“Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, criticized the U.S. in a nationally televised address, calling the operation that captured Maduro an act of “military aggression” aimed at regime change. The comments appeared to contradict Trump’s claims that the U.S. could work with her to oversee the country’s transition. Earlier Saturday, the Venezuelan government declared a state of emergency and said said it would mobilize to “defeat this imperialist aggression.””
The US as a rule of law democracy, and international norms and values against military action against other countries, are under threat with this attack on Venezuela.
“Initially, Trump defended his military operations near Venezuela as keeping drugs out of the US, although experts say the cocaine that passes through Venezuela winds up mostly in Europe while fentanyl is sourced from China.
Trump also accused Maduro of emptying Venezuela’s prisons and “mental institutions” into the U.S., although there’s no evidence of that either. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have settled in the U.S. in recent years due to economic and political instability in their home country.
By mid-December, Trump accused Maduro of “stealing” U.S. oil and land. Trump appeared to be alluding to work done in the 1970s in Venezuela by Western oil companies before the government there opted to nationalize its reserves, eventually forcing out American companies.
In a Dec. 17 social media post – around the same time sources say Trump was making a decision to greenlight the Jan. 3 military operation — Trump said the U.S. military threat to Venezuela will “only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
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Two days later at a press conference, Secretary of State Marc Rubio offered a more general explanation than access to oil reserves, calling Maduro’s presidency “intolerable” because it was cooperating with “terrorist and criminal elements” instead of the Trump administration.”
Israel recognized Somalia’s breakaway region, Somaliland, as an independent country. No other UN country has done so. Somaliland declared independence in 1991.
The STC in Yemen has quickly conquered most of South Yemen after being in a stalemate for years. They are acting relatively competently and humanely, so the international community may eventually accept them as the rulers of South Yemen. The Houthis still control North Yemen.
The French and Germans have turned into little bitches.
“In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support
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The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.
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Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S.
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“In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical.
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The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war.”
Huge difference between a terrorist killing people with a nuclear bomb and a person voluntarily taking a drug that he knows is risky and then dying from it.
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, giving the U.S. government additional legal firepower in its efforts to combat illegal trafficking of the synthetic drug.
The executive order cites the lethality of the drug, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, and the fact that transnational criminal groups the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations use the sale of fentanyl to fund activities that undermine U.S. national security.”
“In recent months Russia has flown fighter jets into Estonian airspace and sent dozens of drones deep into Polish and Romanian territory. Its ally Belarus has repeatedly brought Lithuanian air traffic to a standstill by allowing giant balloons to cross its borders. And last week, Moscow’s top envoy Sergey Lavrov issued a veiled threat to Finland to exit NATO.”