To point out that Maduro is deeply unpopular across much of Latin America and a potential majority of Venezuelans wanted him gone is not to justify Trump's actions but rather indicate that responses in Latin American societies might not conform with partisan battle lines in the US.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the President has an obligation to notify Congress when engaging in military action. That process exists for a reason: to prevent unilateral decisions that drag the nation into conflict without democratic oversight. That constitutional process was not followed.

What flavour of patriotism is calling for Trump to kidnap the democratically elected leader of the UK?

Even if Farage was our PM, I wouldn’t support a foreign regime swooping in and kidnapping him I guess that’s the difference between people who care about human rights and international laws, and people drunk on ideology with no moral compass

Growing numbers of over-60s Britons facing homelessness. Low wages/benefits. State pension is low. No curbs on profiteering. Real cuts in council funding for years. Lack of social housing. 1% have more wealth than 70% of the population combined. Misery and premature death is a political choice.

Imagine being the person brave enough to leak this in the hopes that media attention could stop it and then the media just……buries it.

These freaks want territorial expansion and they know Trump will do everything he can to deliver. This isn’t just a tweet from some random asshole either. This is Stephen Miller’s wife. Miller was in the room with Trump during the kidnapping of Maduro.

Trump is trying to force US oil companies to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields that are too expensive to invest in at current crude prices while a full blown energy revolution is happening with cheap solar and electrification growing exponentially. This is a dying empire shit.

'The people who make our lives more difficult arrive in private jets, not dinghies.'

I'm not a diplomat, but one thing I have to do regularly is to draft or help to draft public statements that parties to litigation agree as part of a settlement. There is an art to drafting something that reasonable readers can agree is clear but from which they draw irreconcilable meanings. /1

For gazillionth time, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept

The overt motives work too: Empire building, greed, the preservation of the US Fossil Fuel cartel, the undermining of International Law. Bears comparison with Hitler's expansion into Russia for their oil in WW2.

Every week there’s another crisis……just before the release of another tranche of Epstein paperwork. I suppose it takes a week for manufacturers to formulate the following weeks worth of redaction ink.

Aren't you entertained, Clacton?

If Trump’s concern was drugs, he’d not have pardoned Honduras’s corrupt leader; if terrorism, he’d have gone after Iran; if world order, Russia; if preserving US power, China. If democracy, human rights or humanitarian motive, dozens of other worthy cases. What’s left is oil. And Epstein.

Trump IS a mob boss. This is the worst of all worlds. Whether Venezuelans themselves will go along with his scheme remains to be seen. I somehow doubt it, meaning this is going to turn ugly very fast, while Russia and China laugh at American hubris.

"Left-leaning mothers of Mumsnet are deserting Labour for Reform" [Times] I can't stop laughing long enough to come up with something sarcastic to say about this headline.

Timeline serendipity @showerabsolute.bsky.social @yiannisbab.bsky.social - why any broadcaster takes this charlatan seriously

OK, crash course in oil. Oil has two main gradings, viscosity (light or heavy) and sulfur (sweet or sour). A light (low viscosity) and sweet (low sulfur) oil is easier to process into gasoline and other products than a heavy and sour one, so the light & sweet oil commands a premium price.

hey remember climate change? didn't it have something to do with... oil? I'm sure it can wait.

The US has directly intervened militarily in central/south America - Panama '89 the obvious parallel. However, Venezuela is different. This is explicitly about seizing overseas assets, oil, and in the context of expressed imperialism. See Greenland and lest we forget Canada. And, indeed, Ukraine.

Civilians.

I signed this petition . Please join me and share. 38d.gs/bm8t

So the plan seems to be to replace chaotic Venezuelan corruption with more efficient US corruption.

Quick update for US media: the story is not about Maduro or what’s going on in Venezuela. It’s about the massive rupture in US history where the country now stands for invading and occupying any country it likes. Trump in his press conference made it very clear this is a new age. Did you miss that?

I called it on November 12. LOL He's so predictable. bsky.app/profile/215p...

Watch this. Watch again. "This incredible thing last night... We have to do it again [in other countries]. We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."

Here is J.D. Vance's rationale for seizing Maduro. He says Trump "was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States." Very interesting, since the indictment says nothing whatever about oil, stolen or otherwise. /1

We are at the mercy of a madman.

"Sovereignty" "Taking back control"

Trump did it again. This is his 2nd post pushing a conspiracy that Governor Tim Walz had Melissa Hortman murdered in her own home. Absolutely disgusting.

this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to jump out of a helicopter to kidnap a head of state and his wife so some oil ceos can make a lot of money. we’ll be watching from a resort in florida that still serves wedge salad and checking how many retweets we get. good luck soldier

Or Canada. And while there is much evidence to assert that Maduro actually stole the previous Venezuelan election, we all know that Trump is prone to wholly false claims about stolen elections too. Not that he seems to care about Venezuelan democracy anyway.

Happening now: several hundred people are pouring into Chicago's downtown Federal Plaza. It's 25 degrees outside. Organizers are leading the crowd in a chant of, "no boots on the ground, no bombs in the air!" Two protesters hold a large banner reading, "no war for Venezuela oil."

Very good report on why Trump wants to annex Venezuela. youtu.be/Pgwny1BiCYk?...

Well played

Is the US doing things in Venezuela only for oil? Well, no, but also yes

A weird thing about the US is that in foreign policy there is a trump reason and a rubio reason for the thing, they are both entirely disjoint, and neither is the "real" reason; they both are

30p Lee accepts hundreds of pounds worth of freebie football tickets www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/30p...

I’m not usually one to obsess over wording of press releases, but damn, man, this is pretty weak. Doesn’t have any kind of “what in the blistering fuck?” to it, and such that it comes closest, it’s only after two paragraphs that seem in support of Trump and his actions.

Blows my mind that some of the same journalists who see Trump as a want-to-be dictator at home are earnestly discussing the "challenges" for this same man to "bring democracy" to a country it just illegal invaded. Please grow up.

/3 Now, Maduro IS evil, without apology to the few marginal dipshits I’ll offend by saying so. Lawless thuggery does not magically transform its object into something good. But the cultural expectation to cut our denunciations of our government’s lawlessness with ritual apologia is weak and feeble.

The cynics think today's attack on Venezuela is staged and transactional. Maduro is allied with Putin, but in 2019 Putin offered Trump a swap: Russia cedes Venezuela and gets Ukraine. (See Fiona Hill's testimony in Trump's first impeachment trial, h/t @davetroy.com). Even Maduro may be in on it. 2/

What has Farage said about it then? Is he pro or anti violent kidnap of foreign leaders?

This is a dangerous and irresponsible response. Cheering the illegal abduction of a foreign head of state and celebrating U.S. control over another country is wrong. Canada cannot pick & choose when international law applies. If the rules only matter when it’s convenient, they don’t protect anyone