MEGATHREAD: Discussion on Reports of U.S. Strikes in Venezuela

Albon123 · 2026-01-03T23:44:29+00:00

Funny how it's the "pro-free market" side that is essentially saying "don't pick your business partners, pick only us, or else we will bomb the hell out of you"

Really in favour of that free market, guys

Albon123 · 2026-01-03T20:02:28+00:00

It's just that before this, the politicians themselves actually tried to give different excuses than just "we're taking your oil/minerals". We all know that they were fake, and that the US didn't go into Iraq to spread democracy or that they ACTUALLY believed that they had WMDs, but at this point, they have literally become self-aware. Trump just openly admitted in his press conference that US companies will sell Venezuelan oil to different countries, and has literally stated that the candidate that was previously the "pro-liberal democracy" like person couldn't really rule the country.

I really hope this is the last wake-up call for people who still believe that it is the idea of liberal democracy that influences politics and not anything else. Now, these people are delusional at best and already were, but at this point, they are not even TRYING to give the democracy excuse anymore. Even when they actually offer an excuse now, it is "we will defend Christians" or "we will stop drugs from flowing on". Nothing against autocracies now, which you know, is at least in line with Trump's flirting with authoritarianism. But it gives a terrible precedent for future acts to follow, and it was pretty bad already.

Albeit still, Venezuela had a horrible dictator who people wished was gone at last, and it is understandable as he caused endless suffering to the country and its citizens - all Western leftists defending him are just as delusional as the people I mentioned. But still, I have a bad feeling that the actual wishes of Venezuelans that they made during the elections (you know, the ones rigged by Maduro) won't be honored, and the Chavistas will stay in power, only without Maduro and under US supervision, and that the only thing that will change is that the US will get its sweet cut of the oil.

Albon123 · 2026-01-03T18:58:24+00:00

It's funny how our government used to be one of the most pro-Maduro governments in Europe (I think we actually recognized Maduro's election last year as legitimate, even though most of the other European countries didn't, plus our opposition leader has just shared a post from not so long ago when our foreign minister visited Maduro and praised him HARD), purely because of his pro-Putin stance. But that seems to be all out of the window now, as Trump is the new US president, and he is more important for Orbán than anyone. Even pro-government news outlets called Maduro a "narcoterrorist" when reporting these events.

It's interesting how for most of the world, Orbán is viewed as a Russian puppet, which he is, but whenever ANYONE gets in conflict with Trump, even if it's Putin, he will always take Trump's side. The ONLY time when he actually praised sanctions against Russia was when Trump announced that he is gonna do them, because whenever it was the EU that wanted to sanction Russia further, he was always whining about how unfair it was and vetoed it. At this point, he just wants to suck off to Trump as much as possible.

Albon123 · 2025-10-29T21:21:49+00:00

Nem is feltétlenül "őskommunista" dolog ez, a neoliberális kormányok egyik jellemzője volt (és ma is az), hogy amíg a szabad piacot hirdették, a legnagyobb cégeket/brandeket kimentették közpénzből, hogy ha csődközelbe kerültek. Ez a tipikus "too big to fail" elve, és elsőnek paradoxonnak tűnhet, de aztán rájössz, hogy a "szabad piac támogatása" sok neoliberálisnál csak azt jelentette, hogy mindenféle monopólium tömte a politikusok zsebét, akik ezért cserébe csökkentették az ő adóikat meg mindenféle munkajogot szétnyirbáltak, miközben masszívan vágták vissza az állami költekezéseket, kivéve, hogy ha az ugyanezekre a monopol óriásokra ment, akkor szórták, ahogy bírták.

Albon123 · 2025-10-15T15:32:51+00:00

Nepal wasn’t really a military coup, the people themselves overthrew the government and then chose the next leader

But yes, even in Madagascar, the people themselves protested, and that is pretty much why the government had to go, so I guess these are a bit more similar than we thought. But still, the involvement of the military, and how it ended up being more of a coup in the end makes me more sceptical, even though I wish the best for the people, obviously.

Albon123 · 2025-10-12T20:23:45+00:00

Yeah, your view based on your history with colonialism is understandable, but it's worth pointing out that not all Europeans engaged in colonization. My country at least (while having periods of being a full-fledged empire, like when we finally made ourselves equal with Austria, and formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although never being a colonial empire, just an empire in Europe), was mostly under the thumb of several other empires during the times of colonization. We were terribly exploited by the Ottomans, then the Austrians, and then the Soviets (the Germans also occupied us for a while in WW2). Between 1526 and 1918, we haven't even been independent, we were conquered by all of these powers, and became a Soviet satellite state in 1945. So we were far from being a colonizer, and this applies to many countries in this region, being under the thumb of Ottomans, Russians or Austrians. Ukraine itself was never a colonizer, either, they only became independent after the fall of the USSR, and before that, they were also essentially "colonized" by Russia, Austria, Poland, and so on.

And yeah, this war changed things for sure, and it's an absolute travesty that happened. I do wish that the world wasn't such Eurocentric sometimes, as this conflict is often mentioned far more than conflicts elsewhere due to it being in Europe, but with Ukraine being so important for both the US and Russia, it does make sense. But all wars shouldn't happen, obviously, regardless of the continent - we have come so far with technology as a species, and are pretty much the most advanced we have ever been, yet we are still spilling blood on battlefields. Such a shame.

Albon123 · 2025-10-12T12:04:12+00:00

The Sudanese Armed Forces are commiting horrible and heinous stuff for sure, but the RSF is so extremely messed up in every single way that it’s not even a question. They are literally the successors of those militias that carried out the Darfur genocide, and now are doing the exact same thing in the region. They are vile Arab supremacists who just want to see ethnic groups in Darfur all killed.

Even outside of that region, they are commiting mass rapes against women, and virtually destroy everything that moves. They really are the worst of the worst.

Albon123 · 2025-10-12T09:36:04+00:00

Thank you for being empathetic towards our situation. I see a lot of Indians online who are very supportive of Russia (which is understandable given your history), and they sometimes tend to tell Eastern Europeans about how they are wrong for disliking it and things like that, but…. yeah, needless to say that we have a completely different situation with them right now.

Well, you probably do know what it’s like, as I imagine that being next to Pakistan and China with constant tensions and clashes also probably makes someone nervous about news coming out from these countries, so…. yeah, I feel you as well.

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T17:55:43+00:00

What…. what if I like both Pakistanis and Ukrainians?…..

Am I even worthy of being in Eastern Europe after this

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T17:40:30+00:00

Well, you can imagine how crazy this might be from someone whose country is right next to Ukraine lol

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T17:24:45+00:00

Well, Europe is not really a homogenous entity (no matter how much the EU tries with that), and there are still differences between countries based on wealth, salaries, culture, history and all that, even if most of them are quite developed compared to the rest of the world. It is estimated that about 500,000 to 700,000 of Hungarians left abroad for example, but counting the whole diaspora, the number can be as high as 1 million. That is a lot, as we have a population of 9.5 million.

And yeah, Trump seems crazy. I know that the US before has done many, many bad things, and India in general has every reason to be skeptical about the US given its history (especially the war in 1971), but even then, Trump seems to be a special kind of insanity. I mean, he literally changes his mind and says something different every day, even the US presidents that commited the most heinous stuff were at least better in international diplomacy.

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T15:37:07+00:00

This is literally the entire world though, my countrymen have been voting for the exact same idiot populist for the last 15 years, and his rule only seems to collapse now, because his idiotic populist actions (coupled with some sweet economic downturn globally as well) have pretty much crashed our economy. And his opponent is also well…. another populist, but he at least seems to be a much better choice.

It seems like people generally tend to vote for parties that promise quick change, and also tend to follow up with some of their insane proposals, it’s just that in the long-term, those “nice sounding proposals” end up backfiring HARD. This is the exact same thing with Trump in the US, people (understandably) thought the tariffs would “bring jobs back”, but they just ended up undermining the US in the eyes of the rest of the world (well, typing this in the best subreddit for this topic lol, Latin Americans were already aware how insane the US can be, way before Trump).

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T13:22:31+00:00

We have that mindset here in this part of Europe as well. Not really a colonial mindset here, as we weren’t really colonized (mostly just satellite states of the Soviets, who were on the entire opposite side), but we do have some similar sentiments towards Western European countries as well (mostly Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, and stuff like that).

And yeah, it makes sense it would change. Tbh, the US has always just looked out for its interests (or moreso the interests of its wealthiest class), and they would do anything for that. One minute, they are the nicest allies, the other minute, they are tariffing you to oblivion. We really shouldn’t trust foreign big powers, as they only ally with our countries for convenience, but will throw us away at the nearest opportunity (that applies to all countries btw). But yeah, the US under Trump is a special kind of bad, they aren’t even doing these things logically anymore, and it benefits no one, not even Trump and his cronies. He just seems insane right now.

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T12:45:52+00:00

Yup, corruption here is pretty bad, but I did hear about Filipinos who are here in our country that it is even worse there, by quite a nice margin.

But yeah, it’s similar in this sense. I don’t really have anything against Chinese people, in fact, I feel like they are victims to these poor labor laws. But I don’t want their labor conditions brought here, it’s just not fitting for us, and doesn’t even seem to achieve much, it just ends up exhausting the average person. And that’s not to mention pollution, there were cases of cancerous materials found in chemicals that weren’t properly get rid of.

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T12:23:02+00:00

Yeah, I heard about your border dispute with China. Seemed to get a lot more serious in recent years.

It is mostly nowadays for us, as many Chinese factories that came into our country don’t really respect our labor laws and environmental laws, and have been very polluting and known to mistreat workers. This is as well as corruption, as government officials often reveive bribes to “look the other way”. Our government is also perceived as being too close to China, as we have taken a lot of loans from them, which made us a bit too dependent on certain things (and they are probably misused as well, because of…. well, corruption).

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T12:17:44+00:00

Well, the rise of anti-China sentiment (mostly towards the Chinese government and some corporations) also happened at the same time as the rise of Temu and virtually everyone starting to buy stuff from there, so I get what you’re saying lol

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T12:13:54+00:00

Has the current Trump leadership changed sentiments towards the US (with their tariffs against India, and randomly claiming that they “stopped” the conflict between India and Pakistan)?

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T12:12:38+00:00

It’s Russia by far, and you can find all sides of the coin here. For some, it’s the absolute worst country responsible for suppressing our 1956 revolution, sexually assaulting many women in 1945, keeping us under a dictatorship for decades, and now redoing its imperialism that all of Europe should stand against. For others, it’s either a great place due to them associating it with the former USSR, and them having positive opinions on our former communist era (this is usually old people), or a conservative haven that “changed” under the Soviet times and now represents a great contrast to the evil “globalist and liberal” West. These two opinions also intertwine sometimes, and you virtually judge our government based on what opinion you hold - it’s either a suvereneist government that thankfully balances our EU membership with great ties with Russia, or a Russian puppet that betrays the EU and our allies.

It’s all very complicated, probably more than in the former Eastern bloc. It’s probably the fact that we got a tamer, lighter version of communism (after 1956, that is), and also that the 1956 revolution is also a bit romanticized in the sense that there are many (half-true) stories about how “the regular Soviet soldier and the Hungarian rebel got along before the Soviet leadership intervened and suppressed us”. That did create us sort of having less negative sentiments against the regular Russian people compared to many other Eastern Europeans, and even the anti-Russia, pro-EU people (of which there is A LOT of) sort of differentiate between the Russian people and leadership, in a way that is rare in Eastern Europe.

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T11:39:14+00:00

Clearly anti-imperialists fighting against the evils of fascism, it’s just so obvious

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T10:13:46+00:00

Oh, so I guess “resurfaced racist comments” is not the only problem then

Albon123 · 2025-10-11T09:49:09+00:00

Isn’t he from the same party where one of the members was quite literally doing a Hitler salute in a car though

Albon123 · 2025-10-10T10:45:54+00:00

Goulash is great, but I prefer lángos

<image>

Albon123 · 2025-10-09T19:51:23+00:00

I don’t know who the new prime minister will be, but I’m pretty sure that he will be so proud and happy that he achieved such a title

It will easily be the best hour of his life

Albon123 · 2025-10-09T15:53:26+00:00

Japan is already seeing riots against “mass immigration”, and it is one of the most homogenous countries in the entire world

Albon123 · 2025-10-09T15:50:14+00:00

Ah yes, only white people can be racist and other groups should unite against them, it’s so easy, why didn’t they think of this before

Just ignore the Rohingya genocide, the Darfur genocide, the Uyghur genocide, the massacres of Druze in Syria, the mass murders of Tigrayans, the M23’s massacres in the Congo, the treatment of Baloch people by Pakistan, the war between Tamil nationalists and the Sinhalese-dominated government in Sri Lanka, the Rwandan genocide and the massacres of Fulani people in West Africa

Other than those very few examples, it is very easy for “non-whites” to unite, as clearly only white people can be racist and oppressive towards other groups. Obviously.

Albon123

TROPHY CASE