Maduro Says Venezuela Will Send Astronauts To Moon In Chinese Spaceship (washingtonpost.com) 151
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro vowed to send "the first Venezuelan man or woman to the moon" in a Chinese spacecraft as part of a new strategic partnership between the two countries, he said Wednesday during a state visit to Beijing. Maduro and Chinese President Xi Jinping, meeting in person for the first time in five years, agreed to boost cooperation in several areas, Maduro said, including oil, trade, finance, mining -- and space exploration.
"Very soon, Venezuelan youth will come to prepare as astronauts, here in Chinese schools," Maduro said, as part of a "new era" of collaboration between China and Venezuela. After years of drifting away from Beijing, Maduro is strengthening ties with China as he seeks help reviving Venezuela's crumbling economy and oil industry. Venezuela is also in talks with the United States exploring the possibility of lifting some U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in exchange for Maduro's promise to hold free and fair presidential elections next year. "Venezuela became the first outside nation to join the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, which was jointly announced by China and Russia in 2021," notes Space.com.
It may be some time before any Venezuelans visit the moon, however. The report notes that Venezuela owes over $15 billion to China at the moment, which will likely impact how much the country would be able to contribute to the China-led ILRS. Venezuela also faces severe economic, political and social crises that have fueled an exodus that has surpassed 7 million.
"Very soon, Venezuelan youth will come to prepare as astronauts, here in Chinese schools," Maduro said, as part of a "new era" of collaboration between China and Venezuela. After years of drifting away from Beijing, Maduro is strengthening ties with China as he seeks help reviving Venezuela's crumbling economy and oil industry. Venezuela is also in talks with the United States exploring the possibility of lifting some U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in exchange for Maduro's promise to hold free and fair presidential elections next year. "Venezuela became the first outside nation to join the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, which was jointly announced by China and Russia in 2021," notes Space.com.
It may be some time before any Venezuelans visit the moon, however. The report notes that Venezuela owes over $15 billion to China at the moment, which will likely impact how much the country would be able to contribute to the China-led ILRS. Venezuela also faces severe economic, political and social crises that have fueled an exodus that has surpassed 7 million.
But will they also send them back to Earth? (Score:2)
I'd like to know if this is a one way trip or a round trip but the links provided lead to paywalls and DNS errors. Maybe it's just me with such troubles.
Sounds like ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... cannon fodder.
Or should I say, "test subjects"?
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They won't be the first, that honour will got to Chinese citizens.
China is making steady progress towards a manned Moon landing. They have heavy lift and used it to put up their space station. They have demonstrated in-orbit docking of two spacecraft, needed for the Moon-orbit rendezvous method of accessing the surface. They have landed a rover on the Moon and communicated with it. Their space station demonstrates living in space for longer than the duration of a Moon mission, as well as things like human-r
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Would you ask the same of any other country?
The UK is transparent about launch failures, so I'm sure they'll tell you all about their PPE contracts.
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Well, there was David Kelly.
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Re:Sounds like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact they are the only country with independent ability to put humans in orbit that hasn't suffered a single serious flight accident yet.
It helps starting 50 years after the major powers have already done it.
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indigenous astronaut
Everyone is indigenous to somewhere.
Food (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he should worry more about his horrible economic policies destroying the Venezuelan economy than writing PR statements about hitching a ride on someone else's rocket. Perhaps he thinks the moon is made of cheese to feed his starving people.
Venezuela has huge known oil researches. There is no reason for their economy to be a wreck. They should be the saudis Arabia of this hemisphere.
There is one very good reason (Score:3)
Corrupt authoritarians in power. Regardless of left or right, whenever people like them rule (and I mean rule, any apparent democracy is a sham) the population suffer and starve and the money disappears into private jets, mansions , gold etc for friends and family. You can see it in Russian with Putin, a lot of the *stan states, and lets be honest, most of africa.
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not the US fucking around... no no no, can't ever be them somehow...
what hubris
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Versus the U.N. approach of standing on the side lines and shaking it's finger while showing a derisive look. I prefer action and possible failure versus doing nothing at all because the chance of failure doing nothing is 100%.
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just stop pretending to do something only to serve your own interest.
just stop doing anything in other countries, the whole planet will be much better.
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By your logic, we should have stayed out of WWII and let Germany and Japan take of large tracks of the globe. Heck, we could go back further and stayed out of WWI and again let Germany take over Europe.
Tell you what, we will agree to not be involved in your little shit-show of a communist turned authoritarian regime as long as you promise to not ask for handouts from other authoritarian regimes because you destroyed your country. History is littered with examples of authoritarian regimes simply destroying c
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https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/d... [cfr.org]
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That's in part because of the Ukraine war. Venezuela produces heavy sour crude, as does Russia. When we cut off imports from Venezuela a bunch of refineries were idled because it requires special configuration to handle heavy sour crude, so the US started buying Russian crude to substitute. Now Russia is the country that we're supposed to hate the most so they're back to buying Venezuelan oil. The alternative was to follow the lead of the European refineries and buy Russian crude at a steep markup from
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Even with corrupt authoritarians, they can prosper for a long time if they have enough of a natural resource to exploit. In Venezuela's case it was oil - until it stopped selling.
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How much can Venezuela's economy be contributed to horrible economic policies versus economic sanctions and other pressures by the US, etc. E.g. Venezuela wasn't able to maintain their gas industry because of the fact that the US and UK banks stole all of Venezuela's reserves (10s of billions dollars worth), so they were no longer able to buy parts to maintain the industry.
You can't put all the onus of Venezuela's failed economy on intrinsic reasons, there are plenty of exogenous factors as well that cause
Re:Food (Score:5, Informative)
You can't put all the onus of Venezuela's failed economy on intrinsic reasons
If you want to be accurate, you absolutely can and should do that. The detrimental decisions were pretty much all made by corrupt Venezuelan politicians. They nationalized assets belonging to foreign companies, they spent money to subsidize cheap gas rather than maintain the equipment to produce it, they steered billions of dollars in contracts and public money to their buddies rather than in competitive or well-managed contracts.
I am not sure where you got the propaganda about banks stealing Venezuelan reserves, but it seems to be related to ongoing litigation over whether the corrupt Maduro regime or the opposition coalition should have legal control over the reserves. That's not banks "stealing" anything, that's banks holding assets untouched while courts determine who has legal claim to the assets.
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You seem to be saying that the sanctions and other shenanigans were ineffective. The US wasted a lot of effort when it could have simply let Venezuela fail by itself.
Which raises the question, why was the US so keen to make sure a nearby socialist state got the right outcome?
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Funny. You say their assets were looted by multinationals, yet Venezuela made a lot more money being looted than they do now.
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beeing looted is when the other nation uses their overbearing power to install their own companies and impose their prices on you for your natural resources.
think France and Niger's uranium ore.
this was what the US was doing prior the oil was nationalized, only giving venezuela a fraction of the price for their oil, by arguing their multinational companies were doing it all...
that's looting
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Then, try to remember that there is a global market for oil and that the US is hardly the only buyer.
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then the US should stay home and stop attempting to insert their CIA sponsored puppets (Juan Guaido) everywhere
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Of course they ran it all into the ground just like everything else they tried to grab. I always used to think that Atlas Shrugged was too farcical to be taken seriously, but it's remarkable how much Venezuela resembles that novel. Here's how well [wikipedia.org] steel production went for them afterwards.
Frankly I wish the US government hadn't bothered
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that's bullshit coming straight from the ever lying CIA.
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Wow, winning an election qualified as 'free and fair' by international observers makes one a dictator now? I guess it's a good thing that even former President Carter admits that the US election system qualifies as neither 'free' nor 'fair' then.
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Just going to leave this here for some reading about the "free and fair" election you are referencing.
https://usoas.usmission.gov/oa... [usmission.gov]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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citing US manufactured propaganda doesn't make it the truth
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So we are to take the word of some internet person who makes unsubstantiated statements versus say....the BBC.....gotcha.
Using your logic, we can cast your statements aside because you are using talking points of an authoritarian regime.
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To be the Saudi Arabia of this hemisphere is to make deals with China on solar PV and nuclear fission energy projects.
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
There's people that don't like the connotations that first world, second world, and third world has gained but it was a description of political alliances during the Cold War from people that clearly defined themselves as being in the first world. The first world consists of democratic nations that allied with each other for defense against the second world
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Middle East nations may be rich in petroleum but it appears to me that they are investing heavily into energy from other sources.
Typical rich people behavior. You don't spend your own money. You use it to invest and make money elsewhere. You try not to spend your capital. In this case, oil is their literal money supply. I don't mean figuratively here. Up until recently, oil is directly exchanged exclusively for US Dollars because it is not sold through their own currency. Now there are a few other major currencies in the mix.
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'Second World' always referred to the Soviet-dominated countries of eastern Europe. There have been no 'Second World' countries since the '90s.
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last I checked, it was the US illegal unilateral blockades and sanctions that were the cause of the faltering economy.
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Please understand that I am not being sarcastic when I ask this question. How are the sanctions illegal?
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well, in the case of venezuela, it's the US that are practicing unilateral sanctions and marine blockades.
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Not as bad as they are now, which is really the only thing that matters at this point.
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there are sanctions because they decided to expell US multinationals that were looting the oil, giving venezuela a tiny fraction of the proceeds.
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Yes, actually they were doing much better than before. Chavez ensured that the poor and middle class received more than the 5% of the country's earnings, they were previously one of the most unequal economies in the world with 95% of revenue going to around 5% of the population. They built hospitals, electrical and potable water distribution systems, sewer systems, markets, and schools in the poor neighborhoods which had never had access to any of those things. They had so much money that they were able
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So you believe that over two decades of economic attacks by the largest economy in the world has nothing to do with Venezuela's issues? Really? Wall Street, currency speculators, (illegal) sanctions by the US, (illegally) forcing other countries to honor the (illegal) sanctions, and (illegal) threats against insurers of shipping companies servicing the country have nothing to do with it? Really? Every country's economy just stands alone and acts in a vacuum?
You must be a Libertardian to be that economic
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You keep using the word illegal over and over. Just how are the sanctions illegal? If they are illegal, why has the WTO not issues such statements? If they have, I have not read such statements.
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what the world needs is a regime change in the US to remove all that hubris they're infected with
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Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. Well played!
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Their whole economy depended on being able to sell huge amounts of oil to someone. It's one of the things that makes communism work (for a while). They haven't sold much oil for MANY years now.
Politically, China probably wants to get away from depending so much on Russia for oil so they could be after a BIG deal with Venezuela.
Their economy is a wreck (Score:3)
And this won't cost Venezuela anything. This is them sending some Astronauts to China, that's all. It's them getting closer to one of Americas enemies.
Maybe we shouldn't be making enemies for no good reason. We certainly didn't have any issues with the other South American dictators we put in power, or their death squads our CIA helped train. Wonder what's different about Venezuela?
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what's your point ?
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You would think with their ties to the old USSR and now China, that the US shouldn't have been (or still be) so relevent to thier economy.
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If the country were to try to exert any more control over their economy, it would only fail faster
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Venezuela nationalized (stole) the oil industry from private businesses and kicked out all the foreigners. They then drained all the money, leaving nothing for maintenance. Even if they had left money for repairs, it would not have mattered since they had kicked out most of the people who knew how to do the job. Oil infrastructure is not something you can just let run without constantly working to keep it running. As time went by, more and more of the equipment broke down, causing their overall output t
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well, it was THEIR oil, there's no reason a foreign entity would do all the selling and shifting all of the profits to the US...
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It wasn't their infrastructure. They stole that. The oil company paid for the rights to extract the oil and invested heavily in creating the necessary infrastructure. The Venezuelan government could have argued that the contract made by the previous government was not made in good faith and taken it to international court for arbitration. Instead, they stole everything and kicked out all the people who knew how to run and maintain things.
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Last I checked the Saudis pulled a very similar stunt back in the 1970s, so that sure ain't the reason.
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there is no such evidence, as shown by cuba still floating after 60+ years of extremely aggressive US blockade and sanctions...
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Tell the Scandinavians that socialism doesn't work, and then let me know if you've changed your mind. In actuality more of their economy is socialized than in Venezuela, and yet they have the highest standard of living in the world and are consistently rated the 'most happy' people in the world.
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ah, well, looks like the system currently at work in the US is equally bad by your analysis parameters.
in the US, nothing works, except for the 0.1% on the top...
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You really have no idea what 'communism' actually is, do you? It's not just an all purpose insult like 'poopyhead', words have actual meanings.
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I know exactly what communism is, and it is nothing like socialism. It is a system devoid of understanding the human condition when it comes to setting a system of rule. If you are a half-full person, communism is simply a gateway drug to authoritarian rule because it gives too few people too much control over others. Or, you can be half-empty and see where communism is simply a tool to get ordinary people to follow people who dream of authoritarian rule. In either case, communism is not to be followed. All
Modern Stadium Diplomacy (Score:3, Insightful)
A country that can barely function, has gone through several years of hyper inflation, is completely broke, has now surprisingly announced a space program... unsurprisingly with China. Stadium diplomacy was China's way of indebting 3rd world countries politically and economically to their cause, and this is just more of that ... in space. It hasn't worked out well for any of the countries involved stripping them of profit, resources, and political power.
The Venezuelan economy is just on verge of slowly recovering, coming out of a historic low point just 2 years ago. The outlook is still incredibly dire. GDP per capita is still the 3rd lowest point it's been in 50 years. There's lots of things that need to have money spent on it, but space is not one of them.
I'm going to take a guess that Poohbear will not be taking payment in Bolivars
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A country that can barely function, has gone through several years of hyper inflation, is completely broke, has now surprisingly announced a space program...
and whose fault would that be ?
(looking at that english speaking country up north that has a habit of fucking around with other countries internal politics
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Maybe countries should take responsibility for the state of their own government.
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maybe countries should stop fucking around with other countries internal affairs, for starters...
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and whose fault would that be ?
The government of that country, full stop.
And, before you start talking about sanctions, look up on *exactly* what those sanctions covered. Until Trump came into office, they were targeted against specific individuals involved with drug running and various human rights abuses. You can argue whether they were valid or not, but we were still buying billions of dollars of oil from Venezuela.
https://crsreports.congress.go... [congress.gov].
Forensics (Score:2)
I'm not seeing you provide any evidence to the contrary, so I assume you have none.
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I'm just saying it's time for the US to keep their coup manufacturers home and stop fucking around with the rest of the world.
Ukraine is going to be the latest of the US foreign policy failure, after a lot of them.
Armenia is going to be the next.
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I'm just saying it's time for the US to keep their coup manufacturers home and stop fucking around with the rest of the world.
I agree 100%. But that's not the case in Venezuela. Here's what happened, greatly simplified:
1. The government nationalized large swaths of industry
2. If you worked in one of those industries, and belonged to an opposition party, you were fired
3. Those positions were filled with friends and family of ruling party officials, whether or not they had any experience in said industry
All the skilled workers, whom were fired, then left Venezuela. There was no knowledge transfer. Ten years later and every major ind
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You can't deride them for turning to China when all the US has done is sanction them and wage a disastrous war on drugs. It's not like Western countries don't use debt as a tool either - look at Argentina.
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You can't deride them for turning to China when all the US has done is sanction them and wage a disastrous war on drugs.
China is waging a drug war too, against the USA. China provides the majority of all the illegal fentanyl that is shipped to the United States.
Becoming buddies with China because the USA is doing bad shit is like becoming buddies with a crocodile because you're afraid of gators. Your fear may be warranted, but that's still a bad decision.
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that's just opinion.
last I checked, china didn't go around making up coups and regime changes everywhere.
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that's just opinion. last I checked, china didn't go around making up coups and regime changes everywhere.
That is interesting. China supplies the Venezuelan regime with riot gear to suppress protests. Latin American countries rely on funds provided by exports to China and also borrow money from China leading to trade deficits and debt. This is the exact same practice China followed in Africa (Belt and Road Initiative), and when debtor nations can't pay, China ends up with a controlling interest in ports and railways, as well as the land. And then of course you have the Korean war and Vietnam. China may not have
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Maduro is sitting on one of the largest proven reserves for oil. Since nationalization it's capabilities in terms of oil production are falling apart, hence the tie with China. China is making key strategic moves to lock in reserves for its economic future. Giving away a seat on a spacecraft is cheap comparatively.
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it's capabilities in terms of oil production are falling apart
That wouldn't have anything to do with the (illegal) sanctions from the US which prohibit equipment companies from selling to Venezuela, of course. Nope, nothing to see here, move along.
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define "illegal."
Under the constitution, the laws of the US, and rulings by the courts in the US, it can bar trade with any nation. It's called export controls. Nothing else precludes the US from asking other countries to do the same.
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under international laws, the US are applying illegal blockades and unilateral sanctions by using their world domination as a tool.
it is time the US learn their place, they represent a tiny portion of the population, their current political clout over the planet is highly unwarranted.
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what place would that be?
So population equates to growth? power? clout? nukes?
Also, there are no "international laws" only agreements that nations have agreed to under various Treaties.
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of guidelines, norms, and standards usually forming the default behavior between states. Inter means between thus outside of territories thus absent of sovereignty, thus isn't a law at all and is rather a common practice between states - unless they wish otherwise due to their own reasoning.
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The Constitution says that treaties ratified by the US are the "supreme law of the land", unilateral sanctions are prohibited by several of them including the UN Charter.
"Asking". That's cute. If the government "asks" you to stop shopping at Walmart and threatens to blockade your home, confiscates your bank accounts and embargoes your business you might call it by a different name.
They're not going to be broke for long (Score:3)
Now Venezuel
China (Score:2)
" jointly announced by China and Russia in 2021"
Looks like China got the shit end of the stick on that one.
Oil from Venezuela (Score:5, Interesting)
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In the event of a hot war, 'oil fetishism' won't seem so poignant. It's still the lifeblood for most of humanity. Everything related to transport, ag machines, feedstocks for chemicals. The Axis in WWII was choked by lack of oil and things haven't gotten better in the near-80 years since.
But this Chinese move isn't related to that. They are interested in peacetime victories. Wartime is another animal.
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Only vulnerable in the sense that someone could decide to start World War 3 by blockading them.
Oil wars have been started over much less, e.g. in Iraq.
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Well, Iraq wanted to sell their oil in some other currencies than the USD. Sort of like what the Saudis are now doing, selling oil in RMB.
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So you think the US Navy is going to turn pirate?
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it is already doing so, when it intercepts iranian tankers heading to china in international waters.
Population control??? (Score:2)
From the second link in TFS: "Maduro’s pledge to send citizens to the moon comes as Venezuelans continue to flee the country on foot".
To me it sounds as though El Presidente wants to rid his country of citizens altogether. Unless the implication is that Maduro hopes to encourage citizens to stay in Venezuela by offering to send some of them to the Moon - but somehow that sounds counterproductive... ;-)
hmm, last paragraph (Score:2)
well, if the USA would stop fucking around with venezuela's internal politics, things would be probably better...
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the US fucking around with the rest of the world is the subject of an entire wikipedia page, you ignoramus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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We're so fucking evil that the border is crowded by South Americans desperate to come live with their abusers.
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Oh God no (Score:2)
Venezuela is also in talks with the United States exploring the possibility of lifting some U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in exchange for Maduro's promise to hold free and fair presidential elections next year.
Why does the US keep getting bamboozled over and over by BS like this? Does anyone believe this shit?
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nah, that's just fact (see human psychology 101)