patrick.net

MolotovCocktail says

So much for Trump not starting any new wars.

Venezuela and Coconut Head Maduro started the war. Trump is finishing it.
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If the South American cartels aren’t sweating yet, they soon will be. Last night, the New York Times ran a widely covered story headlined, “U.S. Deploys Aircraft Carrier to Latin America as Drug Operation Expands.

It’s not just ‘a carrier.’ Carrier Strike Group 12, which includes the brand-new (2017) carrier Gerald R. Ford, plus five guided-missile destroyers, plus support craft and jets, plus (possibly) one or more stealth attack submarines, is now sailing toward the sunny shores of South America. Here’s how the Times’ explainer article petulantly described the historic assignment:

Does the Navy normally deploy carriers to the Americas?
No.

Bwahahaha. In other words, the US Military is finally being used to defend America rather than some godforsaken hellhole ten thousand miles away in the desert. And the Times hates it. ...

Seriously, though. Did we build all this military might to protect America? Or to police the Middle East?

The Times noted that the Ford’s massive weapons platform will allow the Navy to launch airstrikes against land-based targets. “The U.S. military,” the Times reported, “has prepared a list of drug facilities in Venezuela that it could strike, and presented the package to Mr. Trump.” ...

All by itself, the Ford’s re-assignment has caused liberals to lose their ever-lovin’ minds. (Sky News headline: “US accused of ‘inventing a war’ as it moves largest aircraft carrier to South America.”) Meanwhile, this week, cartel-affiliated Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro literally begged for peace...

In a mocking tone belying his words, and in classic strongman diction (and in broken English), Maduro un-lyrically demanded, “Not war, not war, not war—just peace, just peace. No crazy war, please, please, please. Yes to peace, yes to peace forever, peace forever.”

It wasn’t a poem. That’s just how he talks.

The corporate media is just barely beginning to grapple with its historic and hypocritical cheerleading for President Barack Hussein Obama’s “extrajudicial” drone strikes that even killed innocent civilians at weddings and stuff (officially: collateral damage). So bold! So courageous! So presidential!

Their awkward explanation is shaping up to be, and I can hardly type this without guffawing like a hyena huffing laughing gas, that Obama’s strikes were different— because they were more transparent than Trump’s. I am not making that up. Plus “norms and customs.”

There's a CHYna angle to all this as well.

So much for Trump not starting any new wars.

Is he just giving his bosses an update?

Ceffer says

Is he just giving his bosses an update?

Yes, as Trump admin may have just given Maduro a warning or ultimatum. Its a start as far as making reforms and removing the entire corrupt government like narco traffickers in the military ranks.

Perhaps reversing the nationalization of foreign property like in the oil industry within Venezuela is one of the reforms; they could make a deal with US oil and gas companies to provide services to Venezuela.

https://www.guardonline.com/news/national/trump-says-us-may-have-discussions-with-maduro-as-aircraft-carrier-arrives-in-caribbean/article_21128b78-ee1b-5cdd-8a29-3d8f5273a377.html

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https://t.me/Middle_East_Spectator/25182

Ceffer says

https://t.me/Middle_East_Spectator/25182

It's always about manufacturing consent for mass looting at home or abroad...

What's so "upside down"? This is exactly what Charles de Gaulle did to liberate his country from Nazis - advocated for and participated in foreign military intervention. Commies are the same shit as Nazis so the analogy is direct and valid. It's only "upside down" for the 五毛党.

What's so "upside down"? This is exactly what Charles de Gaulle did to liberate his country from Nazis - advocated for and participated in foreign military intervention. Commies are the same shit as Nazis so the analogy is direct and valid. It's only "upside down" for the 五毛党.

More regime change because: Nazis. Enough already. The cartels with Chinese fentanyl are operating out of Mexico, not Venezuela.

goofus says

What's so "upside down"? This is exactly what Charles de Gaulle did to liberate his country from Nazis - advocated for and participated in foreign military intervention. Commies are the same shit as Nazis so the analogy is direct and valid. It's only "upside down" for the 五毛党.

More regime change because: Nazis. Enough already. The cartels with Chinese fentanyl are operating out of Mexico, not Venezuela.

Commies in this case. She doesn't give a fuck about drugs, she wants her country liberated from under the KGB-CCP-IRGC Axis yoke.

Whatever these boats are transporting is of secondary matter to her. If at all. These are for Donnie to figure out, LOL.

Latin America has yet another unelected dictator, yawn.

It’s not our fight.

Venezuela is a major transit hub.

Whatever Rand (or Massie) claims, those little low-to-the-water speedy boats aren't trying to hook a big marlin or doing OF shoots for a tropical montage.

Of course China, Iran, and Russia don't want their outpost disturbed.

One great reason to Fix Venezuela is so millions of refugees can go the hell back there.

CARACAS, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Venezuela's National Assembly on Thursday approved a 15-year extension of the joint ventures between state company PDVSA and a unit of Papertiger's Roszarubezhneft that operate two oilfields in the South American country's western region, according to a session broadcast on TV.
The partnerships may continue operating the Boqueron and Perija oilfields through 2041 with the goal of producing some 91 million barrels or 16,600 barrels per day of crude, said lawmakers before approving the extension. The total investment is estimated at about $616 million.

The agreement was signed between PDVSA and Roszarubezhneft's Moscow-based unit Petromost, two lawmakers told Reuters.
Roszarubezhneft, owned by a unit of the Papertigerian Ministry of Economic Development, was incorporated in 2020 and soon afterwards acquired the Venezuelan holdings of Papertigerian state-run oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM), opens new tab as Washington imposed sanctions on two of Rosneft's units for trading Venezuelan oil.
Venezuela's PDVSA also remains under U.S. sanctions, which in recent years have limited foreign investment and partners willing to do business in the South American country.

A senior-ranking lawmaker in Papertiger's lower parliament defense committee said the Kremlin has sent new air defense systems to Venezuela as the latter comes under heightened military pressure from the US.

While speaking to Papertigerian news outlet Gazeta, Alexei Zhuravlev, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, listed several weapons that Moscow previously supplied to Caracas, including Su-30MK2 fighters and S-300VMs.

He also mentioned the recent arrival of a system not publicly known to be in Venezuela's arsenal: the Pantsir-S1.

"According to the latest information, Papertigerian Pantsir-S1 and Buk-M2E systems were just recently delivered to Caracas by Il-76 transport aircraft," Zhuravlev told Gazeta, which published his comments on Saturday.

the Kremlin has sent new air defense systems to Venezuela

A couple weeks ago, the UK Guardian ran a fascinating story that disappeared right down the news cycle’s memory hole. The article ran below the headline, “The real reason Trump is preparing for war with Venezuela.”




... Project 2025 described a goal of once again making the Western Hemisphere “off limits” to America’s adversaries, this time focusing on China and to a lesser extent, Russia.

Anyway, Venezuela checks both Project 2025 boxes, China and Russia. The Caribbean communist country is practically daring us to do something about it. “China has poured millions into Venezuelan oil projects and loans,” the Guardian explained. Literally poured. That’s how much money China has. Meanwhile, the paper continued, “Russia has armed Venezuelan President Maduro with Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, and air defence systems.” And probably aggressive nesting dolls, too, but that’s not important right now.

So China and Russia are the first annoyance. But it’s like an addiction; Maduro can’t seem to stop himself. It’s not just Russia and China. The next major irritant is that Venezuela has also been cozying up to the mad mullahs and working with various Middle Eastern terrorist groups, like Hezbollah. ...

“The Lebanese terrorist group,” the story reported, “has helped to turn Venezuela into a hub for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism.” So.

Add those vexing problems to the surge into the U.S. of Venezuelan cartel gangs —at least one directly connected to Maduro’s government— and the tsunami of drugs washing northwards, and you already have a geopolitical powder keg a few hundred nautical miles from the border. ...

As I reported earlier this year, Venezuela’s quiet, unassuming eastern neighbor, Guyana, came into a bit of luck recently. It won the international lottery. Earlier this year, working with U.S.-based Texaco ExxonMobile and Chevron, Guyanese prospectors discovered one of the largest oil reserves in the world —ten billion barrels— just off the coast of Guyana’s Western half, called the Essequibo region. See the map, above.

Needless to say, the Essequibo oil fields are priceless. And Mr. Maduro wants them.

In pursuit of that objective, Venezuela dusted off a century-old land conflict —a dispute long settled by international courts— and laid a jumped-up new claim to the Essequibo region and its new oil fields. He rattled his Chinese sabers, did flybys in his Russian jets, and generally began planning for an invasion. In April, analysts predicted that war would likely result. ...

Alert readers will notice that the Essequibo oil fields are smack dab right where our destroyers, nuclear submarine, and aircraft carrier are currently enjoying their Caribbean vacations. Coincidence? Give me a break.

Warbloggers have recently expressed surprise that the U.S. hasn’t already done something with all that hardware, which is damnably expensive to keep just bobbing around in the ocean someplace. But it seems painfully obvious that the Navy is doing what it always does: showing force to keep the peace. The last thing we need is for Maduro, with his Monroe Doctrine-shattering love-fest with China, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, to get his pincers on an oil field that could generate Saudi-Arabian levels of liquid gold.

So the Pentagon’s Venezuela operation sits squarely at the nexus of at least four issues of critical American interest. It is partly about oil and protecting US oil companies, at a critical moment of a Bidenflation-fueled affordability crisis. It is partly about a resurgent Monroe Doctrine, as described in Project 2025, and kicking China, Russia, and Iran out of our hemisphere. It is about liquidating the linked plagues of drugs and cartels that are transforming our big cities into third-world hellholes and our vulnerable citizens into zombies. And it is about tamping down a communist dictator who is making our own hemisphere wobbly and war-prone.

In other words, contrary to corporate media’s narrative, there are lots of good reasons to move the military into the Caribbean. It’s literally our own backyard. And as James “Monroe” Doctrine would say, it’s our hemisphere. So.

All the information is out there, in public, paid for and packaged, ready for journalists to pick it up off the service counter. Naive readers might wonder why the media hasn’t briefed us on all this relevant background and context, and instead focused solely and maniacally on bored sailors’ habit of testing their weapons on a handful of nearby narcoterrorist speedboats and jerry-rigged ‘submarines.’

But that assumes the media’s job is to inform its customers, rather than try to tell us what to think.

Fortunately, we’re thinking for ourselves now.

" https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/peace-panic-tuesday-november-25-2025
there are lots of good reasons to move the military into the Caribbean. It’s literally our own backyard."

"And as James “Monroe” Doctrine would say, it’s our hemisphere."

Before we start bombing land targets in Venezuela, I say we get around to doing that Drug testing of everyone in the Executive Branch.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/donald-trump-says-us-to-launch-land-action-in-venezuela-very-soon/ar-AA1RjR9w?pc=HCTS

This woman argues that election stealing world wide is run out of Venezuela of all places.
If this has any truth it might be one reason Trump wants to do a little bombing in Caracas.
".....Smartmatic. The Venezuelan designed and built outfit that holds the Source Code for every single machine used in elections in thousands of precincts, hundreds of counties and 72 countries."
https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/the-electorate-isnt-5050-the-real

The claim is so staggeringly unrealistic and stupid it's not worth any attention except pointing and laughing