“Because rules for thee but not for me, isn’t a slogan anymore. It’s long established Imperial hypocrisy.” From Gerry Nolan at ronpaulinstitute.org:
Here we are watching the rules (for thee but not me) based order perform its favorite magic trick, of turning performative flexing of might into virtue by simply narrating it as law.
The United States has kidnapped Venezuela’s sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, via an operation carried out by Delta Forces and removed them from the country. The choreography matters. The message matters more: we can reach into your capital, take your head of state, and call it “justice.” But hey, we’ll own that it’s about oil and minerals in the next breath, so at least we are honest bandits
And the world is meant to accept it because the banner says narco-terror and the megaphone says freedom.
But strip the branding off and you’re left with something brutally simple: a doctrine of unilateral capture, the right claimed by one state to arrest another state’s leader by force, without a UN mandate, and without an authorization of war by any recognized international mechanism. This sets an extremely dangerous precedent and raises serious questions under the UN Charter.
And that’s the point isn’t it?
Because rules for thee but not for me, isn’t a slogan anymore. It’s long established Imperial hypocrisy.
For weeks, Washington has been tightening the maritime noose, seizing tankers, escalating interdictions, floating the language of blockade (armada) while insisting it’s something softer, something cleaner, something that doesn’t smell like an act of war. Yet international law is not fooled by euphemisms. A blockade is a blockade and blockade is specifically listed as a paradigmatic use of force in the legal logic of warfare.
Maduro turned himself in for the kabuki?
It will be used to justify the same thing in Iran with astroturf protesters?
Who will repay the billions in loans that CCP has paid to Venezuela?
Get to work, no shirking.