush and then reprise that role as attorney general for Trump. Young Bill Barr had a very expansive view of executive power, and he wrote a memo that said that the president had inherent power under the Constitution to dispatch the FBI, in that case, abroad to carry out its mission of arresting people who were fugitives from charges. And the Constitution empowered the president, essentially, to override international law. It was OK to violate international law, at least as a matter of domestic constitutional law.

That memo by Barr was very controversial when it came out. It’s been criticized by many legal scholars who think Barr was wrong about his approach to analyzing whether or not a ratified treaty is the kind of law that the president has a duty to see is faithfully executed. But that was the reasoning in 1989, and I think it’s safe to assume that’s probably what the reasoning was for this weekend, as well."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/podcasts/the-daily/maduro-venezuela-trump-legality.html?

Edited by DDD Dad

The Noriega invasion/arrest also benefited from an earlier time when there were limited media options. It wouldn't surprise me if we cut off Panama's communication methods during the invasion.

58 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Edit: This probably should've gone in the Greenland thread instead, but it's still relevant here, I guess.

Click through for a thread on this one from December 2024, recalling that Jack Posobiec runs the End Wokeness account:

Gulf of MEXICO??? Woke!

6 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

My favorite part of all this won’t come until later, when the Republicans and neocons tell us all why it was wrong for Xi to do the exact same thing to Taiwan.

And we won't do shit because "America First".

30 minutes ago, Hank_Hill said:

Gulf of MEXICO??? Woke!

lib propaganda !!!!!!

did not know posobiec was married to a russian honeypot. what the fuck.

bert pee teerrrrps ernd erprhabraink

Edited by elfenix

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Edit: This probably should've gone in the Greenland thread instead, but it's still relevant here, I guess.

Click through for a thread on this one from December 2024, recalling that Jack Posobiec runs the End Wokeness account:

IMG_2792.jpeg

racist comedy central GIF

Edited by Dnaguy

Just now, Dnaguy said:

IMG_2792.jpeg

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas.

I wonder what they have in common.

Just now, Foggy Notion said:

IMG_7240.jpeg

image.png

Ah the plundering begins

This really is like Spain amd the aztecs/incas

22 minutes ago, Foggy Notion said:

IMG_7240.jpeg

"High quality"

Steve Brule GIF by MOODMAN

What the fuck kind of wack ass shirt is that Kuntman wearing?

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