/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

At least Saddam had balls

venezuela shoulda got nukes a long time ago. it is the only way to prevent something like this. every other third world nation on earth should acquire nukes asap. but they won't. this terror is coming to your country soon! the borders are closed. the first world is fascist. there is no working your way out of your country. there is no improving your country. may god help the venezuelans they've been cast as the islamic terrorists of this era. soon the rest of latin america will join them though.

>>2539757
>>2539757

I dont understand why nukeless countries just form a pact and get nukes at the same time. Obviously if only one country does it, they get sanctioned to death, but if like 10 medium sized countries do it, there's literally nothing anyone can do about it.

Please Xi, give Maduro a nuke so he can evolve into MADuro

>>2539973
The thinking is that, yes if Venezuela remains on the same side as China that's good. But if Venezuela has a coup, now you just armed your enemy with nukes.

Yankee graveyard

So how does Milei fit into this?

Anudda one

>The United States has moved military assets in the Caribbean to safety ahead of the expected landfall on Tuesday of a massive hurricane that is set to slam into Jamaica.

>Washington has an unusually large number of forces deployed in the region – seven US Navy ships as well as F-35 stealth warplanes as part of what it calls counter-narcotics efforts – and there is a danger of those assets being affected by Hurricane Melissa.
Marea rosa Kamikaze

rip jamaica though. I hope it smashes guantanamo.

>>2539696
god forbid maduro tried to find a peaceful solution instead of getting workers killed

>>2540258
Killing workers is great. It's the entire point of Marxism at its primary stage.

They will launch missiles at Venezuela like they did to Iran and Yemen, but ultimately it won't change anything.

>>2540252
Sadly it's an CIA hurrikkkane

>>2539973
Chynah does not give a fuck. If they had their way, they'd take away NK's nukes as well.

>>2539757
Kind of surprised they never tried to get one from North Korea

>>2539757
I guess that they are fucking expensive and they always counted on the support of Russia & China to fend off any aggression.
Like Cuba, bother are member of the Tlatelolco treaty, that maintains that Latam is non nukes zone.
Plus, it is about international reputation, if they get nukes they will be isolated like the Koreans.

>>2540120
The most loud dog of Washington.
Who now got his bones to chew for some more time.
Also, he has said that he would send troops to Venezuela if given the chance

>>2539757
>>2540289
Just build one on your own. Nuclear weapons aren't that hard to build. They're not some unfathomable esoteric knowledge. The US military ran tests on grad students to see if they could design working nukes in the 60s. They could. You only need a modest research reactor to breed enough Plutonium for a couple of bombs, and Uranium enrichment is entirely unnecessary. All you need to manage that is to have the industrial capacity of a mid sized chemical company and some balls. If Pakistan can manage it, you can too.

>>2540306
theory =/= practice, because you need all the material and a lot of time to be able to set everything up and develop them, which is immediately obvious to anyone with any amount of foreign intelligence on your country
also, nuclear weapons =/= thermonuclear weapons, the latter of which are far more complicated and classified to build (that is, nukes aka fission weapons are public knowledge, but hydrogen bombs aka fusion weapons are state secrets)

>>2540298
A single nuke is like, six figures. For a full program, you need a modest reactor, a uranium extraction/preprocessing plant, maybe a graphite purification plant, a high explosives lab/workshop, and a modest PUREX facility. Venezuela could absolutely afford nukes if they made it a major national priority. The real issue is that they're afraid of even more sanctions and cucked to the none proliferation regime.

>>2540309
>A single nuke is like, six figures
No, it's more than that, even ignoring that the cost depends on the yield of the weapon. And all of this is of course ignoring the means to actually deliver the thing, prevent its production from being stopped midway, costs of maintenance/storage, and from being able to deal with the leftover waste, environmental effects, health effects, etc. of production.
https://blog.ucs.org/elliott-negin/how-much-cost-to-create-nuclear-weapon/
https://www.icanw.org/the_cost_of_nuclear_weapons
https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_spending_get_the_facts
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-456
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/03/americas-newest-nuclear-bomb-will-cost-under-100m-to-produce-budget-docs-show/

>>2540315
$350,000 for a 10kt device was quoted by one of the leaders of India's nuclear program in the 80s referencing American outputs, which is probably out of date. This does not mean that a modest proliferation program is completely unviable.

Natural uranium can be extracted from phosphate rocks as a byproduct of fertilizer production. Enrichment cascades are entirely unnecessary. You simply need to process the yellowcake into uranium dioxide fuel pellets and to locally produce sufficient quantities of purified synthetic graphite to support several redundant low-power breeder reactors. From there you can process the spent natural uranium fuel using chemical separation into enough plutonium for a few very basic fission bombs. This by itself is generally enough to establish deterrence especially if you also have a few long range missiles. It is not cheap and carries significant geopoliticall risks but it is achievable for most modern states with a reasonably large preexisting industrial base and chemicals industry. Both North Korea and India managed to get the bomb with modest programs involving plutonium reprocessing.

So have they already bombed Venezuela? Isn't that an act of war?

>>2540315
Most of these figures are for the most expensive nuclear weapons in the world built by the most expensive labor in the world with the tightest regulatory requirements. A small state like North Korea or Iran or someone else won't be building modern staged boosted fission-fusion thermonuclear weapons with intricate permissive action links, custom fusion boosting foam, and short lived tritium using expensive Western weapons contractors.

>>2540336
>You simply need to process the yellowcake into uranium dioxide fuel pellets and to locally produce sufficient quantities of purified synthetic graphite to support several redundant low-power breeder reactors
You are ignoring the complexity of constructing and operating a nuclear reactor. Graphite-moderated reactors, such as the one described, require extremely pure graphite for the moderator. Chemical separation is an industrial scale procedure that is extremely radioactive and requires heavily shielded facilities with remote handling equipment. You need to hedge against/deal with the production of a higher percentage of the isotope plutonium-240, which is less suitable for weapons because the Pu-240's high spontaneous fission rate makes it much more difficult to achieve a reliable and powerful explosive yield, even ignoring the handling requirements and the need for high-explosive components. You are greatly oversimplifying this.
>North Korea and India managed to get the bomb with modest programs involving plutonium reprocessing
Both of them had external help in getting their programs off the ground; the former with Soviet/Chinese help and the latter with Canadian help due to exploiting a loophole (that greatly angered the Canadians).
>>2540345
>Most of these figures are for the most expensive nuclear weapons in the world built by the most expensive labor in the world with the tightest regulatory requirements.
Nukes aren't toys lol. These regulatory requirements are necessary because nukes factually degrade over time. You must maintain them, store them, account for the initial production/ongoing health and environment costs… not to mention all of the secrecy needed surrounding its construction.

>>2540337
>Isn't that an act of war?
There's no such thing as an "act of war" by the US or Israel in the 21st century. They can bomb whatever they want whenever they want at all times and it's just business as usual until somebody dares to respond.

>>2540349
>You are ignoring the complexity of constructing and operating a nuclear reactor.
And I know that, as far as nuclear reactors go, the ones needed to breed plutonium for use in weapons are quite modest in terms of power requirements and can use natural uranium fuel.
>Graphite-moderated reactors, such as the one described, require extremely pure graphite for the moderator.
The industrial process for purifying graphite to nuclear grade levels is quite mature and well established.
>You need to hedge against/deal with the production of a higher percentage of the isotope plutonium-240
Plutonium-240 isn't very difficult to deal with. You just have to extract the spent fuel slugs at the correct intervals to prevent it from building up.
>You are greatly oversimplifying this.
And you are assuming that modern states in third world nations are run by drooling retards incapable of tackling industrial challenges that have been solved for decades. Nuclear physics isn't a secret and many third world countries have lots of capable chemists, engineers, and physicists who are smarter than you who can handle these problems. It's not the 70s anymore where the internet didn't exist and the ordinary person had no idea what a nuclear bomb even was or how it worked. Yet China somehow managed to build their own nuclear weapons after the withdraw of Soviet assistance at a time of dire poverty, and even managed to quickly get a thermonuclear weapon independently not long after. Of course, nuclear proliferation is always easier if you have a dual-use civilian program you got via foreign aid with plausible deniability. But this does not mean it is impossible or even unviable for most reasonably large nations in the global south.

>>2540337
It's a well know US strategy that they use negotiations and diplomacy as a cover to amass a critical amount of troops near the target country. That alone is highly provocative. The winning military move would be probably to shoot at them first before they are ready, but US would use that as a rally support against the regime change target and would empower the US domestic warhawks to go to cheer for war just to save face. Not that it will prevent a war if don't shoot, if US is really hell bent on a war. You can always cuck out, but US demands are usually existential to any independent or semi-independet nation so that's a hard sell.

The best Venezuela can do is get nukes. Failing that just sit tight and hope that US is bluffing.

>>2540362
>And you are assuming that modern states in third world nations are run by drooling retards incapable of tackling industrial challenges that have been solved for decades
It's not just about the technical challenges, but the diplomatic ones (either keeping it secret or being able to convince foreign actors to leave you alone to build it) and monetary ones (they are extremely expensive to build and maintain) as well. China had the help of the Soviets for half a decade as well as natural uranium deposits, which they could leverage over the next four years (so they were already far along by the time the USSR withdrew support). Of course these countries could get nukes, but I'm saying it's much more difficult and complicated than you make it out to be, such that it isn't simply a case of them lacking the will and being cowed by "non-proliferation regimes".

>>2540373
Okay, but having the "will" is a undeniably major part of nuclear proliferation. There are many states who could have made their own nuclear weapons decades ago (Iran, Japan, others) who simply don't because of policy reasons. The barrier is usually more of a geopolitical one than strictly a technical one, and geopolitics is often a game of will.

As for monetary challenges, they're not nonexistent but if you have a credible nuclear deterrent you can probably afford to relax your conventional military budget a little bit to make room.

I'm not saying it's not complicated or difficult. It is. No non-state actor is getting a nuke anytime soon. But for state actors with decent industrial capabilities facing Western imperialism, nuclear bombs are one of the best investments that you can make and they're not out of reach to a determined program.

>>2540280
obamna use weather gun agin
someone should nuke the hurrican and maimi

Sex with Maria Machado

>>2541546
Gross

>>2539976
this answer makes sense and reflects strategy
>>2540287
this answer does not make sense and reflects butthurt

I didn't get it,why you hate Venezuelan opposition so much?

Bummp

>>2541729
china joined the rest of the world in sanctioning the dprk when it was revealed they had a nuclear program

>>2541966
Are we still in the Jiang Zemin era?

>>2541868
The Venezuelan opposition, especially the ones backed by the US like Juan Guaido and Marina Corina Machado, are compradors who want to kneel to the USA, privatize, let in foreign direct investment, etc. I suppose in the long run it could work out like Dengism did for China, but in the shortrun it's just Monroe Doctrine and plunder of oil.

Been thinking a lot recently that they're going for a Chavez 1, where they tried to fly him off in a heli and that the fleet might be there both as a threat and practically to safely extract him with minimal repercussion when the time comes. Maybe this points to that.
US attempted to capture Venezuela's Maduro by bribing his pilot, report claims
A US federal agent offered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's chief pilot a fortune to divert the leader's plane so US authorities could capture him, according to a media report detailing a 16-month covert operation that ultimately failed to topple the strongman.

According to AP, the agent told the pilot in a secret meeting that he would be made a very rich man.
The conversation was tense, and the pilot left noncommittal, though he provided the agent, Edwin Lopez, with his cell number — a sign he might be interested in helping the US government.
The AP report, whose details it says were drawn from interviews with three current and former US officials, as well as one of Maduro’s opponents, comes amid tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela over drug trafficking.
This month, Trump authorised the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela, and the US government has also doubled the bounty for Maduro’s capture on federal narco-trafficking charges, a move that Lopez sought to leverage in a text message to the pilot.

<A 16-month-long covert plan
More broadly, the ultimately unsuccessful plan reveals the extent to which the US has for years sought to topple Maduro, whom it blames for destroying the oil-rich nation’s democracy while providing a lifeline to drug traffickers, terrorist groups, and communist-run Cuba.
For the last 16 months, even after retiring from his government job in July, Lopez kept at it, chatting with the pilot over an encrypted messaging app.
The untold, intrigue-filled saga of how Lopez tried to flip the pilot has all the elements of a Cold War spy thriller—luxury private jets, a secret meeting at an airport hangar, high-stakes diplomacy, and the delicate wooing of a key Maduro lieutenant.
There was even a final machination aimed at rattling the Venezuelan president about the pilot’s true loyalties, according to AP.
Since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has taken an even harder line on getting Maduro.
This summer, Trump deployed thousands of troops, attack helicopters, and warships to the Caribbean to attack fishing boats suspected of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela.

The US military has killed at least 57 people in 13 strikes, including a few in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The report also said the outlet reviewed — and authenticated — text exchanges between Lopez and the pilot.
“I’m still waiting for your answer,” Lopez wrote to Maduro’s pilot on 7 August, attaching a link to a Justice Department press release announcing the reward had risen to $50 million, the report showed in what it claimed to be the most recent exchanges between the two sides.

Unmasking Imperial Hypocrisy: Trump’s 2025 Venezuela Escalation Is a Sham for Oil

On October 16, 2025, Donald Trump’s second term ignited a reckless campaign against Venezuela, greenlighting covert CIA operations, deploying 4,000 Marines and F-35 jets to the Caribbean, and launching strikes on Venezuelan vessels that have killed more than 27 people—all framed as a fight against drugs and migration. This is no noble mission: It is a recycled imperial plot to seize the world’s largest oil reserves, draped in fabricated threats. The U.S. narrative paints Nicolás Maduro as the mastermind of gangs like Tren de Aragua (TdA), but the CIA’s history of enabling criminal networks tells a different story. Massive disparities in the global economy combined with selective policing contributed to these gangs’ spread, while U.S. banks launder billions in cartel cash, exposing the hypocrisy of Trump’s “security” crusade. In 2019, Trump hesitated without a solid pretext or figurehead; now, with tailored narratives and a charismatic proxy, he is poised to strike, driven by oil lust and geopolitical games—not justice. In 2019, Trump toyed with invading Venezuela but backed off. His (now indicted) adviser John Bolton pushed hard for regime change, admitting to plotting coups globally, including in Venezuela. Trump saw invasion as “cool,” viewing Venezuela’s 300 billion barrels of oil as practically American. So why the pause? He lacked a convincing excuse or a compelling opposition leader to justify the risks.

An invasion would have violated the UN Charter, barring force against sovereign states without Security Council approval, which Maduro’s allies Russia and China would veto. Domestically, the War Powers Resolution required congressional consent for sustained conflict, absent an imminent threat Venezuela did not pose. Regional allies in the OAS and Lima Group opposed military action, fearing refugee surges and anti-American backlash. Public support was weak—only 30% of Americans backed intervention—and Trump, eyeing 2020 re-election, could not afford a quagmire like Iraq. The opposition’s Juan Guaidó was a dealbreaker: an unknown “interim president” with no charisma or electoral legitimacy. Trump called him “weak,” and Guaidó’s April 2019 uprising flopped, exposing him as a flimsy U.S. proxy.

Without a strong pretext or a likable puppet, Trump previously relied on sanctions—economic warfare that slashed oil revenues by 99% from 2012 to 2020 and killed tens of thousands through shortages, as I noted in CovertAction Magazine, branding them “racketeer-level crimes” to destabilize Venezuela’s legitimate 2024 election. Yet, these failed to topple Maduro, forcing Trump to wait for better optics. The hesitation revealed the fragility of U.S. strategy: Without a robust narrative to mask the aggression, intervention was politically toxic. Sanctions became the fallback, a slow strangulation that deepened the humanitarian crisis, driving millions to flee and setting the stage for future pretexts. This era underscored how U.S. foreign policy often prioritizes resource control over human rights, using economic tools to soften targets for eventual military moves. Trump’s first-term advisers, including military leaders, warned of logistical nightmares in Venezuela’s rugged terrain and Maduro’s loyal militias, numbering more than four million, which could turn any incursion into a protracted guerrilla war.

The lack of international coalition support further isolated the idea, as even anti-Maduro nations like Colombia balked at hosting U.S. bases for fear of regional destabilization. In essence, 2019 was a lesson in imperial overreach: Without a polished excuse and a charismatic front, the mask slips, revealing naked ambition for oil.

By 2025, Trump—unshackled from re-election considerations—wields a loyal cabinet and surging “America First” approval. He has authorized CIA surges across Central America and the Caribbean, openly weighing “land strikes” on Venezuelan soil. The excuse? Venezuelan migration and TdA gangs as a “national security invasion.” More than eight million Venezuelans have left since 2014, many entering the U.S., with TdA blamed for crime spikes. Trump labels Maduro the gang’s overlord, slapping a terrorist tag and a $50 million bounty. This is pure fiction. U.S. intelligence memoranda admit there is “no evidence” Maduro controls TdA; his regime sees it as a rival and has targeted it aggressively. In September 2023, Maduro deployed 11,000 troops to raid Tocorón Prison—TdA’s stronghold—dismantling a gang-run fortress with a zoo and disco. Venezuelan forces killed members in follow-ups, proving Maduro could not eliminate them fast enough, not that he commands them. TdA’s U.S. crimes—mostly theft and burglary—are opportunistic, not state-driven, per experts.

The Biden administration designated Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization in 2024 though was accused by the political right of releasing suspected TdA members from custody and was attacked for allegedly allowing for “open borders, which Trump exploited to advance his political fortunes. The right-wing narrative prevalent in the U.S. that is also ebraced by the Democratic Party ignores how sanctions exacerbated poverty in Venezuela, and pushed migration waves that created a self-fulfilling crisis. The TdA hype amplifies fears, but experts note the gang’s fragmentation after Maduro’s raids, with U.S. incidents paling beside domestic threats like MS-13. Feeding off biased media depictions, Trump’s rhetoric inflames nativism, tying Venezuelan refugees to “invasions,” but data show that most migrants are fleeing economic ruin wrought by U.S. pressure, not state-directed sabotage.

The false national security pretext allows Trump to sidestep legal hurdles like the War Powers Resolution for limited strikes, building toward regime change without full congressional debate. The escalation’s timing, post-Biden’s term, underscores how political blame-shifting fuels foreign aggression, turning humanitarian tragedies into electoral gold.

The hypocrisy is glaring: TdA is not Maduro’s weapon—evidence points to CIA entanglements. The agency’s history is riddled with enabling criminal networks for geopolitical gains, from Contra cocaine operations in the 1980s—about which Senate probes confirmed tolerance of smuggling to fund anti-communists—to shielding Mexican cartels for intel. In Venezuela, a 1990 CIA sting flooded U.S. streets with cocaine via local generals. Today, speculation links TdA to CIA cutouts, echoing Nicaragua’s Contras as pretexts for intervention. Trump’s CIA authorization fuels questions: Is TdA being manipulated to justify escalation? This is not speculation; it is precedent. The CIA backed Afghan mujahideen heroin lords and ran “guns-for-drugs” with Panama’s Noriega. In Mexico, CIA ops spare allies like Sinaloa for intel.

Venezuela routes just 6% of U.S.-bound cocaine, mostly from Colombia—yet Maduro’s scapegoated while the agency’s past is ignored. If gangs are the issue, why dodge the CIA’s role in fostering them? The agency’s playbook includes turning prisons like Tocorón into breeding grounds for chaos, then blaming local leaders. Maduro’s raids disrupted this, but U.S. media amplify TdA as a “super gang” to build war fever. This mirrors how the CIA backed Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s, labeling them “freedom fighters” while ignoring atrocities. In Venezuela, the escalation risks repeating history: using gangs as casus belli for intervention, ignoring how U.S. policies—sanctions and border laxity—created the vacuum. Trump’s CIA greenlight raises alarms of false flags, where manipulated threats justify strikes, echoing WMD lies in Iraq.

The core driver is oil—300 billion barrels, more than in Saudi Arabia. Trump’s 2019 musings about seizure have hardened into 2025 rhetoric: Take it if Venezuela “collapses.” Opposition leader María Corina Machado, 2025 Nobel Prize recipient, pledges privatization, promising U.S. firms like Chevron “millions of barrels.” Her ties to U.S. funding and calls for intervention make her the charismatic proxy Guaidó never was.

Geopolitically, Venezuela’s ties to China, Russia and Iran—oil deals and military aid—position it as a rival foothold, spurring Trump to act. Maduro’s 2024 re-election, observed as fair by 910 international monitors with biometric safeguards and 54% machine audits, is dismissed as fraud to isolate him. This “dispute” provides cover for strikes aimed at triggering defections, not full occupation. But Machado is not a hero; she is a traitor, selling out Venezuela’s sovereignty for U.S. applause and money. Her Nobel “peace” prize masks a neo-liberal agenda: Privatize PDVSA, handing the Orinoco Belt’s trillions to American giants like ExxonMobil. In interviews with Trump Jr., she gushed, “U.S. companies are going to make a lot of money,” vowing to “privatize all our industry” and swap debt for investments—essentially mortgaging Venezuela’s future to Wall Street. This reverses Hugo Chávez’s nationalization, which reclaimed oil from foreign exploiters who siphoned 80% of profits abroad. Machado’s plan would enrich Chevron while Venezuelans, battered by sanctions she endorses, would face austerity.

Her betrayal runs deep. Funded by the NED—a CIA front—she co-founded Súmate in 2002 to oust Chávez via recalls, pocketing millions in “democracy” grants. She has cozied up to Bush, Rubio and Trump, dedicating her Nobel to the U.S. president amid his Caribbean build-up. X users blast her as a “coward hiding in her cave,” plotting to “neutralize” opponents in her “first 100 hours” with U.S. troops installing her as puppet. One post sneers: “Hands up, who’s surprised that U.S./Israel puppet Maria Corina Machado promised Venezuela’s oil to the U.S.?” Another post labels her “extreme right-wing U.S. puppet, funded by the CIA for 2 decades, plotting regime change and privatizing Venezuela’s state-owned oil company to U.S. oil corporations.” Machado’s Nobel reeks of orchestration—nominated by U.S. Republicans, it is less peace prize than coronation for a compliant stooge. Historian Greg Grandin calls it the “opposite of peace,” citing her backing of sanctions that starved Venezuelans and her praise for Netanyahu’s Gaza tactics as a model for “bombing” Maduro. She has cheered Trump’s boat strikes and the Alien Enemies Act for deportations, ignoring how sanctions drove the refugee crisis. In victory speeches, she thanked Trump, vowing “freedom” with his aid—code for U.S.-backed coup followed by oil sell-off. This is not leadership; it is treason. Venezuela’s oil, the Bolivarian Revolution’s lifeblood, funded literacy and health care for millions. Machado would trade it for foreign profits, displacing communities and gutting social programs. Her “popular capitalism” touts LGBTQ rights and cannabis legalization, but it is a smokescreen for deregulating labor and privatizing the Guri Dam. As X critics rage, she is “ready to sell Venezuela to the highest bidder,” a far-right ideologue barred from the 2024 race for insurrection ties, now hiding while courting Trump’s Marines. History will judge her not as “Iron Lady,” but as the velvet glove for U.S. imperialism, peddling her people’s birthright for a Nobel and power.
The sign reads: “If imperialism thinks of attacking Venezuela, hundreds of us must go, and if possible thousands, to combat for the sovereignty of that people.”

The hypocrisy peaks with U.S. banks laundering billions in cartel cash while Trump vilifies Venezuela’s “narco-terror.” TD Bank’s $3 billion 2024 fine for $470 million in fentanyl profits is one case—Wachovia washed $390 billion for Mexican cartels (fine: $160 million), HSBC $881 million for Sinaloa (fine: $1.9 billion). Chinese networks funneled $312 billion through U.S. banks for cartels from 2020 to 2024. Fines are business expenses—no executives face jail—enabling the trade Trump decries. This double standard is glaring: The U.S. profits from drugs at home while bombing abroad. Sanctions, not Maduro, drove migration—yet they are the pretext for aggression. Risks loom: a quagmire in Venezuela’s jungles, regional war, more deaths. Analysts warn of a strong chance of engagement by year’s end. Reject the war drums—lift sanctions, probe CIA-gang ties, respect sovereignty. This crisis is made in America; end the hypocrisy before it sparks another endless war.

The escalation’s broader implications are chilling. Trump’s strategy—limited strikes to force defections—could ignite guerrilla resistance, drawing in Maduro’s 4.5 million militiamen and allies like Russia, which has supplied anti-air missiles and conducted joint exercises. China’s $60 billion debt stake means any U.S. move risks global economic ripples, spiking oil prices beyond $90 a barrel. Domestically, Trump’s border-linked action masks dividing America, fueling anti-immigrant violence while ignoring root causes like sanctions’ blowback. The cycle of blame on Democrats supposed soft policy toward immigration ignores how both parties perpetuate Latin American destabilization for profit. Venezuela’s story is a cautionary tale: from Chávez’s oil-funded socialism to Maduro’s resilience amid siege, U.S. interference has only hardened resolve. Machado’s traitor turn amplifies the danger, her Nobel a tool to legitimize plunder. Venezuelans, rallying in massive pro-Maduro demonstrations, reject her sell-out, seeing her as a colonial echo. As one X post warns, “Machado is a traitor! Trump-backed… promises to give oil to U.S. corporations.” The path forward? Diplomacy, not drones—lift sanctions, negotiate oil deals fairly, and end the gangster games. Only then can Venezuela heal, and America reclaim moral ground lost to imperial greed.

https://orinocotribune.com/unmasking-imperial-hypocrisy-trumps-2025-venezuela-escalation-is-a-sham-for-oil/

>>2542371
Full article: https://apnews.com/article/dhs-plan-capture-maduro-pilot-planes-7915d5a0819ceb518a8ca2b47da8b2e5
TL;DR:
>Yanks get tipped off the presidential planes are in for (sanctions-skirting) repairs in Dominican Republic, they go in and form a relationships with the pilots before stealing the planes.
>Amerikkkan keeps trying to make main pilot flip.
<Pilot said no: “We Venezuelans are cut from a different cloth,” Villegas wrote. “The last thing we are is traitors.”
>Crazy (his own words) Amerikkkan threatens pilot and his kids. with his gusano friends does a smear campaign to publicly implicate pilot
<Doesn't work.
<Pilot is paraded about on national TV as a victim of far-right attacks and as a hero.
<'Cabello laughed off any suggestion that Venezuela’s military could be bought. As he praised Villegas’ loyalty, calling him an “unfailing, kick-ass patriot, ” the pilot stood by silently, raising a clenched fist in a display of his loyalty.'
Womp Womp.

Can someone un-paywall this?!?
U.S. Eyes Striking Venezuelan Military Targets Used for Drug Trafficking
The Trump administration has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. If President Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes, they said, the targets would send a clear message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down. …

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/u-s-eyes-striking-venezuelan-military-targets-used-for-drug-trafficking-cafcfe47

>>2543516
i hate this dishonest speak these american subhumans at the government does, "wow we gonna bomb an military installation, it's totally not a war guys".

>>2543516
I like how they repeat the lie as if it were a fact that Venezuela uses their military to smuggle drugs. This is where you do shoot the messenger.

>>2543516
WSJ makes it really hard to bypass it and I don't know a current method, but I really want to read this. There was some reporting that Trump's people were going to brief Congress (or at least their people in Congress) about bombing Venezuela after he got back from Asia. I wonder if the Ford CSG is in the Atlantic by now.

>>2543528
If you do find it or a story alluding to the same thing, please post, thanks.
>>2543521
Yea, that's what scares me!
Brazilian Workers Lead in Offering Solidarity to Venezuelans under US Attack
< Washington intensifies its military aggression against Venezuela, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement is spearheading an internationalist response, calling for solidarity brigades inspired by those of the Spanish Civil War.
Since August, U.S. warships, fighter planes, and troops have deployed in Caribbean waters off Venezuela and in Puerto Rico. Venezuela’s neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean area are reacting variously. Many oppose U.S. aggression, but at a distance. Others are either non-committal or accepting.

Colombia and Brazil are backing Venezuela – or soon will be – in very different ways. Recent remarks of João Pedro Stédile, co-founder and a director of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), warrant special attention.

U.S. attacks from the air have killed dozens of crew members of boats alleged to be carrying illicit drugs. U.S. accusations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that he is a top-level drug dealer, serve as pretext. The U.S. government now offers a $50 million reward for his capture. The allegation that he heads the drug-dealing Cartel de los Soles is false. The cartel doesn’t exist, according to a United Nations report. A U.S. coup plotter recently claimed the CIA created the cartel.

President Trump recently indicated the CIA would be operating inside Venezuela. It’s widely assumed that the U.S. government wants control of Venezuela’s oil and other resources and is contriving to remove a government heading towards socialism.

Venezuela’s government is training militia troops by the millions. Venezuelan defense minister Vladimir Padrino López announced on October 21 that Venezuela’s’ military will cooperate with Colombian counterparts to fight narcotrafficking. Relations between the two nations are quickly improving.

They had deteriorated after Colombia’s government backed accusations that Venezuela’s 2024 presidential elections were fraudulent. But on August 10, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated on social media that, “Colombia and Venezuela are the same people, the same flag, the same history. Any military operation that does not have the approval of our sister countries is an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean.” Petro recently announced the Colombian military will be sharing military intelligence with Venezuela.

U.S. vilification extends to Petro who, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, condemned U.S. support of Israel’s war on Gaza and U.S. imperialism generally. He railed against the U.S. at a rally outside the UN Headquarters. In response, the U.S. government revoked his visa. Petro had previously refused to accept Colombian deportees sent handcuffed from the United States in a military plane.

International solidarity

On October 18, Petro accused the United States of killing a Colombian fisherman and violating Colombian sovereignty. Responding, President Trump called Petro “an illegal drug dealer … [who] does nothing to stop” drug production. He imposed import tariffs and suspended subsidies granted Colombia for drug-war activities. Petro recalled Colombia’s ambassador in Washington.

Colombia may be on Venezuela’s side, but that’s not clear with other countries in the region. Colombia, president pro tempore of the CELAC group of nations, arranged for a virtual meeting of CELAC foreign ministers to reach a common position. In 2014, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States – CELAC –had declared the entire region to be a “zone of peace.”

At the meeting taking place on September 1, representatives of the 23 CELAC nations present (out of 33) considered a general statement that filed to mention the U.S. -Venezuela confrontation. It expressed support for “principles such as: the abolition of the threat or use of force, the peaceful resolution of disputes, the promotion of dialogue and multilateralism, and unrestricted respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Most of the countries voting approved, but Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago did not.

Member nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America–Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) did condemn US military action in the Caribbean. The CARICOM group of Caribbean nations, meeting in late October, expressed support “for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the region,” again without reference to the United States and Venezuela. Trinidad and Tobago was an outlier: Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar insisted that, “I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently.”

Regional presidents spoke out against U.S. intervention, specifically: Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum; Honduras’s president Xiomara Castro, Daniel Ortega, co-president of Nicaragua, and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Brazilian workers, especially those associated with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) are taking matters into their own hands. Their leader João Pedro Stédile was interviewed October 16 on Rádio Brasil de Fato. (The interview is accessible here.) He points out that:

“The United States has been threatening Venezuela for quite some time. The process was accelerated by the Trump administration, a mixture of madness and fascism. He thinks that, with brute force, he can overthrow the Maduro government and hand it over to María Corina [Machado] on a silver platter. Part of this tactic was awarding her the Nobel Prize …The United States is making a tragic mistake because it is basing its actions solely on information from the far right….

“Never before has the Maduro government had so much popular support … It is time for Lula’s government to take more decisive action and show more active solidarity with Venezuela.

“If the United States is exerting all this military pressure to try to recover Venezuela’s oil, and … [if] María Corina … comes to power after the invasion, her first act will be to privatize PDVSA [Petróleos de Venezuela] and hand over other Venezuelan resources—I imagine iron, aluminum, gold, which they have a lot of—to American companies for exploitation. …

“At this event I attended in Venezuela, the World Congress in Defense of Mother Earth, … we agreed … to organize, as soon as possible, internationalist brigades of activists from each of our countries to go to Venezuela and place ourselves at the disposal of the Venezuelan government and people.

“We want to repeat that historic epic that the global left achieved during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, when thousands of militants from around the world went to Spain to defend the Republic and the Spanish people.”

The MST webpage testifies to the class consciousness and anti-imperialism inspiring MST solidarity with the Venezuelans:

“Brazil’s Landless Worker’s Movement was born from the concrete, isolated struggles for land that rural workers were developing in southern Brazil at the end of the 1970’s. … Brazilian capitalism was not able to alleviate the existing contradictions that blocked progress in the countryside … Little by little, the MST began to understand that winning land was important, but not enough. They also need access to credit, housing, technical assistance, schools, healthcare and other needs that a landless family must have met…. the MST discovered that the struggle was not just against the Brazilian latifundio (big landowners), but also against the neoliberal economic model.”

The MST “is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out 27 states.”

Stédile himself articulates a rationale for calling the U.S. government to account. In a recent New Year’s greeting, he noted that, “The world and Brazil are experiencing serious crises, such as the structural crisis of capitalism, the environmental crisis and the crisis of the bankruptcy of states that are unable to solve the problems of the majority … A good 2024 to all Brazilian people!”

His recent interview with Monthly Review is revealing:

“The MST has drawn on two key concepts from the historical experience of the working class in general and campesinos in particular: mass struggle and solidarity.

“Our strength does not come from our arguments or ideas; it comes from the number of people we can mobilize … I believe there has been a process of integration and mutual learning among Venezuelans, Brazilians, and Latin Americans in general. … The MST … has promoted brigades in various countries … and a permanent brigade here in Venezuela.”
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/brazilian-workers-lead-in-offering-solidarity-to-venezuelans-under-us-attack/

>>2543544
>If you do find it or a story alluding to the same thing, please post, thanks.
Sometimes WSJ articles in syndication get posted for free elsewhere. I'll keep a lookout.

>>2543516

>The Trump administration has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. If President Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes, they said, the targets would send a clear message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down.
While the president hasn’t made a final decision on ordering land strikes, the officials said a potential air campaign would focus on targets that sit at the nexus of the drug gangs and the Maduro regime. Trump and his senior aides have been particularly focused on unsettling Maduro as the U.S. military has attacked boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The potential targets under consideration include ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips, according to one of the officials. 
Trump came into office pledging to crack down on the flow of illegal narcotics, responsible for tens of thousands of American deaths each year, from Latin America into the U.S. Since Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. has deployed an unprecedented amount of military firepower to the Caribbean, while simultaneously ramping up

>Air attacks on targets inside Venezuela would mark a significant escalation of the campaign, which has until now been limited to airstrikes on alleged drug boats. 
The administration has focused in particular on combating the fentanyl crisis, as deaths related to the drug in the U.S. have soared in recent years. That synthetic opioid, though, is produced in Mexico with Chinese precursors. There is no evidence Venezuela produces or traffics fentanyl, experts say. The country, though, has long been a transit route for Colombian cocaine, and some high-ranking Venezuelan government and military officials have been charged by American prosecutors with smuggling that drug.
About 80,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2024, down 27% from the peak year in 2023. Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, killed more than 48,000 last year, while cocaine killed 22,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: stop sending drugs and criminals to our country,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our homeland.”

>Ahead of possible land strikes, the Trump administration has embarked on a messaging campaign to cast Maduro as the head of a drug trafficking enterprise that seeks to “flood” the U.S. with drugs—a charge Maduro has denied. Without putting forth evidence, officials have also called Venezuela a “central hub of terrorist activity” and have claimed that Maduro’s regime is running the cartels.
“You have a narco-state in Venezuela run by a cartel,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has taken a central role in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the country, told reporters last week when asked about the expanding military campaign. “This is an operation against narcoterrorists, the al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere…And they need to be dealt with.”
Hitting targets on land would increase pressure on the dictator, and Trump allies have begun to suggest that he flee the country. “If I was Maduro, I would head to Russia or China right now,” Sen. Rick Scott (R, Fla.) said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.
U.S. officials now and in Trump’s first term have applied pressure in the hope of provoking a barracks rebellion or an uprising, though the military has stood with Maduro and there have been no reports of protests in Venezuela. The show of American force now, though, is different.

>“This is the U.S. really putting to the test the claim that Maduro is weak and the military will flip with just a gentle push,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela analyst at the Atlantic Council. “So far we haven’t seen any evidence of major defections in the country, but I think if the U.S. carries out the military strikes on the Venezuelan armed forces, that equation might change. However…there’s a chance that this leads to a rally-around-the-flag effect,” Ramsey said.
Trump has said publicly that he may order airstrikes in Venezuela, and the Pentagon is sending America’s most advanced aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships to the Caribbean. The U.S. already has more than half a dozen warships in the region, as well as thousands of elite forces and advanced aircraft.
The U.S. has also conducted several bomber aircraft missions near the Venezuelan coast over the past two weeks, sending B-52 and B-1s to probe the country’s defenses and test the military’s reaction to the show of force. On Monday, two B-1s flew for roughly half an hour between Venezuela’s mainland and its islands off the coast, according to flight tracking data. 
Trump

>Venezuela’s military has sophisticated air defenses, including a substantial amount of Russian-made equipment. It is believed to operate four to six Russian-made S-300 air-defense systems and man-portable systems, which could potentially detect and shoot down U.S. military aircraft, experts say. While it isn’t publicly known how well the S-300s work or how well-trained Venezuela’s air-defense forces are, U.S. aircraft have recently ramped up flights near the country with the aim of mapping the country’s air defenses.
Last week, Maduro said Venezuela had about 5,000 Russian-made Igla-S man-portable surface-to-air missiles. “Any military force in the world knows the power of the Igla-S, and Venezuela has no fewer than 5,000 of them positioned at key anti-air defense posts—to guarantee the peace, stability and tranquility of our people,” he said.
Last weekend, an aircraft sanctioned by the U.S. for its ties to illicit Russian military activity arrived in Caracas, according to flight tracking data, raising the prospect that Russia could increase its support of Venezuela’s forces in the event of a U.S. attack.
The arrival of the carrier, with its additional destroyers equipped with long-range Tomahawk, F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters and EA-18 Growler aircraft designed for electronic jamming, will give the president a range of additional options for striking Venezuela, experts said.
If airstrikes don’t force Maduro out of power, they could potentially pressure his inner circle to turn against him, analysts say. However, such a strategy carries tremendous risks and could potentially backfire if troops rally around the flag and put up a fight. Many analysts who have closely tracked Venezuela also say the indictments against Maduro and his top aides underscore for him how costly it would be to leave power, as they could end up facing prosecution.
“I think Maduro will tough it out, at least for one round,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, who commanded U.S. troops in the region during his career. If strikes on naval and air force targets ashore don’t force Maduro to resign, the next round of strikes could go after leadership targets, he said.
“I think at that point, it is possible Maduro will fold his cards and go. That would be the best case outcome for the Trump administration,” Stavridis said.

sorry about the shit formatting i had to copy and paste it in chunks.

>>2543563
Thanks!

>The potential targets under consideration include ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips, according to one of the officials.
Most important detail in that.

>The U.S. has also conducted several bomber aircraft missions near the Venezuelan coast over the past two weeks, sending B-52 and B-1s to probe the country’s defenses and test the military’s reaction to the show of force … While it isn’t publicly known how well the S-300s work or how well-trained Venezuela’s air-defense forces are, U.S. aircraft have recently ramped up flights near the country with the aim of mapping the country’s air defenses.
Called it: >>2506439

>>2543516
https://archive.ph/9zIKc

i usually just click the archive browser extension and it works.

Posted in the old chat like a cunt
How long until the Ford arrives in the Carribbean?

>>2543760
Thanks anon, appreciated much.

>>2543544
based

>>2543544
>It is time for Lula’s government to take more decisive action and show more active solidarity with Venezuela.
but drumpf is his new bff

Nobody talks about how an outright war would be awful for Trinidad and all the other Carrib island nations that are stuck with US bases

does venezuela have anti ship missiles with the capability to sink an aircraft carrier?

>>2544141
I hope so
Venezuela of all countries being the first to archieve that feat would be really funny

Trumps threatening to attack Colombia on top of Venezuela, it's only a matter of time before Bolivia and Brazil are in the same cross hairs as well. I don't understand how trump plans to launch an invasion of South America while having the government shut down, during an economic meltdown as well as egging on mass civil unrest. His threats earlier this year against Mexico and Canada means they easily can be brought into mix as well, making it very plausible the war spills into the country itself.

Is trump just mega retarded and thinking he's playing HOI4 with the console open or something? Or is actually part of the curtis yarvin plan?

>>2544213
I can’t wait to get drafted and killed by the nuFARC and the ELN it’s gonna be so lit

>>2544213
>during an economic meltdown
This is WHY the USA is vgh retvrning to open imperialism in Latin America. China is btfoing our ass in global trade, and America is making the transition to fascist regional power.

Guys is this true, is Venezuela a based trad nation fighting against globohomo?

Is this manlet even going to help him?

Trump appearently is openly denying airstrikes which means the strikes begin very soon. After Iran, do they actually expect Venezuelans to be retarded?

>>2544276
He will give him a mansion next to Assad and Yanukovich.

>>2544215
Anon, if you get sent that far defect with whatever you can carry.

>>2544362
I can’t speak spanish dog

>>2544215
Where in Cúcuta are you?

>>2544369
Thankfully not there at all, if I’m ever in Colombia I’d prefer to get drunk on the beach

>>2544368
Debes que aprender rápido.

>>2544276
A Russian Il-76 landed in Caracas a couple days ago, who knows what it was carrying

>>2544391
Maduro's escape flight

>>2544394
delete this T-T

>>2544276
why do you think they call him cucktin

>>2539976
not even a coup, maduro will eventually lose an election (yes, venezuela has fair elections) because that's how liberal democracy works. I suspect china hasn't setup a network of NGOs and fronts to give pink-wave parties money precisely because of this. building takes years but destroying only takes seconds, the us-aligned party only needs to win once. that's why de-development has become an almost inevitable prospect for practically the entire world except the us and china

>>2544401
> the us-aligned party only needs to win once
It took a decade and a half but the sandanistas managed to retreat from power then come back later, idk if PSUV has the goodwill to pull this off

>>2544401
>that's why de-development has become an almost inevitable prospect for practically the entire world except the us and china

Virtually every third world country has significantly increased industrial capacity in the past 30 years. I dont see any reason why this will stop

>>2544213
>Is trump just mega retarded and thinking he's playing HOI4 with the console open or something?
he's barely coherent when he speaks. he has no ideology or if he does it's something very basic like self interest and nothing else. attributing to him anything more complex than that is a mistake imo

Are any international brigades in the process of forming?

>>2544405
and?
the venezuelan opposition has been very explicit about privatizing pdvsa, together with all the other state owned enterprises, which can be done in a matter of months. you can sell pdvsa for 1$ but can't buy it back for 1$. even if the psuv took power again, it would be a massive leap backwards and they would become just another impotent socdem party. if you want a stupid historical parallel, it is the oligarchs buying everything for pennies after the fall of the soviet union for the exact same reason: so even if the communist party got back in power, it wouldn't be able to go back to the state-planned economy

>>2544453
indisputable truth nuke that understands base vs. superstructure

Lets say Venezuela manages to actually defend itself and inflict some decent damage on the US, what would be your reaction? Maybe I'm too optimistic but I have a strange feeling they might have underestimated their enemy. Hopefully atleast.

>>2544465
i would be shocked but elated that maybe this would be the beginning of the end for america's bullying of the rest of the world.
i don't believe it for a second though.

>>2544394
no, he has done appearances since. It was careful to get to Venezuela by explicitly friendly countries through Africa, so it's probably military supplies.
>>2544434
>Are any international brigades in the process of forming?
see >>2543544

>>2544465
>Maybe I'm too optimistic but I have a strange feeling they might have underestimated their enemy. Hopefully atleast.

If the Ukraine conflict is anything to go by, there's a distinct possibility. The impression I get from seeing people in or associated with the US gov talk to each other is that there is a powerful disconnect from reality. Think tanks, research institutions, gov intelligence, it's all driven by money and interests.

So the people making the decision of whether or not to go to war with Venezuela? They don't actually know anything about Venezuela. Dr Dickfucker of the Carnegie Institute for Peaceful American Relations has never been there, doesn't know where it is on the map, and can't even speak the language. None of that matters though because Senator Childraper whom he advises doesn't either. Senator Childraper has no independent institutional means of knowing about Venezuela, and he personally doesn't give a damn. The only thing that matters is that Juan Gusano is his good friend, and Juan has given lots of money to the Institute, which has funded the very excellent research of Dr Dickfucker, condensed into a very readable article that Senator Childraper's intern tells him says that Maduro is a bad, unpopular man and has to go, because Maduro hates America, hates business, and loves seeing innocent Venezuelans suffer because they too love America and are just waiting for good old American liberation.

And in the end, whatever the truth of the matter is doesn't mean shit to Senator Childraper anyway, because Venezuelans aren't his constituents, he won't be held responsible in any way for whatever happens there, good or bad. Some soldiers might die, but that just means less pensions to pay. Whatever weapons get used just means more sales for Raytheon and thus bigger donations for the good senator next election.

What a big pile of nothing burger, useless happingfag thread.

>>2544141
Yes I think so. They have anti-ship missiles acquired from Russia. On the other hand, I'm not sure how easy it to technically sink a carrier even if you hit one. But they don't have to sink a carrier to give the U.S. a bloody nose, just knock it out of action and force it to limp back to a port.

>>2543830
Not sure. Maybe a week?

BTW, I think they're going to do it, but the Miami Herald reported this morning that an attack could happen with a few days or even a few hours. Maybe it does, or maybe it's in a week, or two weeks, or a month! But then Trump denied he was going to do anything. If you ask me, I think they're trying to create a sense of uncertainty around this. Will they or won't they? And when? They send out contradictory messages (on purpose). And also they want Venezuela to do things like flip on their radars so they can detect them. Or see them move military assets around.

>>2544465
>>2544474
These things are always unpredictable. It's always a bad idea to underestimate your enemy. In fact, the U.S. military screwed up a lot during the invasion of Grenada in 1983. There were some relatively disastrous mishaps that happened which prompted reforms in the U.S. military to get the different branches to cooperate with each other more, and that was after invading the equivalent of a college campus not much better armed than a local SRA chapter.

>>2544544
>BTW, I think they're going to do it, but the Miami Herald reported this morning that an attack could happen with a few days or even a few hours. Maybe it does, or maybe it's in a week, or two weeks, or a month! But then Trump denied he was going to do anything. If you ask me, I think they're trying to create a sense of uncertainty around this. Will they or won't they? And when? They send out contradictory messages (on purpose). And also they want Venezuela to do things like flip on their radars so they can detect them. Or see them move military assets around.

IDK I got a feeling trump is going to bitch out. It'll be like the Iran stand-off all over again. I think Trump is doing this is as distraction. This will all end in some deal that is somehow favors Maduro and the price of gas will spike in the U.S. Trump will short the oil market and be made richer.

>>2544559
Distract from what? And allegedly Maduro offered Trump a sweetheart deal weeks ago, which they turned down.

>>2544559
Why would Maduro make a deal with Trump though? America has been open about its desires to invade and regime change Venezuela for a while now, and no deal with the Burger Reich can ever be trusted

>>2544570
>America has been open about its desires to invade and regime change Venezuela for a while now, and no deal with the Burger Reich can ever be trusted

That's what makes me doubt the story of Maduro's sellout deal tbh. Like it makes sense that they would at least try, but what good is a deal with a dirty dealer?

Venezuela Seeks Military Aid From Russia, China, Iran
Venezuela wants urgent military support from Russia, China, and Iran amid the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, according to documents viewed by The Washington Post.
In a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his country was seeking “expanded military cooperation” between their two countries to counter “the escalation between the U.S. and Venezuela.”
In a letter to Moscow, Maduro requested repairs for radars, military aircraft, and possibly missile supplies, including restoring several Russian Sukhoi Su-30MK2 aircraft purchased by Venezuela.
The Sukhoi jets, he said, “represented the most important deterrent the Venezuelan National Government had when facing the threat of war,” according to the documents.

Venezuelan Transport Minister Ramon Celestino Velasquez also recently coordinated the delivery of military equipment and drones from Iran while planning a visit to that country, according to the Post.
Velasquez also told an Iranian official that Caracas needs “passive detection devices,” “GPS jammers,” and “almost certainly drones with a range of 1,000 km.”
“In the missive, Maduro emphasized the seriousness of perceived U.S. aggression in the Caribbean, framing U.S. military action against Venezuela as action against China due to their shared ideology,” the U.S. documents state.

The U.S. has built up a large military presence in the Caribbean in recent months, with fighter jets, warships, and thousands of troops. That presence will significantly expand in the coming weeks with the arrival of the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier strike group.
The U.S. campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific has already targeted at least 14 boats that Washington said were involved in the illegal drug trade, killing 61 people. President Donald Trump confirmed he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week said Moscow “respects Venezuela’s sovereignty” and believes the issue with the U.S. should be resolved in accordance with “international law,” the Post reported.
Trump on Friday said he was not considering strikes in Venezuela following reports his administration identified potential military targets there.
“No. It’s not true,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked about bombing.

Rubio dismisses report that US is poised to strike Venezuela as ‘fake story’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on a report Friday that the Trump administration had decided to strike military installations in Venezuela.
“Your ‘sources’ claiming to have ‘knowledge of the situation’ tricked you into writing a fake story,” Rubio posted on social platform X.
He was responding to a Miami Herald report that said the strikes could come “at any moment” amid an increasingly aggressive posture from the U.S. toward Venezuela. Sources told the news outlet the strikes aimed at cutting off the hierarchy of the Soles drug cartel.
President Trump earlier Friday also disputed reporting that he was planning to carry out strikes inside Venezuela.

“No. It’s not true,” Trump said.
In addition to the Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday the Trump administration had identified military facilities in Venezuela used to smuggle drugs as potential targets for strikes. The news outlet said Trump had not made a final decision on whether to carry out strikes inside of Venezuela.
The Pentagon last week said it was sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, and its carrier air wing to the Caribbean. At the same time, the Trump administration has conducted strikes against boats it says are smuggling illegal drugs in the region, killing dozens of people in the process.

>>2544732
its over

>>2544732
Number one rule for any socialist state: get nukes.

>>2544465
>inflict some decent damage on the US, what would be your reaction?
call my friends and celebrate

i do not think T-72s or Su-30M's or russian scrap will save, but i think guerrilas will save maduro, but at a abhorrent human cost

>The White House has restricted press access to the “Upper Press” area (Room 140) near the Oval Office, citing the handling of sensitive national security communications. Reporters now need appointments to enter.
https://nitter.net/FaytuksNetwork/status/1984366760280408529
Something's up

>>2544544
>But they don't have to sink a carrier to give the U.S. a bloody nose, just knock it out of action and force it to limp back to a port.
That would honestly be not much worse than sinking it. If you've been following the situation with military drydocks in the US, you'll know that they have a dangerously low capacity for ship maintenance, and if any of them took serious damage, they would wait so long in the repair queue that they might as well be destroyed. It would take several years minimum to get the Gerard Ford carrier back in action, or any of its escorts.

>>2544753
Destroying the onboard mcdonalds would be the us's biggest naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.

>>2544753
you dont get it, its not about the loss actual military capacity, its the HD drone footage of the big boom and then the giant flaming ship in the background as hundreds of little us navy guys in bright orange try to swim to their lifeboats

Hot take but I think the Venezuelans have the hardware to shoot down all American planes and intercept long range missiles, and even counterattack against the American ships.

If I'm right about this, then the moment the U.S. decides to launch this operation is when their collapse as an Empire is made unavoidable.

The ripple effects of a defeat under present conditions would shatter the American myths and invite every adversary to support Venezuela and turn it into an Invincible Super Cuba.

While all of us international observers have been conditioned to expect a tragedy that we can bemoan, in the command bunkers of the FANB the tune of the conversation is surely of how to bring about a most glorious Victory against the hated U.S. imperialists.

They have modernized and structured their forces for this very task for over two decades, after all.

Predicting the future is a tricky matter, but this forecast I make without fear. If developments later necessitate that I be in error, then I would rather have expressed my confidence and wish them well in this confrontation, and then be proven wrong singularly, than make a bloodless "realist" assessment that sees only doom, and be wrong alongside everyone else.

>>2544544
>They have anti-ship missiles acquired from Russia
i thought that was a rumor
if not boats gonna sink. houtis can make them turn around from missiles built in a cave. maduro just has to have the balls and f-35 hitting caracas will do just that

>>2544899
supposedly they only have s-300 no 400s yet. iran just got the 400s a moth ago

>>2544947
>i thought that was a rumor
Looks legit, this site is on the more credible side as far as military technology goes:
https://www.twz.com/sea/venezuelas-supersonic-anti-ship-missiles-are-a-real-threat-to-american-warships

>>2544465
Venezuela is a country of 30 million. The American force outside is 2200 marines. There is too much playing Call of Duty and not enough playing HoI4 here.

Either US expects a neighbour to invade Venezuela, or a civil war to break out. Otherwise, you're going to witness the most idiotic collapse of American hegemony/start of WW3.

Imagine fucking Colombia helping the US invade Venezuela over drug trafficking. Dying from irony isn't physically possible, as far as we know.

>>2544954
They are definitely hoping for a revolt or a coup no way even the Trump administration is retarded enough to think they can invade a country with 2 thousand troops

>>2545003
They're retarded enough to start shit with Venezuela in the first place, while Houthis are still there.

>>2544735
進撃のマルクス主義者

>>2544899
im sorry but this is cope lol. maduro is just not built like that and unfortunately boliviaranism relies a lot on the guy in charge. i do think it would be a hell rapidly accelerating the actual collapse of even the domestic US to a within a decade timeline, i dont think venezuela will come out better for it

>>2545003
Yeah, according to an analyst from the Princeton university the US is trying to induce internal defection from Venezuelan army through maximum pressure sanctions. If the fails the hope is for dissenters to start rioting so the US can just bomb the country and let oppositionists take over at the head of a frenzied mob.

The first prong is going to fail miserably. If we accept the US claim that the Venezuelan army is involved in drug trafficking why the fuck would they defect to the US? Their main source of income isnt with the legal economy which is afflicted by sanctions, and if the US wins Trump will clamp down on the drug trade which will destroy the Venezuelan army corps. If the US seriously considers this option either they are lying about the Venezuelan state smuggling drugs or they are genuinely retarded.
The second plan is more realistic on paper but the problem is that there is little proof that it will work in practice. Same strategy used for Syria, Iran and Russia all failed miserably

>>2545032
>they are lying about the Venezuelan state smuggling drugs
duh

>>2544947
>supposedly they only have s-300 no 400s yet
The S-300V line is very different from the S-300P line. I would say, that the S-300VM system that Venezuela has, is great, although the VM, like BUK-M2 is kind of old now (both were basically developed in the USSR and tested at Emba in late 1980s early 1990s (I believe, BUK-M2 is 1989, S-300VM is 1990)), but still, they are capable. The problem with the S-300V could be the lack of modularity with missiles. Unlike the later S-300Ps and S-400, the S-300V only has two missiles: the smaller 9M83 (and it's modifications), the purpose of which is to shoot down planes, cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles (like Lance, or R-17s, or Tochkas, maybe ATACMS), and the bigger 9M82, which is a very capable missile, that mostly targets ballistics (like Pershings).
The problem with Venezuelan air defences - the lack of quantity of systems. I don't know, if Venezuela has air defence command/control systems, like the soviets had (ASU Almaz would be an example), but it would be better, if they had it. And, in my opinion, the lack of quantity (which would change into quality) is the main problem with the Venezuelan forces - what areas would they defend from the missile strikes? How to position the air defences?
Although, another plus for the Venezuelan AD comes from the soviet unions designs - both BUK-M2 and S-300VM TELs have their own radars - it would be harder to knock them completely out.
>>2544949
Ah, the Kh-31! The most capable missile of the late 80s. I believe americans even bought some in the 1990s and converted them into target drones. I may be wrong, but the fact that soviets had sea-skimming capable supersonic missiles (Kh-31, the P-270 Moskit, sort of P-700 and P-500, plus, the developing P-800) led to development of SM-6. SM-6 was basically targeted against these types of missile targets, although, I may be wrong and if I am, please correct me.
Also, Venezuelans have the Kh-35 subsonic sea-skimming missile in the form of Bal coastal defence complex.
But, the main problem would be the lack of planes that are able to carry the Kh-31. The Su-30 can carry six of these in A or P variants. I don't have the data about how many Su-30s Venezuela has, but I believe it's around 20-ish. 21 or 23?
So, in the PERFECT conditions, the "salvo capability" would be around 120-140 missiles. Which is kind of a lot, and could sink the escort ships, and coulddamage, but I don't think outright sink, a US carrier. The warhead is HE for the Kh-31P, and is kind of..light. Around 100 kilograms, maybe less. The K-31A is sort of the same, but it's a piercing warhead, I believe.

isn't it amazing how there were protests against the iraq war during a time when msm was much more trusted and blindly believed meanwhile now everyone knows trump's reasons are bullshit and there's no push back whatsoever?

>>2545187
Trumpism is not transitory, or Republican, it is the full replacement of politics with the culture war. And that means, if nobody in the MSM makes a stink about something, it will literally not register a single independent thought in the masses. With the advent and successful integration tinto the security state of social media, that also removes the market incentives for media businesses to have adversarial coverage. Since the consumption of information from "legacy media" is now downstream from techbro skinnerboxes and so they decide what is popular or not.

And finally, everyone is dumber and more sectarian for it. Especially because for all the dumb shit going around, the GWOT was sold on the premise of the USA facing the impossible, the inconceivable, the final taboo in the exceptionalist mindset of the average American retard… that they too could face the violence, that war could come to them on their land. This is no longer the case. What Trump (and the Dems as well) promises is a return to the 2000s, WITHOUT 9/11.

>>2545214 (me)
This also implies that, of course, since the US has powerful opponents nowadays important geopolitical issues must have a controlled opposition in the culture war. But only because the media cattle they have created is not only prone to *their own* propaganda.

>>2545187
I mean look at how the pro-Palestine movement has gone even though by most accounts it is now a majority. Even well-intentioned Americans are utterly impotent. I don't say this to exculpate them entirely but I do think they've just been defeated more or less.

>>2545187
it's harder to organize now.

>>2545226
how so

>bloomberg
>presented in english
>cuba ignored
>no breaking up poll respondents by class/income, just country
>map color coded so that majority opposition still looks blue (support) on the map
>probably only asked bougie fucks
>america made to look like reluctant world police (Uncle Sam don't like to use violence but the peoples of latin america demand he use it)
oh yeah, it's manufacturing consent time

>>2545249
link to the poll in spanish
https://www.atlasintel.org/poll/latam-wide-poll-la-crisis-de-venezuela-es-2025-11-01

btw MEXICO not the us was the only country in which those opposing intervention were larger than those supporting it yet they were still colored blue.

>>2545233
There’s more empty avenues to vent, like this space and the rest of the internet

>>2545233
just some casual observations, no proof I'll admit:
>more apathy, more doomerism, more defeated attitude in general, people just want to desperately hold onto what little they have left rather than risk it in opposition to the state
>more alienation, more atomization, more isolation
>people have their head more up their ass with their personal obsession and don't care about society at large
>more paranoia (anyone asking me to get organized with them must be a psy op or an agent)
>more skepticism towards the value of doing anything (getting organized didn't do anything for iraq war why would it work now)
>more surveillance (people had cell phones but not smart phones during iraq war protests, there was not yet social media as we know it, which attention whores use to break opsec regularly), police have drones over protests, there is facial recognition software, biometrics, people use social media to organize in advance of the protest which then feeds the info of who is likely to attend to law enforcement etc.
>just like during the iraq war, more effective illegal forms of resistance are a non-starter because people just want to "spread awareness" and do legal permitted nonviolent protests still, except even fewer people now are willing to do even that because of the above.

>>2545255
>There’s more empty avenues to vent
Shouldnt this facilitate communication and therefor organization?

>>2545260
>thinking communication translates to organization
People have to come to realize organization the same way drug addicts have to eventually get sober, they run out of other options.

From Venezuela,still didn't get your point leftypol residents,why you like old fart Maduro so much,he's pretty much everything bad about Venezuela : cultural conformism,reactionaryism,authoritarianism,corruption.

>>2545358
Because the other option is Guado (or whatever his name is) 2.0, that desperately wants to be a US's bitch, which is way worse than current one.
I will never understand why liberals (and gusanos) want other countries to be under US control, despite bitching about not being independent enough and when will you fuckers ever gonna learn?

>>2545358
Trump-backed Venezuelan coup leader promises to give oil to US corporations

2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, a US government-funded far-right coup leader, vowed to privatize Venezuela's oil and give it to US corporations. "We are going to privatize all our industry", she told Donald Trump Jr. "American companies … are going to make a lot of money", she promised. Ben Norton exposes the neocolonial US war on Venezuela.

Topics
0:00 (CLIP) "We are going to privatize all our industry"
0:54 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado
1:41 (CLIP) María Corina Machado supports Israel
2:07 Nobel "Peace" Prize for warmonger
2:28 Venezuela's oil & US coup attempts
3:31 (CLIP) Machado vows to sell off Venezuelan oil
3:46 Machado: Far-right opposition leader
4:23 Machado wants US invasion
5:19 CIA-linked NED funds Machado
6:00 Machado interview with Donald Trump Jr.
6:53 (CLIP) Donald Trump Jr. & Machado
8:23 Venezuela's Pinochet + Margaret Thatcher
8:46 (CLIP) US companies will "make a lot of money"
9:05 Selling their countries to USA: vendepatrias
9:23 Machado's meeting with George W Bush
9:59 Trump's war on Venezuela
11:04 (CLIP) Regime change plans
11:24 Targeting US empire's adversaries
11:56 (CLIP) Machado's US first foreign policy
12:12 Donald Trump
12:25 (CLIP) Machado praises Donald Trump
12:45 Trump's coup attempts
14:06 (CLIP) "Biggest opportunity" for regime change
14:34 Marco Rubio: chief coup-plotter
15:06 Targeting Cuba & Nicaragua as well
15:57 (CLIP) US officials supporting Machado
17:03 Rubio lied about Cuban parents
17:54 Miami, Florida: coup capital
18:24 Elon Musk
19:15 (CLIP) Musk gave Starlink to Venezuelan opposition
19:33 Starlink: tool of US imperialism
20:08 Bitcoin & Trump's corrupt crypto schemes
21:39 BlackRock: world's biggest Bitcoin holder
23:11 (CLIP) Machado loves Bitcoin
23:40 Machado: US coup puppet
23:57 Outro

>>2545358
It's not about liking Maduro so much as recognizing the alternative is worse.

>>2545358
>why you like old fart Maduro

Anyone fighting against America is good

The amerikkkans said one of the boats was an ELN boat.
Why have ELN refused all ceasefire/demobilisation?
Will ELN guerrillas go to Venezuela proper to fight, or will they fight the yankee where they are?

>>2545722
Cool af

>>2545358
Even if Maduro sucks, it's not like America bombing the place will fix it, name one country that got better with us intervention, the people doing this don't care about you in the slightest, that Machado can't is a malinche and a judas who will sell out your interested if the USA makes her a puppet president.
The people doing this don't care about starving people in their own country why would you think they care about you?

>>2545722 (me)
What's ELN's deal anyway? nobody ever really speaks about them, they are sometimes called narcos, although they always deny it in a relatively convincing manner. In the media i've seen of them in the past what always stood out to me was that they always seem to have a good age-range, as in both young and old people, and that they seem far more disciplined/articulate/organised than any actual narco milita you would see in similar such news segments.

>>2545358
I just *hope* the US gets a black eye out of this. It is also the best outcome for me personally, I think.

And lets be honest, If the USA took over, Venezuelans would probably feel a marked improvements on their conditions, simply because of the immediate sanction relief and the free flow of oil revenue, which can be the carrot for China/RF to let it happen, for example. Venezuela doesn't need to be another Chile, it's oil could be a carrot, the fuel if you will, for another blue wave in south america.

>>2545840
what makes you think burgers intend to pay for the oil? They want to bomb venezuela and take the oil. not pay for it. stupid fuck.

Hamas has officially been spotted in Venezuela. This is why the US military needs to go to war there, in order to support our allies against the jihadist terrorist threat

A few different media outfits have started doing ELN pieces recently (Channel 4 (UK) & Al Jazeera just today), is this consent manufacturing?
I watched the C4 one (vidrel), same format as usual, a lot of talk by presenter about being drug gangs and forcible recruiting before an interview which the ELN sound completely reasonable and a bit based.
>>2546476
But wouldn't that break the ceasefire mr trump? won't get a peace price that way.

Why you lefties hate democracy so much?

>>2545966
>>2545970
Venezuela isn't throwing missiles at Israel or imperiling the petrodollar, an existential threat for the USA. PSUV is either willing to play ball with a surprising amount of US interference, or powerless to stop it. Which enables a softer stance. NATO also have a lot of leverage with the humongous amount of Venezuelan migrants whose material interest now firmly aligns with NATO, where they live, but would be willing to lend legitimacy and even move back (chumps that they are) to Venezuela to prove it. And the remittances those migrants feed into the Venezuelan economy also being significant.

It was just an example though. I think the USA would not go through all this trouble if they just wanted to tear a bloody hole in the region like with Iraq and Libya. IMHO the US expects *some* "shock and awe" but then a swift collapse of the government and probably has a lot of allies ready to do the regime change.

PSUV foes not seem willing to go further than class collaborationism and Maduro probably feels that, if this crisis is surmounted, it would be license to do nothing further left again. Cementing the "frenemies" relationship with the USA at the same time that the latter becomes his forever excuse to remain in power, it's me or the gringos. IMO the last election proved how fraught control over the masses can be, not that I think the opinion of anyone who wants the USA to takeover (or their very own Milei) should be considered anyway. And that most of South America's state heads were willing to throw Maduro under the bus wrt the pretenses of liberal democracy.

Are we actually going to invade Vuvuzuela or will this be another China-Taiwan situation. Fucking insane that we will invade without a casus belli; they're not even bothering to give us some giant lie to justify the invasion

lol. love news-media.
Trump says ‘days numbered’ for Venezuela’s Maduro
President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals over the potential for a United States military intervention in Venezuela, as he dismissed talk of “war” but threatened the South American country’s leader.
During a CBS interview, released on Sunday, the president warned that President Nicholas Maduro’s days are numbered. The comment came amid a build-up of US military units in the Caribbean, where the US has conducted multiple strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels that UN officials and scholars say are in clear violation of US and international law.
Asked if the US was going to war against Venezuela, Trump replied: “I doubt it. I don’t think so.”
However, when asked if Maduro’s days as president were numbered, the president replied: “I would say yeah. I think so.”

Trump says he doubts US will go to war with Venezuela
Donald Trump has played down the possibility of a US war with Venezuela, but suggested Nicolás Maduro's days as the country's president were numbered.
Asked if the US was going to war against Venezuela, the US president told CBS' 60 Minutes: "I doubt it. I don't think so. But they've been treating us very badly."
For two months, the US military has been building up a force of warships, fighter jets, bombers, marines, drones and spy planes in the Caribbean Sea. It is the largest deployment there for decades.
The US continues to launch strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. The Trump administration says the strikes are necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the US.
Trump rejected suggestions that the US action was not about stopping narcotics, but aimed at ousting Maduro, a long-time Trump opponent, saying it was about "many things".
At least 64 people have been killed by US strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September, CBS News - the BBC's US news partner - reports.
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump said: "Every single boat that you see that's shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country."
Pushed on whether the US was planning any strikes on land, Trump refused to rule it out, saying: "I wouldn't be inclined to say that I would do that… I'm not gonna tell you what I'm gonna do with Venezuela, if I was gonna do it or if I wasn't going to do it."

>>2547595
Special Military Operation, anyone?

>>2547374
Was Pinochet democratic?

>>2547529
> Fucking insane that we will invade without a casus belli; they're not even bothering to give us some giant lie to justify the invasion
they've been pretending Maduro is Pablo Escobar for like the last 8 weeks. Been living under a rock?

>>2545529
They sincerely believe in metrics where wages are presented in exchange rate USD: they believe that Americans are actually, in real life, without a shred of doubt thousands of times richer than any person living in the Third World, based solely on wages adjusted by the currency exchange rates. All those "living under 15 USD a day" metrics are representative of their worldview, and those are the same people who sincerely believed USSR to has been "Upper Volta with missiles". Also, those are the same people who believe that China is a country of cheap labor and that China is weak, submissive and breedable, and therefore they sincerely do not understand how Trump can be losing trade wars, he must be a Chinese spy; or how Trump doesn't help Ukraine as much as Biden, how is Russia outproducing the collective West militarily, therefore Trump must be a Russian spy

>>2545252
Is Latin America getting this fascist or did they just poll the areas most likely to support the US?

>>2547632
Venezuela will be a rich,free country(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>2547529
they have labelled maduro the leader of a drug cartel and these operations as against narco-trafficking and terrorism. maybe it is some of the flimsiest excuse we've seen in a long time. we haven't seen trump pull out bags on fentanyl on TV in the white house saying this stuff came on a venezuelan boat. or any other type of stunts like colin powell going to the UN.

>>2548409
Honestly, how hard would it be to seize some random Venezuelan fishing boat and plant a bunch of coke on it? They aren't even putting in the bare minimum of effort.

>>2548403
It will be neither under us rule and you know it

It will be,Chile became so much wealthy after the coup,why you prefer Allende?(USER ALREADY BANNED)

>>2548607
>that lack of space after using commas
you are the same person that tried to derail the sudan thread and defend israel and the uae. mods get rid of this troll

Trump Weighs Options, and Risks, for Attacks on Venezuela
The Trump administration has developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela, including direct attacks on military units that protect President Nicolás Maduro and moves to seize control of the country’s oil fields, according to multiple U.S. officials.

President Trump has yet to make a decision about how or even whether to proceed. Officials said he was reluctant to approve operations that may place American troops at risk or could turn into an embarrassing failure. But many of his senior advisers are pressing for one of the most aggressive options: ousting Mr. Maduro from power.

Mr. Trump’s aides have asked the Justice Department for additional guidance that could provide a legal basis for any military action beyond the current campaign of striking boats that the administration says are trafficking narcotics, without providing evidence. Such guidance could include a legal rationale for targeting Mr. Maduro without creating the need for congressional authorization for the use of military force, much less a declaration of war.

While the guidance is still being drafted, some administration officials expect it will argue that Mr. Maduro and his top security officials are central figures in the Cartel de los Soles, which the administration has designated as a narco-terrorist group. The Justice Department is expected to contend that designation makes Mr. Maduro a legitimate target despite long standing American legal prohibitions on assassinating national leaders.

The Justice Department declined to comment. But the move to justify targeting Mr. Maduro would constitute another effort by the administration to stretch its legal authorities. It has already engaged in targeted killings of suspected drug smugglers who, until September, were pursued and arrested at sea rather than killed in drone strikes. Any effort to remove Mr. Maduro would place the administration under further scrutiny over whatever legal rationale it does offer, given the hazy mix of reasons it has presented so far for confronting Mr. Maduro. Among them are drug trafficking, the need for American access to oil and Mr. Trump’s claims that the Venezuelan government released prisoners into the United States.

Mr. Trump has issued a series of contradictory public messages about his intentions, and the goals and justification for any future military action. He has said in recent weeks that the attacks on speedboats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific that have killed at least 65 people would be expanded to land attacks. But that has not happened yet.

When asked by CBS News whether the United States is headed to war with Venezuela, Mr. Trump said on Sunday: “I doubt it. I don’t think so, but they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs.” He repeated his unsupported allegation that Mr. Maduro opened his prisons and mental institutions, and sent Tren de Aragua gang members to the United States, a charge Mr. Trump has made since his campaign for the presidency last year.

Asked whether Mr. Maduro’s days as president of Venezuela were numbered, he added, “I think so, yeah.”

The support for the more aggressive options is coming from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security adviser, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser. According to several U.S. officials, they have privately said they believe Mr. Maduro should be forced out.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed reservations, aides say, in part because of a fear that the operation could fail. Mr. Trump is in no rush to make a decision, and has repeatedly asked about what the United States could get in return, with a specific focus on extracting some of the value of Venezuela’s oil for the United States.

“President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: Stop sending drugs and criminals to our country,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The president has made clear that he will continue to strike narcoterrorists trafficking illicit narcotics — anything else is speculation and should be treated as such.”

Mr. Trump will most likely not be forced to decide at least until the Gerald R. Ford, the United States’ largest and newest aircraft carrier, arrives in the Caribbean sometime in the middle of this month. The Ford carries about 5,000 sailors and has more than 75 attack, surveillance and support aircraft, including F/A-18 fighters.

There has been a steady buildup of U.S. troops in the region since late August. Even before the carrier arrives, there are about 10,000 American military personnel in the Caribbean, roughly half on warships and half on bases in Puerto Rico.

The Pentagon has in recent weeks also dispatched B-52 and B-1 bombers from bases in Louisiana and Texas to fly missions off the coast of Venezuela in what military officials call a show of force. B-52s can carry dozens of precision-guided bombs, and B-1s can carry up to 75,000 pounds of guided and unguided munitions, the largest nonnuclear payload of any aircraft in the Air Force arsenal.

And the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which conducted extensive counterterrorism helicopter operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, recently carried out what the Pentagon said were training exercises off the Venezuelan coast.

The military buildup has been so rapid, and so public, that it appears to be part of a psychological pressure campaign on Mr. Maduro. In fact, Mr. Trump has talked openly about his decision to issue a “finding” that permits the C.I.A. to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela — the kind of operation presidents almost never discuss in advance.

Should Mr. Trump elect to order the action inside Venezuela, it would amount to a considerable military, legal and political risk. For all the risks Mr. Trump took in authorizing the American bombing of three nuclear-related sites in Iran in June, it did not involve an effort to overthrow or replace the Iranian government.

If Mr. Trump goes that route, there is no assurance that he would succeed or that he could guarantee that a new government would arise friendlier to the United States. Aides say that far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

And some of Mr. Trump’s most loyal political backers have been warning against striking at Mr. Maduro, reminding the president he was elected to end “forever wars,” not incite new ones.

<A Military Plan in Three Parts
Mr. Trump’s authorization for the C.I.A. to operate inside Venezuela’s borders could enable the agency to conduct a variety of activities, from information operations to building opposition to Mr. Maduro to actively sabotaging his government — and even seizing the leader himself. But national security officials say that if such operations could really pry Mr. Maduro from power, he would have been gone years ago. That is why the White House is considering military action, and the proposals on the table come in three broad varieties.

The first option would involve airstrikes against military facilities, some of which might be involved in facilitating drug trafficking, with the aim of collapsing Venezuelan military support for Mr. Maduro. If Mr. Maduro believed he was no longer protected, he might seek to flee — or, in moving around the country, make himself more vulnerable to capture, officials say. Critics of such an approach warn that it could have the opposite effect, of rallying support around the embattled leader.

A second approach envisions the United States sending Special Operations forces, such as the Army’s Delta Force or the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, to try to capture or kill Mr. Maduro. Under this option, the Trump administration would seek to sidestep prohibitions against assassinating foreign leaders by arguing that Mr. Maduro is, first and foremost, the head of a narcoterrorist gang, an extension of the arguments used to justify the U.S. airstrikes on boats the administration says are smuggling drugs.

The State Department has a $50 million reward for Mr. Maduro’s arrest or conviction — up from the $25 million offered in the last days of the Biden administration. The Trump administration may also argue that because Mr. Maduro suppressed opposition and worked to rig elections, he is not the legitimate leader of the country. The Biden administration refused to recognize him as Venezuela’s president after he declared victory last year.

A third option involves a much more complicated plan to send U.S. counterterrorism forces to seize control of airfields and at least some of Venezuela’s oil fields and infrastructure.

These last two options carry much greater risks to American commandos on the ground — not to mention civilians — especially if they were targeting Mr. Maduro in an urban setting like Caracas, the country’s capital.

Mr. Trump has been reluctant to consider attacks that could put American troops at risk. As a result, many of the plans under development employ naval drones and long-range weapons, options that may prove more viable once the Ford and other ships are in place.

<For Trump, an Oil Conundrum
Mr. Trump is deeply focused on Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, the largest in the world. But how to deal with them — whether to cut off exports to the United States or keep them going in hopes of retaining a foothold should Mr. Maduro be ousted — is a problem that has vexed administration officials for the past 10 months.

Even as Mr. Trump doubled the bounty on Mr. Maduro and called him a narcoterrorist, he canceled, then renewed, a license for Chevron, an American oil company that is a pillar of Venezuela’s economy, to keep operating there.

Chevron’s existing license was killed in March under pressure from Mr. Rubio, and over the summer Venezuelan exports to the United States plummeted. But a new license — the details of which have been kept confidential — apparently prevents the company from sending hard currency into Venezuela’s banking system. Still, Chevron’s oil exports are providing Mr. Maduro’s economy with real support.

Chevron is a rare survivor; most American oil companies operating in the country had their assets seized or transferred to state-owned firms years ago. The company is one of the few that have figured out how to deal with both Mr. Trump and Mr. Maduro, who declared that “I want Chevron here for another 100 years.” It has hired as its lobbyist in Washington a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Maduro made a last-ditch effort over the past few months to offer Mr. Trump oil concessions, including a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth. He dangled the possibility of opening up existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, which would receive preferential contracts. And he said he would redirect exports that are now headed to China, and limit mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.

But Mr. Trump rejected the offer in early October, and the U.S. military buildup accelerated.

Should Mr. Maduro’s government fall and be replaced by a stable leadership open to improved relations with the United States, Chevron would be best positioned for what the Trump administration believes would be a boom in investment in the country’s huge oil reserves. It is a topic that fascinates Mr. Trump, much as it did when he urged the seizing of oil fields in Syria, whose reserves are a tiny fraction of Venezuela’s.

The company is keeping its head down.

“We believe our presence continues to be a stabilizing force for the local economy, the region and U.S. energy security,” said Bill Turenne, a Chevron spokesman.

<Seeking a Legal Rationale
As Mr. Trump’s aides push for the most aggressive military option, lawyers at the Justice Department are working to develop a legal analysis to justify the full range of military options that are being developed.

White House officials have said they want an updated legal analysis before taking any additional steps, and administration lawyers told Congress last week that the president did not need congressional approval for his lethal military strikes on boats.

T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told Congress that the administration did not think the boat-strike operation rose to the kind of “hostilities” covered by a 1973 law called the War Powers Resolution, which limits the president from conducting military operations for longer than 60 days without congressional approval. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the strikes and have demanded more information from the administration.

Perhaps the closest recent parallel to a legal justification for killing a head of state would be a legal opinion produced by the Office of Legal Counsel during Mr. Trump’s first term. It concluded that the president had authority to conduct a missile strike to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

General Suleimani was Iran’s top intelligence and security commander when he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020, and Mr. Trump has long viewed that killing as one of the signature successes of his first term.

In that instance, the Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the drone strike could be carried out because General Suleimani was “actively developing plans for further attacks against U.S. military personnel and diplomats,” according to a heavily redacted memo released after the strike.

“Military leaders who organize and oversee attacks against U.S. persons and interests may be legitimate military targets,” the memo said, adding that the strike was intended “to avoid civilian casualties or substantial collateral damage” and was not aimed “at imposing through military means a change in the character of a political regime.”

The memo concluded that “given the targeted scope of the mission, the available intelligence and the efforts to avoid escalation,” a drone strike against him “would not rise to the level of a war for constitutional purposes.”

>>2549506
>https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/russia-reiterates-support-for-venezuela-maduro-govt-requests-military-assistance/
monke-apology-form.webp

Russia open to sending hypersonic missiles to Venezuela
Russia could provide its most advanced hypersonic missiles to Venezuela, amid frayed relations with the United States.
The Kremlin claims the Oreshnik missile is impossible to intercept and can carry conventional and nuclear warheads.
Alexei Zhuravlyov, the deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defence committee, warned that “the Americans may be in for some surprises” as he opened the door to a weapons transfer to Venezuela.
“I see no obstacles to supplying a friendly country with new developments such as the Oreshnik or, let’s say, the well-proven Kalibr missiles,” Mr Zhuravlyov told the Russian news website Gazeta.Ru.
The Oreshnik missile, translating as “hazel tree”, is capable of striking any target across the European continent in under an hour if launched from Russia or Belarus, according to Moscow.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has insisted that the missiles are so mighty that using several of them in a strike with conventional warheads would be just as catastrophic as a nuclear attack.

The Oreshnik was first used in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024 in what Putin said was a reprisal to Ukraine’s use of long-range weaponry hailing from the US and UK, including Storm Shadow missiles, to hit targets inside Russia.
It is understood Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, reached out to Putin personally to plead for military assistance amid increased US military presence in the Caribbean.
Mr Maduro asked for Russia to boost air defences, including restoring Russian Sukhoi Su-30MK2 aircraft already in Venezuela’s possession and acquiring 14 sets of missiles, The Washington Post reported last week.
In a letter to the Russian president, Mr Maduro reportedly said that the Sukhoi fighters were “the most important deterrent the Venezuelan national government had when facing the threat of war”.

Caracas also reached out to China and Iran to upgrade its military capabilities and expand defensive ties, according to the paper.
The US deployment in the Caribbean Sea has been swelling for months as Washington dispatched fighter jets, warships, bombers, marines, drones and spy planes in a move that the US president claimed was necessary to sever the flow of drugs into the US.
More than a dozen US strikes on alleged drug traffickers, most of whom departed from Venezuelan shores, have killed more than 60 people since September.
On Saturday, Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said that Moscow condemns “the use of excessive military force in carrying out anti-drug tasks” by the US, reiterating its “firm support” for Venezuela’s leadership.

Russia and Venezuela have celebrated close ties over the past two decades and signed a strategic partnership treaty in Moscow last year.
Mr Zhuravlyov, describing Russia on Tuesday as “one of Venezuela’s key military-technical partners”, said that it “supplies the country with almost the full range of weaponry”.
On Tuesday, Putin announced that the Sarmat intercontinental heavy missile will enter Russia’s combat service from next year.
The nuclear missile, nicknamed Satan II, has been touted as the “world’s deadliest weapon”.
pdfd.

>>2551224
yeah, I'm thinking we are back

I will unironically become of a Zigger if Putin helps Maduro and Venezuela I'm not joking

>>2551238
Will you cum on Putin's photo?

>>2551238
if he sends hypersonics it would be the most based thing he has done in his cucktin life

>>2551252
I have to stop myself from making cum tributes on here all the time so maybe
god I fucking hate modern russia but they'll finally be good for something for once

>>2551224
Another fucking proxy war where the ones who most suffer will be innocent civilians. Cold war imperialism never really ended.

>>2549230
>For all the risks Mr. Trump took in authorizing the American bombing of three nuclear-related sites in Iran in June, it did not involve an effort to overthrow or replace the Iranian government.
oh, but it did. the usa and israel tried to kill khamenei and successfully killed a bunch of high ranking members of his government and military.

anyway. dare i say i think it is a good sign that trumps government feels like they need to generate a legal justification for going into venezuela. probably means there is big capital in the USA that has interests that would be hurt by intervention in the country, and they're raising a stink about it in the white house.

>>2551282
>nooo you cant help a socialist leaning government with nationalized oil stand up to the americans who want to bully and plunder them, that would be proxy war!
fuck off, if anything giving them some good missiles might deter the burgerreich

>Venezuelan President Maduro is ready to step down, and willing to accept a negotiated exit from power if the US guarantees him amnesty, removes the rewards for his capture, and ensures him a comfortable exile - The Atlantic reports.
>The report, citing a close source to Maduro, says "if the US puts everything on the table, everything is also on the table with Maduro," and will step down from power.
Succdemms, everyone

>>2552662
post the source please

>>2552436
yeah this, I dont know how could anyone see this as a bad thing unless you are nafoid with monke derangement syndrome

>>2552436
Because it would take a lot more than "some good missiles" to deter an American strike force if they really wanted to topple the government. Yes they might inflict some casualties, but the repercussions inflicted upon them (read: their civilians) would be far worse because of it. Russia doesn't give a shit this because they don't care how many Venezuelans suffer and die since they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, only because they view any expense/diversion of the US to be worth it, since they're focusing on Ukraine. To put it simply: giving them a handful of weapons is not actually "helping them from being bullied". If someone really wanted to help them, it would take a lot more resources/diplomatic intervention to do so.
All this, of course, is even ignoring all of the problems with Maduro (I don't agree he's even socialist leaning) because it's not relevant to the discussion.

>>2552700
cope

>>2552662
oh yeah, just like his pilot had betrayed him!
actually it was just a fake news to destabilize like everything said about venezuela in western media

>>2552700
how the fuck do people not recognizing that giving the venezuelans hypersonic missiles, that if they launched at say a major military base or city, would just result in the country getting annihilated?

>>2552709
Its obviously supposed to work as deterrence.
>>2552700
>Because it would take a lot more than "some good missiles" to deter an American strike force if they really wanted to topple the government.
Its better than nothing, right now the US can do whatever they want without fear of any kind of retaliation, and thats the worst case scenario for any country thats on the eyes of the burgers.
>If someone really wanted to help them, it would take a lot more resources/
This could be the start of that.
>diplomatic intervention to do so.
The US only understands brute force.

>>2552700
>I don't agree he's even socialist leaning
nationalized resources, communes, popular militias, strong democracy, anti imperialism and internationalist solidarity isnt enough for ultras to describe someone as "socialist leaning", impressively retarded

>Yes they might inflict some casualties
this is the whole point of deterrence, US is very casualty averse, ofc they still have the means to destroy the country, but the political will might lack if theres any risk of getting hurt in return

>repercussions inflicted upon them (read: their civilians) would be far worse because of it.
<they will bomb your civilians if you defend yourself so just take it

>they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts
no shit, who the fuck cares

>giving them a handful of weapons is not actually "helping them from being bullied"
<helping them isnt actually helping them because its not enough
how dishonest can you be holy shit

>>2552789
>nationalized resources, communes, popular militias, strong democracy, anti imperialism and internationalist solidarity isnt enough for ultras to describe someone as "socialist leaning", impressively retarded
Agree but I think he was talking about Maduro in specific

>>2551224
Fucking finally
I need more dakka Putin
>>2551282
B8it used to be believable

Something cheerful
Venezuela is going to space!
Sending a probe with China to Mars in 2028
<Insert meme

>>2552700
One ship being sunk will be enough to deter them. The Navy hasn't experienced heavy losses since WWII.