Mad with greed; war scamming

 

Warning to the military

 In response to Trump's threat that "a civilization will die tonight."

UPDATE 02:27 pm:

Fucking madman.

And Israel continues genocide in Gaza

 

It's always about "investment" possibilities

 

I remember when they planned the same thing on the heels of George W's invasion of Iraq.  How'd that turn out?

So we just take an entire country and steal their resources.

Yeah.

"Peace president" starting a war in Venezuela

 

Trump said early on Saturday that American forces had carried out a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela, claiming President Nicolas Maduro and his wife had been captured and flown out of the country.

  TRT World

Truly outrageous.  We are now invading sovereign countries and kidnapping their leaders.  

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced the strikes as a “criminal US attack,” calling for an urgent international response.

Indeed.

Senator Ruben Gallego said the operation marked “the second unjustified war in my lifetime,” accusing Washington of engaging in an unnecessary conflict “There is no reason for us to be at war with Venezuela,” he wrote.

Representative Jim McGovern also raised concerns over the lack of congressional approval and public support, questioning why funds were being spent on military action abroad instead of domestic priorities.

Lame ass Congress. Impeach Trump.

In the UK, several lawmakers urged the government to condemn what they described as an unlawful assault on a sovereign nation.

Perhaps they described it as such because that's what it is.

Independent lawmaker Zarah Sultana said Venezuela’s vast oil reserves were central to the conflict, calling the strikes “naked US imperialism” aimed at overthrowing a government and “plundering its resources.”

She called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government to denounce the action unequivocally.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as an act of “armed aggression,” saying the justifications offered by Washington were “unfounded.”

 

So what are you prepared to do about it?

What the fuck does Trump plan on doing with Maduro?  How is this going to end in anything but devastating consequences to the US, Venezuela, and the world?

And, so much for the idea that US military personnel might refuse to follow illegal orders.

What "imminent attack"??  That is extreme bullshit.

Okay, but who helped?  How did they kidnap Maduro?

Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital. Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.

We fucking bombed Caracas!

Maduro, Trump said, “has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.”

They did not do it without the help and cooperation of people in Venezuela. Who?

The attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they’d seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, the vice president, without giving a number.

[...]

The legal authority for the attack, and whether Trump consulted Congress beforehand, was not immediately clear. The stunning American military action, which plucked a nation’s sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990 — exactly 36 years ago Saturday.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

  AP

They are not America's to deal with. If they belong in a criminal court anywhere that is not Venezuela, it is the Hague.

The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.

Unprovoked acts of war.

The website of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, a post that has been closed since 2019, urged American citizens to shelter in place.

Do we think Americans in Venezuela are safe after this?

The FAA warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country, was off limits “due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.”

Buckle up.

UPDATE 08:34 am:

This was definitely not done without inside assistance.

Nigeria got the honor.

UPDATE 08:46 am:  He is now on the phone with Fox & Friends bragging.  Apparently, he called in.

As though that's anyone's decision to make besides the Venezuelan people.

Oh, that's right.  I forgot.  Trump said Venezuela stole our oil.  (And land.)

Mexico next???

One giant war crime.  The international community needs to get its shit together fast and come get this madman.  Obviously, Congress isn't going to do anything.

UPDATE 03:44 pm:

So, what are you prepared to do about it?

Don Jr?

Chuck will always be Chuck.  Chuck has got to go.

I remember when the planned the same thing on the heels of George W's invasion of Iraq.  How'd that turn out?

He'll be using this as part of his rationale for declaring martial law to stop the 2026 elections.

UPDATE 01/04/2026:

 

For the past several months, the U.S. military has been carrying out a bombing campaign in Yemen ostensibly aimed at forcing the militant group Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, to stop their military intervention on behalf of Palestinians under Israeli assault in Gaza. This campaign has conducted strikes against more than 800 targets, as well as verified claims of civilian harm, including, most recently, a strike against a detention facility housing African migrants that killed dozens of people.

[...]

[S]erious allegations have emerged that the U.S. military has been relying, in part, on anonymous X accounts who post coordinates that they dubiously claim contain military assets.

This week, U.S. warplanes bombed a location alleged by two such amateur open-source intelligence accounts to be a Houthi stronghold, killing innocent bystanders in the process.

A Twitter account—operated by an individual whose bio says they are based in the Netherlands, using the handle @VleckieHond—apologized this week after the U.S. struck coordinates she erroneously suggested, in early April, were the location of an underground Houthi military position; it was not a military site. “Allright, time for me to go through the mud,” Vleckie posted. “Based on satellite imagery I'd marked this quarry as an underground base, and tweeted is out as such. I'm fairly certain Centcom doesn't take their targeting data from Twitter, but this still is a very severe mistake.” Vleckie had highlighted the coordinates in a thread that claimed to have uncovered a Houthi base, and they had relied, in part, on a secondary account, @Galal_Alsalahi, whose bio suggests they are based in Houston. That account, which is hostile to the Houthis, claimed to have discovered a Houthi missile launcher at the coordinates.

The strike that took place on April 28 reportedly killed eight civilians in their homes on the outskirts of the capital of Sana’a. Vleckie’s reading of satellite imagery, the account later said, was incomplete—they said they had privately marked the target as only “possible”—and they would strive to do better in the future, while posting a screenshot of a 500 Euro donation to charity that she had made as penance. “I should never have posted it,” they added.

[...]

To be sure, it may be a mere coincidence that the amateur sleuths identified the location before CENTCOM struck it, but the account used for the Sana’a strike is known to officials in the military, increasing the potential likelihood that it was relied on—at least, in part—for the tragic targeting.

  Dropsite News

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

The curelty is the point

 

It was already bad enough, with anyone in range of a combatant being considered a combatant since George W Bush invaded Iraq.

Israel policy fodder for Trump

Watch for this to appear in Trump ads and speeches.

Jad Haidar is a US Marine Corps veteran who enlisted after 9/11. He was awarded a Purple Heart after he was twice hit by an IED, suffering severe concussions and a traumatic brain injury, in Iraq. For years, he’s required daily assistance due to his debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder.

He’s now stranded in Lebanon, unsure of if he and his family will get out.

Haidar is among 7,000 Americans who have sought information from the US about leaving Lebanon amid Israel’s strikes across the country.

[...]

The US Embassy in Beirut on Sept. 27 said it was not evacuating US citizens and suggested those looking to leave the country book and pay for a commercial flight. On Wednesday, the State Department said it organized a flight from Beirut to Istanbul that carried around 100 Americans and their family members. Haidar was not on that flight, but he says he was told by State Department officials they were trying to get him on a plane to Istanbul on Thursday. He would be on his own once there. They have yet to provide more details, and regardless, Haidar says he feels “abandoned” and disappointed in how he’s been treated by his own government.

[...]

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Haidar, in an Instagram video, called it a “disgrace” that her team has had “to call and beg” the State Department to help get Haidar and more than 140 people in her district out of Lebanon. “We need to do better. We knew this was going to happen. We had no plans to get Americans out.”

  Zeteo

And would Trump suddenly be on Tlaib's side?  If it wins him votes, he would.  He just wouldn't mention the part about Tlaib.  Only that the Biden administration is stranding American Marines and their families.

And, this...

And I don't doubt it for a second.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Israel has no intention of stopping

The Gaza health ministry said that an airstrike in Rafah on Sunday killed 45 Palestinians and injured dozens more. It said that there are still victims under the rubble and that the majority of those killed were women and children.

The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas installation and killed two senior Hamas militants.

  NPR

Two. At this rate, they will have wiped out all of Gaza by the time they get every "Hamas militant." And, that, of course, is the aim.

The strike caused a fire in an encampment just west of Rafah in a neighborhood called Tal al-Sultan, where dozens of Palestinians were sheltering. The area was designated a safe zone by the Israeli military, which dropped leaflets in the area last week saying humanitarian aid would be available there.

If that is not a war crime, nothing is.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile, Russian war crimes continue unabated

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has released a desperate video plea calling on world leaders to attend a “peace summit” next month in Switzerland after a deadly Russian attack on a DIY hypermarket in Kharkiv on Saturday killed at least 16people and injured dozens more.

Zelenskiy appealed in particular to the US president, Joe Biden, and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to attend the summit, which is due to start on 15 June.

[...]

Biden has not yet confirmed his attendance and it is not known whether China will attend – “negotiations are ongoing” over Beijing’s participation.

[...]

Saturday’s strike came at the end of a week in which daily Russian missile and air strikes terrorised Ukraine’s second city, with hits on a printing house, numerous residential areas and a central park, among other targets. In most cases, there were no obvious military targets nearby.

[...]

Prosecutors said at least 16 people had died, of whom 10 had not yet been identified, and 43 injured. More than 10 are still missing after the strike. A separate missile strike early in the evening hit a residential building in the centre of the city, injuring 18 people, according to the regional governor.

[...]

The strike on Saturday targeted a popular suburban shopping complex. Andriy Kudinov, its director, told local media the store had been packed with shoppers buying items for their summer cottages.

[...]

The strike sparked a fire that sent large clouds of dark smoke billowing above the shopping centre. Rescue work is dangerous in these conditions, and repeat strikes targeting first responders have been a common feature of recent Russian attacks.

[...]

In recent weeks, Russia has been working to make life a misery for Kharkiv, a city 20 miles from the border with Ukraine, and which had a pre-war population of over a million. Although life in the city goes on, deadly strikes have become a daily feature of life.

  Guardian

An outrage that didn't have to happen.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Israeli war crimes continue unabated