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Showing posts with label US Imperialism invades Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Imperialism invades Venezuela. Show all posts
Tribune ☭ Written by Jeremy Corbyn.

  • Keir Starmer’s evasiveness towards Donald Trump’s assault on Venezuela is a clarifying example of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ of unthinking submission to the White House’s interests.

In 2003, thousands of us took to the streets to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq. ‘We shall help Iraq move towards democracy’, Tony Blair told us. Perhaps he shared speech notes with George W. Bush, who promised a better future for the Iraqi people. ‘When the dictator has departed’, the President said, ‘they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.’

Ignoring the warnings of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, and bypassing any approval from the United Nations, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, and set off a spiral of hatred, conflict and misery that is still spinning today.

This was the last time a Labour Prime Minister blindly backed the wishes of the United States and its warmongering President. Twenty-three years later, another Labour Prime Minister is doing his best to cement the UK’s status as a vassal of the United States. On Saturday, the United States launched an unprovoked attack on Venezuela, killing more than 40 people. Our Prime Minister’s response? ‘The UK has long supported a transition of power.’

Unlike Iraq, the UK says it is not involved in the bombing of Venezuela. Like Iraq, however, the UK is proving once again that it has no interest in standing up for international law. It’s really not that complicated: bombing a sovereign nation and abducting its head of state is illegal. It is absolutely staggering that a Prime Minister with a background in law cannot bring himself to say something so obvious.

Continue @ Tribune.

Starmer’s Passivity On Venezuela Is Cowardice

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 1-January-2026.

Photo: G.O.L. Bag of coca leaves Catatumbo, Colombia 2006

Petro earned a worldwide fame for challenging the powerful with his speeches on Palestine, climate change and also changes to the drug prohibitionist paradigm. He became famous for his speeches against Trump. He challenged the US government to imprison him and put on him one of the infamous orange uniforms of Guantanamo and other lugubrious places in the US penal gulag. He challenged the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to put the orange pyjama on him, to try it, if he dared.[1] He compares himself to the slain president of Chile, Salvador Allende, murdered in a coup d’etat orchestrated by the CIA and he has publicly stated that they want to kill him.[2] He raises his hand with that pencil that he uses to draw attention and point to the path we have to go along as if it were Harry Potter’s wand. Some psychologist can explain that pencil to us and his talk of being on the same level as Allende.

But this has little to do with reality. Petro is not willing to die in his post. That discourse is reserved for public meetings, not for diplomacy and less still for state policy. As with many, though not all the militants of the former guerrilla group M-19, Petro is above all pragmatic, particularly when it has to do with his own welfare. There are those who like to say that the M-19 people were studious, they read, they were cultured, in a nutshell they were cadres unlike the majority of the other groups. It is true, that they were cultured and studied, but all that remains of that is their sense of smell, they can sense personal advantage and the gravy train at a distance. So, Petro will not sacrifice himself and even less so will the M-19 functionaries in his government. A lot of anti-imperialist talk, but when it comes to it, they come down on the side of those they believe will win. And in the case of Venezuela, rightly or wrongly Petro believes Trump will win.

In response to the right-wing journalist Patricia Janiot who took him to task for describing Kast, the president elect of Chile as a Nazi and never having called Maduro a dictator, Petro replied stating that Kast was the child of a Nazi who arrived after the second world war and that Maduro was a dictator but not a drug trafficker.[3] It was another step to put some distance between him and Maduro, as the first step was the decision not to attend Maduro’s swearing in ceremony as president. Now he highlights that he does not agree with the reasons given by Trump, but he does believe that Maduro should resign his presidency. He stated Venezuela needed a democratic revolution and a transitional government and furthermore offered to receive Maduro, a clear signal that even if the Venezuelans voted for Maduro, Petro believes he should step down from the government.[4] Another step from he who will not die at his post, to tell Trump that if he wants to take out Maduro well don’t lump me together with him, at least not in the same coffin.

In recent declarations he took another step in relation to Venezuela, regarding possible and actual attacks against the country by the US. According to Petro, nobody is to blame other than the ELN. In twisted declarations he said that the land attack carried out by Trump in Venezuela was in reality an attack on the ELN and a centre for processing their cocaine and that the ELN was to blame for allowing an invasion of Venezuela.[5] There is something worth clarifying. Up till 2016 when the FARC signed their peace agreement, they were according to the press, the Colombian government and various NGOs the main drug traffickers in the world, the largest cartel the world had ever seen. After signing the agreement, overnight, the ELN miraculously became the main cartel. The FARC lent themselves to that myth, as did their unarmed political militants, many of whom are functionaries in Petro’s government without ever acknowledging their militancy in the former guerrilla group and they continue their fight with the ELN guerrilla group. At least this time they are not shooting at the ELN and trying to liquidate another guerrilla group. This time they have left the task to the Colombian state and Trump, just like the NGOs who used to preach about peace, fought against fumigation and did not accept the narcoticised discourse about the Colombian armed conflict. This time they are part of the government.

Petro said the ELN was to blame for Trump killing Colombian citizens in the Pacific and the Caribbean. But he changed a key element. He accepted that they weren’t fishermen. He said that they weren’t transporting cocaine but rather cannabis. How he knows this, we do not know and given his deliriums on the issue, maybe he doesn’t know either.

According to the president, many of the boats attacked with missiles in anti-drugs operations - including seizures carried out by Colombia or with international support – were not carrying cocaine, but rather cannabis, a substance that “is legal in many parts of the US”.

Petro contended that by keeping cannabis illegal in Colombia, Congress had made a mistake and warned that that decision “has cost the lives of many humble boatmen”.

On that basis, Petro directly called into question President Donald Trump in stating that “he is totally wrong”, as he said that the cocaine going to Europe is leaving in submarines and containers, whilst “cannabis is being illegitimately attacked”.[6]

Once more Petro has shown his complete ignorance on the issue of drugs. It would seem he is advised by first year sociology students destined to fail the course, or he smokes a lot of what he criticises. No serious analyst on the issue would state what Petro said.

Yes, it is true that the recreational use of cannabis is legal in various US states, but at a federal level it is illegal. Furthermore, any substance covered by the Single Convention of 1961 cannot cross international borders without the backing of the INCB (International Narcotics Control Board). The international trade in medicinal heroin and cocaine has always been allowed and in recent years medicinal cannabis in some countries. Whilst some states in the US and countries like Uruguay allow the controlled sale of cannabis for recreational use, its international trade is not permitted. Only trade in medicinal use substances is allowed and in the USA there are no medicinal uses for cannabis at a federal level.

It is just not true that if the Colombian Congress had legalised recreational cannabis that would have resulted in a significant change in the attitude of the US. Firstly, at a federal level, the sale of recreational cannabis is not permitted and this causes problems for the sellers themselves in Colorado when they try to put their legal profits into the banking system. They have to resort to strategies more akin to drug trafficking and operate cash only businesses.[7] The legislation which would allow the cannabis sellers to access the federal banking system has not been passed.

Moreover, even in the case of the legal sale of controlled substances, its international sale is severely regulated and everything that takes place outside of that is drug trafficking. That is what the Colombian law, covered by international treaties says, as Colombia ratified the Single Convention a long time ago. It is also a gross stupidity to think that if Colombia had legalised cannabis that Trump would not have attacked the boats.

Additionally, if those boats were carrying cannabis, where were they going? Nobody says those boats were capable of travelling thousands of kilometres to the US. Are they fishermen or cannabis traffickers? Petro’s discourse makes no sense. He stated that:

With the increase in coca leaf crops in Latin America in response to a growing demand in Europe, the price of cocaine has collapsed. Cannabis and illegal gold are now more profitable than cocaine. It is time for substitution.[8]

When he started his presidency, he said the same of fentanyl. The reports from the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) say the exact opposite. Cannabis has always been the most consumed drug in the world, but the UNODC says that market that has most increased is the cocaine market. With both drugs the price has decreased slightly in the last decade but the purity of the cocaine and the potency of cannabis have increased. In the case of cannabis it has almost doubled and the purity of cocaine has increased by 34%.[9] Once again, Petro makes it up. His delirious statements on drugs would make anyone doubt themselves and ask whether he made those statements under the influence of the same drugs.

But there is another aspect, that the USA is practically self-sufficient in Cannabis for the illegal market. More nonsense from Petro, but one that is very dangerous because he is telling Trump that the boats were carrying illegal drugs. In the hippy parties of M-19 cannabis might be well thought of, but in the US legal system it is just as illegal as cocaine.

When Petro says that if they had legalised cannabis, something which should be done, Trump would not have attacked the boats, he lies to us, he deceives us. Trafficking in recreational cannabis is not permitted in the USA. The countries that tolerate or have legalised recreational use do not allow for its international sale.

The ELN is not to blame for the attacks in Venezuela. Petro’s discourse on drugs continues to be incoherent and in the context of the murder of Colombians on the high seas it is dangerous.

So much talk about his anti-imperialism, dying at his post, that they want to kill or imprison him and he ends up doing a favour to Trump by giving him excuses to attack Venezuela. And it turns out that the supposed laboratory in Maracaibo doesn’t exist and there isn’t even a report of an attack in the area.[10] All just to bow down to Trump hoping that he lifts the sanctions imposed on Petro. He has neither pride nor dignity and he is willing to sacrifice Maduro and Venezuela to save his own skin.

References

[1] El Nacional (23/11/2025) Petro envía contundente mensaje a Marco Rubio: “Si me va a meter preso, a ver si puede: si me quiere poner el piyama naranja, inténtelo”.

[2] Publimetro (23/09/2025) “Por esto me quieren matar”: Petro dice que es por hablar del narcotráfico y de Gaza. 

[3] El Tiempo (17/12/2025) Presidente Gustavo Petro llama ‘dictador’ a Nicolás Maduro, pero dice que ‘no hay evidencia de que sea narcotraficante’ como afirma Estados Unidos.

[4] CNN (11/12/2025) Colombia recibiría a Maduro si sale de Venezuela para una transición en el poder, dice el Gobierno de Petro. 

[5] W Radio (30/12/2025) Petro confirm que EE.UU. bombardeó fábrica y acusó al ELN de permitir una “invasion”. José David Rodríguez.

[6] Ibíd.,

[7] US Congress (2023) Marijuana Banking: Legal Issues and the SAFE(R) Banking Acts. 

[8] W Radio op. cit.

[9] EUDA (2025) European Drug Report 2025: Trends and Developments. h

[10] El País (31/12/2025) Petro señala que el ELN fue blanco de un ataque de Trump en Venezuela: “Tememos que mezclan la pasta de coca para hacerla cocaína. Camila Osorio. 

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

Venezuela 🪶 Petro On His Knees To Trump

Craig Murray ★ The mainstream media covered Venezuela non-stop yesterday. 

They many times mentioned Delcy Rodríguez, Vice President, because Trump stated she is now in charge. They never mentioned that 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the torture to death of her father, socialist activist Jorge Rodríguez, by the CIA-backed security services of the US-aligned Pérez regime in Venezuela.

That would of course spoil the evil communists versus nice democrats narrative that is being forced down everybody’s throats.

Nor did they mention that the elected governments of Hugo Chávez reduced extreme poverty by over 70%, reduced poverty by 50%, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number receiving a state pension and achieved 100% literacy. Chávez took Venezuela from the most unequal society for wealth distribution in Latin America to the most equal.

Nor have they mentioned that María Corina Machado is from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families, which dominated the electricity and steel industries before nationalisation, and that her backers are the very families that were behind those CIA-controlled murderous regimes.

Economic sanctions imposed by the West – and another thing they have not mentioned is that the UK has confiscated over £2 billion of the Venezuelan government’s assets – have made it difficult for the Maduro government to do much more than shore up the gains of the Chávez years.

Continue @ Craig Murray.

Venezuela And Truth

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On 3rd January 2026 Unites States President, Donald Trump, Commander in Chief of the US armed forces, ordered the illegal bombing of the South American country Venezuela. 

US forces then proceeded to, at the point of a gun, kidnap the oil rich county’s president, Nicolas Maduro, taking him back to the US for a show trial. This illegal act by Trump did not force the same protests and outrages from Western leaders as Russian President, Vladimir Putins, invasion of his neighbour Ukraine. In fact what Trump has done has semi-legitimised the Russian invasion of Ukraine because Putin can now reasonably claim; just as you dictate what goes on in your backyard, so do we in ours! 

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 the USA has considered Central and Southern America within their sphere of influence but this is the first time they have kidnapped a country’s leader. By the same token since the fall of the Soviet Union Russia can equally claim Ukraine to be within its orbit and therefore the same rule of influence must apply. Whether this assumption is right or wrong is not the topic here but Trump's actions in Venezuela have given Putin the rationale he needs to justify his invasion and demands of Ukraine. If anything Putin may have had more justification than Trump for his actions against his neighbour which is a matter of conjecture. 

Donald Trump, a man not known for his honesty, claimed, with absolutely no evidence, the Venezuelan leader was involved in the drugs trade and therefore his arrest was legitimate. Trump also claimed the former trade union leader and head of the Venezuelan Socialist Party is/was not the legitimate leader of the country and therefore he had to be removed. Madura’s political ideology is an antithesis to Trump and for this reason, among others, he has been illegally and forcibly removed from office and taken to a US kangaroo court. We only have Trump's less than reliable word for this allegation what in all likelihood could be a false claim. The real reason for this violation of Venezuela is because the country is rich in oil. Western sycophant leaders like Britain’s Keir Starmer are lining up to find words which can justify Trump's actions so they do not have to take action, sanctions for example, if they dare, against the US tyrant.

Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact he wants to annex his neighbour Canada to the north and most of the Americas to the south of the US. In this - what could be described as a bastardisation of the Monroe Doctrine - has Trump laid the first brick in his plans to occupy the whole of the Americas? If this turns out to be the case - and the early signs are not good - what will the reactions of larger South American countries like Argentina and Brazil be? Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has already told Trump Canada will not become the “51st state of the USA” earlier in 2025 when Trump was sabre rattling about such an eventuality. Now Trump is threatening Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with military invasion, claiming it is important to US ‘national security’ for Greenland to be governed by the USA. Once again this is make-believe stuff of comics. What the US Brigand really means is the ‘country is wealthy in minerals we want’. US security is presently guaranteed as they already have military bases in Greenland. Denmark and therefore Greenland are members of NATO and such an invasion by the USA, the leading NATO member without whom the alliance is virtually toothless, would no doubt split and possibly end the Atlantic Alliance. Article five of NATO’s constitution states, “if one member is attacked all other members come to help.” The six-million-dollar question is: will article five apply if the US invade Greenland? Just as Venezuelan sovereignty has, for the time being, gone so too would that of Greenland, and by virtue of that the sovereignty of Denmark would be eroded. On 6th January in a statement:

the leaders of France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Denmark, and Greenland said Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland and only them to decide on politics concerning Greenland. (Irish Daily Mirror 7th January). 

Trump has already indicated he does not care what Europe think: it shall be him who decides the future of Greenland! This is very similar to Adolf Hitler's attitude towards Britain and France after he had taken the Sudetenland - an area of Czechoslovakia - with the blessing of Britain, France, and Italy: and proceeded without care to take the whole country. Is Trump another Hitler?

Many Western leaders have claimed, wrongly in my opinion, that Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is only the start of his take over in Eastern Europe. I do not believe this to have been the case. But the actions of Trump and his threats to other sovereign nation states certainly may give Putin ideas in such a direction! With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ongoing war British Prime Minister Starmer and his like-minded European leaders like French President, Emmanuel Macron, have gathered what they call the “coalition of the willing” to provide if necessary “boots on the ground” to guarantee Ukraine’s security once the conflict with Russia comes to an end. They have spent billions and billions in aid to Ukraine and have supplied much military hardware. 

The question now is to Starmer and his supposed “coalition”: will you provide the same arms and money to Venezuela to fight the US as you have to Ukraine to fight Russia? It is exactly the same principle of violation which Trump has done to that of Putin or do such rules only apply to Russia? Starmer has refused to call Trumps actions illegal in ‘international law’ probably because he knows to do so would stir the wrath of the US tyrant! Even the far-right leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, a friend of Trump, has said the US actions are “probably in breach of international law”. Starmer is a sycophant to Trump who must be laughing his balls off at the British leader. In fact all the Western European heads at their dithering over what to say or do about his actions and future threats. Just as the world stood still when Hitler invaded the Rhineland in 1936, then Austria in 1938, Czechoslovakia in 1939 and finally Poland again in 1939. Are they going to do the same again with Trump?

Donald Trump is, according to him, going to run Venezuela allowing “US oil companies” to administer the oil industry in the country. This again will be an act of theft no different in principle to housebreaking just on a far larger scale. Once again, such an act will be in breach of international law which in reality does not exist. If Trump does this and takes over the administration of Venezuela as a corporate business in effect he will have made his first move towards open fascism. Corporatism is an integral part of fascist governance (something the electorate in Britain should consider before voting for Reform UK as Farage wants to run the country as a business) and is a dangerous slide back into the darkest years of global history. Another major question is perhaps: will the US dictator invade any other country which disagrees with his far-right ideology, including Britain? The US already have around 10,000 fully active troops based in Britian so all they would have to do is take over British Army barracks while more US forces arrive!

In an act of piracy on 7th January 2026, the US boarded and seized the Russian flagged tanker, Marinera, in the Atlantic about 400 miles off the coast of Ireland. This act by the United States Corsair is once again an illegal action as piracy is a crime and has been for centuries. The US aircraft had to fly over Twenty-Six County airspace to carry out this deed. The question to be asked is did they have the permission of the administration in Leinster House for this incursion? When Twenty-Six County Minister for Foreign affairs, Helen McEntee, was asked this question she fudged and avoided answering. We can probably take that as a no, they did not have permission. In which case the sovereignty and neutrality of another small country had been violated by the United States. 

Another prudent question is: how will Putin react to this Russian flagged tanker being seized by the USA? Remember Vladimir Putin has the largest nuclear arsenal of any single country on earth! In a statement Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated “the UK helped the US in seizing the tanker”. If this assistance was voluntary then the so-called UK are complicit in breaking the fabled international law. What we should be asking is; did the “UK help” the US or, roughly translated, were they ordered to do so by the leading NATO country? Did Trump get on to Starmer and tell him this is what is going to happen and you will help us? Maybe being bullied by the US is part of Britain's “special relationship” with the United States!

With Donald Trump now doing whatever the fuck he likes where will it end? The European sycophants are doing their level best to justify the US dictator’s actions in typical grovelling fashion. Will Trump invade Greenland signalling a crisis within NATO? Or to avoid such a crisis and dilemma will the other alliance countries find a way of dumping Greenland and, in effect, Denmark possibly claiming NATOs article five only applies to actions by countries not in the alliance? 

The outcome of these US actions will end in tears for somebody with Venezuela and President Madura being the first victims. Columbia are now voicing concerns about their future, fearing a possible US invasion! The rest of the world might sit back and tell themselves in a couple of years Trump will have gone, voted out! Well, do not bank on that because this tyrant is not above, as did Hitler in Nazi Germany, cancelling elections in the USA under the guise of protecting their national security. Do not be surprised and will the world still sit idly by? Probably. They have never moved against the USA in the past why should this be any different?
 
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Donald Trump 🪶Thief, Kidnapper, Corsair!

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Eight Hundred And Fifty

Barry Gilheany ✍ It was the most audaciously illegal act ever in US foreign policy. 

In the dead of the night on 3rd January 2026, US forces captured or kidnapped (depending on one’s point of view) President Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela and his wife from their residence in Caracas and flew them to New York - where, in the theatre of performative power and humiliation that we have witnessed in human traffic in the opposite direction namely the deportation of supposedly illegal Latino immigrants and falsely branded criminals to El Salvador’s notorious supermax - to face charges of narcotics supply to the US. 

The overthrow of uncompliant governments in Latin America at the instigation of US agencies is, of course, hardly a rare event in a region where America has always presumed the right to do as it likes to uphold its strategic interests. But this was no half-baked attempt to overthrow a regime using native proxies like the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; no coup with a ready mean moustachioed military dictator like Pinochet; no long drawn out insurgency such as the Contra guerrilla campaign against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s; no transformative blueprint for the reordering of an entire region by democratisation and free markets such as the Project for a New American Century which provided the intellectual ballast for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. No, it was the decapitation of the figure head while the regime continues its repression of the Venezuela population. In an inversion of the language of anti-war movements of the West, “it was all about oil” as Trump made abundantly clear while it was most certainly not about “democracy” which was the message delivered by Trump’s disavowal of any role in any future dispensation for Maria Corina Machado, the leading light of the democratic opposition and winner of the Noble Laureate which Trump so craves while he indicates his desire to cut a deal with the technocratic Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez to ensure US control of Venezuelan oil reserves. No colour revolutions on Trump’s watch.

And there will be no colour revolutions, televised or otherwise, because despite the apparent ideological chasm between Trump and the Chavismo regime that Maduro represented, both belong to the loose but interconnected conglomerate of authoritarian leaders that Anne Applebaum describes as Autocracy Inc. Unlike military regimes and ideological alliances from the past and contemporary hybrid or “illiberal” democracies like Hungary, Turkey or India, this group operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, cemented not by ideology but instead by a ruthless, single-minded determination to keep their personal privilege and wealth.[1]

Applebaum lists the strongmen leaders of the following countries (at the time of writing): Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan and maybe three dozen others who share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to repel any attempts at transparency or accountability, and to strike out at anyone, at home or abroad, who has the courage to challenge them. The leaders of Autocracy Inc also share a brutally pragmatic approach to wealth. They often maintain opulent residences and structure much of their collaboration as for-profit ventures. Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are moulded not through ideals but through deals – deals designed to ameliorate the effects of sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich.[2] Although the name of the country that he leads is not listed in the above rogues gallery of autocracies, the modus operandi of their mutual collaboration also belong to the toolkit of President Donald Trump. His transactional view of the world, of personal and international relations and his brazen and signal approach towards self-enrichment puts the United States into that club.

Not a few of those autocracies on that list were initially birthed through popular revolutionary or national liberation struggles such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola and, most pertinently for this article, Venezuela. For as much as the events of January 3, 2026, are so emblematic of raw American power, they can also be seen as the long-term culmination of a revolution betrayed.

President Hugo Chavez arrived in office in 1998 after a strident campaign for change in the Republic of Venezuela which had been established forty years earlier. Formerly a wealthy, stable democracy, Venezuela had, as is the typical developmental pattern in many oil states, become nepotistic and corrupt with bribery of politicians and kickbacks being given to their friends. With the fall in oil prices in the 1990s, the resultant anger created the conditions for the revolutionary ferment that brought Chavez, a lieutenant-colonel in the Venezuelan army who had led an abortive coup d’etat in 1992, to power in a democratic election in 1998 on a promise to create a more honest Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. A year later, the new Venezuelan president held a meeting with an old comrade in struggle Jesus Urdenta, his chief of internal police. Urdenta brought to Chavez evidence of corrupt practices in the new, supposedly revolutionary government. He informed him that several top officials in the new government were padding invoices for government contracts, including the printing contract for Chavez’s new constitution. Urdenta urged Chavez to bring an end to such behaviour. After an initial silence, Chavez asked for Urdenta’s resignation and Venuezela’s Supreme Court quashed any investigation into corruption.[3]

So, Chavez made a choice, one which would prove in the long term to be fatal for the legitimacy of the revolution and the Bolivarian Republic. Had he sided with his old comrade and established an expectation of probity in the public sector, then it would have provided a solid ethical and democratic foundations for the undoubtedly popular social programmes that he did institute. But, in an attempt to keep himself in power in perpetuity, he made the calculation that corrupt officials would prove more malleable than clean ones and he was proved right to the long-term detriment of his revolution and his country.[4]

For in the years that followed, cronies of Chavez would support the president’s drive to eliminate any mode of accountability and transparency, both because doing so maintained their stay in power and protected them from scrutiny. Like other budding autocrats like Putin, Orban and Erdogan, Chavez gradually but steadily denuded democratic institutions in Venezuela of autonomy – the press, the courts, the civil service, various regulators, and ombudspersons – even while proclaiming his belief in democracy. His supporters went along with that too and, over time, the state began to act like a criminal enterprise.[5]

And what a gravy train grew for the officials who partook in the skimming off of the Bolivarian Republic’s resources. During the fourteen years Chavez held power, Venezuela took in nearly $800 billion in oil-export revenues, much of which did indeed finance the state welfare programmes which made Chavez such a poster boy for Western leftists like Jeremy Corbyn, erstwhile leader of the British Labour Party. But hundreds of billions of dollars from PDVSA, the state oil company, as well as other Venezuelan state companies, ended up in bank accounts around the world. In 2017. Investigators found that PDVSA officials had been hiding millions of stolen dollars at the Portuguese bank, Banco Espirito Santo. A 2021 investigation revealed that Swiss banks were hiding $10 billion on behalf of officials at Venezuelan state banks, electrical utilities, and other entities. In that same year, journalists uncovered a $2 billion Venezuelan oil company that had been processed through banks in the principality of Andorra.[6]

But graft pervaded the totality of Chavismo society with one of its most important agents being the industry of currency exchange manipulation, created by the state’s byzantine system of multiple currency prices. The beneficiaries of this “democratisation of kleptocracy” included students who gamed the allowance for cheap dollars meant for overseas studies either to profit from the artificial exchange rates abroad or by paying unscrupulous schools to produce paperwork suggesting that they had studied abroad which meant that cheap dollars could be swapped on the black market for many more Venezuelan bolivars than it had cost to buy them, creating for the student “a nice little earner” of a few thousands of dollars in profit. But there were far greater and more egregious players in on this scamocracy who exploited their connections to work out how to claim tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to import spare parts, medical supplies, telecoms equipment, chemicals, computers. If Venezuela needed to import anything, then someone would be generating the false paper trails and making discreet payoffs, just to unlock access to cheap currency. [7]

Behind the allure and bluster of Chavismo propaganda lay an economy and society so weakened by corruption and gross incompetence that it was peculiarly exposed to the effects of turbulence, internally and externally. The cash behemoth that was the oil industry was the first to suffer the shocks that undid the Bolivarian revolution. In 2002-3, Chavez detonated chaos in the industry by sacking 19,000 oil workers for going on strike and replaced experts with regime loyalists. Later, the decline of commodity prices and the imposition of sanctions on the PDVSA by the first Trump administration accelerated the collapse. Almost simultaneously, Venezuela began to experience critical scarcities of everything due to the currency exchange scams. Billions (or maybe tens of billions) of state funds had disappeared into the proverbial black hole, the country’s foreign currency had been siphoned into private offshore accounts, hyperinflation accelerated, and imported goods disappeared.[8]

People without dollars faced hunger and malnutrition if not outright starvation. The Catholic Charity Caritas estimated in 2019 that 78 percent of Venezuelans ate less than they used to, and 41 percent went whole days without eating. Doctors in Venezuelan hospitals faced pressure not to list malnutrition as either a cause of illness or death.[9] Even the most basic commodities disappeared from shelves including, most excruciatingly embarrassing (if such emotions could be held by such uber-kleptocrats) toilet paper.

The death knell for the Bolivarian revolution turned kleptocracy with a faux left tinge should have been sounded by the death of Chavez in 2013 and his replacement by the uncharismatic party functionary Nicholas Maduro. Venezuelans knew the truth of the hollowed-out revolution and the regime it brought to power; corruption seeped from its pores. The accession of Maduro to power ushered in a series of popular, Arab Spring demonstrations across the country and it seemed that the days of the regime were well and truly numbered. However, as Anne Applebaum describes, this was the moment that the regime called in favours from Autocracy Inc.

As well as the common ur garden means of revenue raising by rogue regimes such as drug trafficking, illegal mining, kidnapping, extortion and gasoline smuggling, the Maduro regime was able to find friends and trading partners among other sanctioned states and companies happy to engage in corruption. Russian companies such as Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil and TNK-BP (a joint Russian-British venture, at their own behest or at the request of the state, filled the gaps left by departing European, North American and South American firms frightened by the instability and risk, to put money into Venezuelan oil, agriculture and even manufacturing. In addition to subsidised grain exports replacing those previously from Canada and the US and gasoline (the only gasoline available in Venezuela), Moscow supplied Caracas with some $4 billion of arms and armaments, including 100,000 Kalashnikovs, 24 fighter jets, and 50 helicopters to be used in the recurring bouts of repression that characterised the Maduro regime. Complementing such lethal cargo, China has sold surveillance technology, crowd-control equipment, and riot gear to the Maduro government, along with water cannons, tear-gas guns and enormous moveable walls that could block people from joining crowds – all tools that helped prevent the opposition from winning power. China had also been a generous benefactor in the way in which it replaced international institutions wary of lending to Venezuela by providing $30 billion in loans before it cottoned onto the reality that these loans would never be paid back and that an incredibly expensive, Chinese-backed high-speed railway meant to cross Venezuela’s lightly populated southern plains would never be completed due to Venezuelan contractors absconding with the money.[10]

A shared anti-American worldview links Cuba and Venezuela and in return for subsidised Venezuelan oil, Cuba provided soldiers, police officers, security and intelligence experts as sell as sports coaches, doctors, and nurses. A shared feeling of ‘disrespect’ from the democratic world lies behind the personal links between Maduro and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Venezuela exports gold to Turkey and receives food in exchange. But the biggest Autocracy Inc relationship that Venezuela has cultivated and developed is with Iran. They relate to each other on the basis of shared anti-American grievance and interest in clandestine petroleum sales. Iranians bought Venezuelan gold and sent food and gasoline in return. Iranians are believed to be advising Venezuela on repressive tactic against dissidents. They helped Venezuela build a drone factory with mixed success and have helped with the repair of Venezuelan oil refineries. In return, the Venezuelans may have helped launder money for the Iranian proxy militia and are believed to have provided passports for Hezbollah and Iranian officials as well.[11]

By tapping into this axis of convenience/corruption/illiberalism (add any suitable adjective) conceptualised by Applebaum as Autocracy Inc, the Maduro regime was able to shamelessly steal elections, bloodily suppress street protests and imprison thousands of political opponents and presumably continue to feather the nests of its entourage of placemen and apparatchiks. 

The ending of Maduro’s term in office by a much more powerful kleptocrat and authoritarian populist who, like Maduro’s predecessor, can speak to his constituency in familiar language, will most likely change nothing on the ground. In many ways, it was an easy win for Trump as his European allies, especially the UK, feels hamstrung in its response due to their perceived need to keep him on board in the defence of Ukraine. Despite all his bluster, it is almost impossible to see him repeating his “success” with, for example, the despotism of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

References

[1] Anne Applebaum (2024), Autocracy Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run The World. London: Allen Lane p.2

[2] Ibid, p.3

[3] Ibid, pp.43-44

[4] Ibid, pp.44-45

[5] Ibid, p.45

[6] Ibid, pp.45-46

[7] Ibid, pp.46-47

[8] Ibid, pp.48-49
 
[9] Ibid, p.49

[10] Ibid, pp.50-51

[11] Ibid, pp.51-53

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

The Day That Changed Everything Yet Nothing 🪶 Trump Captures Maduro But Business As Usual In Venezuela With Regime Unchanged

Right Wing Watch 👀Written by Kyle Mantyla.


One day after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, MAGA cultist and self-proclaimed "prophet" Hank Kunneman used his Sunday service to announce that God was thrilled by the Trump administration's actions.

Kunneman, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has steadfastly refused to admit that his multiple prophecies that Trump would win the 2020 election were wrong, took to the stage on Sunday to deliver what he claimed was a message from God praising Trump for seizing control of Venezuela's oil.

"They say you have seized Venezuela for the oil," Kunneman proclaimed, purporting to speak on behalf of God. "Yes, this is true."

"The enemy has sought and was seeking to bring war and to bring conflict through Venezuela and to control the oil of the Earth," Kunneman thundered. 

But the spiritual oil and the natural oil does not belong to the forces of darkness or to those who thought that they could bring a One World Order. This is my reset and the oil of the natural and the oil of the spirit is mine, says the Lord.

 

Continue @ Right Wing Watch.

MAGA Cultist Hank Kunneman Claims God Praised Capture Of Nicolás Maduro

Ciaran McClean ✍ As events unfold in Venezuela with America appropriating it's natural resources to bring the people there prosperity after firstly seeing to USA oil companies, the Omagh based international mining company, Dalradian, must look on with envy as they enter their seventeenth year of financial failure in Northern Ireland.

Dalradian's investors would take the Sperrins Venezuela-style in a heartbeat had they the wherewithal to do so. Unfortunately for them Northern Ireland isn't Venezuela.
 
Going nowhere fast, Dalradian fall between two stools in their quest to enrich themselves at the expense of this little place. The outdated colonial playbook on how to buy your way into a country has proven worthless in the face of well organised local opposition who saw the miners' play from day one.

Secondly, the attempt to industrialise the Sperrins can't meet minimum environmental standards in law. With community activists understanding the planning system better than slothful politicians and inept civil servants, every move to facilitate Dalradian is counter checked. Unlike the last major scandal in Northern Ireland, there are no RHI type off-ramp options to allow the mining proposal to gain traction.

The scales of justice also refuse to tip in Dalradian's favour as protection of the common good, particularly environmental cases, increasingly prevail via the courts. Meanwhile, citizens see the Northern Ireland Executive support for (FDI) Foreign Direct Investment, at any cost, exposed as an exercise which trades their health and wellbeing to financially benefit privately operated businesses. They will not countenance that type of deal for the Sperrins.

In 2026 goldmining licences are expiring, environmental surveys outdated, legal obligations unfulfilled, even Dalradians camp in the Sperrins must be dismantled and returned to a green field site in the next short while. 

All of the above points to a harsh reality for anyone foolish enough to buy into the fairy tale about digging up untold riches in the Sperrins. The question now is not, if the goldminers leave Northern Ireland, but when? Having relocated from South America to Northern Ireland some years ago believing political circumstances here looked favourable to assist their scheme, Dalradian would be well advised to avoid returning to that region. Regardless of who wears them, American jackboots will be resisted in Venezuela, Northern Ireland or anywhere else they try and impose themselves.

⏩Ciaran McClean campaigns against the rape of the Sperrins.

Resisting Gold Diggers In Sperrins

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