Did the US not used to require congress authorization before engaging in violent repression against other sovereign nations? Or is that not needed anymore? Seems it was a long time ago the US actually followed their own practices, was this capturing of Maduro basically Russia's "Special Operations" but somehow "actually good this time" or something like that?
Especially for the supposed capturing of a foreign leader. But maybe we did this with Gaddafi and Hussein, not sure what Congressional approval there was for those either. Apparently H.W. Bush also ordered the capture of Noriega for drug trafficking charges.
I'm tired of the US thinking that military forceful action is the way to resolve conflicts, especially the way to win the "war on drugs." We should be much more effective at reducing drug addiction if we realized that it's not so much about the drugs, it's about our growing culture of conflict and emotional avoidance. When a population lets itself feel sadness, feel pain, and reinterpret conflicts from the assumed "they don't care about me" to "they care more about me than I may ever realize," then I am willing to bet the drug industry will shrink significantly.
Punishing those who sell drugs often just perpetuates this idea that punishment resolves conflict, which I'm very willing to bet actually _increases_ our tendency to be addicted to drugs.
Every culture consumes drugs. There was a massive heroine consumption problem before WWI in the US, which was largely mitigated by making it illegal to sell it over-the-counter.
It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country, than solving the self-actualization issues (is it even one?) of your population.
People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
> It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country
So easy. Exactly why Sweden have had a "zero tolerance" policy against drugs, particularly Cannabis, yet usage keeps growing no matter how much resources they keep throwing at stricter border controls and trying to reduce both supply and demand by arresting everyone with even traces of Cannabinoids in their blood. https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/country-drug-reports...
> People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
You're making the argument for why these things should be sold in controlled circumstances, rather than by private individuals who don't care about anything else but themselves, yet you end with "is criminalized for a good reason". Completely opposite, you're making the argument for why it needs to be legalized.
There is a difference between "0 tolerance", which affects mainly users, and "no entry", which prevents the product to reach your border.
In the case of Sweden, it is mainly a symptom of non-european immigration, using their criminal networks to import the product. Netherland is dominated by Moroccan mafia, France by the Algerian mafia, and so on. Remigrating them would likely solve a big part of the problem.
> controlled selling
Yes, that's already the case in most countries: I can get opioids such as morphine in the case of surgical operation. Many ADHD teens get derivatives of amphetamines. No one is against this.
In practice they tend to substitute A with B, and B is often times even more destructive (black market fentanyl rather than medical opioids, or just inhalants).
It really depends on where you live and the repression. In France, drug dealers paint large ads on buildings, advertising coke and weed, flood telegram channels and so on. If alcohol and cigarettes sellers do it on a massive scale, why wouldn't other drug dealers do the same (if the conditions allow it).
Drug users can be found at every stage of the society, either because of psychological/genetic issues making them more prone to consume, or because it's a cultural thing to do it (e.g alcohol), or there is peer pressure leading to consumption. Your living conditions have little to do about it, really.
Perhaps, if our main goal is to simply reduce consumption of a specific drug. The problem I see is that problem avoidance finds other paths. Get rid of heroine? People will use marijuana. Marijuana gone? People use alcohol. Alcohol gone? People use video games.
I don't think the drugs are inherently the problem, as there's a paper I loved talking about different kinds of escapism: one where people escape to avoid problems and the second where people escape to solve problems.
So I still think the root is problem avoidance, which at an even more root level is emotional avoidance, especially of "bad" feelings, mostly sadness.
So I don't see it as self-actualization for some noble goal, but rather a practical how do I actually solve problems in my life goal.
tldr; banning certain drugs can be whack-a-mole, trying to solve symptoms but not the problem.
This is why it's more effective to focus on the most destructive drugs. Video games don't make you lose your teeth and become a burglar to buy the new CoD season pass (so far!).
If heroin were legal, in my current phase of life, I don't think I'd take it. I don't like even being drunk, and alcohol is very legal in most places I've lived.
But I dunno, I tend to say we should make it harder to get guns, so I want to reflect a little more on my double standard.
> People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
You don’t need any special tricks to keep someone buying fentanyl, the withdrawals are your sales pitch.
> It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country, than solving the self-actualization issues (is it even one?) of your population.
Stuff like this is hard to believe in 2025 without really compelling evidence.
I gave you an example. You have similar examples in the XXth century, such as post-war amphetamin consumption in Europe.
The reverse is also true: the crack epidemic was caused by a dramatic increase in the supply of cocaine, which allowed even the poorest members of society to afford it. It's happening again now in Europe.
We can discuss about the criminalization of users and its effects on society, but in the case of the sellers I don't really see a case, especially when you know the conditions in which drugs are produced, involving often borderline slavery and wide corruption networks.
Most organizations ignore their policies and stated missions and do whatever they were going to do anyway, then justify it after the fact (or when they get in trouble)
Most? I doubt that. Many? Yes. But because "many" can't avoid being hypocrites constantly, doesn't mean we suddenly should stop calling it out when we see it, don't you agree?
> I would say almost all organizations ignore their missions
There are countless of organizations who follow their stated missions even after 100, 200, 400 or even 800 years. I'm not sure you should judge it based on some young US organizations, or whatever you're going by.
> “Calling it out” is meaningless
Not calling it out is cowardice and complacency. "Calling it out" might have a tiny effect, but it surely beats nothing.
Post 9/11 US president is allowed to take action against terrorists without any approval(AUMF). Hence the months/years long messaging around "narcoterrorism" and it's links to venezuela. Not saying the drugs don't exist, but AUMF is selectively applied to say the least.
Now the real reason is that venezuela is a "hostile influence in the western hemisphere" both from a russia/china perspective as well as an energy security perspective so this was a matter of when not if (monroe doctrine and all that).
This is not the first time the US has intervened in LatAm, and it won't be the last. Being the sole influence in N and S america is a defining feature of america and all americans, and has been so since 1823.
The current US administration seemed to prefer isolationism (at least up until today), and seems hellbent on destroying the US economy. If they're successful in their goals, this might very well be the last SA intervention from the US for a very long time. Maybe they're aware of this, and this is some sort of dead-cat bounce or whatnot.
Isolationism will never become so strong that they limit influence to literally the country USA. If anything, they will refocus efforts on the americas, taiwan, rest of the pacific, away from the middle east and the indopac[1]. This means making sure japan, phillipines and taiwan are US allied, and of course that they are the sole influence in the Americas.
[1] which they have taken a lot of massive steps towards recently
That would require a functional economy though, which is why the US been able to do what they've been doing. Without it, I'm not sure how they're hoping to achieve this, but I'm guessing "oil" somehow is involved in the calculation, considering today's actions.
Ya, I find predictions for what would happen in that scenario extremely noisy. Tend to avoid them.
But I do believe that a lot of the US government posturing that if implemented would be bad for economy (which you are alluding to), will not actually happen. A massive revamp of the economy is what the majority voting bloc in the US wishes for, so the winning politician will have to keep signalling in that direction. But actually following through with it, be it in a way with positive or negative effect, is extremely difficult. So I don't pay much attention to it.
I keep seeing this comment regarding congressional authorization for war all over social media this morning, and am wondering why everyone seems to be aware of that, but not aware of the 80+ years of eroding those checks and balances and abandoning that precedent time and time again.
It's the 2020's, not 1920's. Congress hasn't declared war since WW2, and that hasn't stopped us from engaging the dozens of wars and armed conflicts we've been directly involved in since then.
To be clear, I'm not happy/proud of that fact. I think it's a moral and systemic failing, and do not support America's actions in Venezuela this morning. I'm just perplexed why everyone seems to think a precedent we abandonded long before most of us were even born suddenly applies today, or why they know about that law but don't know that we've violated it more times than we've observed it (without consequences), or don't know about the War Powers Act, or think that Congress would do anything but further enable him.
In short, why does everyone suddenly think that's relevant while also ignoring all the other relevant history that establishes we do not and have not observed that precedent in the modern era. Again, we *Should*, but did anyone honestly expect it to happen, or that congress wouldn't go along with it, or that the current POTUS would respect such law/precedent?
TL;DR: I don't think we should be going to war or engaging in armed conflict without congressional approval either, but the law and well established precedent both say POTUS legally has that power, at least in the short term, and we're not even 24hours into the 60 day period the War Powers act (which is 50 years old and passed by congress btw) grants.
I don't think the US Congress has declared war since Word War 2.
I would say this is the exact same thing we did with Manuel Noriega in 1988.
Personally, I hate that we do these things but it is certainly not impossible in the long run the lives of the Venezuelans will be improved.
It is hard to get an exact figure but inflation last year was 150-200% and that is an improvement from what they had. 50,000% hyperinflation at the end of the last decade.
Given I was just annoyed at my grocery bill an hour ago because of 3% inflation I really can't imagine what life is like with that level of inflation.
"The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-aligned Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war.[1]"
Korea was not a war. Vietnam was not a war. Iraq I and II were not wars. Afghanistan was not a war. The "War on Terror" was not a war. You could be forgiven for thinking this invasion of a sovereign foreign country is a war, but it's not a war according to any law that is likely to be enforced within the USA.
Power accumulates in places it shouldn't be permitted unless the people occasionally claw it back and redistribute it. Unfortunately, Americans failed to claw back the power to declare war from the POTUS almost a century ago. Trump's reasons for declaring not-war (cough Wag the dog. cough Epstein. cough) are more unprecedented than his methods in this particular case.
I'm confused why this isn't bigger news internationally.
Sure, it's the tip headline everywhere, but seems less emphasised than football world cup final results. More like, "Very large rain occured somewhere".
Trump, without even Congress' authority, never mind UN or any allied country consultation presumably, kidnaps a foreign president, "elected" likely fraudulently but still the head of his state, over accusations even more tenuous than WMD in Iraq.
What's next? Danish PM held hostage until Greenland is handed over? This seems like a really hostile move by the US, and the reaction seems to be, oh yeah, something's up.
there are many people who believe that punishment creates fear and fear creates compliance and compliance solves problems. So if someone in America believes this, then they probably think this will punish people for trafficking drugs (or disobeying US demands) and instill fear in them with regards to trafficking and will get them to stop trafficking drugs and therefore Americans will no longer be addicted to drugs.
The problem is that fear-based problem solving often just becomes problem avoidance. People become afraid to say there's a problem so it _looks_ as if the problem is solved, but the problem just becomes more buried and actually gets worse.
So, it might help Americans _think_ that the drug problem is solved, but not actually help us solve the drug problem. And I suppose when we push punishment, we're mostly pushing problem avoidance, and so it helps people Americans avoid problems more, so I guess it'd be successful in that.
That is an out of date question unfortunately. Now you just have to ask how it benefits the criminal oligarchy currently in charge of our country. Short term it gives them bread and circuses for their base. Longer term, oil wealth.
That’s a way of viewing it, but of course it assumes logical planning by reasonably bright individuals. So it’s begging the question somewhat.
Same as with Iraq. A more friendly regime that would be willing to let American companies extract its natural resources, and a proxy state used to coerce neighbors on behalf of the US.
I think even Bush would recognise it didn't really work out that way with Iraq, but hey, maybe this administration has unlocked the secret.
Years ago I had a cubicle right next to the supervisor's office. I noticed that he was having more closed-door meetings than usual, and mentioned it to my good friend who was also my boss. My boss did a good job not reacting, because she already knew a layoff was eminent but couldn't share that with me (I was not one of those let go.) Events like this can be surprisingly accurate indicators of something significant going on.
I had a manager years ago tell me to pay attention to the free soda / coffee. It costs them basically nothing. If they can’t pay that how are they going to pay your salary.
Wise words, years later I worked at a fancy place. All kinds of snacks and drinks and weekly lunches. One day we got moved off into a smaller, worse office. Our old Herman Miller chairs were missing and our nice fancy desks were replaced with bottom barrel IKEA furniture. The weekly lunch was cut. The snacks were scarce.
I got a new job within the month. By the following month the entire company went bankrupt.
> apparently two of them met for lunch, and the one who was left out pulled funding
Yeah, I could kind of understand that, somewhat. Big sign that they're planning on pushing you out anyways if they meet in secret without you to talk about the business, so better GTFO quick rather than try to force-staying.
My century-old fortune 50 workplace does not have free. Autodrip coffeemakers are provided, but the coffee isn’t free. Employees bring it in with a jar to collect “coffee club membership fees.”
A friend of mine used to say, "Companies that are about to go bankrupt start behaving strangely."
I always just nodded in agreement without really knowing what she meant.
A couple of years later, one morning, I noticed that the daycare my daughter attended had swapped the large iMac in their office for an old Dell monitor. I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Somewhat later, the soft wipes in the diaper-changing room were gone. There only were the cheap, sandpaper-like ones to be found.
Not long after that, they announced their bankruptcy, shortly after the piano had mysteriously disappeared, without any explanation.
There are like 10 of these surge pizza traffic posts from this account every month. And 99% of the time we don’t hear anything happening afterwards so I’m not sure how reliable it is
It’s kind of amazing that this is a weak point in the Pentagons’ opsec.
Like, surely they could afford to have their own pizza ovens installed .. or does all that cash really just need to be spent slaughtering innocents instead?
One bad anchovy batch and the world might be at peace for a while, hmm…
What my local secret service does is they rent various houses in a circle around their headquarters and order pizzas to them frequently. Mostly the pizzas are securely destroyed, but on days with large meetings they're transported from the houses to the headquarters via underground pneumatic tubes. I would have thought a similar DPS (Decentralised Pizza Strategy) would be employed in the US too, but I suppose they are not as tactically advanced in that area.
The US doesn't do a lot of pneumatic food delivery, and the main tunnel[1] is both inappropriately placed for pentagon activities and inappropriately configured for pizza. Maybe you could do calzones, but calzones don't make a good work meeting.
Knowing that massive pizza consumption is important to the functioning of the Pentagons’ minions means that there is a back door into the Pentagon via pizza.
It's probably not, if you sit on Twitter at all you'll see posts about Pentagon pizzas almost once a week. Maybe it does measure something about the Pentagon, but I doubt it's anything close to as precise a measure as folk like to believe.
That makes sense for the average unsuspecting Android user who keeps location on all the time. "Proper" Android is more or less spyware from Google, so this is not surprising. But Pentagon people keep their work/personal Android location on all the time?
Otherwise, for iPhones, can Google get real-time location data when someone is not actively using Google Maps?
The pizza report is very annoying to me. It’s a trivial thing for any interested party ( few thousand dollars) to sway up when they want to bring attention to an action the pentagon is doing, and has been such a measure for so long that it’s (in my opinion) ridiculous to still follow it as a source for actual activity. Maybe I should start manipulating it myself.
well, they definitely had an operation tonight to get maduros. maybe the pizza activity is more from the reporters and news crews tgat need to pull a late night shift?
I believe that state actors have put in the relatively low amount of effort to use android device farms to manipulate this statistic. I believe it hasn’t been relevant outside of seeing what the state wants to signal. I also believe individuals can do it as well, since it’s just phones reporting to google maps where they are. You see businesses in tourist cities that are dead empty with massive reviewbots and it showing as a ‘busy place’ as well.
As far as my quick twitter research goes there have been reports¹ to an attack before 2am EST (= 7am UTC). So, is this correlation actually useful or just a gimmick?
In the interests of national security might I humbly recommend that we open a pizza joint INSIDE the pentagon? It’s distressingly easy for our adversaries to identify when something big is going down.
How long would it take for someone to put that pizzeria on a map right inside of the pentagon?
Literally any adversary can put the place (call it "Pentagon Pizza" if they don't give it a name) on a map, and every time clueless DoD employees google it, there'll be a peak on a graph.
Out of 30k people working there, there has to be a bunch of new hires that don't understand how OSINT works, and they just weren't fired yet. I believe solving this problem without reducing staff is extremely hard.
> You can tell when shit is going down inside the pentagon cause they're working after hours and they order pizza from nearby places. Today the US is invading/destabilising: Venezuela
i wonder about pizza near Chinese MOD - it looks like Putin gets Ukraine in exchange for Trump getting Venezuela, and the next natural piece here is Xi getting Taiwan.
no way - this notion of "exchanges" isnt real, certainly i will never believe it.
why would the US 'play nice', when it can have its cake and eat it too? venezuela show of force, followed by imminent regime change in iran, ukraine will get more weapons, and china will continue getting surrounded via japan.
i think the people hoping to see some kind of change to the status-quo will be disappointed! pax americana alive and well.
well yes, but from todays events it seems that everybody elses military is degraded, if anything.
after being inundated with scenes of russian donkeys, ukranian 3d-printed drones, and hezbollah toyota machine-guns, this is a stark reminder of who the real, OG 'world policeman' is (and there is only one!)
ultimately its actions that matter, and the US can punch.
every dictator of every 3rd world nation is thinking super hard today about how much they really care about resisting 'US imperiaism' - indeed, whether their soldiers are even capable of preventing them from being abducted in a shock extraction by a vastly more organised and technologically superior US.
"Bro please just give me the Sudetenland. I swear bro just let me take the rest of Czechoslovakia and I'm done. It's my last territorial demand bro I promise. Just one more annexation and the Treaty of Versailles is fixed. Please bro it's just for the living space."
"Bro please just let me take Kyiv. I swear bro just one more special military operation and the security buffer is complete. It's not a war bro it's denazification. Just give me the Donbas and the land bridge and I'll be chill. One more mobilization and the multipolar world order is saved bro please."
"Bro please just acknowledge the Nine-Dash Line. I swear bro just let me have Taiwan and the great rejuvenation is complete. It's totally an internal matter bro. Just one more island chain and the century of humiliation is over. Please bro just let me cross the strait."
"Bro please just let me bring them freedom. I swear bro just one more regime change and the region is stable. It's about democracy bro it's not about the oil reserves I promise. Just let me install an interim president. Please bro just one more coup."
US going full terrorist/Russia at the same time is fun to watch.
A "military operation" in another country's territory (without declaring war, like a coward) and entering their capital is the same as ICC wanted military criminal Putin did to Ukraine.
Confirmed - strike on Venezuela and capture of Maduro. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/03/trump-us-operation-captured-...
Did the US not used to require congress authorization before engaging in violent repression against other sovereign nations? Or is that not needed anymore? Seems it was a long time ago the US actually followed their own practices, was this capturing of Maduro basically Russia's "Special Operations" but somehow "actually good this time" or something like that?
Especially for the supposed capturing of a foreign leader. But maybe we did this with Gaddafi and Hussein, not sure what Congressional approval there was for those either. Apparently H.W. Bush also ordered the capture of Noriega for drug trafficking charges.
I'm tired of the US thinking that military forceful action is the way to resolve conflicts, especially the way to win the "war on drugs." We should be much more effective at reducing drug addiction if we realized that it's not so much about the drugs, it's about our growing culture of conflict and emotional avoidance. When a population lets itself feel sadness, feel pain, and reinterpret conflicts from the assumed "they don't care about me" to "they care more about me than I may ever realize," then I am willing to bet the drug industry will shrink significantly.
Punishing those who sell drugs often just perpetuates this idea that punishment resolves conflict, which I'm very willing to bet actually _increases_ our tendency to be addicted to drugs.
Agreed, but this has nothing to do with drugs.
This whole thing is an oil grab. Simple as that.
It's not just oil, it's minerals too: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5642398-venezuela-...
Ok, but to be clear, its a capitalist oil grab to protect business interests and oligarchy.
People seem to conflate whats supposed to be separate in these realms
Like, when we talk about farmer subsidies, wedont call it food grab, when its functionally the same.
Shouldnt we just drop this american democracy facade for a hybrid corporatocracy with optional citizen input?
Anyway, oil grab suggests American government, rather than business interests, benefits.
Operation: Epstein Distraction is go.
Every culture consumes drugs. There was a massive heroine consumption problem before WWI in the US, which was largely mitigated by making it illegal to sell it over-the-counter.
It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country, than solving the self-actualization issues (is it even one?) of your population.
People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
> It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country
So easy. Exactly why Sweden have had a "zero tolerance" policy against drugs, particularly Cannabis, yet usage keeps growing no matter how much resources they keep throwing at stricter border controls and trying to reduce both supply and demand by arresting everyone with even traces of Cannabinoids in their blood. https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/country-drug-reports...
> People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
You're making the argument for why these things should be sold in controlled circumstances, rather than by private individuals who don't care about anything else but themselves, yet you end with "is criminalized for a good reason". Completely opposite, you're making the argument for why it needs to be legalized.
There is a difference between "0 tolerance", which affects mainly users, and "no entry", which prevents the product to reach your border.
In the case of Sweden, it is mainly a symptom of non-european immigration, using their criminal networks to import the product. Netherland is dominated by Moroccan mafia, France by the Algerian mafia, and so on. Remigrating them would likely solve a big part of the problem.
> controlled selling
Yes, that's already the case in most countries: I can get opioids such as morphine in the case of surgical operation. Many ADHD teens get derivatives of amphetamines. No one is against this.
OTBE, if you reduce supply, prices tend to increase. So although you're getting less of the stuff in, you're equally incentivised as a criminal.
OTOH, if demand drops, that's real money out of traffickers pockets. They sell less, and at lower prices.
If you reduce supply, less product is consumed by society, which is the intended effect.
You have to think as a person who does drugs though. You want to get high, and product A is not available, what do you do?
You're not solving any problems, you're moving them around. What's the point?
They will consume less product A as a result. If product A is highly destructive/addictive (e.g, crack), it's a win.
In practice they tend to substitute A with B, and B is often times even more destructive (black market fentanyl rather than medical opioids, or just inhalants).
People selling drugs bit is not true. No one gets addicted bc the sellers. They get addicted because of the conditions of their own lives.
With the exception of medicinally. Like lost op painkillers. But that’s different than what you’re saying.
It really depends on where you live and the repression. In France, drug dealers paint large ads on buildings, advertising coke and weed, flood telegram channels and so on. If alcohol and cigarettes sellers do it on a massive scale, why wouldn't other drug dealers do the same (if the conditions allow it).
Drug users can be found at every stage of the society, either because of psychological/genetic issues making them more prone to consume, or because it's a cultural thing to do it (e.g alcohol), or there is peer pressure leading to consumption. Your living conditions have little to do about it, really.
Perhaps, if our main goal is to simply reduce consumption of a specific drug. The problem I see is that problem avoidance finds other paths. Get rid of heroine? People will use marijuana. Marijuana gone? People use alcohol. Alcohol gone? People use video games.
I don't think the drugs are inherently the problem, as there's a paper I loved talking about different kinds of escapism: one where people escape to avoid problems and the second where people escape to solve problems.
So I still think the root is problem avoidance, which at an even more root level is emotional avoidance, especially of "bad" feelings, mostly sadness.
So I don't see it as self-actualization for some noble goal, but rather a practical how do I actually solve problems in my life goal.
tldr; banning certain drugs can be whack-a-mole, trying to solve symptoms but not the problem.
This is why it's more effective to focus on the most destructive drugs. Video games don't make you lose your teeth and become a burglar to buy the new CoD season pass (so far!).
If heroin were legal, in my current phase of life, I don't think I'd take it. I don't like even being drunk, and alcohol is very legal in most places I've lived.
But I dunno, I tend to say we should make it harder to get guns, so I want to reflect a little more on my double standard.
> People selling drugs such as fentanyl or cocaine have various techniques to hook consumers and keep them addicted regardless of their mental state. Selling hard drugs is criminalized for a good reason.
You don’t need any special tricks to keep someone buying fentanyl, the withdrawals are your sales pitch.
Drug dealers often text ex-users proposing free products to get back their lost client, for instance.
> It's far easier to reduce consumption by cutting the supply entering your country, than solving the self-actualization issues (is it even one?) of your population.
Stuff like this is hard to believe in 2025 without really compelling evidence.
I gave you an example. You have similar examples in the XXth century, such as post-war amphetamin consumption in Europe.
The reverse is also true: the crack epidemic was caused by a dramatic increase in the supply of cocaine, which allowed even the poorest members of society to afford it. It's happening again now in Europe.
We can discuss about the criminalization of users and its effects on society, but in the case of the sellers I don't really see a case, especially when you know the conditions in which drugs are produced, involving often borderline slavery and wide corruption networks.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 allows the president 60 days to engage in conflicts without Congress express' approval.
Most organizations ignore their policies and stated missions and do whatever they were going to do anyway, then justify it after the fact (or when they get in trouble)
> Most organizations
Most? I doubt that. Many? Yes. But because "many" can't avoid being hypocrites constantly, doesn't mean we suddenly should stop calling it out when we see it, don't you agree?
I would say almost all organizations ignore their missions and operate orthogonal to their stated policies, after 100 years or so
“Calling it out” is meaningless
> I would say almost all organizations ignore their missions
There are countless of organizations who follow their stated missions even after 100, 200, 400 or even 800 years. I'm not sure you should judge it based on some young US organizations, or whatever you're going by.
> “Calling it out” is meaningless
Not calling it out is cowardice and complacency. "Calling it out" might have a tiny effect, but it surely beats nothing.
Post 9/11 US president is allowed to take action against terrorists without any approval(AUMF). Hence the months/years long messaging around "narcoterrorism" and it's links to venezuela. Not saying the drugs don't exist, but AUMF is selectively applied to say the least.
Now the real reason is that venezuela is a "hostile influence in the western hemisphere" both from a russia/china perspective as well as an energy security perspective so this was a matter of when not if (monroe doctrine and all that).
This is not the first time the US has intervened in LatAm, and it won't be the last. Being the sole influence in N and S america is a defining feature of america and all americans, and has been so since 1823.
> and it won't be the last
The current US administration seemed to prefer isolationism (at least up until today), and seems hellbent on destroying the US economy. If they're successful in their goals, this might very well be the last SA intervention from the US for a very long time. Maybe they're aware of this, and this is some sort of dead-cat bounce or whatnot.
> The current US administration seemed to prefer isolationism (at least up until today)
This is an interesting claim, what did you see to suggest this?
The tariffs are not isolationist, they are leverage held over trading partners used to coerce them.
Isolationism will never become so strong that they limit influence to literally the country USA. If anything, they will refocus efforts on the americas, taiwan, rest of the pacific, away from the middle east and the indopac[1]. This means making sure japan, phillipines and taiwan are US allied, and of course that they are the sole influence in the Americas.
[1] which they have taken a lot of massive steps towards recently
That would require a functional economy though, which is why the US been able to do what they've been doing. Without it, I'm not sure how they're hoping to achieve this, but I'm guessing "oil" somehow is involved in the calculation, considering today's actions.
Ya, I find predictions for what would happen in that scenario extremely noisy. Tend to avoid them.
But I do believe that a lot of the US government posturing that if implemented would be bad for economy (which you are alluding to), will not actually happen. A massive revamp of the economy is what the majority voting bloc in the US wishes for, so the winning politician will have to keep signalling in that direction. But actually following through with it, be it in a way with positive or negative effect, is extremely difficult. So I don't pay much attention to it.
I keep seeing this comment regarding congressional authorization for war all over social media this morning, and am wondering why everyone seems to be aware of that, but not aware of the 80+ years of eroding those checks and balances and abandoning that precedent time and time again.
It's the 2020's, not 1920's. Congress hasn't declared war since WW2, and that hasn't stopped us from engaging the dozens of wars and armed conflicts we've been directly involved in since then.
To be clear, I'm not happy/proud of that fact. I think it's a moral and systemic failing, and do not support America's actions in Venezuela this morning. I'm just perplexed why everyone seems to think a precedent we abandonded long before most of us were even born suddenly applies today, or why they know about that law but don't know that we've violated it more times than we've observed it (without consequences), or don't know about the War Powers Act, or think that Congress would do anything but further enable him.
In short, why does everyone suddenly think that's relevant while also ignoring all the other relevant history that establishes we do not and have not observed that precedent in the modern era. Again, we *Should*, but did anyone honestly expect it to happen, or that congress wouldn't go along with it, or that the current POTUS would respect such law/precedent?
TL;DR: I don't think we should be going to war or engaging in armed conflict without congressional approval either, but the law and well established precedent both say POTUS legally has that power, at least in the short term, and we're not even 24hours into the 60 day period the War Powers act (which is 50 years old and passed by congress btw) grants.
Your legal concerns are covered here in detail: https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt...
I don't think the US Congress has declared war since Word War 2.
I would say this is the exact same thing we did with Manuel Noriega in 1988.
Personally, I hate that we do these things but it is certainly not impossible in the long run the lives of the Venezuelans will be improved.
It is hard to get an exact figure but inflation last year was 150-200% and that is an improvement from what they had. 50,000% hyperinflation at the end of the last decade.
Given I was just annoyed at my grocery bill an hour ago because of 3% inflation I really can't imagine what life is like with that level of inflation.
The last declared war was in 1942 against Romania and Bulgaria, IIRC.
"The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-aligned Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war.[1]"
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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...
Korea was not a war. Vietnam was not a war. Iraq I and II were not wars. Afghanistan was not a war. The "War on Terror" was not a war. You could be forgiven for thinking this invasion of a sovereign foreign country is a war, but it's not a war according to any law that is likely to be enforced within the USA.
Power accumulates in places it shouldn't be permitted unless the people occasionally claw it back and redistribute it. Unfortunately, Americans failed to claw back the power to declare war from the POTUS almost a century ago. Trump's reasons for declaring not-war (cough Wag the dog. cough Epstein. cough) are more unprecedented than his methods in this particular case.
Senate Armed Services committee didn't even know.
hes a king... why would they need to know?
I'm confused why this isn't bigger news internationally.
Sure, it's the tip headline everywhere, but seems less emphasised than football world cup final results. More like, "Very large rain occured somewhere".
Trump, without even Congress' authority, never mind UN or any allied country consultation presumably, kidnaps a foreign president, "elected" likely fraudulently but still the head of his state, over accusations even more tenuous than WMD in Iraq.
What's next? Danish PM held hostage until Greenland is handed over? This seems like a really hostile move by the US, and the reaction seems to be, oh yeah, something's up.
I don't get it. How's this help america?
there are many people who believe that punishment creates fear and fear creates compliance and compliance solves problems. So if someone in America believes this, then they probably think this will punish people for trafficking drugs (or disobeying US demands) and instill fear in them with regards to trafficking and will get them to stop trafficking drugs and therefore Americans will no longer be addicted to drugs.
The problem is that fear-based problem solving often just becomes problem avoidance. People become afraid to say there's a problem so it _looks_ as if the problem is solved, but the problem just becomes more buried and actually gets worse.
So, it might help Americans _think_ that the drug problem is solved, but not actually help us solve the drug problem. And I suppose when we push punishment, we're mostly pushing problem avoidance, and so it helps people Americans avoid problems more, so I guess it'd be successful in that.
Oil.
That is an out of date question unfortunately. Now you just have to ask how it benefits the criminal oligarchy currently in charge of our country. Short term it gives them bread and circuses for their base. Longer term, oil wealth.
That’s a way of viewing it, but of course it assumes logical planning by reasonably bright individuals. So it’s begging the question somewhat.
> Short term it gives them bread and circuses for their base
And a nice distraction from the Epstein files.
Same as with Iraq. A more friendly regime that would be willing to let American companies extract its natural resources, and a proxy state used to coerce neighbors on behalf of the US.
I think even Bush would recognise it didn't really work out that way with Iraq, but hey, maybe this administration has unlocked the secret.
It is just Trump trying to distract from the Epstein files.
Years ago I had a cubicle right next to the supervisor's office. I noticed that he was having more closed-door meetings than usual, and mentioned it to my good friend who was also my boss. My boss did a good job not reacting, because she already knew a layoff was eminent but couldn't share that with me (I was not one of those let go.) Events like this can be surprisingly accurate indicators of something significant going on.
I had a manager years ago tell me to pay attention to the free soda / coffee. It costs them basically nothing. If they can’t pay that how are they going to pay your salary.
Wise words, years later I worked at a fancy place. All kinds of snacks and drinks and weekly lunches. One day we got moved off into a smaller, worse office. Our old Herman Miller chairs were missing and our nice fancy desks were replaced with bottom barrel IKEA furniture. The weekly lunch was cut. The snacks were scarce.
I got a new job within the month. By the following month the entire company went bankrupt.
I was at a company that tried its best to keep those free things going all the way until the end.
(The company only went under because of an investor tiff, apparently two of them met for lunch, and the one who was left out pulled funding)
> apparently two of them met for lunch, and the one who was left out pulled funding
Yeah, I could kind of understand that, somewhat. Big sign that they're planning on pushing you out anyways if they meet in secret without you to talk about the business, so better GTFO quick rather than try to force-staying.
Sometimes the opposite is true.
My century-old fortune 50 workplace does not have free. Autodrip coffeemakers are provided, but the coffee isn’t free. Employees bring it in with a jar to collect “coffee club membership fees.”
A friend of mine used to say, "Companies that are about to go bankrupt start behaving strangely." I always just nodded in agreement without really knowing what she meant.
A couple of years later, one morning, I noticed that the daycare my daughter attended had swapped the large iMac in their office for an old Dell monitor. I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Somewhat later, the soft wipes in the diaper-changing room were gone. There only were the cheap, sandpaper-like ones to be found.
Not long after that, they announced their bankruptcy, shortly after the piano had mysteriously disappeared, without any explanation.
Now I know what "strange behavior" looks like.
There are like 10 of these surge pizza traffic posts from this account every month. And 99% of the time we don’t hear anything happening afterwards so I’m not sure how reliable it is
Very high false positive rate, but low false negative rate.
How could there even be a false negative?
There was an event without and increase of pizza orders I guess?
You could say the same by claiming something will happen every hour.
not a false flag this time. maduros is gone after 13 years.
i understand im just saying that the other 99% of the time this signal leads to nowhere so i would not pay attention to it
It’s kind of amazing that this is a weak point in the Pentagons’ opsec.
Like, surely they could afford to have their own pizza ovens installed .. or does all that cash really just need to be spent slaughtering innocents instead?
One bad anchovy batch and the world might be at peace for a while, hmm…
What my local secret service does is they rent various houses in a circle around their headquarters and order pizzas to them frequently. Mostly the pizzas are securely destroyed, but on days with large meetings they're transported from the houses to the headquarters via underground pneumatic tubes. I would have thought a similar DPS (Decentralised Pizza Strategy) would be employed in the US too, but I suppose they are not as tactically advanced in that area.
The US doesn't do a lot of pneumatic food delivery, and the main tunnel[1] is both inappropriately placed for pentagon activities and inappropriately configured for pizza. Maybe you could do calzones, but calzones don't make a good work meeting.
[1] https://www.wikibin.org/articles/alameda-weehawken-tunnel.ht...
Cannelloni would be a better fit for the tubes.
You lost me at calzones. That is one way to poison an otherwise perfectly good tactic.
When everyone knows it it's no longer a weak point. They can fake this signal too.
Also what are you going to do about it? Knowing how much pizzas they ate didn't prevent Maduro from being captured.
Knowing that massive pizza consumption is important to the functioning of the Pentagons’ minions means that there is a back door into the Pentagon via pizza.
Weaponized anchovies, you know…
However, it would only work once. After that, you’ll get a lethal injection because they traced the anchovies back to you.
But if they would have payed attention that something is about to happen now, he could have fled to a safe place.
It could have been action against any number of countries or people.
Russia, Iran, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, etc.
It's probably not, if you sit on Twitter at all you'll see posts about Pentagon pizzas almost once a week. Maybe it does measure something about the Pentagon, but I doubt it's anything close to as precise a measure as folk like to believe.
In house catering is usually subject to strict cost controls.
Hard to motivate people to work late with minimum bidder pizza.
It feels like not a lot of information is leaked though, we can tell something is likely happening, but never what.
> One bad anchovy batch and the world might be at peace for a while, hmm…
If what you're proposing did happen, there would be a huge power vacuum, not peace.
They probably don't care. By the time the pizza signal was out, the operation is over and the dude was captured.
Or they could just throw pizza parties every once in a while at random.
Make the signal have too many false positives to be worthwhile.
How does Google gather foot traffic data?
I assume from cell phone location?
Then I have more questions...
That makes sense for the average unsuspecting Android user who keeps location on all the time. "Proper" Android is more or less spyware from Google, so this is not surprising. But Pentagon people keep their work/personal Android location on all the time?
Otherwise, for iPhones, can Google get real-time location data when someone is not actively using Google Maps?
Via fediverse, for those not on x: https://bird.makeup/users/penpizzareport/statuses/2007347706...
This is just an embedded X post, with a link to X (actually twitter.com) instead of an image.
Viewable without logging in to x though, and shareable on fediverse
Thank you.
The pizza report is very annoying to me. It’s a trivial thing for any interested party ( few thousand dollars) to sway up when they want to bring attention to an action the pentagon is doing, and has been such a measure for so long that it’s (in my opinion) ridiculous to still follow it as a source for actual activity. Maybe I should start manipulating it myself.
well, they definitely had an operation tonight to get maduros. maybe the pizza activity is more from the reporters and news crews tgat need to pull a late night shift?
I believe that state actors have put in the relatively low amount of effort to use android device farms to manipulate this statistic. I believe it hasn’t been relevant outside of seeing what the state wants to signal. I also believe individuals can do it as well, since it’s just phones reporting to google maps where they are. You see businesses in tourist cities that are dead empty with massive reviewbots and it showing as a ‘busy place’ as well.
As far as my quick twitter research goes there have been reports¹ to an attack before 2am EST (= 7am UTC). So, is this correlation actually useful or just a gimmick?
1: https://xcancel.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/2007338360017498269 (6:28am UTC = 1:28am EST)
In the interests of national security might I humbly recommend that we open a pizza joint INSIDE the pentagon? It’s distressingly easy for our adversaries to identify when something big is going down.
How long would it take for someone to put that pizzeria on a map right inside of the pentagon?
Literally any adversary can put the place (call it "Pentagon Pizza" if they don't give it a name) on a map, and every time clueless DoD employees google it, there'll be a peak on a graph.
Out of 30k people working there, there has to be a bunch of new hires that don't understand how OSINT works, and they just weren't fired yet. I believe solving this problem without reducing staff is extremely hard.
Venezuela, duh.
Coup in Venezuela needs more Pepperoni.
mirror: https://nitter.net/penpizzareport
Strike on Venezuela?
There was one, yes. And supposedly Maduro has been taken hostage by American forces and flown out of Venezuela.
They should be buying pizzas at a constant rate to obscure the signal.
> What's the context here ?
> You can tell when shit is going down inside the pentagon cause they're working after hours and they order pizza from nearby places. Today the US is invading/destabilising: Venezuela
There are other establishments they track...
Freddies Beach Bar, the closest gay bar to the Pentagon is reporting below average traffic.
The nearby sports bar, Crystal City Sports Pub is reporting below average traffic.
The closest open Papa Johns is reporting slightly above average traffic.
Man, if people are even ordering from Papa John’s, you know things must be bad.
i wonder about pizza near Chinese MOD - it looks like Putin gets Ukraine in exchange for Trump getting Venezuela, and the next natural piece here is Xi getting Taiwan.
no way - this notion of "exchanges" isnt real, certainly i will never believe it.
why would the US 'play nice', when it can have its cake and eat it too? venezuela show of force, followed by imminent regime change in iran, ukraine will get more weapons, and china will continue getting surrounded via japan.
i think the people hoping to see some kind of change to the status-quo will be disappointed! pax americana alive and well.
Until the chain of incompetence slowly gets replaced top down by bootlickers and the military degrades over the years.
well yes, but from todays events it seems that everybody elses military is degraded, if anything.
after being inundated with scenes of russian donkeys, ukranian 3d-printed drones, and hezbollah toyota machine-guns, this is a stark reminder of who the real, OG 'world policeman' is (and there is only one!)
ultimately its actions that matter, and the US can punch.
every dictator of every 3rd world nation is thinking super hard today about how much they really care about resisting 'US imperiaism' - indeed, whether their soldiers are even capable of preventing them from being abducted in a shock extraction by a vastly more organised and technologically superior US.
We're talking in different timeframes
And then we have peace :)
"Bro please just give me the Sudetenland. I swear bro just let me take the rest of Czechoslovakia and I'm done. It's my last territorial demand bro I promise. Just one more annexation and the Treaty of Versailles is fixed. Please bro it's just for the living space."
"Bro please just let me take Kyiv. I swear bro just one more special military operation and the security buffer is complete. It's not a war bro it's denazification. Just give me the Donbas and the land bridge and I'll be chill. One more mobilization and the multipolar world order is saved bro please."
"Bro please just acknowledge the Nine-Dash Line. I swear bro just let me have Taiwan and the great rejuvenation is complete. It's totally an internal matter bro. Just one more island chain and the century of humiliation is over. Please bro just let me cross the strait."
"Bro please just let me bring them freedom. I swear bro just one more regime change and the region is stable. It's about democracy bro it's not about the oil reserves I promise. Just let me install an interim president. Please bro just one more coup."
Yes. Or as Chamberlain put it, "There will be peace in our time."
Venezuela?
US going full terrorist/Russia at the same time is fun to watch.
A "military operation" in another country's territory (without declaring war, like a coward) and entering their capital is the same as ICC wanted military criminal Putin did to Ukraine.