(03-07-2019 12:39 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  The motive for intervention hardly matters at this point.

I think there are a lot of people so desperate to believe in the prevailing strength of Western hegemony that they will push an invasion of someone, anyone, just to get that addict's hit of power and relevance.

I would have more respect for people that just admitted this shit openly rather than creating self-delusional fantasies about how they'll be welcomed with open arms as liberators. A fraction of the Western world even has the balls to concede that nations are not a product of their ideologies but of their people, at which point it becomes mind-numbingly obvious that you are in fact invading to save people not from socialism but from themselves.

So if you're going to colonize the savage apes and bring them civilisation in return for the valuable shit on their land or even the land itself as a potential "staging ground" then just bloody say it. An ugly truth is far more respectable than all these dirty and pathetic lies people are trying to peddle.

I still haven't gotten over the invasion of Iraq. US Military Complex ugh.

WMDs, brah!

We're bringing them democracy, brah!

Staging ground for Russia, brah!

We're bringing them capitalism, brah!

It's fucking ridiculous, isn't it? I excuse people in their early 20's. For most of us it takes a while to establish the patterns. For everyone from 25 up there's no damned excuse at all.

The motivation is the US dollar was being replaced by them when it comes to trading oil,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela-s...1505343161

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/...995e9f3094

Preeeety sure anyone vouching for local actors to launch attacks agaisnt the legitimate government of Venezuela didnt know this.

(03-07-2019 01:10 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Also, this is the third time in something like 12 hours that some generic conservabro on RVF has told me to "read up on (famous event from American history that everybody knows about)" Is this the latest basic bitch conservative talking point?

Sam, a few pages back I think you mentioned something about Trump supporters/conservatives being dumb, and as much as I didn't want to admit it, I think I'm coming around to the same conclusion. Roosh wrote about conservatives acting like losers before, but I think we're gonna have to add that they're also borderline stupid. There is some sort of rigidity in their arguments that doesn't allow room for nuance. Any slightly left-of-center argument is automatically met with "muh free markets", "get out of here commmie" or "you're a loser blackpiller".

Just so we're clear, I am not insulting anyone on this forum, because I know a lot of guys on here are hard-working, successful, and intelligent. I am speaking in general terms. Even guys I strongly disagree with on here, I always think to myself "it's all good, I can tell the guy does his research and I've learned something".

(03-02-2019 05:49 PM)911 Wrote:  Captn, the Libya vid is by a normie open borders globalist, he presents the Libyan invasion as some kind of well-meaning humanitarian mission that somehow went wrong, as if Iraq never happened, when in fact it was just a mission to destroy the country, destabilize the region (fueling the African immigration onslaught into Europe), and to steal its gold and assets, preventing Gaddafi from establishing an alternative gold-backed organic regional currency. The ensuing chaos after the invasion was by design.

Here's the same normie fruitcake sucking Trudeau's pole:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHQ2lrAjKQk
(no need to click, it's just this fruitcake fawning over Justine T.)

I believe everything but the chaos was planned. IIRC, the Hillary emails had her trying to set up some kind of puppet gov't but she was just too incompetent to make it work.

Well, the Guri dam with 10,000+ MW of generation capacity has been sabotaged. Maduro is blaming the Imperialists while Madame Secretary Pompeo is being incredibly glib with lines like "Maduro’s policies bring nothing but darkness." I have to say the PR campaign in this here intervention isn't looking very humanitarian.

Are we sure it's sabotage and not just the damn thing falling apart for lack of proper maintenance?

(03-08-2019 06:15 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Are we sure it's sabotage and not just the damn thing falling apart for lack of proper maintenance?

Well the complex supplies ~1/3rd of their electricity and exports some to Colombia and Brazil. It's the sort of thing that gets maintained.

On the other hand... fucking with power generation and distribution is part of the regime change playbook the US almost always starts on well before bombs drop. Stuxnet was a thing. The US fucks with control systems for other countries major infrastructure for political points. There's a track record. That the US has the ability to do it is probable. Believing they would doesn't require a huge leap of faith.

I can't help but thing about how going into Iraq and Afghanistan just about everything was televised. Then with Syria the presence of boots on the ground was denied and then at some point the line shifted with no fanfare at all to "Of course we have boots on the ground in Syria".

I'm inclined to believe the stupid bus driver in this case.

For sure, it's straight out of the Elliott Abrams 1980s Contra sabotage playbook, it's almost got his signature on it.





Some of those measures will come naturally to the locals . IIIRC the CIA also pushed those kinds of sabotage measures against France, circulating those kinds of pamphlets among labor unions funded by the CIA, during the color revolution of May 1968 where they fomented a cultural marxist revolution against the nationalist righteous government of Charles de Gaulle, our greatest president and greatest postwar European leader, biggest thorn on the side of the globalists. France was the third world power under him.

But there are some higher-level operations targeting the infrastructure, and a key powerplant has got to be the prime target:

https://medium.com/the-semaphore/this-19...346baa1d9f

https://apnews.com/9648478ff49cacaa718363efb8f419ee

The question is, is this going to turn their people against Maduro, or will they rally for him? I'm leaning towards the latter.

The US is using their less used subversion techniques. They know a lot of people dont like Maduro and their intel points to a potential military coup.

The people just need to be prodded in the direction you want it to go and voila, come out at the end of the tunnel with no need for military assets and Your Guy in the top seat. Once all is settled they start trading oil in dollars again and Russia and China dont get cheap oil.

(03-08-2019 06:15 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Are we sure it's sabotage and not just the damn thing falling apart for lack of proper maintenance?

This. Everything in Venezuela is SO poorly maintained that this isn't far fetched.

(03-01-2019 11:34 AM)BBinger Wrote:  

(02-27-2019 11:57 AM)911 Wrote:  Maduro is nowhere near a proper dictator, Assad or Gaddafi, who fit that bill (although both are clearly better for their country than the globalist aternative) would have had all opposition leaders purged, pronto. He's not even a Putin-grade strongman, he's got more than enough basis for charging Guaido with treason and arresting him.

I mentioned upthread, but the closest historical parallel in my reading is Spain's Franco. Both Maduro and Franco got stuck in their positions due to a lack of other men stepping up. Maduro is stuck with the job running Venezuela for a lack of any other strong men who can step up to the job.

Maduro is clearly not very good at the job of running a country by most measures, but driving a state is harder than driving a bus.

(02-28-2019 07:26 PM)Latinopan Wrote:  

(02-27-2019 06:04 PM)Luvianka Wrote:  

The oil could be already considered USA's, there is not way Russia or China get their hands in Venezuela oil. Is geographically impossible for China or Russia to try anything in Latin America.

There's this specialized type of boat optimized for nothing other than moving large amounts of oil between continents.

In related matters... Artisan gold mining is a thing in Venezuela. Small groups of men going into the jungles and mountains with hand tools to produce ~10 grams of gold per man-month. Venezuela isn't just oil rich, it is mineral rich. And tropical beach paradise rich. Venezuelan cuisine is pretty good too.

(03-01-2019 08:38 AM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  

(02-27-2019 11:57 AM)911 Wrote:  Maduro is nowhere near a proper dictator, Assad or Gaddafi, who fit that bill (although both are clearly better for their country than the globalist aternative) would have had all opposition leaders purged, pronto. He's not even a Putin-grade strongman, he's got more than enough basis for charging Guaido with treason and arresting him.

Why can't Maduro do a slow transition to a China like Economy? Is there anything he can do to resolve this crisis?

Well, Maduro can keep drilling the military and winning elections by large margins by pointing at the loud enemies outside the gates. Maybe along the way he gets better at running a state by taking lessons from Putin, Ergodan, and Xi?

Voters in democracies generally don't pick the best. Not the best people, not the best outcomes. Consider Trump is the best person the US could get now even though there was a time New York had even more serious businessmen and managers who make Trump look like a clown. It's too late to vote for them though because they are all dead. Trump's all the US has left which means he can't surround himself with good people. This means Madame Secretary Pompeo and John Bolton beating war drums because the only other people with experience want to paint the world pink for Soros.

This standoff is making the US state department "soft power" apparatus look very impotent on the world stage. I see no reason why a US military intervention in Venezuela would be any less embarrassing than Iraq, Libya, or Syria.

(03-01-2019 09:08 AM)lonewolf1992 Wrote:  I respect those who are against the military intervention as you know, 'venezuela is none of our bussiness' and that is completely reasonable. Now I think is maybe is due to language barrier that some folks in here even have some sympathy for Maduro. The guy is literally one the most stupid, silly and naive 'politicians' we have seen in our lives, from the left and right we call him 'maburro' that stands for donkey. Even Chavez was a clever socialist piece of shit but the venezuelans know he was no pussy. Maduro is complete idiot you just have to see all the stupid things he say in his speeches. Man I fucking hate that pig. Cheers to everyone.

Maduro doesn't seem anymore dishonest than Peron, Lula, the Kirchners, Pepe Mujica, or Mother Merkel. Democracy has a structural problem in the inadequacy of the common homo sapien. People suck and they make bad decisions.

A lot of Venezuelan voters like Maduro and they respond enthusiastically to his sales pitch. Cubans overwhelmingly voted for a constitution that keeps the same people in power. Nearly 87% of ballots in favor, ~9% opposed, and 4.5 percent of ballots were blank or spoiled. When's the last time a US election reported the number of blank or spoiled ballots instead of engaging in "hanging chad" wank over "voter intent" after the fact.

Maduro is a problem for people in Venezuela who want a high standard of living, but he is a godsend for people who want to bucket crab their way to equality.

Chavez being clever is not a credit to Chavez. Chavez being clever is how Maduro got stuck leaving behind a comfortable life as the coolest of the bus drivers to try to drive an absolute mess now that the clever's run out. Clever hacks are why contemporary computing is an absolute mess. Venezuela is what happens when someone tries to run a country in the same way.

I was refereeing to the idea of Chinese, Russian military intervention in Venezuela. No matter how much China or Russia supports Venezuela the idea of any of them having any military presence in Latin America is dumb and they know it, there is also the problem that it could backfire hard on Maduro. Not matter how much close the governments are, the Venezuelans don't see China of Russia as having good intentions, any military intervention from them will make Venezuelans even more anti Maduro and even make them see USA as better option.

China and Russia don't have to put troops in Venezuela to keep Uncle Sam out.

They probably let Trump know that if he starts fucking around in there then the rebels are going to mysteriously get their hands on a large quantity of untraceable single-production-run ground-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles.

China in particular is capable of that now. They could have resistance fighters swimming in that kind of hardware for pennies per unit. America also no longer has the kind of soft power to force China back in the box. That's my best guess as to why the US suddenly backed down and why I'm also suddenly hearing a shitload less on the radio about the plight of the poor, downtrodden Venezuelans. China may have made it clear that the US is no longer in a position to assume easy and cheap foreign incursions, a scenario that played out not so long ago in the Ukraine.

(03-10-2019 01:09 AM)natas305 Wrote:  

(03-08-2019 06:15 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Are we sure it's sabotage and not just the damn thing falling apart for lack of proper maintenance?

This. Everything in Venezuela is SO poorly maintained that this isn't far fetched.

Oh so just as the US-backed el-Pres is in the country, large protests are organsied and then all of a sudden the power decides to go out and transformers are seen to have been damaged or destroyed.

All a matter of coincidence eh?

China will not intervene militarily, they are smart, and are playing the long game. They'll let Bolton and Abrams do their thing and pull the colonial card on Venezuela, and eventually the country will rebel and clamor to be under Chinese orbit. Same dynamic as in Africa, where most countries have been butt-raped for decades by corrupt ruling cliques propped by the West with loan sharking schemes by the IMF and World Bank stripping them of their resources with nothing to show for. The Chinese model also strips them of their resources, but in exchange they get shiny, functional new roads, dams, powerplants, sewers, airports, railways etc.

On top of the old Western colonial model, African countries now also have had to contend and comply with western globohomo, ever since Obama's second term. So now it's allow gay marriage or face the consequences in trade sanctions or worse. China doesn't do any of that shit. In fact they actively combat that kind of subversive social agenda at home.



Russia will not intervene in Venezuela either, at least not directly, partly for the same reasons as China above, but also because they actually benefit from chaos in Venezuela as a major oil producer. Russia is now selling a whole lot of oil to the US because the US is boycotting Venezuelan oil, a lot of which is processed in US Gulf Coast refineries. The Koch Brothers own most of this refining operation.

Russia will also come out on top in the long term if Venezuelans reject US interference. See Syria, where the US/NATO funded and propped up the "moderate rebels" who run roughshod all over the country and caused Syrians to rally under Assad and welcome the Russians as friends and liberators.

Part of the reason the US is playing hardball with Venezuela is that the Kochs want to be in full control of the crude at the source, they want to secure the kind of sweetheart discount deals from their Venezuelan wells that they used to get back in the 1990s, when they owned the government, before Chavez came in and nationalized their oil, putting an end to the party. Those Gulf Coast refineries are adapted to process heavy grade Venezuelan oil, and Chavez leveraged this to force the Koch bros. to pay him top rate for their crude.

That's one of the angles that you won't hear about on Fox or CNN.

(03-10-2019 01:20 AM)Latinopan Wrote:  I was refereeing to the idea of Chinese, Russian military intervention in Venezuela. No matter how much China or Russia supports Venezuela the idea of any of them having any military presence in Latin America is dumb and they know it, there is also the problem that it could backfire hard on Maduro. Not matter how much close the governments are, the Venezuelans don't see China of Russia as having good intentions, any military intervention from them will make Venezuelans even more anti Maduro and even make them see USA as better option.

How many bases does the US have in Asia and Europe? I don't see the Chinese or Russians needing to go that far. They simply partner up. Russia has sent some "military advisers" already. They could end up drilling together the way the US and South Korea do, which wouldn't be any more ridiculous than the US and South Korea running joint wargames every year.

Lumping "Venezualans" together as a single opinion bloc is dangerous. Yes, a large number of Venezuelands hate Maduro, viscerally. But Venezuela is a democratic country and those Maduro voters come out for the counter protests.

Maduro is more popular in Venezuela than Obama, Trump, Macron, or Merkel ever were.

Remember the average person sucks and half the population is even worse! But if you start weighting people by their abilities and accomplishments, that is Undemocratic!!! No, way democracies "fix" the inadequacy of the people is armed military interventions after the election, because no way those people actually meant to vote for that guy.

I suspect a lot of the pressure for military intervention on the US side is anxiety that eventually the green feminist bloc is going to voted enough power in the US to deindustrialize, like Argentina. History is not necessarily controlling precedent in the common law sense, but it is instructive.

(03-10-2019 07:50 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  China and Russia don't have to put troops in Venezuela to keep Uncle Sam out.

They probably let Trump know that if he starts fucking around in there then the rebels are going to mysteriously get their hands on a large quantity of untraceable single-production-run ground-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles.

China in particular is capable of that now. They could have resistance fighters swimming in that kind of hardware for pennies per unit. America also no longer has the kind of soft power to force China back in the box. That's my best guess as to why the US suddenly backed down and why I'm also suddenly hearing a shitload less on the radio about the plight of the poor, downtrodden Venezuelans. China may have made it clear that the US is no longer in a position to assume easy and cheap foreign incursions, a scenario that played out not so long ago in the Ukraine.

Venezuela is still a rather rich country. Being mineral rich with a lot of jungle does that. The original Incas didn't have anti-malarials. The new pasty to multicultural Incas up north do.

Then there's the urgency this standoff injects into the BRICS states to get parallel US-resistant international financial systems built out. One trend is that generally people give a whole lot less fucks about US sanctions than they did while Saddam was still breathing. New York and London aren't irrelevant yet, but sanctioned folks and countries are getting by better than they used to.

(03-10-2019 09:30 AM)911 Wrote:  Part of the reason the US is playing hardball with Venezuela is that the Kochs want to be in full control of the crude at the source, they want to secure the kind of sweetheart discount deals from their Venezuelan wells that they used to get back in the 1990s, when they owned the government, before Chavez came in and nationalized their oil, putting an end to the party. Those Gulf Coast refineries are adapted to process heavy grade Venezuelan oil, and Chavez leveraged this to force the Koch bros. to pay him top rate for their crude.

That's one of the angles that you won't hear about on Fox or CNN.

Thanks to Hussein Bahamas the US exports oil now. If oil is a serious consideration I suspect it is less about capturing Venezuela's reserves than destroying their production infrastructure. Destroying their production infrastructure creates a supply contraction for higher prices and an opportunity to for them to buy new kit at gunpoint from your favored contractors Iraq style.

I suspect the gold and other mineral deposits are weighing pretty heavily on the "things to steal" scale relative to the oil.

All this talk of China and Russia having red lines on a South American country. Thats missing the mark completely. Chinese and Russians do not think like that and will not intervene.

It cost a lot for Russia to go to Syria and they had a lot more skin in the game which they did not and could not afford to lose.

China just wants cheap oil. Both have red lines but those are Ukraine and North korea. Until the US/NATO sets up incursions with their own militaries in those two areas we shouldn't be talking about those two TBH.

Thats not to say they wont do something to get back at the US however.

I love to see that the typical LatAm left discourse "The USA is the source of all our evils and the justifications for our actions" its alive and well. Never blame to foreign intervention to what can be explained with the inoperancy of a far-left regime.

BBinger the Venezuelans are doing a good of destroying their oil infrastructure on their own, they are running their refineries into the ground. I follow a Venezualan refinery maintenance technician online who posts photos of the state of disrepair in a state owned refinery and its mind boggling, you would never see this type of thing in western refineries.

Mr MAGA is a criminal, a real war criminal.
A widespread power cut affecting much of Venezuela has continued ahead of planned protests on Saturday. Hospitals struggled to cope and at least one hospital patient died when her respirator stopped working. The power cuts, which started on Thursday, have reportedly been caused by problems at a major hydroelectric plant.
It seems that American government is using a virus like Stutnex, the Israeli virus used against Iran, to disrupt the power distribution.

(03-10-2019 12:29 PM)BBinger Wrote:  Lumping "Venezualans" together as a single opinion bloc is dangerous. Yes, a large number of Venezuelands hate Maduro, viscerally. But Venezuela is a democratic country and those Maduro voters come out for the counter protests.

Maduro is more popular in Venezuela than Obama, Trump, Macron, or Merkel ever were.

Do you seriously believe Venezuela is democratic (currently) and that Maduro really has even moderate levels of popularity like that? People hate him more than ever right now with this blackout, but even a few weeks ago his support was super low.

“Posted by Luvianka - Today 09:11 PM

Mr MAGA is a criminal, a real war criminal.
A widespread power cut affecting much of Venezuela has continued ahead of planned protests on Saturday. Hospitals struggled to cope and at least one hospital patient died when her respirator stopped working. The power cuts, which started on Thursday, have reportedly been caused by problems at a major hydroelectric plant.
It seems that American government is using a virus like Stutnex, the Israeli virus used against Iran, to disrupt the power distribution.”

So DJT is using an Israeli virus to cut the power of the electrical grids in Venezuela.

The tinfoil hat crowd is really getting stronger here.

Blackouts in Venezuela have been happening since the late 2000’s, à prolonged blackout is not even news the infrastructures are in an extremely bad condition now. Worst than Cuba.

I spoke to a non-Western man a while ago and he offered this view of the world:

"Some people complain that countries are being dominated by the West. I think its completely fair. If these countries were strong- economically, militarily, politically - then the West couldn't do anything. But since they are weak, the West can interfere and rightfully so."

I was surprised to hear him say this, and I think I agree.

In my mind there are 2 possibilities:

1) The infrastructure is poor, it is their fault for mismanaging it.

2) This is a successful attack, it is their fault for being weak.


Maybe the world has progressed a bit since the caveman days, we no longer kill all the males and take the women as slaves, but cultures do still battle. In the end, its still the survival of the fittest.

I think the real lesson to be taken from all of this is that we must strive to be strong individuals- intellectually, spiritually, physically - and to make our countries and cultures that way. We don't have any choice.

We got confirmation. The Deep State’s desperate attack on Venezuela’s power grid was far more extensive than previously thought. This is a textbook regime change strategy to plunge Venezuela into darkness and chaos, on top of the multiple economic and political sanctions that the country has been subjected to for years, to push the people to topple their own legitimately elected authorities in favor of a puppet government.

Stephen Lemman writes in Covert Geopolitics that what’s happening in Venezuela is similar to infecting Iran’s Bushehr and Natanz nuclear power facilities with a Stuxnet malware computer virus in 2010, a likely joint US/Israeli intelligence operation. Edward Snowden blamed them for what happened. At the time, operations were halted indefinitely. Iran called the incident a hostile act. General Gholam-Reza Jalali said if the affected facilities went online infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down. It took months to fully resolve the problem. Following the summer 2010 attack, the malware continued to infect the facilities’ centrifuges, requiring their replacement. An Institute for Science and International Security analysis said

(03-08-2019 07:48 PM)911 Wrote:  

So, it's because of some brilliant, CIA-engineered master-plan that most Central-American employees "arrive late for work, are slow to complete their task, and often call in sick"? Well, as same goes, I've noticed, for Italian and French employees - next time I'm late for work: I'll blame the CIA!

Matter of fact, it looks like this CIA handbook is enthusiastically followed and implemented by 95% of the world's workforce. Only Japan and Westphalia are immune!


German worker. Will not arrive late, will not call-in sick. Slightly boring as shit though

Anyway, we've had members on this thread writing stinging posts on how "Latin America is fucked-up and useless and nobody works there and why should we help them, they are ineffective savages" , but now some of these same members are saying that it's impossible that Latin American workers would badly maintain an electrical dam or whatever.

So, which is which? Are our Latin American brothers "inefficient and not worthy of our help", or are they "so smart and industrious that only sabotage can stop their electrical grids"?

In any case, hard to know what happened in Venezuela to the electrical power-plant (can be basic failure due to lack of maintenance, or could be sabotage carried out by a number of actors), but, generally speaking, it is a reminder that these power-plants all over the world are soft targets.
Soft targets both for physical assault (as they are relatively unprotected) or virtual (through computers) assault; and in Europe for example, a single power-plant can feed three or four countries in electricity, at times. So any failure would be catastrophic.