Non paywalled version https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e
(Thanks to @AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world )
We just casually out here kidnapping heads of state now?
And many world leaders will defend it because they know US bastards could do the same to them.
If putin kills zelensky next week then trump won’t be able to whine.
It’s not like Putin hasn’t tried that…
I bet he’s thinking about trying it again. After the attack in Kherson they have the perfect excuse.
Never mind Zelensky, if I were Taiwan’s president I’d be looking at the US creating a big naval distraction for itself at the same time as affirming that heads of state are fair game with more than a little trepidation…
First time the united snakes did it?
Well no, they did the same in Panama with Noriega
Again, Noriega surrendered after 2 weeks, he wasn’t kidnapped the same night as the invasion started.
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You don’t believe this is anything new, right?
Imperialism and general fuckery, no…but to my knowledge this is the first time the US has opened a conflict by just straight up taking the head of the foreign government.
Unless, of course, you’ve got something that says different.
Honestly, idk, but they’ve done worse/adjacent things so it’s not shocking. 🤷 Just depressing.
Let’s appreciate what this means for the global order.
Russia has proactively attacked Ukraine. Now the US has attacked Venezuela. If China ever needed a permissive international environment to attack Taiwan, this attack was a major step in this direction.
We are quickly sliding back to a world of great powers, where might makes right and hence smaller countries will be bullied into submission without any concerted opposition by what remains of the ‘international community’.
If the US gets away with this, the same is going to happen to Panama in the not too distant futute and to Greenland soon after.
Unless Russia is burned out after the Uktain war, they might try their hand at the Baltics.
Should Russia collapse, China might integrate some of the Siberian regions.
And so on.
I wonder how this all will end.
It will end like it always does. Like the Roman and Byzantine empires ended, like the USSR ended, like Alexander the great’s empire ended, like England’s empire ended.
At some point great powers become too great to be stable, so they fracture into provinces that become separate countries and the cycle starts over.
Only this time there are nuclear weapons involved, so we’ll see how that goes
Personally, I’m quite ready for an independent New England. We only get back 80% of what we contribute in taxes and manufacturing.
yes because everything will remain the same in this scenario…
honestly it’s this level of analysis that got the usa to elect a pedophile for president
Oh so sorry. I guess I’ll just sit quietly in front of my propaganda box and not try to leave the fascist hellscape my country has turned into.
All political movements start with local activism. If I want New England to be free, it starts with me at the town level.
Have fun doing nothing. I’m sure that engenders a real feeling of hope deep down in your jibblies.
i’m not telling *ou not to act… I’m telling you to give in an ounce of thought before you act
We are quickly sliding back to a world of great powers
Sliding back? When did it stop?
Westerners don’t have a clear perception of this since they have lived in either the great power (US) or one of its vassal states (NATO) for the last 30 years.
They’re not used to a world of multiple great powers / poles, even though that has been the case for most of human history.
This is ridiculous. The USSR was a thing not long ago.
Might make right has always and will always be the de facto. It takes those with. Might choosing to not have it make right for anything else to exist.
That’s the reality of history and anyone who has even a grade school understanding of the history of humanity knows it.
We can all want better, and we all know the cost of the fall out of might makes right. But that doesn’t change reality, it only makes it more painful to watch history repeat.
Yes and no.
As a last resort, the threat of violence (or enforced consequences more generally) is ultimately behind the authority of any institution.
But legal and institutional frameworks can persist if power to inflict consequences is distributed and governed by rules, the incompliance with which is again sanctioned, and so on. The system is then kept stable by preventing consolidation of power with few actors and not tolerating arbitrariness in how it is welded. The fact that any authority is ultimately rooted in the threat of violence does not mean that we as social and reasonable animals cannot find reasonable and stable arrangement that should prevent us from actually having to resort to violence all too often.
And we have absolutely slipped up in this regard. Relying on one party (the USA) as the primary locus is power in NATO and the world to keep peace. Allowing big social media platforms to consolidate and grow beyond any reason. Turning a blind eye to violations of international law
Which is really weird give how decentralized and hard to control the world is right now. This empire strategy is a failing one for everyone involved.
This is what Putin wants. Putin’s puppet is doing exactly what it’s master commands. A world where great powers disregard everyone’s sovereignty.
So this is how 2026 starts.
Oh boy.
This is going to be a decade of a year, isn’t it?
A decade?
I see an optimist.
I expect the wars just to escalate. First countries are running out of water, that’s gonna accelerate soon.
None of this will end well. And we knew it would happen decades ago.
Oh well.
Capturing another countries leader just to hide the fact that you are a pedophile is ludicrous. C’mon internal america. Only you can stop this (for now).
There’s also oil, our perennial reason for invading and making war (sorry I mean conflict).
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We don’t know that the sun will come up tomorrow, but it’s a safe bet.
It’s also to steal the oil for shareholder profits
So this is where the Amarican people no longer accept this president and rovolt in an unprecedented rage, amiright?
Like, finally take an example of the French and other counties and finally unite in a massive violent protest, right?
Please learn from history, it’s the only way.
We’re patiently waiting and watch eagerly from the sideline here in Europe, come on, act!
I’ve been in the US two months ago, in a very Democratic city, socialising with only very anti-Trump people. Not a single one cared what happened outside US borders. They were upset about the inflation, cost of living, loss of privacy and civil liberties, etc. There may be some who do care about the US foreign policy, but unless thousands of Americans start returning in body bags, there won’t be enough critical mass to stage any revolt or even protests worthy of Trump’s attention.
I’ve lived in the US my entire life. I wish I could tell you your wrong.
I can’t.
Some of my earliest memories revolve around watching the evening news, listening to them say that “X amount of American lives were lost” and wondering why “American” lives were substantially different or worthy of note. A life lost is a life lost. And that’s a tragedy no matter how you slice it. Where that life started or where it lived has no bearing whatsoever on it’s value.
At least… that’s what I believe. The current state of things has me thinking I might be in the minority on that one.
As to revolution, protest, anything that could even prove an inconvenience to the status quo… I’ll believe it when I see it. Not to make excuses, but I think forces in the American culture have been working to defang popular protest since at least the civil rights movement, or perhaps even earlier. Even if it’s demostriably wrong… I can’t begin to tell you how demoralized I feel. My government just… went and did this. It’s illegal. The very shape of our government is supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. And yet… here we are. One illegal invasion and (apparently) kidnapping of a sovereign head of state later.
…I wish it were otherwise, but it feels like there’s very little that can be done about it. Americans just… don’t seem equal to the task of holding their government to account. The one thing we are supposed to be good at.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many outrages there were up to this point. Too many. Far too many for concence to allow. This… feels different. Is different. Has to be different, then the way we’ve been allowing things to ride.
But… I’ve been disappointed before. I’m certain I’ll be disappointed again. I hope this will be different, but…
…I can point to plenty of times it should have been different before. Times that would have prevented this from happening. It’s… hard to maintain hope in the face of that.
I mean, philosophically all lives are equal.
But you value people you love, your family (I assume) more than your neighbors. And you care about what happens in your town more than in another city in your country, and you care more about your country than others…
USA had a pretty bad plane crash a couple months ago in Louisville; about a dozen people died. I care, it was a tragedy, but I guarantee you that the people in Louisville care a lot more than I do.
And it’s the same reason a nation will care more about its citizens vs the citizens of other nations. Kind of obtuse to pretend that’s not how people work, no?
That’s fair, I was quite tired when I wrote what I wrote so let me expand on that a little bit.
That is of course true in most situations. I should have clarified this more but primarily when I said “I grew up watching the evening news” I was talking about war on terror coverage.
I’m not pretending that’s not how people work, it absolutely is and that’s the reason this was exploited. But… there’s this kind of… preformative agony to the whole ordeal that, speaking as an American, does feel uniquely American.
Empathizing with the death of people you’re close with is natural. But when, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, they are active participants in why people are dying, and then they’re deaths are used to justify sending more people over there to kill and be killed…
…It kinda just soured me on the whole affair to be honest. And, given the events of last night? It’s something I could easily see happening again. We seem to have dusted off everything else from the Iraq playbook, why not that too?
Anyways, we’re not disagreeing. There was just more to my point that didn’t quite make it into my post.
I wish I could tell you your wrong.
You’re*
Maybe he wants to describe the reader’s wrong doings?
/s
Unfortunately that’ just human nature, tribalism, nature is cruel and the life that evolved out of it is the product of this cruelty
There are many social circles. The most immediate is Family, then extended relatives, close friends, then neighbors, then your village/towm/city, then region, then nation, then its the planet.
Humans aren’t really capable of really caring about thing happeneing far away.
This isn’t unique to the US. I think every country is like that, especially those struggling.
It’s not like people consciously choose to be evil, this is just biology, they can’t help it.
When your family is struggling, its hard to care about neighors, and especially harder to care about someone in another town/city.
Nationalism just extend the circle a bit, people care about their own country’s suffering more than others. Don’t even have the time to catch a break and think when your role in this system is just a wage slave.
but unless thousands of Americans start returning in body bags, there won’t be enough critical mass to stage any revolt or even protests worthy of Trump’s attention.
that happened during the invasion of Iraq, and nothing happened anyway… most Muricans are just chicken hawks
This is a lie. This reeks of someone looking to claim they’re the only person who cares about Gaza
It may be time for the rest of the world to stop waiting patiently for Americans to mobilize. When non-US states commit atrocities, the civilized world does sanctions to erode public support for the regime. It’s time for sanctions on the US. Russia can’t be the only nation that condemns us.
Like most countries in all of history with remotely any amount of power. The avg citizen doesn’t give a fuck about foreign policy.
If your country isn’t militaristically weak or at risk and your people are’t coming home in body bags. You will be hard pressed to find a country with a population that doesn’t care about it self first and foremost with foreign policy a distant thought.
no, they’ll keep on waiting and seeing… turns out the home of the brave was just full of feckless sheep
The fact that Maduro got captured so quickly will increase his support if anything.
… Why? America voted this, 2/3 Americans either actively or passively support a pedo king who kidnaps other countries leaders
Fat complacent Americans aren’t going to do anything. They love the military industrial complex including so-called “left” Americans.
What the fuck… What timeline are we on???
The timeline where the US Pearl Harbors a country.
Now, that’s a verb☝️
He verbed it.
We’re on the Beta Seikaisen (Wordline)
What is happening is called Daisanji sekai taisen (Third World War)
Operation Vega has failed… WW3 broke out…
This is the work of The Organization
timeline
Stop with this shit. This isnt some Marvel movie. It’s reality. You are living in the rising age of American fascism, as you have been for the last year.
Its also somewhat witty way of saying that what is happening right now seems so unbelievable it must be somekind of mistake.
Dark times make dark humour and jokes are often easiest way for people to start process things and it does not equal inaction.
If you dont want to see remarks like that, you should maybe stay of internet.
Eek barba durkle…
So much for not following illegal orders. US army is the world’s largest terrorist organization.
Well, it’s an order by the president, so it has to be legal… it is legal right? RIGHT?
This is a disgusting lawless action by a convicted felon who deserves to face trial for war crimes.
LOL. Sure, right after Bush and Blair.
3rd fucking day of 2026!…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Every country pretty much needs to have a nuke now.
That seems to be the lesson Ukraine has taught.
Except that those with nukes will never allow any country to develop one.
Taiwan tried to in the 80s and got immediately shut down when a scientist defected to the US and revealed the nuke facilities and that’s shut down by allies. And look at them now on the brink of being invaded - bet the scientists feels real fucking stupid.
Eventually it seems like developing nukes will be easy enough i secret that everyone will have them. Apparently it would take many countries like Japan only a year or so to develop nukes in an emergecy so I imagine in 20 years that number will be few months for most countries.
Ngl this is a crazy move. Now the opposition will be utterly confused. Maduro is an evil man but also wtf.
The collective WTF said as both nations wake up to hearing about all of this will be heard around the world. We need anti war protests ASAP to show the world we as the citizens do not condone this invasion by our government, march on DC would be better obviously but we need people to at least start speaking out instead of it just being a scroll on their phone til it hits us in higher prices and shortages of products from South America and China
People are too busy slowly dying under capitalism to protest.
It’s this. Europeans don’t understand this part of being American because they have healthcare and worker protections. They will understand soon if they keep voting for facists though
The US is the largest rogue state on Earth
Post-Trump, I fear that’s the truth.
