So, no one really needs a recap of what transpired in Caracas on the third day of the new year.
Essentially, US forces carried out a surprise attack and raid in the Venezuelan capital and kidnapped the country’s president (and his wife), forcibly taking them to the US.
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio then gave a conference offering their mixed justifications for violating another nation’s sovereignty and breaking international law.
By the way, I wrote an article here in 2018 called ‘The End of International Law‘: explaining how and why the idea of international law was being deliberately eroded by various countries. It was to normalise open criminality in geopolitics.
So that things like this could happen more easily.
Naturally, the slimy professional politician Rubio was more considered in his performance: citing the claims of Maduro and Venezuela trafficking drugs into America and this therefore being part of the Trump administration’s war on drugs.
Trump, on the other hand, was more straightforward: it’s about that delicious, juicy Venezuelan oil.
We’ll come to other elements of this, like Israel and Iran, shortly too.
But the drug trafficking pretext, by the way, is obvious cover. Firstly, Trump literally just pardoned the man described as the biggest trafficker of drugs into America – former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was supposed to be serving 45 years in prison.
So, how this Trump administration can explain pardoning Hernandez on one day and then invading Venezuela and kidnapping Maduro for being a drug trafficker on another day… well, it’s as incongruous as everything else in this administration.
The raid in Caracas happened just two days after the former Honduran President was walked free.
You also can’t claim to be fighting a war against drug trafficking at all while simultaneously pardoning a man prosecuted for helping traffic some 400 tons of cocaine into the US over 18 years.
Not to mention that the CIA is one of the biggest drug trafficking cartels in history, particularly in South America.
So, no, the reality of what’s happening is fairly obvious. The US under Trump, Rubio and co (and actually Rubio seems to be the main idealogue here) is aggressively reasserting its control of Latin America.
Of course the US has controlled and bullied the countries in its Latin ‘sphere of influence’ for many decades, including via bloody coups and civil wars, propping up murderous right-wing dictatorships, hijacking natural resources, etc.
And then having the cognitive dissonance to complain about immigrants and asylum seekers coming to America from those places.
By the way, the aforementioned Honduran criminal that Trump just pardoned was only in power in Honduras in the first place because the US State Department under Hillary Clinton sponsored a bloody right-wing military coup in Honduras that removed its democratically elected leader from office.
In 2009, they literally kidnapped Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas in the middle of the night and forced him onto a plane out of the country. Sound familiar?
But the brazenness of this Venezuelan raid is broadcasting a clear message of who’s in charge and what the danger of disobedience is.
Even if the Trump administration doesn’t now go into the likes of Cuba, Mexico, Brazil or Colombia, it has effectively communicated that international law and normal rules don’t apply and that it is willing at any time to openly violate the sovereignty of what it views as lesser nations.
The fact that Trump, in his speech following the kidnapping of Maduro, didn’t even try to hide his interest in Venezuela’s oil reserves (“our oil”, he called it) demonstrates this new era of open, unapologetic and undisguised imperialism (as previously discussed here).
Meanwhile much of the media has chosen to take the predictable line of ‘well, he (Maduro) is a bad guy who was hurting his people’.
Which, regardless of whether this is true or not, is a complete red herring: it is in fact the same deflection tactic that was used to defend the overthrow of, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you opposed or questioned the Iraq War, you were met with ‘well, don’t you think Saddam is a Bad Guy and him being removed is a good thing?’
Which of course was an irrelevant question: it was never about whether Saddam was a nice person, but about whether the invasion was legal, whether we had any moral right to carry out regime change, whether the pretext for the invasion was based on false claims, and whether it was ever a good idea to do it or something that would have bad consequences.
The mantra that Maduro is a bad person is therefore really a tried and tested PR tactic to help justify the action.
Which again, isn’t me saying that he isn’t a bad person or shitty leader: just that it’s not the point.
Likewise, the focus on showing Venezuelans apparently applauding the US action and arrest of Maduro is deliberately misleading: reminiscent again of Western news media famously showing Iraqis celebrating the overthrow of the Iraqi regime.
First, there’s no sense whatsoever of the scale of the anti Maduro enthusiasts. Is it just a handful of people? What percentage of the overall population?
Also, most of the Venezuelans I’ve seen being spoken to by Western media aren’t in Venezuela but living abroad, so are naturally likely to have a very specific type of view.
And the reality also seems to be that the opposition figure championed by Western liberals as the correct alternative to Maduro (the Nobel Prize winning María Corina Machado) is even less popular in Venezuela than Maduro. This was even acknowledged by Trump himself in his rambling speech, which would be why the US isn’t trying to install a replacement government.
Also, the idea (cited by Trump in his conference) that the Venezuelan economy – and its oil industry – has been mismanaged into disaster because of the left-wing government and anti imperialist ideology is also blatantly overlooking the fact that the sanctions are obviously a massive factor in why things deteriorated in the country.
It’s the same model that was used on the likes of Libya and Iraq for years: crippling sanctions and boycotts to weaken the economy, the infrastructure and the state, and to thus engender internal unrest and dissatisfaction – paving the way for either eventual collapse, internal uprising, or a state too weakened to stand against external intervention.
The war on Venezuela has been going on for many years in various forms, long before the Trump administration. But it’s this current US regime that has forsaken any PR concerns or image management and decided to simply be openly and unapologetically Colonialist.
At least, we could argue, it’s more honest. Trump, Rubio and co, unlike their predecessors, are the truer face of American imperialist sensibilities.
Gaddafi wasn’t wrong when he said the global south should establish ‘SATO’ – a defense pact for smaller, developing nations against imperialism. He allegedly even discussed this concept with Chavez.
What all of this means going forward, not just for Venezuela but for Latin America and the Carribbean in general, remains to be seen.
The underlying infrastructure of US domination in Latin America has been in place for decades, spanning multiple Democrat and Republican administrations, but the Trump regime is brazenly attempting to throw its weight around all over the continent: in Argentina, for example, where it has championed and supported the unhinged right-wing Javier Millei, or Brazil, where a democratic government has only recently reemerged after years of a corporate/Washington backed coup that ultimately saw Washington and Tel-Aviv ally Jair Bolsonaro in power.
Speaking of Tel-Aviv, Israeli support for the US action in Venezuela has been suspiciously over-the-top. The raid in Caracas also came right after Netanyahu was in Washington.
Look up the ‘Isaac Accords’, by the way.
They’ve also all too eagerly suggested that the leaders in Iran should see what happened in Caracas and be worried.
They’re now claiming Iran and Hezbollah are involved in the Venezuelan regime.
For the record, much has been written about the US plot to oust and assassinate Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez in 2002 (which did remove Chavez from power for two days): the Bush administration was caught red-handed in a plot with the wealthy and upper middle classes of Venezuela. Chavez was kidnapped, held at an American military facility and Washington decided to immediately legitimise the coup.
I recommend reading Wall of Controversy’s excellent post on this subject here. As he reminds us, a 2003 documentary entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Televised provided insight into the American-orchestrated coup. What was fascinating in that instance was the the Irish filmmakers had been in Venezuela to make a documentary on Chavez – only to find themselves caught up in the turmoil of the coup attempt.
CIA head Mike Pompeo also seemed to have admitted in an interview that the US was engaged in a covert regime-change programme in Venezuela. And Trump had been telegraphing acting against Venezuela since his first term.
But not much has been said about the allegations of Israeli involvement in the 2002 operation.
Chavez in fact directly accused Israel of involvement multiple times. W.M. Peterson covers some of that in this article, also recalling that ‘During a nationally broadcast speech in June 2010, Chavez condemned Israel as a “terrorist and murderous state,” and affirmed that “Israel is financing the Venezuelan opposition. There are even groups of Israeli terrorists, of the Mossad, who are after me trying to kill me.”…’
Venezuela recognised a Palestinian state back in 2009, for the record.
Fox News also published a December 20th article claiming Maduro’s Venezuela had become “Hezbollah’s most important base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, strengthened by Iran’s growing footprint and the Maduro regime’s protection“. This was clearly media groundwork being laid.
Is this indicating imminent action, not in Cuba or Colombia, but in Iran? Trump has already said that if protesters are harmed by the regime in Tehran, the US will take action.
Sounds like a perfect set-up. A Libya 2.0.
Again, the hypocrisy is stunning. The treatment of protesters in the US itself has been nothing to celebrate lately.
Likewise, citing Maduro as a criminal when Trump himself has numerous criminal cases against himself. Not to mention that the Trump administration has repeatedly protected a formally declared war criminal named Netanyahu, even sanctioning international institutions on his behalf: Trump even called on the Israeli judiciary to drop all of its own cases against Netanyahu.
He has also called for the release of convicted criminal Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
So any notion that Maduro’s arrest is about punishing a criminal is laughable.
Again, coming back to the stated pretexts for the action in Venezuela. No, it’s obviously not about drug trafficking.
Funny how often overthrown leaders or regimes happen to be in oil-rich countries: Gaddafi and Saddam being obvious examples.
Venezuela has been marked ever since it nationalised its oil industry decades ago. When Iran nationalised its oil industry in the fifties under the democratically elected Mohamed Mosadegh, the CIA and MI6 staged a coup and installed a pro-Western puppet ruler.
When Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto moved towards nationalising resources and lessening American domination in the seventies, he quickly found himself in jail and eventually executed by the Pakistani military.
Those are just a couple of examples out of many.
The list goes on. When it comes down to it, lesser nations really don’t have the right to determine their own destiny: nor ultimately the right to their own resources.
If there’s one thing to commend Trump for, it’s that he’s at least far more honest about it than everyone else.
Let’s just think about the past couple of years… The West with Israel’s close assistance directly enabled a former al-Qaeda chief and ISIS second-in-command to become head of state in Syria and this Mr al-Jolani was then given a new name and welcomed to Washington. Still the ever-pliant MSM have next to nothing to say in condemnation of the installation of a literal headchopping terrorist dictator. Meanwhile, a short hop across an increasingly flimsy border, the West’s favourite racist genocidalist is being simultaneously enabled to pursue an indiscriminate bombing campaign followed by the deliberate starvation of an illegally imprisoned population to the point of committing a livestreamed holocaust. In response, he is afterwards given the right to occupy the territory he has ethnically cleansed, while the people fighting for their own survival are told they must give up their weapons or face total annihilation. All the while, the MSM deliberately downplays this holocaust and the international community mostly sits on its hands.
Now skip ahead to today. A completely peaceful country is assaulted by a hostile military force in order for its elected president to be kidnapped and renditioned on the basis of trumped up charges of drug trafficking that literally nobody above the age of ten actually believes happened (this includes the US Justice Dept which has already backtracked from its original indictment). Still the MSM plays along and the international community sits on its hands even when Trump admits its for the OIL. OIL! What more is there to say? Oh, that’s it… Maduro owns some automatic weapons and apparently that’s strictly illegal (in Venezuela guns are illegal unlike the United States?) But then, hold on a moment… the genocidalist-in-chief Bibi quite literally owns illegal nukes. That’s okay. It’s not something we talk about in polite conversation.
So I don’t know where to begin anymore without just ranting and swearing loudly. America is so rogue it really isn’t funny – it’s seriously scary – and yet mostly people play along. They buy into the lies because the truth is too painful. Instead we should all be on the streets. There should be mass industrial action – a general strike forever. But most people don’t even bother to write letters to The Times or their MPs. We suck it up – a great American expression.
Then there’s Israel. If we even talk about israel in the wrong way we now face arrest – in Britain, in Germany, in Switzerand, in Austria. So it’s all over. The western liberal order is done. It’s a complete fiction. There is no free world. There is only gangsterism. And now with Venezuela, the Rubicon was not just crossed but the bridge behind us has been entirely burned down. There’s no going back. Next stop Iran, most probably.
In short, the lunatics are fully in charge and anyone who still doesn’t see the writing on the wall has basically lost their own mind, if not their soul too. They are either delusional or in denial. Which is why I honestly don’t know where to begin anymore – but thank you for trying and thanks for the link as always. If you pray (I don’t), then please pray for sanity and peace, because finally there’s not much else we can do.
Jesus, I can feel your anger. Not an incorrect word in everything you’ve said though.