Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
Dozens of cities in Italy organized actions in solidarity with Venezuela, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores
One month after the US attack on Venezuela, dozens of Italian cities once again took to the streets in support of the Bolivarian process, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. Organized under the international slogan “Bring them home!”, the decentralized actions represent a stepping stone toward a national assembly in Rome on Sunday, February 8, as well as permanent mobilization against war and rearmament.
Students and youth made up a significant portion of participants in Tuesday’s demonstrations. “In response to the United States’ military action, a clear expression of its desire to reassert control over the continent, we once again stand alongside the Bolivarian Revolution […] against US imperialism and to demand the immediate release of Maduro and Flores,” the organizations Cambiare Rotta and OSA wrote on the day.
Left groups also denounced the Trump administration’s threats and attacks against other countries in Latin America, particularly Cuba and Colombia, warning that the strategy is rooted in a model of imperialism that harms people all over the world. Marta Collot, spokesperson for the left party Potere al Popolo, emphasized that the protests were also aimed at opposing a “model based on extractivism that seeks to seize the resources of other countries.”
“The ambitions of the US are not limited to Venezuela, but extend to all the countries of Nuestra América, which are to be turned into mere territories for resource extraction, from oil to rare earths, from vast freshwater reserves to a ‘disposable’ workforce,” Potere al Popolo wrote ahead of the protests. Venezuela, with its socialist transformation, “has always been a thorn in their [the West] side, against which they have directed all weapons of hybrid warfare, from economic and military aggression to cognitive warfare,” the party added.
Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
“We condemn this attack, which was not only an attempt to seize Venezuela’s oil, a nationalized oil, but also an effort to restore US hegemony over Latin America, which the US continues to regard as its backyard,” activists from Potere al Popolo Turin said on the day.
“But Latin America does not bow to US imperialist ambitions,” they added. “It resists, as shown by the massive crowds in Caracas, where the Venezuelan people are not celebrating, as our subservient media would have us believe, but are instead fighting loudly for the release of President Maduro and the primera combatiente.”
“We are here to say it once again: hands off Venezuela,” Collot said. “Today we are facing a paradox in which Trump not only allows himself to kidnap President Maduro, but also threatens half the world, from socialist Cuba to Iran, Colombia, and even Greenland.”
“All of this must end,” she concluded. “We need to reverse course and focus on policies that genuinely support workers and peoples, promote solidarity, and oppose the war-driven agenda that is pushing us toward the brink of World War III.”
Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
A protestor holds up a sign as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about US policy toward Venezuela on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on January 28, 2026. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged,” one watchdog leader said of the US secretary of state.
In addition to asserting that “there is no war against Venezuela,” despite US forces killing scores of people there while abducting its president earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday laid out for a Senate panel how the Trump administration intends to continue controlling the South American nation’s oil and related profits.
Legal experts have argued that US President Donald Trump’s blockade of Venezuela’s oil, abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—and bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean all violate international law.
“The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela’s president, are wrong, illegal under US and international law, and unconstitutional,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the group Public Citizen, said before the Senate hearing. “Congressional Republicans have blocked war powers resolutions that would end the US aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness.”
“Marco Rubio’s central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country’s oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as secretary of state,” Weissman continued. “Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged.”
Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—Rubio said that “Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state,” described his abduction as “an operation to aid law enforcement,” and declared that “the United States is prepared to help oversee Venezuela’s transition from a criminal state to a responsible partner.”
Rubio, the acting national security adviser, insisted that Trump wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela—but also would not rule out such action, potentially without congressional authorization, in “self-defense” against an “imminent” threat.
Trump has repeatedly made clear through public statements that his Venezuela policy is focused on its petroleum reserves, seemingly to enrich the fossil fuel leaders who helped him return to power. American forces have seized several tankers in the Caribbean Sea linked to the country—which critics have condemned as “piracy”—and the first US sale of Venezuelan oil went to the company of a trader who donated millions to the president’s 2024 campaign, which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) last week called “yet another example of his unchecked corruption.”
Describing US control of Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, Rubio told the committee:
Objective number one was stability… And one of the tools that’s available to us is the fact that we have sanctions on oil. There is oil that is sanctioned that cannot move from Venezuela because of our quarantine. And so what we did is we entered into an arrangement with them, and the arrangement is this: On the oil that is sanctioned and quarantined, we will allow you to move it to market. We will allow you to move it to market at market prices—not at the discount China was getting. In return, the funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over, and you will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people…
This is not going to be the permanent mechanism, but this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we’ve created, where they will submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded. We will provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard. In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine and equipment directly from the United States.
In an exchange with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Rubio said that an “audit process” has not yet been set up but will be, adding that “we’ve only made one payment” and it “retrospectively will be audited, but it was important we made that payment because they had to meet payroll. They had to keep sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff.”
Shaheen noted that the oil reportedly sold for $500 million, but only $300 million went to Venezuela’s government, now led by Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and asked Rubio about the remaining $200 million. The secretary said that the rest of the money was in a temporary account in Qatar that will ultimately become a US Treasury blocked account.
Summarizing the Trump administration’s plans, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said: “I think the scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent. You are taking their oil at gunpoint; you are holding and selling that oil; putting, for now, the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account; you’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is gonna be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure.”
Highlighting that “a month later, we have no information on a timetable for a democratic transition, Maduro’s people are still in charge, most of the political prisoners are in jail—and by the way, those that have been let out have a gag order on them from the government—the opposition leader is still in exile,” Murphy added, “this looks, already, like it is a failure.”
At one point during the nearly three-hour hearing, Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan-American with the anti-war group CodePink, shouted, “Marco Rubio, you and Trump are thugs!”
US Capitol Police removed Flores from the hearing. As he was being led away, the protester said that “sanctions are a form of collective punishment of Venezuelan citizens. That’s a war crime. Hands off Venezuela! Hands off Cuba!”
Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday, “Will you make a public commitment today to rule out US regime change in Cuba,” Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—replied: “Regime change? Oh no, I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn’t mean that we’re gonna to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”
Since the abduction operation, there have been “free Maduro” protests in both Venezuela and Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Trump administration’s attack on Caracas. Speaking to thousands of people gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana earlier this month, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “the current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism.”
“No one here surrenders,” he continued, taking aim at not only Trump but also Rubio. “The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven’t stopped threatening me.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
US President Donald Trump holds a framed Nobel Peace Prize medal given to him by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—the actual 2025 winner—at the White House in Washington, DC on January 15, 2026. (Photo by the White House)
In 1943, the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun gave his Nobel Prize for Literature to the infamous Nazi criminal.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s gifting of her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump raised eyebrows around the world Friday—but it wasn’t the first time that the winner of the prestigious award gave it away.
Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to the 58-year-old opposition leader “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Trump has ordered the bombing of nine other countries during his two terms, more than any other president in history. US forces acting on his orders have killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. While running for president in 2016, Trump vowed to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State militants and “take out their families,” and then followed through on his promise.
Despite being passed over by Trump for installation in any leadership role in Venezuela so far, Machado presented Trump with her framed Nobel medal along with a certificate of gratitude during a Thursday meeting at the White House. Trump subsequently posted on his Truth Social network that “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
In 1943!!!“Nobel Literature laureate Knut Hamsun famously gave his Nobel medal and diploma to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as a gesture of admiration for the Nazi regime, following his support for the occupation….”
That gesture prompted the Norwegian Nobel Committee to issue a statement noting that the prize cannot be given away.
“Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” the committee said. “A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time.”
The committee’s statement was extraordinary—but this is not the first time that a Nobel winner gave away their prize. In 1943, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun gifted his 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature—awarded for his novel Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil)—to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after a trip to Germany. Other Nobel laureates have donated or sold their medals.
The progressive media outlet Occupy Democratssaid on social media: “Clearly, the similarities between Trump and Goebbels extend beyond just a mutual admiration for fascism. Both men possess(ed) the kind of spiritually sick, egotistical temperament that allows one to accept a prize that someone else has earned.”
“Obviously, Donald Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize,” the outlet continued. “He has bombed Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, innocent fishing boats in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and is in the process of turning the United States into a war zone. That said, Machado doesn’t deserve it either.”
“Anyone spineless enough to surrender the prize to an evil man like Trump in the hopes of obtaining power is not someone we should be celebrating,” Occupy Democrats added.
Last month, Wikileaks founder and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee Julian Assangesued the Nobel Foundation—the Swedish organization that manages administration of the approximately $1.2 million-per-winner prize—in a bid to prevent Machado from receiving the money.
Machado’s win also sparked protests outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States president Barack Obama (b. 1961) for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.
Donald Trump holds a press conference after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and launched a ‘large-scale strike’ on the Latin American country | Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
As the days pass, shock subsides over the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, which was ordered by Donald Trump and carried out by the US military. That the victim is a dictator has helped to justify the illegal use of brute force.
There is a long history of US military intervention in Latin America. It’s been the expression of the most enduring principle that has governed relations in the American continent.
Everything Trump did in the first year of his second presidential term was old news: tariff wars, interventions in the internal affairs of other countries, threats, extortion and the revival of the old Monroe Doctrine.
What is new is the brazenness, the absence of even the slightest legal justification, or even the effort to frame actions within some interpretation of international law, however twisted it may be. There is no talk of democracy, freedom or human rights for millions of Venezuelans.
This is an unexplained and uncontested exercise of power. “What’s next, Mr President, Colombia?” journalists asked Trump like subjects asking their emperor. “It sounds good to me,” he replied. Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland… “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
The threat is material – Maduro in handcuffs, the naval deployment in the Caribbean, the boats bombed for months – and at the same time diffuse. No one knows what the logic or the alleged motive for the next action will be.
The effect of Trump’s actions, already tested with the so-called “peace deal” for Palestine in the aftermath of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, is to sow confusion and division, and paralysis. The era of this new power has begun with little to oppose it, and with international laws useless like broken toys. And we are all warned.
Maduro was extracted from his bunker in eight minutes, which was enough time to kill 32 Cuban guards who were protecting him. The rest of the regime remains intact, now as the executive arm of Trump’s designs, which have articulated only one priority: oil.
When asked about elections, democracy or the release of some 800 political prisoners, Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reply that all this “is premature”. The nature of the events indicates the coup was orchestrated with a part of the regime whose head was Maduro.
Nothing remains of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, not even dignity. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president and one of the most vocal figures in his administration, has been appointed interim president, with Trump’s acquiescence. She and her brother Jorge, the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, the minister of the interior, and Vladimir Padrino López, the head of the armed forces, have become administrators of a Trump protectorate – a new, perhaps provisional, status quo that sets Venezuela and all of Latin America sailing into uncharted waters.
The eternal misunderstanding
In a speech to the US Congress 202 years ago, US president James Monroe laid the foundations for his new country’s relationship with the other republics emerging across the American continent amid struggles against the European colonial powers.
That relationship would be one of US dominance and Latin American subordination, although the Monroe Doctrine was presented as a warning against new European colonial adventures in America.
“America for Americans” – Monroe’s phrase that coined the eternal misunderstanding – postulated that America, the continent, was for them, who called themselves “Americans”. In that single remark, the rest of the American peoples were left in an inferior category, confined to their nationalities or to a subordinate belonging to the same single continent (Latin Americans, South Americans, Central Americans or Caribbeans). Never simply Americans.
Other US presidents followed Monroe’s lead. More than five decades after his doctrine came Rutherford Hayes’s corollary of 1880, on the need for the US to have exclusive control in Central America and the Caribbean, and therefore of any interoceanic canal, followed by Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary of 1904, which postulated the freedom of the US to intervene by force in any country on the continent if it considered that its interests were affected.
Just a few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, Trump published his own corollary, which contains nothing new, though the foreign power to keep away now is no longer Europe but China. The novelty lies in what began in Venezuela.
The question of democracy
In December, the UN reported that Venezuela’s human rights situation was continuing to deteriorate. In 2021, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor opened a formal investigation into crimes against humanity, such as torture, disappearances and executions at the hands of the state.
Like Delcy Rodríguez now, Maduro became interim president in 2013 after the death of leader Hugo Chávez. Shortly afterwards, he won the elections by a narrow margin and, from 2015 onwards, took an openly authoritarian turn when he refused to recognise the result of parliamentary elections that left him without a majority in the National Assembly.
Opponents of the regime tried different approaches to overthrow it. To name just a few: peaceful demonstrations, violent actions, calls for a military uprising, attempts to get neighbouring governments to blockade the country, support for economic sanctions by the US and the European Union, complaints to international organisations, boycotts of elections they considered rigged, negotiations with the regime mediated by third countries, and massive participation in elections. None of this moved the needle.
Despite the opposition’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections, Maduro was once again proclaimed president, through fraud.
Then Trump reappeared, with a military deployment unseen in decades, indiscriminate bombing of ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and persecution and stigmatisation of Venezuelan migrants as terrible criminals and mentally ill people ravaging US cities.
The main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, clung to this strategy like a lifeline in the storm. She argued that the military siege, the accusations of narco-terrorism against Maduro and his circle, and the imminent military action by Washington would bring down the regime and open the door to a transition. Shortly after Maduro’s kidnapping, Machado proclaimed: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”
Trump’s response could not have been colder. He removed her from the scene, claiming she lacked the necessary “respect” and “support” for the moment.
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado tried again to court Trump and said she wanted to give him her Nobel Peace Prize, which the US president has long coveted and considers himself deserving of. Days later, Trump indicated to Fox News that he might meet with her in Washington, saying: “I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her.” The Norwegian Nobel Institute was forced to clarify that its peace prizes cannot be transferred to third parties.
There were celebrations by Venezuelans in exile in cities across the western hemisphere when Maduro’s overthrow was announced, but not within Venezuela. Maduro no longer governs there, but the same regime does, under Trump’s shadow.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
This combination shows Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (L) on July 6, 2025 and US President Donald Trump during a meeting with US oil companies executives in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on January 9, 2026. US President Donald Trump urged Cuba on January 11, 2026 to “make a deal before it’s too late” or face unspecified consequences, warning that the flow of Venezuelan oil and money to Havana would now stop. Photo by Pablo Porciuncula and Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” said Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel in response to the latest threat from the authoritarian US president.
President Donald Trump was ripped by humanitarians and anti-war voices on Sunday after he again threatened Cuba by saying the US military would be used to prevent oil and other resources from reaching the country, threats that come just over a week after the American president ordered the unlawful attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
In a social media post Sunday morning, Trump declared:
Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided “Security Services” for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE! Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last weeks U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected Trump’s latest comments and threat of military force, saying the island nation was ready to defend itself.
“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” Diaz-Canel said in a social media post. “Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the US for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
Progressive critics of the US president were also quick to hit back. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, said the “true extortionist” in this situation is Trump himself, as she detailed the mutual benefit of the relationship between the Venezuelan and Cuban governments over recent decades:
Trump says Cuba is “extorting” Venezuela.
Yet, it was Cuba that sent 250,000 health workers to Venezuela, lowered infant mortality, restored eyesight, and trained local doctors.
“What is extortion?” Benjamin asks. “It’s what Donald Trump is doing: taking over those oil tankers, confiscating 30-50 million tons of oil—that is extortion. And saying to Venezuela, ‘We’re going to run your country.” Donald Trump is the greatest extortionist our country has seen.“
Reuters reports Sunday, citing shipping data, that Venezuela has been Cuba’s “biggest oil supplier, but no cargoes have departed from Venezuelan ports to the Caribbean country since the capture of Maduro.
Speaking with CBS News on Sunday, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) said that Trump’s threats to strangle the people of Cuba by enforcing a resource blockade were “like magical” in her ears and those of her right-wing constituents who live in Miami’s large community of Cuban exiles.
Welcoming Trump’s efforts to bully Cuba into submission, Salazar claimed that Cuba’s government is “hanging by a threat” she said, before correcting herself, “a thread, I should say.”
Oddly—but notably—Salazar continued her remarks by saying it was Cuba that has been an “immense” threat to the United States, as she described it as a nation “with no water; they have no electricity; they have no food—nothing. So if you think Maduro is weak, Cuba is even weaker. And now they do not have one drop of oil coming from Venezuela.”
President Trump announced on TruthSocial that “there will be no more oil or money going to Cuba,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) responded saying “those words are like magical.”
But progressive voices opposed to Trump’s authoritarian violations of international law, his bullying of allies and enemies alike with claims that the US can do whatever it likes in the name of national security and claims of national interest, are warning that the threats against Cuba and other nations represent a chilling development that must be met with international opposition and condemnation.
“The US blockade of Cuba is the longest-standing act of collective punishment in the world,” said David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, pointing to Trump’s remarks. “It is condemned by the entire international community every year at the UN. And now, the US president is doubling down on this cruel and illegal punishment. Enough.”
URGENT 🚨 @POTUS has issued a new threat to strangle Cuba 🇨🇺 of critical energy and resources.
That is why the @ProgIntl has issued this emergency call: to defend the unity of Americas and the freedom of its peoples — before it is too late.
“This is an emergency,” Progressive International explained in a dispatch last week, warning about Trump’s overt hostility toward Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and other nations in the wake of the US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores.
“The United States is rapidly escalating its assault on the Americas—and the principle of self-determination at large,” warned the international advocacy group. “Under the banner of the Monroe Doctrine, Donald Trump and his cronies are leading a campaign of imperial aggression that stretches from Caracas to Havana, Mexico City to Bogotá.”
What we are witnessing today is class struggle played out through imperial violence. The United States stands as the political and military instrument of capital: Big Oil bankrolling politics; arms manufacturers profiting from destruction; and financial power thriving on plunder and permanent war. These sections of capital pay for the policies they desire and are richly rewarded. The share prices of US oil majors soared around 10% following Maduro’s kidnapping, representing a return of around $100 billion on an investment of $450 million in the last US elections.
The government serves its donors, so aggression can proceed without consent. Public opinion has repeatedly shown opposition to U.S. military action in Venezuela — a gap between elite appetite and popular will bridged by force, not democracy.
Venezuela — like many nations before it — represents a different possibility: that the popular classes might govern themselves, control their resources, and chart a future beyond imperial command. And that possibility represents an existential threat to empire.
The group said Sunday’s latest threat by Trump against Cuba—openly saying that the US military might will be used to prevent life-sustaining resources from reaching the island nation—should be seen for what it is: a coercive “threat to strangle Cuba of critical energy and resources” at the end of a barrel of a gun.
“Through manipulation, coercion, and now direct military action,” the group warns, the US government under Trump “has made absolutely clear its intention to dominate Latin America.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
