Venezuela’s President Maduro gave a speech following the arrival of five Iranian gas tankers, sent despite US opposition, declaring it proof that the “two revolutionary people will never kneel down before North American imperialism.”
Maduro defended the right of the nations to trade with one another despite US sanctions. Venezuela bought the gasoline, which is meant to ease a major fuel shortage, and reportedly paid in gold. The gold is reportedly to be flown back to Iran.
The first Iranian tanker arrived in Venezuelan waters on Saturday evening, and docked on Sunday. A second tanker has also reportedly docked since then. Iran’s oil minister presented the shipments as a victory, declaring “we keep going and winning.”
Despite US opposition, and growing US naval presence in the Caribbean, there was no serious effort to stop the tankers. The US did impose sanctions on a Chinese company accused of involvement in the airline that ships the gold.
“We will never bow down before North American imperialism” – and that, my friends, is EXACTLY why the US is so hell-bent on destroying Venezuela and Iran: because they DARE to stand up to Washington with the whole world watching. Obviously, this cannot stand- they must be crushed as examples to the rest of the world that when the US says jump you better get in line or you’re next for ‘regime change’, and very likely you’ll have ‘freedom’ shoved down your throat at gunpoint. Unless you have nuclear weapons, of course, and can actually fight back credibly in which case you get a pass.
we could defeat iran on a tuesday morning and still have time on tuesday afternoon to take out that third world hellhole down there conventionally.
Sure. Like we did Afghanistan.
afghanistan is just a training exercise. if we really wanted to accomplish something there we would.
Absolutely . “If we really wanted .”
Now we are so hard hit in the brains,that we look for brain in the balls and find one is dangling . By the time we find one we forget what we came for looking .
we have overwhelming power and force if we choose to unleash it conventionally. we’ve prolonged afghanistan intentionally for obvious reasons which you are incapable of understanding.
It is a prolonged quest in searches for the brains. No family has ever asked the local police to call off the searches for missing family members ,more so when it was the family that had drowned the child . No we hear that David Frum blames everything on the wrong decisions to invade Iraq war . https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/24/trumpocalypse-review-donald-trump-david-frum-bush-axis-evil
Sounds like a Charlie Manson ramble….
think about it. do you really think it would take 18 years to defeat the taliban if we wanted to. we are there stalling and pretending to fight a war in order to maintain a presence in that region. otherwise we would have to leave.
Yes. They live there. Unless we did what Trump mused about and killed 10 million in a week.
who lives there. the taliban are unwanted invaders. we manage to get a few a week but more keep streaming in from somewhere.
The Taliban are invaders? That’s funny.
weren’t they just lingering in some corner of that country plotting to take over from the legitimate afghan government that we support. that’s all that mattes is if we support it. then it is the right choice there. we will stay there forever if necessary. not a bad climate.
They were in a civil war with the Northern alliance. They were willing to turn bin Laden over with evidence of his guilt. Bush declined. Hardly “lingering in some corner”.
they were going to turn over the guy who died of kidney failure years earlier. don’t blame bush for declining.
Hardly the reason bush declined. He declined because he wouldn’t “negotiate with terrorists”. And bush was part of the big fantasy that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 so it’s insane to think that was his reasoning.
So yet sayin it’s a fake war, kinda like the fake moon landing ?
the moon landing was indeed faked. but we are there in afghanistan for real. it is just not the reason we are there. we could care less about the taliban. they can be annoying from time to time but our real interest is positioning in a place where we shouldn’t normally be able to operate our covert operations.
Ok, what covert operations are you imagining ? Against who?
we are on the lookout for anyone looking suspicious from any of the five countries whose names ends in …stan. there is evil lurking in all of them.
Huh…think they are afraid one of those evil lurking ‘stan people might expose the phony moon landing ?
More like surrounding Iran.
excellent point. if it annoys iran then we will stay till the end of time. fairly easy pot shot at tehran from there when we decide to go in.
Thank you. My point was that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Again, thank you.
Like what?
it is just an excuse to stay in the area enabling us to keep a better eye on things. why else would we be there.
I see. Like Sarah Palin being able to keep an eye on Russia from Alaska.
you don’t find it strange that the most powerful country ever in the history of the world cannot defeat a band of homeless warriors with very few weapons within 18 years. it is a ruse to get our people there to keep an eye on things in that region. the fighting the taliban is just a diversion.
Not strange at all. Send in the Marines with no air support. There’d be a bunch of dead Marines. And Afghanistan is their home.
No way is Iran flying gold back to Iran; too easy to lose the airplane.
The gold will be on the returning tankers.
I believe the lot of Venezuelan gold is held in London, with the Brits not allowing Venezuela access to it.
ps: The US and Britain are both headed by two nutty blonds 🙂
we have already ordered that plane to be diverted to london so we can check that situation out. if the gold is on there it will be impounded. the chinese airline company wants that sanction lifted so they will comply. if not we will board their ships before they return to that barbaric islamic destination and remove the gold.
So you’re okay with piracy on the high seas now? I wonder how you’d view it if Iranians boarded a US vessel and stole the contents. Good for the goose, good for the gander, right?
we imposed sanctions on those two and they blatantly defied them. once that happened it removed us from any liability in regards to the seizure of any of the parties involved. we cannot be sanctioned so the reverse is a moot point.
That’s like saying: Stop Running! Or I’ll shoot”.
More like: I’m shooting! Stop running!
Tell it, John Birmingham! Tell it!!!
Maduro has a small army of poor miners in quasi-legal gold mines in the Venezuelan jungle. They sell that hard-earned gold for a pittance in worthless Bolivars.
Kind of defeats the purpose of a socialist revolution to have exploited workers, but they are digging up new gold.
Of course, an up-and-up white market gold mine would probably incense the U.S. enough to bomb it. Maduro doesn’t seem to have a lot of great alternatives.
Nutty blondeness is a female trope; male blondes with power are supposed to be villainous.
maduro acting pretty cocky for someone who cannot get anyone to sell him a life insurance policy. just because we let this shipment go through does not change a thing in regards to our goal of replacing him. which we already have officially. now the physical removal has to take place. we want to do it on some symbolic date in venezuela if they have any which is doubtful since the country has been in constant turmoil since its inception.
Deal’s not done yet, unless Iran really did fly back that gold.
Odds are, though, one or all those ships returning to Iran have gold on board, as well as whatever else Maduro could barter.
Only solidarity among the oppressed can break the devil’s back. Every nation sanctioned by the American Empire should form a coalition of economic solidarity. In doing so, every subsequent nation America sanctions will just make this union stronger and serve as a possible deterrent. Gold is also definitely a step in the right direction against Dollar supremacy. Crytpo would be even better.
it would be a shame if our foreign aid to these oppressed nations was curtailed. doubt if any of them want to take a chance on that. when they step out of line we impose sanctions and do not expect violations. the three strike rule should be imposed in these cases.
God, what do you work for the State Department or something? What aid? We send cash to dictators and death squads. We’re not handing out apple on Halloween here, we’re killing people and arming people who kill people for us. They owe us nothing. We owe them the common decency of f**king off and minding our own damn business.
sure, and let them run rampant. they need to be controlled and contained in some manner. it is always us that has to step up and do it.
Just ignore that Hasbara troll, Comrade Hermit .. He’s just trying to get your goat with all of his lies. He’s being paid a whole lot of shekels for trolling this site.
There’s no way on earth anyone’s paying this guy for such low-quality (and exactly the opposite of Hasbara) sarcasm-trolling.
Trolling, including sarcasm-trolling, doesn’t violate our guidelines. That doesn’t mean you guys have to keep feeding it, though. You’re all fully capable of personally blocking the idiot and ignoring him. I’m the only one here who HAS to read his stuff.
Unfortunately the U.S. dollar is the locked-in world reserve currency by Mackinderan default. No other fiat currency is produced on a Mackinderan World Heartland.
The North American Great Plains may not be The World Heartland of the central Eurasian plains, but its good enough as the only other such natural seat of world empire, with a naturally defensible border and highly productive interior.
Gold lacks the flexibility of fiat. Fiat money can be created and destroyed as needed to keep up with valuations. Gold is discrete wealth; a commodity over a currency that can distort pure market valuation.
Crypto needs electronic stability. A big geomagnetic storm would erase crypto. A simple lost password traps crypto forever as surely as gold dropped into a deep ocean volcanic vent.
Arrest Donald Trump et al and present them to the Hague…….Here is the background to the criminal activities of the US regime………David and Charles Koch needed the XL Keystone Pipeline. The XL Keystone pipeline takes Canadian tar-sands oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The refineries of the Texas Gulf Coast are optimized for heavy crude. It would cost billions of dollars to rebuild the giant Flint Hills Corpus Christi Refinery, owned by Koch Industries, to use the less-polluting Texas oil drilled nearby.
The Koch’s built the giant Flint Hills Corpus Christi Refinery to process heavy crude from Venezuela. At the time the plant was built Koch Industries were pillaging Venezuelan heavy crude for a fraction of its true value. When Hugo Chavez became President of Venezuela he insisted Koch Industries pay full price for the heavy crude.
Yuan Guido promised to return control of the oil to US companies (ie Koch Industries, Flint Hills Corpus Christi Refineries, there are no other refineries that can process this heavy crude). Hence Trump tells us that Yuan Guido is the democratic leader of Venezuela. Trump himself obtained 3 million less votes, Pompeo (no votes) and Bolton (no votes). Guido has never stood for election anywhere. Maduro however was re-elected with a huge majority.
Massive corruption due to big corporate control of government, continual abuse of power and mass murder can only be described as fascism. White Supremacy and Fascism is the Key to understanding America’s Venezuela aggression (supreme international crime). Venezuela is a story of four centuries of white rule and It all came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo (indigenous) majority.
This rejection of white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez’ chosen successor. Social investment in Venezuela during the Chavez administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment and brought real democracy to Venezuela. Venezuela was the wealthiest nation, by far, in South America. Hugo Chavez became President on 2 February 1999. Venezuela reached its all-time-high economic-growth rate in 2004 after 5 years of Socialism.
The economy rapidly declined as soon as the U.S. started its coup-attempts and imposed sanctions. It was the US that murdered Chavez. It is estimated that the sanctions have been the catalyst for up to 40,000 deaths in Venezuela.
Lets be quite clear about this: the people who support Trumps White Supremacy (racist colonial rule) are no better than he is. The problem with fascists is that they think they are Republicans or Democrats.
Oil supremacy isn’t particularly racist.
Racism was a convention that grew up by happenstance; most of the non-Euro world wasn’t white during the Discovery era and that became a convenient means to differentiate and justify victimizer from victim.
Both Canada and Russia produce oil, are ‘white’ countries, and doormatted by U.S./globalist oil power.
Racism is a convenience to power; if the whole world were white blue-eyed blond ski gods and goddesses, the outcome of imperialism would be no different.
The Irish are a very white people, but were long considered an inferior breed of white under British imperialism, being among the first victims of it.
The Monroe Doctrine is racist at its very core. US is an extremely racist society.
Agreed, however, racism is a tool of a deeper evil.
At the time of the Munroe Doctrine, the Americas were still dominated by white Europeans.
The toxic continental politics and old regime loyalties, the early Americans had rejected, albeit imperfectly.
Totally agree that racism is a tool of a deeper evil. The US is an extremely racist society by design.
There is no mystery to that “deeper evil”…it is named “greed”.
Greed is simply wanting more than you need, which is not necessarily evil. Perception of need will vary, but libertarianism is based on harnessing ‘greed’ to prosocial ends.
For most of history people were at high risk of not having enough to meet discrete everyday needs let alone unforeseen circumstances and emergencies.
Another word for greed can be self-interest, and this does not become a defective character trait when disciplined to social morals. Ethical expression of greed has wide interpretation, but we all are motivated by some level of greed.
We probably wouldn’t be around if some distant ancestor hadn’t obsessed over having extra food, clothing and spare tools. We couldn’t prosper if we weren’t greedy enough to figure out how NOT to kill the golden goose however dire a shorter-term need..
When held accountable, ‘greedy’ actions can do more good than harm to those affected.
If the species isn’t around in a hundred years, that might likely be because too many of us weren’t greedy enough to hold accountable, the worst psychopathic and sociopathic greedy among us.
No, greed does not equate to “self interest”, or, husbanding, or stockpiling for the future. Maybe try the dictionary, or, the Bible.
greed – (grēd) n. An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/greed
The Bible; is one of the oldest psyops going to keep elites in power.
The Pope recently declared, people were more important than the economy with regard to ending lockdowns. Apparently he was without a clue that people WERE the economy and ultimately the way we look out for and look after one another even as distant and often indifferent strangers.
What all we need and deserve, is something we all prefer to be as empowered as possible to determine ourselves. For good reason; we’d be cheated otherwise.
Strip away the politeness of socially disciplined greed, whether called husbandry, or stockpiling, its just the desire to possess more. Greed is a problem until bound by an ethic of stewardship,
Base desires need morals and ethics to achieve a higher human meaning. However, without that base desire, there’s no drive or need for the higher meaning.
Reference:
Star Trek TOS, ‘The Enemy Within’, S1, Ep.5.
Gotta appreciate a guy willing to play devil’s advocate for greed…;?)
Not the most comfortable feeling… Still, the base instinct of greed is not unlike the base instinct of fear, also considered a ‘sin’ with respect to fearing evil.
Popular culture has somewhat moved on from ignorantly denying fear to embracing differentiating between healthy fear and destructive fear; facing fears constructively as a base instinct to be harnessed intelligently.
Its been a couple of thousand years, and those able to harness greed into their psyches rule the roost and wreak havok.
One possible explanation, is that not enough people understand greed at a high enough level to identify problem greed.
We don’t seem ‘greedy’ enough to take what’s ours from those who have stolen from use, whether money or power.
The purpose of the term “white” was to differentiate between people who could not (“white”) and people who could (“non-white”) be held as chattel. There was nothing “happenstance” about the peoples of territories being colonized being treated as “non-white.”
The legal convention was based on biological happenstance; most of the premodern non-European planet was inhabited by darker skinned peoples; non-whites.
Melatonon and darker pigmentation have advantages that are less apparent once clothing tech is unlocked. Dark skin protects from ultraviolet rays, but slows vitamin D production.
Theoretically, had light skin been an overwhelming advantage, natural selection, not firepower, would have made far more populations lighter-skinned.
“Guido has never stood for election anywhere”
So was he drafted instead of standing for election when he was elected to the National Assembly in 2010 and 2015, or what? Someone came to his house with a gun and said “you’re a member of the National Assembly whether you like it or not?”