Trump is every bit as much of a lowlife piece of shit as Maduro. The US might want to cool it with the “dictator” shit until something is done to rectify that situation.
I was well aware that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but that the country didn’t have the modern infrastructure / technology to extract and refine the oil. Also the country has had to deal with government corruption. Meanwhile China has been vying for access to the country’s oil. And I sensed that trump’s motivation for killing Venezuelan citizens without due process was actually his desire to use military force in Venezuela to remove Maduro from power, then take control of the oil.
Okay. So, María Corina Machado, who was just given the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is collaborating with djt for a regime change in Venezuela?
“In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations.”
“Machado excitedly explained that, if Trump helped her overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, HER new regime would “be the strongest ally in the region for the United States”.
Ok something smells like rancid oil fumes. What am I missing?
Yes, USA has a history of that. But in case you haven’t been paying attention, Trump has taken it to a whole new level. HE certainly works in his own best interests. Always has, always will. Rule of law and the constitution mean absolutely nothing to him. And he’s rapidly turning USA into an authoritarian dictatorship supported by billionaire oligarchs. Which the vast majority of AMERICANS are not in favor of.
So one would think, that Venezuela, which is dealing with its own right-wing corruption, would want to AVOID another corrupt government at this point.
A great piece and worthy of close attention. The US has a grim legacy of covert and overt military intervention in Latin America, as well as regime change and (as you say) it's all about capitalist class interests including (in this instance) oil - and plenty of it. It's also about neutralizing any threat posed by the working class or Left as well as more ambiguous threats to the geo-political hegemony of a US Imperialism in terminal decline. If you support Project2025, like Honduras and El Salvador, you are a friend. If you challenge it in any way you are a foe, a narco-terrorist and target for removal.
The process began in the modern era in Honduras, following the failed revolution in Bolivia in 1952 - a revolution that has all but been erased from history. It developed by way of the Bay of Pigs and training of future coup leaders at Fort Bragg, initially under the pretext of the war on terror. Significant high points were of course the military coup in Chile (where the working class itself posed the greatest threat) and the sub-contraction of CIA support via Rafi Eitan and MOSSAD, to Latin American death squads such as the AUC. This led in turn to Iran-Contra and culminated in the invasion of Panama under the rubric of Operation Just Cause. Known as "Little Hiroshima" in the capital's slum districts this left 70 000 Panamanians dead.
The war on drugs was always a sham given that America's dirty war in Nicaragua was financed by drugs, under the rubric of Operation Black Eagle. Later, Escobar was targeted because he wouldn't play ball with the US and worked with the FARC. The Cali Cartel continued to be supported as they always have been. Everyone has heard of Escobar. Few have heard of his arch rival, Monzer al Kasser, an ally of Cali who was once a protected CIA asset and masterminded the Lockerbie bombing.
More recently threats against Venezuela preceded the plans to invade Iraq and were resurrected following a 2006 trade agreement with Libya to restrict oil production. They've also been linked to threats against Panama over the canal. Make no mistake, a coup or US military intervention (or both) are being planned for Venezuela but the fact that Trump has gone public is instructive. As well as playing to his domestic base and praying for a "Falklands moment" in US politics he is sending a warning to the whole continent. And the continent should respond accordingly.
Despite his virtual deification by much of the Left as a romantic figure, Che Guevara didn't know the first damned thing about Marxism and working class politics. His tragic death, at the hands of George HW Bush, of Frank A. Sturgiss, Rodriguez, Oswald Le Winter and others bears testimony to this fact. And I say this as someone who has met Guevara's brother and daughter - the latter at Trinity College Dublin.
Rodriguez used Guevara's Rolex as a paperweight and played tapes of his tortured screams to amuse guests, including British mercenary John Banks, at his pad in Miami as they plotted the murder of a DEA agent in Mexico. Le Winter kept Guevara's bloodstained poncho as a grim trophy in the hotel he owned on the Franco-German border.
On one thing, however, Guevara was 100% correct in that the future of resistance and socialism in Latin America rests on the building of a Socialist United States of the Americas to enhance its protection and independence not only from a fascist US but from fair-weather allies like Russia and China who will only support them the way that a rope supports a hanged man.
The outcome is NEVER inevitable but we certainly have a fight on our hands and NEVER has the threat of fascism been so great, in Britain, the US and elsewhere, since the end of World War II. I fought the old style Nazi fascism in the 1980s and 1990s but serious as the threat then was they were never contenders for state power whereas now (due to an unprecedented crisis of capitalism and a crisis of consciousness in the working class) the new fascism has entered the mainstream. In the US you already HAVE a fascist regime but not yet a fascist state which is why your No Kings protests and resistance to military occupation of the cities is so important. In the UK we have a reactionary neo-liberal government, Labour in name only, that is both in thrall to Trump and preparing to deliver power to the fascist Nigel Farage on a plate. In both countries we need to build Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary resistance and a clear socialist alternative.
Thanks. Although I don’t follow all the political activities in Europe and elsewhere, (which would be a full time job!), from what I do know, it certainly seems to me that rightwing extremism is on the rise in several countries around the world.
It also appears to me that trump is itching for (translate —> intentionally inciting) social unrest so he can declare a state of emergency, initiate martial law, close the government indefinitely, suspend midterm elections, increase militarized armed forces/national guard, (and possibly hire various private militias like Eric Prince) to arrest dissidents en mass and hold them indefinitely without due process in internment camps.
Methinks we could be heading towards another civil war.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS has indeed rendered itself irrelevant, as we confront the hostile and imminent invasion of “barbarians at the gates.”
Believe it or not, I’m a card-carrying optimist! sigh
Keep hold of that optimism, Merry, but your analysis of Trump's strategy is spot on. By "Trump's strategy," of course, I mean the dark money financiers and Tech Oligarchs who, with a little help from Putin, actually put him there because the orange skinned pedophile rapist and convicted felon who calls himself a President doesn't personally have two brain cells to rub together. Interesting that you refence Erik Prince and I'm sure you've read Jeremy Scahill's important 2007 book, BLACKWATER, since which privatised warfare has mushroomed all over the planet. For all that their deployment in the US in ANY FORM would be in violation of the Pinkerton Act I'm sure that they would feature in any future coup plot or remake of the seminal movie, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY played out for real.
Thank you so much for responding. No I haven’t read the book, but I’m well aware of Erik Prince’s notorious reputation. Particularly in Iraq. And that he was given hundreds of millions in government contracts, that he was reckless and wanton and that he’s very slippery, like djt, recreating himself by creating new organizations.
I know Trump pardoned 4 of Prince’s security officers who had been convicted of killing Iraqi civilians. I also know that the Iraqi government banned Blackwater but he recreated himself as FSG and returned to Iraq.
Now we’re watching as Trump tries to strong arm Iraq (and other South American countries), because he wants control of the oil, which is what that war was always about, OIL. And I’m absolutely sure Prince is deeply involved with everything Trump is doing.
I also know that his sister Betsy DeVos was a huge financial supporter of Trump’s first administration and she was hellbent on destroying the dept of education and replace it with a national Christian-based system.
The extreme right’s over-arching ideology and goal to recreate the US has been in place for decades and we’re now witnessing its rapid implementation. Trump doesn’t care about religious sentiments, he’s merely interested in what’s in it for him and continuing his family NOBLE lineage, so he's busy creating his legacy.
I’m planning to rewatch 7 days in May.
Thanks for your willingness to share your wealth of information through your extraordinary historical knowledge. It’s important that we KNOW.
Since Americans, for various reasons, have extremely short attention spans, they have no doubt forgotten that we ever got bogged down in a REAL swamp--The Vietnam War.
Those that were too young to actually recall what those times were like--and that this country practically descended into a civil war over it--could have studied it in school, but, alas, American history is not taught anymore.... This is very convenient for autocratic thugs like Trump because they can start a war without most voters recalling that the last full-scale war we fought was not only morally bankrupt but also imposed another gigantic layer of debt on the country--All of this AND, of course, the greatest loss of all: maybe a million Vietnamese killed or crippled and tens of thousands of Americans also killed, wounded or driven crazy..
A leader starting a war with a neighbor or some trumped up villain (foreign or domestic) is the oldest DISTRACTION in human history; just ask Netanyahu)... Trump's many, many crimes and vile depredations will be blown away by the great wind caused by the waving of a million flags--
He will hold press conferences showing the latest military triumph in Venezuala by our brave (hopefully not fat) boys in uniform, while they bring peace and justice to that country and oil profits, military contracts, and ready for prime-time war footage to the homeland.
Trump will get a special gold pointer made up to show you where Pistol Pete's legions have scored their latest victory.
A war like this is the ultimate con game; the final distraction available to the greatest criminals.
Agreed. Follow the money (or in this case oil) and one finds the truth. Trump views the whitehouse occupation as an invitation to enrich himself and his cronies. The bar of acceptable behaviour plumbs new depths daily such that one is worn down (which is of course the point - to overwhelm).
Trump is every bit as much of a lowlife piece of shit as Maduro. The US might want to cool it with the “dictator” shit until something is done to rectify that situation.
Why? Truth should be told, not put on a shelf til convenient to address
Maybe address your own house before pointing fingers elsewhere. Gives you the credibility to point those fingers.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/10/16/venezuela-maria-corina-machado-privatize-oil-us-corporations/
I was well aware that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but that the country didn’t have the modern infrastructure / technology to extract and refine the oil. Also the country has had to deal with government corruption. Meanwhile China has been vying for access to the country’s oil. And I sensed that trump’s motivation for killing Venezuelan citizens without due process was actually his desire to use military force in Venezuela to remove Maduro from power, then take control of the oil.
Okay. So, María Corina Machado, who was just given the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is collaborating with djt for a regime change in Venezuela?
“In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations.”
“Machado excitedly explained that, if Trump helped her overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, HER new regime would “be the strongest ally in the region for the United States”.
Ok something smells like rancid oil fumes. What am I missing?
Wow! Will she really approve?! Damn!
Who knows? That’s what’s baffling me. WHY would she privatize the country’s oil wealth and sell it to US oil companies? I don’t get.
Isn’t that the standard blueprint that USA works on where self interest is concerned.
Yes, USA has a history of that. But in case you haven’t been paying attention, Trump has taken it to a whole new level. HE certainly works in his own best interests. Always has, always will. Rule of law and the constitution mean absolutely nothing to him. And he’s rapidly turning USA into an authoritarian dictatorship supported by billionaire oligarchs. Which the vast majority of AMERICANS are not in favor of.
So one would think, that Venezuela, which is dealing with its own right-wing corruption, would want to AVOID another corrupt government at this point.
Yea. And isn't it kind of funny how she praised Trump after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
A great piece and worthy of close attention. The US has a grim legacy of covert and overt military intervention in Latin America, as well as regime change and (as you say) it's all about capitalist class interests including (in this instance) oil - and plenty of it. It's also about neutralizing any threat posed by the working class or Left as well as more ambiguous threats to the geo-political hegemony of a US Imperialism in terminal decline. If you support Project2025, like Honduras and El Salvador, you are a friend. If you challenge it in any way you are a foe, a narco-terrorist and target for removal.
The process began in the modern era in Honduras, following the failed revolution in Bolivia in 1952 - a revolution that has all but been erased from history. It developed by way of the Bay of Pigs and training of future coup leaders at Fort Bragg, initially under the pretext of the war on terror. Significant high points were of course the military coup in Chile (where the working class itself posed the greatest threat) and the sub-contraction of CIA support via Rafi Eitan and MOSSAD, to Latin American death squads such as the AUC. This led in turn to Iran-Contra and culminated in the invasion of Panama under the rubric of Operation Just Cause. Known as "Little Hiroshima" in the capital's slum districts this left 70 000 Panamanians dead.
The war on drugs was always a sham given that America's dirty war in Nicaragua was financed by drugs, under the rubric of Operation Black Eagle. Later, Escobar was targeted because he wouldn't play ball with the US and worked with the FARC. The Cali Cartel continued to be supported as they always have been. Everyone has heard of Escobar. Few have heard of his arch rival, Monzer al Kasser, an ally of Cali who was once a protected CIA asset and masterminded the Lockerbie bombing.
More recently threats against Venezuela preceded the plans to invade Iraq and were resurrected following a 2006 trade agreement with Libya to restrict oil production. They've also been linked to threats against Panama over the canal. Make no mistake, a coup or US military intervention (or both) are being planned for Venezuela but the fact that Trump has gone public is instructive. As well as playing to his domestic base and praying for a "Falklands moment" in US politics he is sending a warning to the whole continent. And the continent should respond accordingly.
Despite his virtual deification by much of the Left as a romantic figure, Che Guevara didn't know the first damned thing about Marxism and working class politics. His tragic death, at the hands of George HW Bush, of Frank A. Sturgiss, Rodriguez, Oswald Le Winter and others bears testimony to this fact. And I say this as someone who has met Guevara's brother and daughter - the latter at Trinity College Dublin.
Rodriguez used Guevara's Rolex as a paperweight and played tapes of his tortured screams to amuse guests, including British mercenary John Banks, at his pad in Miami as they plotted the murder of a DEA agent in Mexico. Le Winter kept Guevara's bloodstained poncho as a grim trophy in the hotel he owned on the Franco-German border.
On one thing, however, Guevara was 100% correct in that the future of resistance and socialism in Latin America rests on the building of a Socialist United States of the Americas to enhance its protection and independence not only from a fascist US but from fair-weather allies like Russia and China who will only support them the way that a rope supports a hanged man.
Roger, thanks for the details of this important back history. I’m familiar with the history but not nearly as knowledgeable and as astute as you are.
I’m watching in horror as djt’s administration via P2025 is rapidly shifting the US into a fascist authoritarian/oligarchic regime.
Can you bottomline it for me? Is the outcome inevitable?
The outcome is NEVER inevitable but we certainly have a fight on our hands and NEVER has the threat of fascism been so great, in Britain, the US and elsewhere, since the end of World War II. I fought the old style Nazi fascism in the 1980s and 1990s but serious as the threat then was they were never contenders for state power whereas now (due to an unprecedented crisis of capitalism and a crisis of consciousness in the working class) the new fascism has entered the mainstream. In the US you already HAVE a fascist regime but not yet a fascist state which is why your No Kings protests and resistance to military occupation of the cities is so important. In the UK we have a reactionary neo-liberal government, Labour in name only, that is both in thrall to Trump and preparing to deliver power to the fascist Nigel Farage on a plate. In both countries we need to build Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary resistance and a clear socialist alternative.
Thanks. Although I don’t follow all the political activities in Europe and elsewhere, (which would be a full time job!), from what I do know, it certainly seems to me that rightwing extremism is on the rise in several countries around the world.
It also appears to me that trump is itching for (translate —> intentionally inciting) social unrest so he can declare a state of emergency, initiate martial law, close the government indefinitely, suspend midterm elections, increase militarized armed forces/national guard, (and possibly hire various private militias like Eric Prince) to arrest dissidents en mass and hold them indefinitely without due process in internment camps.
Methinks we could be heading towards another civil war.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS has indeed rendered itself irrelevant, as we confront the hostile and imminent invasion of “barbarians at the gates.”
Believe it or not, I’m a card-carrying optimist! sigh
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/politics/erik-prince-return-maneuvered-inside-trump-orbit#:~:text=Prince%20has%20recently%20floated%20a,hotspots%20like%20Afghanistan%20and%20Somalia.
Keep hold of that optimism, Merry, but your analysis of Trump's strategy is spot on. By "Trump's strategy," of course, I mean the dark money financiers and Tech Oligarchs who, with a little help from Putin, actually put him there because the orange skinned pedophile rapist and convicted felon who calls himself a President doesn't personally have two brain cells to rub together. Interesting that you refence Erik Prince and I'm sure you've read Jeremy Scahill's important 2007 book, BLACKWATER, since which privatised warfare has mushroomed all over the planet. For all that their deployment in the US in ANY FORM would be in violation of the Pinkerton Act I'm sure that they would feature in any future coup plot or remake of the seminal movie, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY played out for real.
Thank you so much for responding. No I haven’t read the book, but I’m well aware of Erik Prince’s notorious reputation. Particularly in Iraq. And that he was given hundreds of millions in government contracts, that he was reckless and wanton and that he’s very slippery, like djt, recreating himself by creating new organizations.
I know Trump pardoned 4 of Prince’s security officers who had been convicted of killing Iraqi civilians. I also know that the Iraqi government banned Blackwater but he recreated himself as FSG and returned to Iraq.
Now we’re watching as Trump tries to strong arm Iraq (and other South American countries), because he wants control of the oil, which is what that war was always about, OIL. And I’m absolutely sure Prince is deeply involved with everything Trump is doing.
I also know that his sister Betsy DeVos was a huge financial supporter of Trump’s first administration and she was hellbent on destroying the dept of education and replace it with a national Christian-based system.
The extreme right’s over-arching ideology and goal to recreate the US has been in place for decades and we’re now witnessing its rapid implementation. Trump doesn’t care about religious sentiments, he’s merely interested in what’s in it for him and continuing his family NOBLE lineage, so he's busy creating his legacy.
I’m planning to rewatch 7 days in May.
Thanks for your willingness to share your wealth of information through your extraordinary historical knowledge. It’s important that we KNOW.
Trump is openly murdering & no one is stopping him.
Since Americans, for various reasons, have extremely short attention spans, they have no doubt forgotten that we ever got bogged down in a REAL swamp--The Vietnam War.
Those that were too young to actually recall what those times were like--and that this country practically descended into a civil war over it--could have studied it in school, but, alas, American history is not taught anymore.... This is very convenient for autocratic thugs like Trump because they can start a war without most voters recalling that the last full-scale war we fought was not only morally bankrupt but also imposed another gigantic layer of debt on the country--All of this AND, of course, the greatest loss of all: maybe a million Vietnamese killed or crippled and tens of thousands of Americans also killed, wounded or driven crazy..
A leader starting a war with a neighbor or some trumped up villain (foreign or domestic) is the oldest DISTRACTION in human history; just ask Netanyahu)... Trump's many, many crimes and vile depredations will be blown away by the great wind caused by the waving of a million flags--
He will hold press conferences showing the latest military triumph in Venezuala by our brave (hopefully not fat) boys in uniform, while they bring peace and justice to that country and oil profits, military contracts, and ready for prime-time war footage to the homeland.
Trump will get a special gold pointer made up to show you where Pistol Pete's legions have scored their latest victory.
A war like this is the ultimate con game; the final distraction available to the greatest criminals.
It's the Monroe Doctrine twisted beyond recognition.
Like Marauders during the crusades in 11th and twelfth centuries!
Or are they going to use Russian missiles to make it look like the US got attacked by Russia?
https://open.substack.com/pub/thiagodearagao/p/five-reasons-a-us-invasion-of-venezuela?r=2di31u&utm_medium=ios
https://www.menonpause.info/p/be-careful-what-you-wish-for
Agreed. Follow the money (or in this case oil) and one finds the truth. Trump views the whitehouse occupation as an invitation to enrich himself and his cronies. The bar of acceptable behaviour plumbs new depths daily such that one is worn down (which is of course the point - to overwhelm).
Any moment now.
I expected that to have already happened by now but maybe not all the assets deemed necessary for a ground invasion were already deployed.