We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

[Cousin Strawberry]

China has officially volunteered to step in as peacekeepers

[Topper]

I'm serious Topper. I'd rather do nothing, watch people suffer than risk making their lives better.

[5thhorseman]

I'm serious Topper. I'd rather do nothing, watch people suffer than risk making their lives better.

Ukraine

[Tciso]

This was written by s friend, but it sums up how I feel.
...
One of the habits I try to cultivate is connecting dots that most people insist are unrelated. History rarely announces itself loudly at the beginning. It whispers first. The situation unfolding around Nicolás Maduro and Venezuela is not just a foreign policy curiosity. It is a case study, and one that Canadians would be foolish to ignore.

Canada and Venezuela share a fundamental similarity that should have guaranteed prosperity. Both are extraordinarily resource-rich countries. Oil, gas, minerals, land, and human capital. These are gifts most nations would kill for. Venezuela once had the highest standard of living in Latin America. Canada should, by any rational measure, be one of the most prosperous countries on Earth.

Venezuela chose a different path.

Under Maduro, Venezuela embraced a hard ideological turn toward socialism. Capitalist companies were chased out. Private investment was vilified. Markets were distorted, then dismantled. Productivity collapsed. Not because the resources disappeared, but because ideology replaced reality. The goal stopped being wealth creation and became political control.

The result is now well-documented. Scarcity replaced abundance. Inflation destroyed savings. Basic goods vanished. People fled by the millions. The state tightened its grip not to fix the damage, but to suppress dissent. When ideology fails, control always follows.

Now, let’s be clear. Canada is not Venezuela. Not yet. We are not killing zoo animals to survive, and anyone claiming we are on the brink of that level of collapse is overstating the case. But pretending there are no parallels is equally dishonest.

Over the past decade, under Liberal Party of Canada leadership and figures like Mark Carney, Canada has increasingly deprioritized productive resource development in favor of ideological governance. Pipelines blocked. Shipping constrained. Energy projects stalled or killed outright. Western Canada treated less as an engine of national prosperity and more as a political inconvenience.

At the same time, legislative energy has been redirected toward speech regulation, behavioral control, and ideological enforcement. Bills framed as protection often function as limitation. Not to improve productivity. Not to grow wealth. But to manage disagreement.

This is the quiet similarity with Venezuela. Not the severity, but the direction.

Socialism rarely announces itself as deprivation. It arrives dressed as compassion, safety, and fairness. Only later does it reveal its true cost. Less innovation. Less investment. Less incentive. Less freedom. Scarcity doesn’t arrive overnight. It creeps in while people argue about intentions instead of outcomes.

To understand where we are going, you must understand two things: history and human nature. History shows that societies that punish production and reward control eventually collapse under their own weight. Human nature tells us that power, once centralized, is rarely surrendered voluntarily.

Canada is drifting away from a prosperity mindset and toward a scarcity mindset. Away from capitalism, which creates wealth through voluntary exchange, and toward managerial governance, which believes society must be controlled for its own good.

Venezuela is not an accident. It is the logical endpoint of ideology overriding reality.

The hope, and it is still a real hope, is that Canada’s leaders have the humility and intelligence to look at Venezuela not as a moral lecture, but as a warning. A country with every advantage squandered by ideas that could not survive contact with human nature.

We do not need more control. We need more freedom. We do not need more ideology. We need more productivity. And we do not need to guess where this road leads. History has already shown us.

The question is whether we are willing to learn before scarcity becomes the lesson.

[rats19]

Well said… friend

[Tciso]

China has officially volunteered to step in as peacekeepers

Rotflmao.

Oh, wait. Did China really say that?

[donlever]

I think they want to spread the lube....

[JelloPuddingPop]

The way Trump went about this - just opens up the doors for other countries to do the same.

Goodbye Taiwan
End of any hope for Ukraine.

This only means bad things for Canada, Greenland and others.

Anyone who is happy about this, is missing the bigger picture.

[Topper]

Since Donny asked

Caracas lit up like Swiss nightclub.

Interesting, hear some call it the illegal kidnapping of a foreign head of state.

Fifty countries, including Canada, did not recognize Maduro as the head of state.

Not surprising is the NDP here in Canada is calling it an illegal act. The Liberals, in the statement from Foreign Minister Anand, are wishy washy. I believe they do not want this to be an issue. The leader of the opposition is married to a Venezuelan refugee who came to Canada with her parents to escape the Chavez/Maduro regime. It is a no win for the Liberals.

Canadian pipelines to the Pacific and Arctic coasts take on new meaning and urgency today.

When I was working in the Caribbean, Venezuela was a very hot area to explore for gold. the Kilometre 64 discovery was flavour of the moth for international gold exploration and stock promotion. I was working for one of the worlds largest mining companies and was barred from looking at anything in Venezuela because of the political risk. Weirdly though, the iron ore arm of the company was developing a major processing plant in Venezuela at the same time. Never did get an answer on that conundrum.

The natural resources story can not be down played. Venezuela has the largest reserves in the hemisphere and it is all light oil. Wonderful stuff. Then there are the mineral resources. There is a good reason that it was a very prosperous country for a very long time.

Many Caribbean countries had an economic agreement with Venezuela for cheap loans for oil. It was a way to spread their political influence in the generally poor area. Belize was a major benefactor, doubly so when oil was discovered in Belize and shipped to Venezuela for refining. I wonder what becomes of those debts.

A book I read years ago and may re-order to read again "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin follows the geopolitics and history of oil. Highly recommended.

An amazing invasion and seizure. I'm reading two hours to get in and out, taken alive. The US has come a long way from Grenada/Panama/Libya/Afghanistan.

and

The infrastructure surrounding the natural resources in Venezuela has been run into the ground. Chavez and Maduro never put a dime into maintenance or upgrades. It will be costly. We'll see how it gets divided up. I believe Chevron is the only company that didn't completely flee the country. I'm assuming it looks like some of the mines in Nicaragua I toured after the first fall of the Sandanistas and there was a brief opening of the economy. Resource industries were run as employment agencies.

I'll add, the Kilometre 64 development and area play was a dominant story on the TSX.V before nationalization. Several Canadian wholesale and retail investors took the hit. Petroleum was divided up among the big international players. Chevron and Exon were there, I don't know for certain, but I suspect BP was also there. Their assets were stolen in nationalization.

As noted, Maduro was not shy about spreading his petro dollar influence to seek favour from his 3rd world neighbours. It is no different than the two China game the third world plays when begging for foreign aid.

Is fith upset he only gets to watch people suffer in the Ukraine?

[Megaterio Llamas]

The Donroe Doctrine is activated



must watch https://x.com/JoshRainerGold/status/200 ... 18810?s=20

[Megaterio Llamas]

[Megaterio Llamas]

This was the Syria regime change playbook btw. They hollowed out the country with sanctions, then the CIA went in and paid off the military.

The S300 air defence system was turned off as helicopters flew around at low levels unmolested.

[Megaterio Llamas]

Meet the new Viceroy of New Grenada

[Topper]

This was the Syria regime change playbook btw. They hollowed out the country with sanctions, then the CIA went in and paid off the military.

The S300 air defence system was turned off as helicopters flew around at low levels unmolested.

and that is what hasn't been talked about. Maduro was nearly bankrupt. The petroleum industry was barely functioning and he forced to become a host for terrorists and a narco state to keep paying the military that kept him in power. He was desperate for cash.

[5thhorseman]

China has officially volunteered to step in as peacekeepers

Calling Trump's bluff about this being for the Venezuelen people, lol.

Also, China has invested tens of billions in Venezuela. You know they're not going to let that slide. Trump will have to give them their slice.