Venezuela

The government of Venezuela has declared a state of emergency that applies to the entire territory of the country.

This decision was made after a large-scale US attack on Caracas and other regions, which led to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro, InfoDefensa reports.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez issued a statement on behalf of the army, confirming full support for the government decree. He emphasized that the army remains “united and cohesive” in the face of external aggression.

In an address on state television, Padrino called Maduro’s seizure a “cowardly kidnapping.” He added that this happened after the “cold-blooded murder” of a part of the presidential guard.

According to official data, the US attacks covered not only Caracas, but also the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira. Both military and civilian targets were damaged, which led to the declaration of a state of emergency.

The decree on the Commonwealth of Venezuela activates Article 338 of the Venezuelan Constitution. This allows the government to temporarily restrict certain freedoms, including movement and assembly, but at the same time guarantees the preservation of basic rights of citizens.

Stephen Miller wants Strongman rule of the world.


Stephen Miller has spent the bulk of his White House career furthering hard-right domestic policies that have resulted in mass deportations, family separations and the testing of the constitutional tenets that grant American citizenship.

Now, Mr. Miller, President Trump’s 40-year-old deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, is casting his hard-right gaze further abroad: toward Venezuela and the Danish territory of Greenland, specifically.

Mr. Miller is doing so, the president’s advisers say, in service of advancing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy ambitions, which so far resemble imperialistic designs to exploit less powerful, resource-rich countries and territories the world over and use those resources for America’s gain. According to Mr. Miller, using brute force is not only on the table but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN on Monday, during a combative appearance in which he was pressed on Mr. Trump’s long-held desire to control Greenland.

“These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he said.

This aggressive posture toward Greenland — and in turn, the rest of the world — is a perfect encapsulation of the raw power that Mr. Trump wants to project, even against Denmark, the NATO ally that controls Greenland. The moment also illustrates how people like Mr. Miller have ascended to the inner circle of a leader who has no interest in having his impulses checked, and how they exert their influence once they arrive there.

The moment also shows just how differently Mr. Trump has operated in his second term from how he did in his first.

About midway through his first term, the president began joking with his aides about his desire to buy Greenland for its natural resources, like coal and uranium. At the time, his advisers humored him with offers to investigate the possibility of buying the semiautonomous territory. They did not think Mr. Trump was serious, or that it could ever actually happen. Those advisers are gone.

Flash forward to the second term. Mr. Miller has the president’s complete trust, a staff of over 40 people, and several big jobs that include protecting the homeland and securing territories further afield. A first-term joke made in passing about purchasing Greenland for its natural resources is now a term-two presidential threat to attack and annex the Danish territory by force if necessary, under the guise of protecting Americans from foreign incursions.
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I guess trump misspoke when he said drill baby drill. What he meant was steal baby steal.

I did find it funny that trump said everything went perfectly in this operation and then I come to find out later that one of the helicopters was shot and the pilot was hit with 3 bullets in the leg and the helicopter barely avoided crashing.

fishonjazz said:

I did find it funny that trump said everything went perfectly in this operation and then I come to find out later that one of the helicopters was shot and the pilot was hit with 3 bullets in the leg and the helicopter barely avoided crashing.

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Well and 80 people in Venezuela died. I'm sure they all deserved it.

President Trump said on Wednesday evening that he expected the United States would be running Venezuela and extracting oil from its huge reserves for years, and insisted that the interim government of the country — all former loyalists to the now-imprisoned Nicolás Maduro — is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.”

“Only time will tell,” he said, when asked how long the administration will demand direct oversight of the South American nation, with the hovering threat of American military action from an armada just off shore.

“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Mr. Trump said during a nearly two-hour interview. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”

Mr. Trump’s remarks came hours after administration officials saidthe United States plans to effectively assume control of selling Venezuela’s oil indefinitely, part of a three-phase plan that Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined for members of Congress. While Republican lawmakers have been largely supportive of the administration’s actions, Democrats on Wednesday reiterated their warnings that the United States was headed toward a protracted international intervention without clear legal authority.

During the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump did not give a precise time range for how long the United States would remain Venezuela’s political overlord. Would it be three months? Six months? A year? Longer?

“I would say much longer,” the president replied.

fishonjazz said:

I did find it funny that trump said everything went perfectly in this operation and then I come to find out later that one of the helicopters was shot and the pilot was hit with 3 bullets in the leg and the helicopter barely avoided crashing.

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Shut up. No it didn't. Everything went perfectly. You're on the list.

Going well?


The U.S. government issued a new security alert Saturday urging Americans in Venezuela to leave the country immediately, citing security concerns and the U.S. government’s inability to provide emergency assistance, according to the U.S. Embassy Caracas.

"U.S. citizens in Venezuela should leave the country immediately," the embassy said in a Jan. 10 security alert.

The warning cited reports of armed groups operating on Venezuelan roads.

"There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as ‘colectivos,’ setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States," the U.S. Embassy Caracas said.

Uh huh…


View: https://x.com/odinikaeze/status/2010542609224421549

Turns out the first attack on the “drug boats”, on 9/2/25, the one in which they returned to kill the 2 survivors, was in fact a war crime.


The Pentagon has justified the killings on the grounds that the US is at war with drug trafficking cartels. Most international legal experts reject that and say the attacks amount to murder.

Even if the claim of being at war is justified, specialists in the laws of war say the use of a plane disguised to look like a civilian aircraft, so that its targets would be caught off-guard, would represent the war crime of “perfidy” under international and US military legal standards.

“If we move from the legally incorrect premise that this is a lethal operation governed by the laws of war, then the concept of perfidy here is relevant,” Nehal Bhuta, professor of public international law at the University of Edinburgh, said.

Bhuta said the use of civilian disguises in war would have a corrosive effect, for example making every airliner with civilian markings a potential target. “This is precisely the destructive slippery slope that a firm commitment to prohibition against perfidy is aimed to avoid,” he said.

He added, however, that in the absence of an armed conflict, the “perfidy” issue was irrelevant as the strikes should be classed as extra-judicial killings.

“Fundamentally, the debate about ‘war crimes’ is a distraction – the whole operation is illegal, and the conduct of an extrajudicial execution by means of a plane with civilian markings is in fact reminiscent of a death squad operation,” Bhuta said.

The US Law of War manual defines perfidy as “acts that invite the confidence of enemy persons to lead them to believe that they are entitled to, or are obliged to accord, protection under the law of war, with intent to betray that confidence”. It provides the example of “feigning civilian status and then attacking”.

The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, used by the US Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, states that “honor prohibits perfidy” and gives the example of “feigning non-hostile relations in order to seek a military advantage”.

The handbook for the military commissions, set up to judge terror suspects held in Guantánamo Bay prison camp, also has a section on “using treachery or perfidy”. One inmate was charged with perfidy for the 2000 al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole, in which the attackers waved in friendly manner as they approached the US warship in a small boat packed with explosives.

The military commission handbook stipulates the death sentence “if the death of any person occurs as a result of the improper use of treachery or perfidy”.

Red said:

Turns out the first attack on the “drug boats”, on 9/2/25, the one in which they returned to kill the 2 survivors, was in fact a war crime.

US aircraft that attacked suspected drug boat reportedly disguised as civilian plane

Experts say obscuring plane’s military identity would constitute a war crime

www.theguardian.com

The Pentagon has justified the killings on the grounds that the US is at war with drug trafficking cartels. Most international legal experts reject that and say the attacks amount to murder.

Even if the claim of being at war is justified, specialists in the laws of war say the use of a plane disguised to look like a civilian aircraft, so that its targets would be caught off-guard, would represent the war crime of “perfidy” under international and US military legal standards.

“If we move from the legally incorrect premise that this is a lethal operation governed by the laws of war, then the concept of perfidy here is relevant,” Nehal Bhuta, professor of public international law at the University of Edinburgh, said.

Bhuta said the use of civilian disguises in war would have a corrosive effect, for example making every airliner with civilian markings a potential target. “This is precisely the destructive slippery slope that a firm commitment to prohibition against perfidy is aimed to avoid,” he said.

He added, however, that in the absence of an armed conflict, the “perfidy” issue was irrelevant as the strikes should be classed as extra-judicial killings.

“Fundamentally, the debate about ‘war crimes’ is a distraction – the whole operation is illegal, and the conduct of an extrajudicial execution by means of a plane with civilian markings is in fact reminiscent of a death squad operation,” Bhuta said.

The US Law of War manual defines perfidy as “acts that invite the confidence of enemy persons to lead them to believe that they are entitled to, or are obliged to accord, protection under the law of war, with intent to betray that confidence”. It provides the example of “feigning civilian status and then attacking”.

The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, used by the US Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, states that “honor prohibits perfidy” and gives the example of “feigning non-hostile relations in order to seek a military advantage”.

The handbook for the military commissions, set up to judge terror suspects held in Guantánamo Bay prison camp, also has a section on “using treachery or perfidy”. One inmate was charged with perfidy for the 2000 al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole, in which the attackers waved in friendly manner as they approached the US warship in a small boat packed with explosives.

The military commission handbook stipulates the death sentence “if the death of any person occurs as a result of the improper use of treachery or perfidy”.

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I just wish someone had the authority and ability to prosecute and punish for this ****, but the problem is, no one does. No one. At all. Who is going to try and convict and then punish the sitting president of the most powerful country with the most powerful military in the world? It could only happen internally and the hand-picked and bought-off supreme court won't do anything. The republican-held congress won't do anything. No one will here and no one else can externally. Unless literally everyone else bands together and engages us in a true war, but even then the entire world would struggle against us, unless it went nuclear, and then all bets are off for everyone world-wide. **** it, maybe it is time. Want to save the world, really save the world, stop pollution, stop the destruction of nature and thousands of species? Well there is only one way to truly save the world: eliminate the humans. Maybe this is all leading us to a species re-set to set the world back into some semblance of balance. And maybe that is for the best, honestly.

But seriously, no one can or will do anything about any of this no matter how much anyone protests. Those in power are happy to keep their power by any means. No politician really wants what's best for us, the American people. They just want what is best for their party and continues to get them elected.