The US has no moral authority to attack Venezuela, regardless of Maduro’s authoritarian nature. Both can be true: Maduro is a dictator who caused immense harm to his people, and US military intervention is an illegal act of aggression that will not resolve the crisis of democracy in Venezuela.
The region’s future must be determined by people themselves, free from the shadow of empire
“If the US can unilaterally launch military strikes against sovereign nations at a whim, then the entire framework of international law becomes meaningless. This tells every nation that might and power trump legality and sovereignty.”
Although I agree that this is bad, it is unsurprising. The states have been devolving towards this for a long time. I’d argue that the patriot act was one of the more audacious steps in this direction. I suppose there were earlier ones, I am not very knowledgeable about this topic
You’re right, despite your confessed ignorance.
The US has been doing it since the beginning, including the invasion of Quebec in 1775. The only difference now is that everything gets broadcast, especially on social media.
Trump just sent a very dangerous message to
Latin Americathe worldHe just said to China, go ahead and invade Taiwan, we aren’t going to stop it.
The entire world is going to turn into 3 or 4 monopolies, just like American corporations
Central/South America would be well served from establishing something like the EU. The US has too long been able to act with little impunity in their back yard and the world suffers for it.
The moment they start even trying to organize themselves, the US will bomb them. So many US-backed coups in Latin America, and they still have the audacity of complaining about immigration.
Venezuela is not a part of Mercosur
I mean even if it was, I don’t think Mercosur has the teeth to prevent this sorta thing.
I’m confused about what you think the EU is if you think it has “teeth”.
surely they can do economic sanctions right?
I’d say it would be perfectly fair if some country wanted to come to the US to kidnap a despotic leader and hold them accountable in an international court of some sort. You know, now that the precedent is set.
its not only latin america. i hope we remove all their military bases in europe, ban all air charter from us and let the demographic of a failed state with missmanaged economy do their work.
Europe doesn’t have the stones to ask Trump politely to stop, much less anything else on that list of fantasies.
You can vote on it right?
Europe is a democracy unlike China.
What’s the point of democracy if you can vote only once every 4 years? That’s like 15 times in a lifetime.
All the oil, cocain and rare earth’s are mine!
I got banned on ml instance for saying the exact same thing - both are bad. Apparently, over there they think Maduro is a good guy.
i got banned on ml for saying “rich coming from a tankie lol” on a post about usa being bad for the kidnapping
Removed by mod
i mean its a pot and kettle situation
i mostly view getting banned from there as a positive even though i kinda made it seem like i agree with usa kidnapping heads of state
They can’t do anything about it. So what’s the point?
The region’s future must be determined by people themselves, free from the shadow of empire
I have a problem with that line. Maduro has been president of Venezuela since 2013. Just, how long would it take for the people there to free themselves? 50 years? Never?
I mean look at the American people, we’re no different. We keep talking about revolution, civil war, assassination. We’ve only maybe have a couple of near misses, but the rest are just nothingburger after nothingburger. We still willingly wake up, go to work, come back home and repeat everyday while we glue ourselves to the news just getting vicariously pissed off and yet we do dick about it. We just grip onto voting like they’re rosary beads in hopes things turn around and only then do we proclaim we’ve done something, only allowing the villains we’ve elected previously, to get off scot-free.
And even then, that doesn’t promise anyone that we won’t stupidly elect another dictator of our own.
Just, how long would it take for the people there to free themselves?
However long it takes. Historically a foreign invasion only pushes the timer further back, doubly so when (neo)colonialism is involved.
Nope, can’t go with that. That’s how they win, is you doing nothing.
Removed by mod
In 2013, Maduro was incredibly popular. Hell, in 2019 he was incredibly popular. So despite the fact that he felt it was critical to prevent the American-aligned party, who was actively calling for a US invasion, from taking power, he was still their by the will of the people for at least 8 of those 12 years.
The claims that Maduro was a dictator are primarily biased readings of a conflict between the US and the anti-imperialists in Venezuela. The US first started organizing regime change in Venezuela 25 years ago. The first attempt was staffed by Venezuelans, but funded, organized, trained, and facilitated by the US. The sanctions have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans and driven poverty and hunger to levels of desperation. This is why there’s been millions of emigres.
For 25 years the US has been sending covert operations staff to Venezuela, training people who would like to overturn the government against the will of the people, and when Maduro stepped into office he became part of that battle. His choice was to hunt the subversive elements in the country and purge them, with or without murder. Even at the worst estimates of his body count, which are based entirely on speculative evidence and just sort of guessing based on satellite imagery and interviews with poor hungry people (who will say anything for safe passage and food for their kids), he has some far less violence than the US has to Venezuela in the same time frame.
This is not a choice between a dictator and a US intervention. These are interrelated processes. The crack down on dissent is a result of the president of Venezuela securing the country against US subversion. If the US wasn’t subverting, the president wouldn’t be cracking down. We know this because it happens in the run up to nearly all historical regime changes run by the US. Iran under Mossadegh also nationalized the oil fields, just like Chavez, and he was also popular, just like Chavez, but when the US and UK started building the operations for the coup, Mossadegh had to find them and stop them. If he didn’t, they would harm the Iranian people. He spent a couple years getting more and more draconian on his attempts to find the spies and subversives and purge them. And he lost in the end.
Maduro was not wrong that there were literally US spies and special ops all over the country. He was not wrong that the opposition party was working with them. He was not wrong that they were trying to harm the Venezuelan people for money and power. But he failed to stop them.
So now we’re left with the question - should he have purged harder, or should have done it differently? And the only way you can answer that question is if you understand what the government of Venezuela was doing for the last 25 years since Chavez first took office. You need to know how they were working to prevent this sort of outcome, what things they did implement, and then you need to study what other governments have implemented and whether Maduro could have done it differently.
And at that point you’ll hopefully be humble enough to realize that you’re Monday-morning-quarterbacking running a fucking country when you’re up against a US regime change operation and that you really have no ground to stand on to critique Maduro as a dictator who needed to be stopped for the good of his people.
This is some top-tier tankie fan fiction that completely ignores how things actually work on the ground. Calling Maduro popular in 2019 is a total joke. His approval ratings were in the teens and he only stayed in power because of a 2018 election so rigged that even the voting machine company admitted the numbers were manipulated.
You are blaming the US for every single problem, but the Venezuelan economy was already in a death spiral by 2014 due to massive corruption and oil mismanagement, which happened years before the heavy 2017 sanctions ever existed.
Framing actual crimes against humanity documented by the UN as just “hunting subversives” is an insane way to hand-wave away torture and extrajudicial killings. It is not “Monday-morning quarterbacking” to point out that when a leader destroys the judiciary, jails anyone who polls better than him, and starves his own people, he is not a defensive hero. He is just another autocrat holding a sinking ship together by force.
I disagree with Satan, but I believe all his lies
The US sanctions regime for nVenezuela back in 2006 restricted its access to credit markets, they weren’t “formal sanctions” but they were government actions to economically harm Venezuela. That caused a debt trap for the country which weighed the economy down and it never recovered.
The voting machine company that made those claims has a British Lord as a Chairman, and the CEO of the company is a capitalist in Venezuela. Hardly an unbiased source.
And the UN republished reports that are specious pretty often. Instead of arguing from authority about the UN says this or that, read the actual report. They don’t have proof of the numbers dead that they claim. They have speculation based on research methods including interviewing emigres and looking at satellite images. They don’t have researchers on the ground figuring it out, they are publishing numbers with plenty of room for interpretation.
Don’t believe everything you read.
The UN has always characterized anti-subversive activities as human rights abuses. They’ve done it in a dozen countries. And again, they don’t actually have documentation of crimes against humanity. Read their own report.
Venezuela’s debt actually tripled during the biggest oil boom in history between 2006 and 2012. The country didn’t collapse because of US meddling. It collapsed because the government blew every cent of the oil windfall on corruption and imports while gutting local production. By the time the oil price crashed in 2014, they had zero savings and zero industry left to fall back on.
Dismissing the chairman of Smartmatic for being a capitalist is cope and ignores the fact that they were the regime’s hand picked tech partner for over a decade. When the people who literally built and ran the voting system for years tell the world they added a million fake votes to the 2017 count, that isn’t a conspiracy. It is a confession from the only people who actually knew how the software worked.
And if you actually read the UN reports instead of just calling them specious, you would see they are backed by verified video and direct forensic evidence. They have documented systematic torture at the Helicoide including electric shocks and sexual violence. Calling state sanctioned murder anti-subversive activity is just a way to hand wave away crimes against humanity. You can call it speculation all you want, but thousands of victims aren’t all making up the same story for fun. Don’t believe everything you watch on TankieTube
I wonder why Venezuela’s debt tripled starting the year that the US tanked their ability to access debt at non-usury rates. So curious! Blowing oil revenues on imports? You don’t say? You mean they bought things with their only source of revenue. Shockingly corrupt!
Oh I don’t dismiss the chairman of the holding company that owns smartmatic as a capitalist. I dismiss him as an imperialist. The British upper class has a lot to do with oil imperialism. Just ask Iran what happened when they nationalized their oil.
I dismissed the founder and CEO of smartmatic as a capitalist because he is. He’s clearly not a Bolivarian or he wouldn’t be in bed with a British Lord building out digital voting infrastructure in the periphery. He stands to gain a lot from the capitalists coming back into power, and the chairman does as well.
As for the report, the UN claims that the Maduro regime killed 5k people but they make that claim by extrapolating from interviews, news articles, and satellite footage. There has been no corroborating evidence on the ground. It’s totally specious.
As for torture, I don’t think anyone in Venezuela is losing sleep over American spies and their collaborators getting the “enhanced interrogation” techniques that those same American spies unleashed on the world.
Look, I’m not saying the Venezuelan government is run by saints. They’ve done things that are harmful to people, they’ve killed people, and they have most definitely killed innocent people.
But the US kills almost 6k annually through prison deaths alone, and another 1000 in police custody/police homicides. Every country has black ops, every country does spy hunting, every country under attack by the US has to take calculated risks understanding that they are going to be catching innocents in the net.
And again, Maduro wasn’t wrong! Machado was literally asking US oil companies to convince the US to invade in exchange for wealthy contracts. We know for a fact that Machado and her cohort were working directly with US covert ops running money, arms, training, organizing, and facilitation. It’s not like there wasn’t a covert subversive international threat inside Venezuela. There was one and the Bolivarian Armed Forces is responsible for finding these people, disrupting their networks, and stopping their operations.
You can’t use moral logic here unless you apply it evenly, and the result of you applying it evenly would be that nearly every country would need regime change because their leaders are bloodthirsty dictators who indiscriminately commit human rights violations.
The reality is that Maduro is unpopular because 1) the economy is shambles from economic sanctions, 2) there’s still a large contingent of capitalist roaders who would rather be a junior vassal of the US and make their millions as compradors and 3) he is uncharismatic as fuck.
The masses are suffering economically and have been for years. Under Maduro, food production for major domestic food crops more than doubled and national food availability more than quadrupled. That’s astounding given their situation. The masses still want the Bolivarian revolution to proceed. They do not want to become a neocolony again. But they want the suffering to end. And all the US has to do is stop the crime against humanity that is collective punishment.
The idea that we need to focus on the unconfirmed 5k people killed by the government instead of the multiple thousands killed by the sanctions and the 20 years of violent subversion that the US has been enacting is a clear sign that you don’t have your priorities straight. Or rather, you do, but they are aligned with the empire.
Trying to blame 2006 restrictions for a debt trap is historically illiterate. Venezuela’s debt tripled because the government issued billions in bonds on the open market while oil was at an all-time high of over 100 dollars a barrel. They were not blocked from credit. They were the darlings of Wall Street until they spent the entire 1 trillion dollar oil windfall and had nothing left when the price crashed. Buying imports with your only revenue is exactly the problem when you use that money to destroy your own domestic farms and factories.
Calling Smartmatic’s whistleblowing imperialist is a convenient way to ignore that they were the regime’s closest partners for 13 years. If you spend over a decade letting capitalists run your unhackable democracy, you do not get to act shocked when they reveal how the sausages are made.
As for the UN reports, you’re ignoring the fact that the Fact-Finding Mission has verified forensic evidence and internal chain of command documents. Comparing US prison deaths (which are mostly natural causes and illness) to state security forces firing live ammunition into protesters or torturing people in the Helicoide is a massive false equivalence. One is a failure of a healthcare system. The other is a deliberate policy of state terror; and 5k is just the deaths from one year. You’d be better off comparing it to Iraq or something. But idk why you’re even making the argument, I’m not an authoritarian. Dismantle the US too.
The 90 percent food self-sufficiency claim is pure state propaganda. Independent data from 2024 and 2025 shows agricultural imports actually grew by 9 percent, with the US remaining one of the top suppliers. The only reason availability looks higher is because 8 million people fled the country and those left behind often cannot afford to eat, so the shelves stay full. Maduro is not a victim of a covert threat. He is a leader who broke his country and is using the CIA agent trope to justify a body count that even he admits exists.
Buying imports with your only revenue is exactly the problem when you use that money to destroy your own domestic farms and factories.
It certainly does when you’re a total market economy. Chavez nationalized a bunch of food production and collectivized the farms.
Venezuela’s debt tripled because the government issued billions in bonds on the open market while oil was at an all-time high of over 100 dollars a barrel
Because it was a petrostate when Chavez was elected and it was literally the only and best source of economic wealth the country had after decades of deliberate underdevelopment by compradors working with the imperialists to keep the country dependent. This is standard IMF/Word Bank shit. Venezuela didn’t become a petrostate in 1999 as part of its economic strategy. It started a revolutionary movement in 1999 on the basis of an impoverished petrostate riddled with corruption and neocolonial economics. You can’t time the markets. Chavez made the best decisions he could with limited experience, limited foresight, and the limited amount of embedded skill and experience in the community to run a country under a collectivized and nationalized model. The 2008 oil price crash was, in essence, an economic natural disaster that occurred at an incredibly fragile time for Venezuela.
You can absolutely say that they did bad a job of nationalizing and collectivizing. And of course they did, they were at the beginning of their revolutionary process. Russia’s collectivization and China’s collectivization processes went terribly before they actually solved their cycles of famines. It takes time to build these things. Venezuela’s only chance was the price of oil remaining high. They lost their bet with the market. They didn’t have many other choices. And again, if you want to present what they are, I refer you to the Monday-morning quarterbacking critique.
Being a revolutionary state that is collectivizing and nationalizing land, industry, and natural resources is not a way to get help from the international community with financial problems. The US was already engaged in covert operations by 2002, on the ground in Venezuela. By the 2008 crash, covert operations were maturing and intelligence networks were established. Venezuela was going to have to figure it out on their own. It took 9 years to go from electing Chavez to the crash. It took another 9 years before the economy showed signs of recovery, particularly through allowing USD into the economy. And then the US sanctioned Venezuela, determined that it should not recover.
I’m sure you would have done better if you were in charge.
Calling Smartmatic’s whistleblowing imperialist is a convenient way to ignore that they were the regime’s closest partners for 13 years
Such editorial restraint you have. Not mincing words are we. The regimes closest partners. Really?! Not Morales? Not Castro? Not PDVSA? Not Sidor? No, of course it was Smartmatic. I mean, who could say otherwise right?
If you spend over a decade letting capitalists run your unhackable democracy, you do not get to act shocked when they reveal how the sausages are made.
And apparently you don’t get to question the veracity of their statements even though that have plenty of financial incentives to lie. It’s such a weird thing for you to claim is unassailable. A private company? Lie?! How could they!? They had a contract with the government that lasted 13 years!!! How could they lie!!!
You people are far too credulous.
As for the report from 2019, let’s see how unbiased and fact based it is:
Expressing deep concern for the more than 4 million people compelled to leave the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and also that the 2019 Venezuela Humanitarian Response Plan identifies a population of 7 million in need because of, inter alia, violations of the rights to food and health, violence and insecurity, the collapse of basic services, the deterioration of the education system, lack of access to pre- and post-natal care, and insufficient mechanisms for protection from violence and persecution on political grounds
By this point the sanctions were well established. No mention? Just that the Bolivarian government is committing violations of the rights to food and health? US covert ops on the ground since 2002 (also well established by the time the report came out). No mention? Just that the Bolivarian government is overseeing conditions of violence and insecurity? And after all that, insufficient mechanisms for protection from violence and persecution on political grounds? My brother in Christ - this year there were literally Venezuelans openly asking for a full scale invasion in exchange for oil money. I know the UN categorizes that as “political opinion” and “freedom of expression” but give me a fucking break.
Also strongly condemns the widespread targeted repression and persecution on political grounds in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, including the excessive use of force against peaceful protests, the excessive use of force during security operations, arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances by security forces, such as the Fuerzas de Acciones Especiales and pro-government civilian armed groups
Oh man. Can you imagine? A Bolivarian revolution with pro-government civilian armed groups actually choosing to fight fellow Venezuelans? Man, I wonder what could ever cause them to do that? It couldn’t be brainwashing, do you think? Maybe there’s legitimate security concerns with subversive and counter-revolutionary action on the ground in a country that the US has been targeting for 20 years and has fully function covert operations on the ground? Maybe? No. It must be condemned as “political violence” that truncates “the fundamental human right” to choose to be a junior partner to a psychopathic genocidal empire.
Urges the Venezuelan authorities to immediately release all political prisoners
Can you imagine releasing Machado… oh wait. She’s not in prison. In fact, she was detained briefly and then released. Real murderous dictator vibes there. How is she still alive? Is it A) Venezuela isn’t just murdering the opposition or B) she’s well protected by US covert ops operating in Venezuela?
Expresses grave concern at the fact that there have been at least 6,000 killings resulting from security operations in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since January 2018 and that, according to information analysed by the High Commissioner, many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial executions;
This report is from September 2019. That report LAUNCHED the fact finding mission. Meaning the 6K number was arrived at before fact finding began.
If you actually read each of the fact finding reports, the first doesn’t actually use “internal chain of command documents” in its methodology and only reviewed about 274 cases and only investigated 223. The methods they used were: “confidential interviews, both in-person and via secure telephone or video connections; (2) confidential documents obtained from individuals and organizations, including legal case files; (3) a call for submissions; and (4) review of open source information”. Not exactly confidence inducing.
I just went through all 5 years of fact finding reports. There is nowhere near deaths totally 5k/year. I encourage you to go through the documents yourself and find evidence for the claim of 5k/year. There is ONE claim of 5k deaths in 2018 that they claim is provided directly by the Venezuelan government. The footnote says “Provided by the Venezuelan government”. I haven’t found the actual source. The Venezuelan government denies that the number, which appears to mean that it denies having provided documented evidence for the number. That’s all I’m able to find right now, so I’m considering it hearsay until I see whatever document the UN thinks the government provided them.
I’m not an authoritarian. Dismantle the US too.
I disagree with the great Satan, but I believe all of his lies
Anyway, this has been fun. Keep simping for the empire while also claiming you hate it. They love when you do that.
Say what you will about Trump but it’s a well calculated move.
If democrats step in, he’ll accuse them of supporting rigged elections. Meanwhile the hidden lesson in allowing this to happen is that Trump is above the law.
It fits Trump perfectly, and the purpose is of course to get incredibly rich.
Democrats would have done the same. Obama invaded 8 countries in 2016.
Elections are for entertainment for show for the masses. The people who actually run the Western world are the billionaires and the 3 letter organisations.
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