Part 1 is here.
I assumed that headline was a misstatement, because the jokes write themselves (Hamas is condemning an abduction?). But I checked some Arab world sources, and indeed, all of the terrorist organizations are big mad over President Trump nabbing Maduro. From an Arabic news agency:
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has condemned the US aggression against Venezuela as a blatant and unprecedented violation of international law…Hezbollah movement, in a statement, condemned the U.S. aggression against Venezuela and the targeting of the country’s vital facilities, civilians, and residential buildings, describing it as a blatant and unprecedented violation of international law….It added that the military aggression shows disregard for global stability and security, and aimed at entrenching the “law of the jungle” in order to dismantle the remnants of the international system and strip it of any substance that could serve as a safeguard for nations and peoples.
The Palestinian movement, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, denounced what it called an “imperialist American aggression” on Venezuela, including airstrikes and missile attacks on Caracas and civilian, residential, and military sites, casting it as a new episode of ‘organized American terrorism” against sovereign states….
Palestinian Islamic Jihad described the US assault on Venezuela as an escalating campaign, from blockade to direct strikes, aimed at domination, occupation, and plunder, and a flagrant breach of sovereignty and international law. It said Venezuela is targeted for its steadfast support for Palestine and regional resistance forces, describing the struggle as part of a shared anti-imperialist battle.
Hamas, for its part, denounced the military aggression on Caracas and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, calling it a grave violation of international law and the sovereignty of an independent state. The movement cast the assault as an extension of unjust U.S. interventions driven by imperial ambition that have destabilized multiple countries and threatened international peace. Hamas urged the UN, especially the Security Council, to take measures to stop the attack immediately.
I have to say, I find this mordantly funny. Could there be a more villainous, despicable group of critics for Democrats to find common cause with? Any minute now, I’m expecting a statement from the Seven Princes of Hell, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Mammon, Belphegor,, and Satan, joined by demons Astaroth, Belial, and Azazel, declaring the U.S.’s dazzling Venezuelan operation to be a violation of international law.
Not quite in their category but still, Kamala Harris has been heard from. She didn’t say this, because it’s too coherent and has no cackling. She (or a lackey) wrote:
“Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable.That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before. Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price. The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to.This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman. If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies. The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home. America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.
Wouldn’t you think smart Democrats (I don’t mean Kamala) would have the sense not to include verbatim the talking points put out by the DNC or whoever it is that blasts out these narrative? There are dozens of statements that are almost identical to Harris’s, all aping some version of “unlawful and unwise”, all repeating, absurdly, the “affordability” mantra, Trump’s alleged “desire to be a regional strongman,” putting American troops at risk (more troops died as Biden yanked troops out of Afghanistan than died when Trump went into Venezuela: none). Most mention Trump’s pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, President of Honduras, whom the Biden Administration had arrested and extradited to the United States for drug trafficking, without explaining why that action by a Democrat was fine and dandy as far as they were concerned. The President seems to believe that Hernandez was unfairly targeted for some strange reason, but 1) pardons are by nature controversial and 2) pardoning one bad guy foolishly has no relevance to arresting another bad guy justly. The United States at least recognized that Hernandez had been legitimately elected; not so in the case of Maduro. What are Democrats arguing here? If the question is pardoning Hernandez, swell, I might agree that Trump was wrong, but the issue isn’t his pardon of Hernandez, or abuse of the pardon power, is it? As usual, Trump’s critics are just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks whether it makes sense of not.
And Harris and any Democrat invoking “enforcing the rule of law ” is in the same category as Hamas condemning an “abduction.”
Speaking of throwing stuff at the wall, James Carville actually said that Trump invaded Venezuela to distract from the Epstein files! He really did. In the “no surprise” category, the New York Times naturally published the Axis line…
Huh! “Illegal and unwise”! I wonder who the New York Times takes its marching orders from? The same place The New Yorker [“The Brazen Illegality of Trump’s Venezuela Operation”] does, I’m sure. The Economist, as left-bissed as you would expect from a European magazine, bleated: “Donald Trump wants to run Venezuela, and dominate the western hemisphere.”
[Pssst! Actually, guys, President James Monroe wanted us to dominate the western Hemisphere: he was right, and we do.]
But the Washington Post’s editorial sided with Trump, approving of the raid. Antediluvian Trump-Deranged conservative pundit George Will did not, registering an op-ed titled, Trump goes monster-hunting, untainted by a whiff of legality. What does Will know about “legality”? He’s not a lawyer. He just knows that if Trump did it, he hates it.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, oddly, sounded a lot like Kamala Harris on “X”: “Donald Trump’s unconstitutional military action in Venezuela is putting our troops in harm’s way with no long-term strategy. The American people deserve a President focused on making their lives more affordable.”
What a coinky-dink!
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) parroted the pardon angle, saying that if Trump was concerned about the drug problem, he “wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month. It’s about oil and regime change.”
Ask any Venezualans if they think regime change is a good enough reason to take out Maduro.
Breaking ranks, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wrote , “¡Libertad! Today I celebrate with the people of Venezuela in Colorado and elsewhere. The tyrant has fallen!” What! Where’s “affordability”? Didn’t he get the memo?
Oh, just for goggles, let’s close with Axis star Rachel Maddow, whose reaction was about as predictable as they come. “Not only will [Trump] care about people saying this is illegal, he’ll see that as an asset,” Maddow said in an appearance on colleague Ali Velshi’s weekend morning show, saying that the President is a “would-be strongman” who ordered the operation to provoke a war and give himself “expanded powers” against domestic political opponents.
Hmmm… would-be strong-man. Where have I heard that before? Rachel gets $25 million a year to smirk at the MS-Now faithful; can’t she come up with her own anti-Trump rhetoric?
UPDATE: Now that you know the caliber of the hacks, communists, knee-jerk Trump-haters, terrorists and liars who are lining up with Democrats to condemn the U.S. for ending the illegal regime of a drug-running, brutal dictator who helps our enemies, can you guess what side NYC Mayor Mamdani comes down on?
Ethics Alarms 
“Rachel gets $25 million a year to smirk at the MS-Now faithful“
$25 million…seems I’ve heard that figure before…
Oh yeah, 51 weeks ago (01/10/2025): Biden administration raises Maduro Bounty to $25,000,000
To borrow a phrase: “the jokes write themselves“
PWS
What’s remarkable is that Maddow pulls down $25 mil, but I could witness the same level of talent watching “The Dukes of Hazzard” as a kid…for free.
Here is a both a new and old statement by Senator Chris Murphy (CT). Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Is dominating other countries ethical now? How? I don’t even think that was what the Monroe Doctrine stated, BTW. For myself, I may be an idealist, but I don’t think dominating weaker nations is any more ethical than dominating weaker people. It’s wrong when Putin tries to bully the Baltic states. Just because they are smaller and in his region doesn’t make it right. And even if they were doing something truly unethical, like exporting drugs to Russia, invading them would still be wrong.
verb: dominate; 3rd person present: dominates; past tense: dominated; past participle: dominated; gerund or present participle: dominating…..have a commanding influence on; exercise control over.
OR…”be the most important or conspicuous person or thing in.”
My father dominated our family, but he didn’t abuse his position, and just kept us safe, happy and happy while giving me a role model. The US accepted responsibility for that role with the Western Hemisphere and when it performs the role well, everybody benefits.
So they should just recognize their big daddy? The history of American intervention in Latin America is dark. There’s not a lot of “loving children” in these scenarios. And you do grasp, at some level, how humiliating it would be for Latin America to accept “daddy” domination from us, right? You’re not completely ignorant of how nations tend to view such things, right? You sound like Kipling, we should take up the White Man’s burden, and accept that these darkish folk don’t know how to run their own countries. Points for being open about it, I suppose. It’s Trumpian transparency, I guess.
South America just can’t seem to get over its love for the caudillo. It will never reach its potential as a continent if it’s nations keep putting these swaggering dictators into power. Granted, dictators of the right, like Chile’s Pinochet, weren’t so great either, but the alternative was not perfect democracy, it was tyranny of the left under Allende, who wanted to create another socialist Utopia, while stealing private property and bankrupting the place.
Funny how the left is perfectly all right with its people stealing private property from those who work for it to placate their own voters. However, when those same people are made to forfeit ill-gotten gain, they squawk like plucked chickens.
Go ahead, justify enticing foreign companies to invest in your country, because you don’t have the ability or the infrastructure to make use of your resources, then saying thanks, we’ll take it from here, and throwing them out, while stealing whatever they brought with them. There is no justifying that, and that’s what gets people like Maduro, like Allende, like pajama-wearing Mossadegh in Iran, thrown out of power. Rewarding thieves and swindlers is just not good policy.
You’re adding a lot of intentionally silly phraseology here to make something sound far worse than it actually is. Makes it hard to take you seriously.
I asked him what he meant by domination, he said like his dad did. I didn’t introduce the paternal terminology. I’m no expert in Latin American history, but if you look what we did to Guatemala (knocked off an elected government, and the subsequent 30 years of hellish civil war, with death squads and massacres…had, by many estimates, an overall death toll of the population right around Cambodia under Pol Pot, per capita), to Chile (assisting a coup that led to the rise of the dictator Pinochet who killed so many), to Argentina, where the junta disappeared an estimated 30,000, to El Salvador, to Nicaragua (true, that’s now the Russians and Cubans fault under Ortega, but before that, Somoza was our son of a bitch, to quote FDR) Running the Dominican Republic for years, and then leaving it to a dictator…to say that’s fatherly domination is…well…inaccurate? Weird? Or, as the great satirist Tom Lehrer said in his satirical “Send the Marines”–“because democracy must be protected, until someone we like gets elected”–in other words, we don’t have to respect their sovereignty, their right to choose their own leaders…because we’re bigger and stronger, and we get to decide for them. Like a daddy.
(Oooooh. This should be good!)
I comment on your post down below, at bottom of the pages.
It’s an analogy. Which you think somehow gives ammo to use. There’s no flaw in the analogy useable the way you’re using it.
A more powerful nation with a massive economy and massive military will dominate a lesser power even if the greater power literally does *nothing*.
I agree that a vast country will dominate the culture, economics, and politics of a tiny neighbor. I don’t oppose “do nothing” domination. I just oppose the “shooting and killing people” domination. And, as an analogy, I don’t think “daddy” covers the “we’re going to kill people until you get a leader we like” domination.
Presumably at a lower limit, you consider it ok for a nation “do something” like say when they are attacked.
Without going through a painstaking escalation of justifications I’d be curious to know what your upper limit on “do nothing” is…
Because in the eyes of any reasonable person, the arrest of Maduro is easily justified given the negative effects his stolen election has had on the United States.
I guess I have the traditional high bar for the use of violence in international relations. Did they attack us? Did they kill Americans? Did they get to the verge of nuclear weapons? Did they harbor terrorists who killed Americans? Even that last one should probably only end up in the use of violence after other methods are tried. But I’m curious–what are these terrible effects of the stolen election in Vz that justify violent overthrow of the government? Elucidate if you can.
-A wide range of American companies who had, prior to the Hugo Chavez revolution, been deeply engaged in the country through freely entered commercial agreements, were driven out of the country. This is a massive theft of American property. I could list every company individually but that would make this post almost unreadably long.
-Venezuela hosting and developing deeper ties with our de facto military enemies: Russia and China
-Central player in drug trafficking. A short but massive bullet point.
Those three direct threats together are quite a justification for regime change.
As a more general reason, the humanitarian crisis caused by Venezuelan socialism is justification for international intervention.
There’s plenty of justification here for a good nation (the United States) to target a bad regime.
Well, not a bad case. But–the vast majority of countries with oil have nationalized stuff. The original agreements, often made with supine governments that were deeply corrupt, were usually very unfair. And it is a strange way to deal with a decades old grievance with a sudden attack. As for drugs–yeah, they sure were shipping a lot of coke. To Europe. Not fentanyl to us as is claimed. And if large numbers of refugees is a just cause for war, I haven’t heard about it. Moreover–if that was the justification–what have we done that is likely to reduce the flow? Do you see refugees returning? Do you see some prosperity happening in Vz? Not yet. It COULD happen.
Talked to someone with deep contacts in Cuba, and there are many Cubans who are excited that they might be next. The Cuban economy is deeply dependent on Vz oil. If that government falls of its own now, Trump will look like TR Roosevelt to many people. It could happen. Of course, Americans have been expecting the regime in Cuba to fall since about 1959….but when I was there twice in the last decade, it really is an economic basket case. Moreover, it has close ties with America, and knows the prosperity is so close–so many Cubans have family in Florida, they hear about the wages, the consumer goods…the medicine. It could come down suddenly…or persist for twenty more years. But Trump has shaken them. (not a just cause for war, but a possible outcome effect)
It’s actually an excellent case for intervention. Whether or not reasons for intervention have been around for a time or not, they’re still reasons.
You’ve been fat for 15 years, so why are you only starting to exercise now? Seems a little suspect.
it’s not the same and you know it. Stalin forced the Baltic states into the Soviet Union at gunpoint. They didn’t even get leaned on like Finland, they got made part of a nation they didn’t want to be any part of. The West did nothing because they did not want to repeat World War I. After the iron curtain rusted away in 1991, they took the first chance to take back their nation and understandably wanted no part of their conquerors. The US never did anything like that, at least not in the last two centuries, okay, maybe the Mexican-American War was a land grab (from the original caudillo , Santa Ana, who massacred Americans at the Alamo and Goliad) on a continent still in flux. Still no excuse.
” And even if they were doing something truly unethical, like exporting drugs to Russia, invading them would still be wrong.”
Where the hell are your solutions. Critique without offering an alternative is the lazy mans ways of bullying. Biden offered 25 million for someone to take him out instead of bringing him to justice as what is happening right now. He wanted someone to kill him and do his dirty work and you were woefully silent. You all scream for due process for people transporting drugs and when we arrest them and bring them to justice you scream again that that too is wrong. There was no invasion it was merely a snatch and grab operation. Where are our troops right now? At home.
Here is a solution you might like given that excuse for the drug trade is we are to blame because we demand it. Ban Narcan and let people die on the street. Leave them to rot there to serve as a message to those who might want to try drugs. Of course that is idiotic but it is a solution to the demand problem. Debating what is right and what is wrong with a decision to achieve a desired outcome cannot be I am always right because I say everything you do is wrong. You offered nothing for me to evaluate.
I am beginning to think those that oppose everything are simply puppets of the left who would love to see themselves as high ranking Party members with their dachas in Telluride.
Aspen–can you tell the party I want my dacha in Aspen? Telluride has too many posers, even for me.
Ha!
Tomato – Tomahto.
you made the claim it was wrong but offered no rationale for that claim. Pundits and Democrat politicians are screaming that this was illegal and offered no evidence in the form of legal doctrine to buttress their argument. Steve in NJ routinely educates because he offers historical facts to establish his point. Zoe Brain offers real evidence that support parts of what Zoe believes. I have changed my mind based on the evidence both have provided
I come here to get ideas based on facts. Opinions are fine and dandy and like something else everyone has one. With that said, The idea that someone is right because of some advanced degree or position without offering any other rational does not resonate well with me who spent over 20 years in higher education witnessing how PhD’s felt they were more schooled in virtually every aspect of life and made sure anyone without a PhD who proffered an alternative perspective was deemed unworthy of consideration.
I agree that PhD arrogance is real, unwarranted, and a problem. I was just talking with colleagues over email about how academics haven’t even begun to really do the self-examination of their own responsibility for the decline in public respect for academia.
Here’s what my argument for the illegality of this action is–the Constitution has been interpreted to give the power to declare war to the Congress. And the only time the president can use force outside that is in a national emergency where time is scarce, and he must take action to preserve American lives/vital interests. That’s the domestic argument. The international law argument is that we are signatories to treaties that reject the use of force as a means of resolving international disputes, absent exigent circumstances that are entirely absent in this case. Vz posed no threat, took no action that could serve as a “casus belli” such as blockade, invasion of our territory, attacking our embassy or our troops or citizens, etc. The UN Charter itself forbids actions like the one we just took. How is it different from other actions by U.S. presidents? Well, several times we have used force pursuant to a declaration of war, a use of force resolution, or UN vote. Or, as in the case of Grenada, there were US citizens allegedly at risk, or in Panama, there were both US installations AND Panama’s government declared war on us (rhetorically but truly a grave error). Even the Iraq War has a vote in Congress, and allies. (and that war was a far worse idea than this one, so far anyway) But in truth, this is not the first time a president has broken domestic and international law. Still, it is an illegal war, and the excuses for it barely hold up under scrutiny–Maduro was a terrorist? Please. He was exporting Fentanyl to the US? Not according to the DEA. He was deliberately sending immigrants to us? Nah, they were just a product of his dictatorship and the failures of his state socialism.
It is Monroe Doctrine.
It’s pretty obvious both China and Russia were crafting Venezuela to be another back door into the western hemisphere.
Applicability of the Monroe Doctrine to Venezuela: Maduro’s inviting Russia, Iran and China into the Western Hemisphere is a security threat to the United States.
Ignoring all the partisan chatter, I’m hoping the newly minted President Delcy Rodriguez is able to take this opportunity to steer the country in a positive direction with Maduro out of the way.
She certainly has the connections and the experience if she prioritizes the best interests of the Venezuelan people rather than ideology.
If that happens then Trump will have done the Venezuelan people a big favor. One can hope….
Beloved American Boomer Jingoists, I salute your able talons! Now, back in the fort and polishing your boots it is a time for reflection and circumspection. Avoid the preening mirror!
I also salute your capacity to self-deceive — and this is really the abiding truth about the strict use of power: it is always about lies that are covered over with ‘lofty rhetoric’ the purpose of which is to mask the strict and direct use of power. You might think: She is unhappy that they nabbed Maduro but this is not the case. But let me tell you what I think is really going on (naturally this is my supposition but based, I think, on careful and realistic analysis) and we will see if I get it right or not: the next manouevre will be to strengthen, not weaken, the present ruling and administrative junta, and bring that junta (Maduro’s empowered cronies and accomplices) under the control of the American will.
What many do not realize, and though I am no friend of Charisma nor his revolution, is that that revolution was not without a positive aspect for the dramatically and chronically poor of Venezuela. But to understand why the poor in the ranchos of Caracas and all around the country got behind Chavez, and supported his policies (and his inimitable rhetorical assault against the ridiculous and bald-faced Yankee with his ever-eternal policies of self-interest that wore the mask of generosity and of ‘bringing democracy and freedom’ which never, ever materializes because that is not the object of the application of American power.
It is very good, however, that in this instance there is not even a pretense of desiring some benefit for the people of Venezuela. Trump’s policy as he expresses it is exclusively for the benefit of American industries. And perhaps you think, speaking as I am, that I take a ‘left’ position here? No. I completely agree that America as the enterprise that it is (it has nothing to do with democracy and only an old lady or a mental retard could or would believe this) should establish, or reestablish itself in the region. I cannot remain unaware, however, of the contradiction, and that is one that involves, at its base, the exercise of raw, blatant power. And please understand that at that level of operation ‘power’ cannot, and will not be, much concerned about the social and political situation in Venezuela.
You — i.e. you Americans who always salivate when the military shows its authority and power — fail to understand that Bolívar and many of those in his era that responded to him held to very similar ideals as those expressed in the American revolution and in the ‘spirit’ of freedom and development therein presented. If you did understand this, you would then be able to understand how it came about that Venezuela produced its Chavez and why a majority responded to him. Because he presented a plan for them to better their circumstances, and the fact is that — simply taking literacy among the totally uneducated as an example — it was increased by a great margin.
You jingoistic adventurist self-deceiving liars (sorry but this harsh statement does express a truth) do not give a flying fig about those who struggle against real adversity and whose struggle is expressed in your own sacred documents’. Do you really think that Donald Trump and his lieutenants have any level of that concern in mind? You may self-deceive with ease but you are extremely clever, you could not seriously believe such a falsity.
In the Postwar era of Venezuela there was an extremely idealistic movement that sought, and achieved power. It morphed as often and regularly happens in Latin America into a classic oligarchy — el govierno — that perversely controlled the wealth-source of Venezuela. It did not invest in its people, nor in industry, and life was a festival or perverse celebration of wealth while about 65% had nothing and got noting at all. These were the conditions in which Chavez arose, and the promises were extraordinarily attractive and of course seductive.
Maduro took advantage of the developing corruption of the Chavez regime and things really went downhill. There is no denying this at all. But here is the thing: that junta that he empowered and assembled around him is still very much in power, and it looks as though Trump et al will employ that same junta to establish its own administration. The Americans are in no position, and do not have the will, to reorganize Venezuela into a model of democratic capitalism. And it cannot be, and it will not be, a part of this American adventure to even be concerned about the social conditions in Venezuela. Indeed it was Bolton who used the metaphor of Darth Vader strangulating an enemy to provide an image of the intentions of such harsh sanctions on Venezuela:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEOEiuj181o&t=1581s
So I think it is fair and indeed ethically correct to say what I have said here. But what I say should not be misinterpreted. It is a positive gain that Maduro has been captured and removed. The question though is what happens in the next steps.
She’s baaaaaaaaaaaack!
“simply taking literacy among the totally uneducated as an example“
You have to be able to read propaganda in order to be INDOCTRICATED
PWS
Jack,
Alizia Tyler is back.
Your commentariat just went from 5 to 11.
Alizia Tyler,
I have missed your writing style.
Hi, Alizia. Welcome back.
While your tone is dismissive and, quite frankly, insulting, you do raise a few valid questions, the most important of which is, “what now?” or, “y ahora, ¿qué sigue?” Is Rodriguez a positive step in normalizing US-Venezuela relations? Will she step away from the Chavista/Madurista cuadillo policies that bankrupted Venezuela? Will she accede to US interests – mainly out of self-preservation – or will she establish herself, much like Sheinbaum, as a mere figurehead for the entrenched powers that have controlled Venezuela for decades:? Only time will tell.
Did Trump take action for purely US self-interests? Yup. He extolled the Monroe Doctrine to show that US policy will be paramount in the region. It was a wake up call for China. Russia, Iran, and North Korea were sent a message. Also, Colombia and México. Trump is telling the world that this hemisphere is paramount to US national interests. Period. We estadounidenses are not deluded, or what did you call us, jingoistic adventurist self-deceiving liars – whatever that means, as if only venezolanos have some sort of grasp on fundamental truths. Trump was remarkably clear about his and US intentions and interests. We heard his message, and from the reports from Caracas and Maracaibo, venezolanos are celebrating Maduro’s removal.
jvb
Alizia,
Welcome back! To celebrate your return, I read your entire post although I think it might be short than is your norm.
Being an American jingoist, I tend to agree with your thinking on why Chavez came to power initially. But I think he ended up perverting that revolution and eventually he ran out of Other People’s Money. Venezuela has been steadily sinking into disfunction and poverty for years and years.
I too am quite interested in what happens next. My personal feelings are that we should ensure that the government actually elected in 2024 be put into power and then see how they do in running the country.
The problem with that approach is that the Chavistas permeate the government and the military still — is their response to putting the elected government into office to shoot them all and as many of their supporters as they can? That’s kind of their track record, and that is the basic conundrum that I see.
I don’t care about the oil — we have plenty of our own — but I would think it reasonable that the property appropriated from Chevron be return to them. If there is a safe business environment, I reckon they would be happy to come back into the country.
Alizia Tyler wrote, “You jingoistic adventurist self-deceiving liars (sorry but this harsh statement does express a truth) do not give a flying fig about those who struggle against real adversity and whose struggle is expressed in your own sacred documents’.”
It’s pretty clear to me that Alizia Tyler has recently been reading Ethics Alarms again and now she is back trolling with more of her colorfully worded ramblings and insults.
It wasn’t so long ago that Alizia wrote in her October 6, 2020 at 4:56 pm parting comment, “I will refrain from posting here.”. Then Alizia wrote in a November 9, 2020 at 9:16 am comment, “This is a parting post and not a “I am returning” post!“. I think Alizia has proven multiple times that she’s a liar in this regard and now she’s back to prove it once again, so be it.
If Alizia chooses to participate at Ethics Alarms again, she should expect the same kind of retorts to her routine racist, bigoted, and insulting ramblings.
I’m going to quote what I wrote to Alizia back on OCTOBER 5, 2020 AT 8:02 AM…
I’ll leave Aliza with the following hilarious quote posted on SEPTEMBER 19, 2020 AT 10:57 AM by valkgrrl as a reply to one of her asinine comments…
Have a nice day.
After reading Alizia’s ramblings for years, It’s pretty clear to me that Alizia is an anti United States bigot. I know that being anti United States doesn’t necessarily mean that someone resides outside the USA these days, but I am curious, what country does Alizia reside. I’ll have to dig through my extensive archives to see is there was any mention of it.
I thought I remembered something about Venezuela in a conversation between my previous commenting account and alter ego, Zoltar Speaks!, and I found it.
Alizia did state this in 2016…
You can follow the conversation that lead to her comment.
Thanks for posting that, Steve; for a LOT of reasons.
Talk about Ghosts From An EA Commentariat’s Past!
I hope I’m not the only one who misses Chris Bentley.
PWS
Yeah, even though it was before my time here (I think I came along as an actual commenter around 2019), there was a real sense of nostalgia scrolling through the names, some of which I recognized.
I was around but likely didn’t participate because I would’ve been up in Iron County (WI); back then, it would have still been the Dark Ages (pre-internet connection), there.
On that subject, July 2016 was pre President Donald J. Trump, as well. Were you to ask 100 people their opinion of that era, can you even imagine the…er…variety of responses…?
PWS
Alizia,
Remember this excellent quote from 2016…
Now apply what you’ve learned.
ALI !!!!! 🙂
What an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing, I learned a lot. The deep history of Venezuela is mostly unknown to me. And I agree that Chavez was wildly popular in his early years, in great part because of the oligarchy he replaced that, under the frame of democracy, ended up enriching the connected. Chavez, thanks to skyrocketing oil prices, was able to reach out to the poor, the indigenous, and was authentically popular (he survived a coup!). But his socialist policies and corruption failed him when the price of oil dropped dramatically. Maduro lacked his charisma, and the gratitude that Chavez acquired.
Also, great to reach back to Bolivar. That was the emotional pull of Chavez, as well. And it might be good for jingoistic Americans to remember that other countries don’t want to be dominated, any more than we wanted to be dominated by England. Venezuelans are cheering today that Maduro fell, but if France had tried to “run” us after they helped win our freedom, we would have quickly soured on them.
I heard a Venezuelan woman make a very good point on NPR just now, though. Asked about how she feels about American oil companies going back in, would she support exploitation, she said “what do you think Russia and China were doing to us all these years? What do you think Cuba was doing? We’ve been exploited by all of those!”
It’s a complicated situation.
Should we even approach the events in Venezuela primarily from an ethics framework?
Great powers tend to approach their vital (inter)national interests and preferences from a framework of realpolitik. Realpolitik prioritizes practical and material factors over ideology and ethics. Realpolitik also emphasize balance of power and influence in international relations. Realpolitik prioritizes the security and survival (and sometimes expansion) of the nation. Realpolitik is also realistic, using diplomacy and/or coercion, whatever is right and possible given the circumstances.
So let us look at the stakeholders in Venezuela:
Adversary presence close to the USA, and critical mineral vulnerabilities are the main driver of the decision to intervene in Venezuela.
The oil is secondary, however it is interesting to note that 80% of Venezuela’s oil export goes to China. The narrative about oil and narcotics hides the real strategic reasons for the intervention, as the article linked below argues.
https://renegaderesources.pro/p/the-venezuelan-oil-narative-is-pure
Fascinating!!! Thanks for sharing that, CVB.
I agree. US influence in Venezuela isn’t much at all about getting oil (and other resources). Leveraging US presence is much more importantly about confounding Chinese, Russian, and Cuban interests and abilities in the region (and hopefully elsewhere as well).
FYI I made a reply below at the bottom.
After the Spanish American War, the U.S. gave Cuba to the Cubans. They fucked it up and Castro took it from Batista and it’s been a dumpster fire ever since and a destabilizing force in the West and even Africa for years. As a Cuban buddy explained to me, the Moors were in Spain for centuries. The Spanish are essentially Middle Easterners. They only do strong men. The culture is the same as in Iran, much as Marco Rubio wishes it weren’t and proclaims it isn’t.
I wonder how long the regime in Cuba will survive without the help of their best friend in Venezuela.
The Democrats do not have a good week. Gov. Walz is not seeking reelection. Walz is reduced to being a laughing stock, and the opposition to the Maduro arrest will face the same fate.
If Democrats are rid of the Knucklehead, it’s a good week.
Remember when that guy was up for #2 with Kamala Harris?
Ok, there’s the alley-oop for a poopy punchline…I’ll let someone else slam it home…
I won’t go there; I just hope T-Timmy has leared his lesson.
I think we could pass on that one.
What? Democrats aligning with the worst people on the planet?
You don’t say.
Mr Barneveldt asks: “Should we even approach the events in Venezuela primarily from an ethics framework?
Great powers tend to approach their vital (inter)national interests and preferences from a framework of realpolitik. Realpolitik prioritizes practical and material factors over ideology and ethics. Realpolitik also emphasize balance of power and influence in international relations. Realpolitik prioritizes the security and survival (and sometimes expansion) of the nation. Realpolitik is also realistic, using diplomacy and/or coercion, whatever is right and possible given the circumstances.”
If sensible realpolitik is the consideration, I would suggest that this action by president Trump will turn out to be a failure in that realm. I further suggest that what he has done must be examined in the larger context of his stated, or pretended, governing plan to ‘make America great’ and to ‘put America first’. If the sources I follow and listen to are correct, he is losing touch with the base that elected him and is revealing that his objects and goals have little to do with all that he said as he sought election.
So from a realpolitik perspective the baldfaced gloating about the success of a complex and audacious military operation to invade a country, capture its leader and drag him back to the US to be prosecuted, simply plays very badly on the world stage. It is presented as a bold, determined act, but it is more accurate to say that it is part of desperate actions that have not been thought through. The entire world is paying attention, and the entire world that forms opinions has been shown a completely arrogant and indeed hubristic president using military power for a sensationalist objective.
If the object is really to reestablish America, to recreate its industries, to turn things around on the domestic plane, and to create a base for prosperity and social wellbeing, then it appears that the actions of Donald Trump are failing in these areas. So he made endless statements about what he intended and what he would do, and (it seems) he is violating his own commitments and promises in every area. If this is so then this raid, even though it was rather spectacular as a military operation, will only help his position as far as domestic perception goes as long as the jingoistic excitement lasts.
My own view, literally stated, is that all the opinion expressed in this thread is noise, and the noise also expresses, or covers over, lies. Self-deception is all that we do to cover over truths and facts and realities with various levels of deception. Ethically, it seems to me, our duty at least as citizens without real power and limited ‘ownership interest’ is only to be able to state the truth. What is the core of that ‘truth’? Where to begin? The United States is in a desperate position that was gotten to by mismanagement. Fact. And the real truth is that to get out of that position will require a deeply thought-through set of actions that over years could reestablish the US. But the adjacent fact seems to be that the way that Donald Trump is going about things is not only contrary to his stated promises, but brazenly stupid. In realpolitikal terms then, a leader on the world state, and especially one who is declaring that he seeks to reestablish greatness for the nation, cannot act, should not act, in these brazen ways. Especially if seen from a Machiavellian angle.
The make it plain to the world that if you do not bow before the will of the United States that you will be ruthlessly punished is simply unpolitik. That is not how you get things done. It is an act of desperation that masks itself with certainty and boldness. The smaller players, the minor powers, can and will team up against the arrogant and declining power and create obstacles that will make ‘greatness’ more difficult.
jdkazoo123 wrote: “I asked him what he meant by domination, he said like his dad did. I didn’t introduce the paternal terminology. I’m no expert in Latin American history, but if you look what we did to Guatemala (knocked off an elected government, and the subsequent 30 years of hellish civil war, with death squads and massacres…had, by many estimates, an overall death toll of the population right around Cambodia under Pol Pot, per capita), to Chile (assisting a coup that led to the rise of the dictator Pinochet who killed so many), to Argentina, where the junta disappeared an estimated 30,000, to El Salvador, to Nicaragua (true, that’s now the Russians and Cubans fault under Ortega, but before that, Somoza was our son of a bitch, to quote FDR) Running the Dominican Republic for years, and then leaving it to a dictator…to say that’s fatherly domination is…well…inaccurate? Weird? Or, as the great satirist Tom Lehrer said in his satirical “Send the Marines”–“because democracy must be protected, until someone we like gets elected”–in other words, we don’t have to respect their sovereignty, their right to choose their own leaders…because we’re bigger and stronger, and we get to decide for them. Like a daddy.”
It should be noted that in Latin America there are factions that while they do not support or appreciate paternalistic domination yet do take issue with the communistic-socialistic movements that undermine even the conventional, authoritarian powers. As for example in Colombia where I now live. It is (from those of us who have this perspective) almost inconceivable to imagine a government ruled by FARC or ELN elements, and for 50 years they were fought against by exactly the ‘plutocratic elites’ that now, still, dominate the national economy. But here, and I hope it can continue, the economy has expanded so much when compared to the early 2000s, and there are so many opportunities for young people (to study for example), that the Left-Progressive factions can only influence to certain degrees. In my view, and even though it is still essentially corrupt, the controlling regime is better than the alternative. And then there is the realpolitik truth very clearly stated by some intellectuals that it is folly to oppose the reigning hegemon, and far more intelligent to cooperate with the universal economic world that the US established in the Postwar.
As an example, when I was still living in Venezuela (when a teenager) I once had conversations with a Chilean man who thoughtfully countered my (then) lefty-type ideas about ‘the evilness’ of destroying the Allende government by pointing out, in essence, what I am saying here. It is non-intelligent to turn against the Power that has created the economic order that defines the world. It is a fool’s project. One has to take sides, and taking sides when it comes to such determining social struggles will necessarily involve political violence. The political violence in the southern cone was, however, somewhat limited, but the trauma of those disappeared thousands is certainly real. If one really does believe that socialism and communism are evils, and if one then decides that it is worth the fight and the cost to destroy it, one then has a responsibility to engage on those very ugly levels.
It is a curious study to examine Colombia in the context I am describing. Simply put Colombia received from the US vast amounts of money and lots of equipment to set up a police and military apparatus with which it could confront the rebellion that had taken root in Colombia. It also involved ‘public relations’ (propaganda) to convince people of the sensibility of a better road. And the fact of the matter is (certainly this is my own opinion, others might think differently) the conditions in Colombia are night and day in comparison to just 20 years ago. But the US, you see, cooperates with the US and does not oppose it.
Unfortunately, with the election of Gustavo Petro — an ex-member of a literal guerrilla army organization — who got into power with slick and effective rhetoric and also some policies that were attractive to the poorer classes, an old problem resurfaces and, if you follow the logic of my arguments, must be confronted. If you read Colombian periodicals there is not much spirited opposition to the (utterly bizarre and impossible) notion of capturing Gustavo Petro in a raid similar to that of Maduro because of some connection to cocaine production. This is all subterfuge. The power-structure in Colombia, and its US allies, have many other good reasons to discredit the political movement that Petro represents. And underneath it all is political violence.
From today’s El Colombiano:
En suma […] el objetivo no sería la captura física del presidente Gustavo Petro, sino generar “ruido” y tensión para forzar cambios en las políticas del gobierno colombiano, lo que refuerza la idea de que se trata más de una estrategia de intimidación que de un plan ejecutable de intervención militar o judicial. Para simplificarlo, intentar capturar a Petro sin una orden judicial ni pruebas, basándose sólo en retórica política, es como tratar de ejecutar una sentencia de desalojo contra un propietario legítimo que tiene sus papeles en regla de la casa que compró con su dinero, solo porque al vecino no le gusta cómo administra su jardín.
[In short […] the objective would not be the physical capture of President Gustavo Petro, but rather to generate “noise” and tension to force changes in the Colombian government’s policies, which reinforces the idea that this is more of an intimidation strategy than an executable plan for military or judicial intervention. To put it simply, trying to arrest Petro without a warrant or evidence, based solely on political rhetoric, is like trying to execute an eviction order against a legitimate homeowner who has all the proper paperwork for the house he bought with his own money, simply because the neighbor doesn’t like how he maintains his garden.]
Should have written “But Colombia, you see, cooperates with the US and does not oppose it.”
It’s very helpful to have someone who has lived in Venezuela in these discussions, Alizia.