OUTRAGE: Protesters hold signs calling for the release of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro outside Manhattan Federal Court before his arraignment in New York, on Monday January 5
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Western outrage was absolute. Yet today, the tone is markedly more subdued regarding US aggression against Venezuela. The manner in which the media and politicians frame this invasion exposes a profound ideological double standard, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
… During the invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky was immediately crowned the ultimate champion of democracy. Pre-war criticisms of his policies were airbrushed from the Western press as if they had never existed.
It became taboo to mention the banning of opposition parties or the relentless war in the Donbass, which claimed 14,000 lives between 2014 and 2022. The tragedy in Odessa, where some 40 trade unionists were burned alive, did not fit the heroic narrative and was subsequently filtered out of the coverage.
In Venezuela’s case, the opposite is happening. Media attention is focused almost exclusively on how “evil” Maduro supposedly is.
Every report on the US invasion is accompanied by a litany of his alleged failures. The narrative relies entirely on interpretations and exaggerations regarding the lack of democracy under his rule.
The White House attempts to justify the abduction by linking Maduro to drug cartels. However, this argument holds no water: the primary cocaine routes run through Colombia and Ecuador. Yet the media frequently “forgets“ to mention this, thereby legitimising military aggression in the eyes of the public.
…
Through this euphemistic framing and the constant demonisation of Maduro, a brutal military aggression is being de facto legitimised.
Following the double standards applied to Ukraine and Gaza, the West is losing its last shred of credibility with the global South. The “rules-based order” is being definitively unmasked as a selective instrument of power.
But there is more at stake. With this attack, Trump is testing the limits of his imperial ambitions. Because of Europe’s appallingly weak stance, Washington has received the signal that it can act with total impunity.
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.
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U.S. President Donald Trump (R) welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, United States on December 29, 2025. [Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers in his government that he has received a green light from US President Donald Trump to launch an attack in Lebanon, according to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on Wednesday evening.
The report comes a few days after Kan said, citing two informed sources, that Israel is considering a military operation in Lebanon aimed at eliminating what it described as the “Hezbollah threat”.
Kan said Netanyahu discussed expanding Israeli attacks in Lebanon with President Trump during a meeting in Florida in late December.
According to the broadcaster, Hezbollah has been able to rebuild some of its capabilities during the ceasefire. Israeli officials also claimed that the Lebanese government is unable to confront the group.
The sources added that the Trump administration does not rule out the possibility of Israel carrying out an operation against Hezbollah. However, they said Netanyahu was asked to delay any decision to allow further dialogue with the Lebanese government.
This assessment comes amid ongoing tension along the Lebanese–Israeli border and growing debate in Israel about the failure of political and diplomatic efforts to force Hezbollah to disarm, raising the prospect of a new phase of careful military calculations.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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A composite image, assembled from left to right with photos depicting events from the Western world’s agenda in 2025 alongside the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Gaza, reflects two contrasting faces of the world in Ankara, Turkiye on December 29, 2025. [Stringer, Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency]
President Donald Trump is once again surrounded by a cast of political lightweights and constitutionally hollow obedient courtiers on one end, and Israel-first operatives on the other. They run US foreign policy where constitutional restraints are subverted, and American power is used as a blunt instrument to advance agendas that are neither democratic nor American. This is not chaos or mismanagement, its planned.
What is being presented as “drug enforcement” against Venezuela’s president is a premeditated act of war orchestrated, in part, to advance Israeli strategic interests and the profits of multinational oil corporations. It is a manipulation of US power in service of foreign actors, with consequences that threaten global stability and undermines international law.
The most disastrous US foreign policy failures of the past quarter century in Iraq, Libya, and Syria were not driven by American interests. They were Israeli wars, sold to American officials through pressure, cooked intelligence, and a compliant political class.
Iraq war was designed in the dens of the pentagon by Israel-first neocons who fabricated the weapons of mass deception to drag America into a made-for-Israel war. Libya was obliterated under the pretext of humanitarian intervention. Syria was turned into a prolonged proxy battlefield. The promised prosperity, stability, democracy, or security never materialized. One thing materialized: delivering Israel’s objectives with American money and the lives of American soldiers.
Today’s war threats against Iran are following the same script. A war manufactured carefully and cynically by Israel-first American Jewish billionaires such as Miriam Adelson, and journalist advocates bought and employed by Larry Allison. These actors have exerted extraordinary influence over Trump, and even audaciously calling for violating the U.S. Constitution by floating a third term run, all to serve of Israeli strategic interests.
Trump branded Maduro a “drug trafficker” to justify his kidnapping, while pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández, a former Honduran president and a US-indicted cocaine kingpin who ran a narco-state shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
Could it be because Hernández was pro-Israel, but Maduro was not? Maduro dared to condemn Israeli genocide in Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank.
This has nothing to do with American interest. It is another Israeli account to settle with the president of Venezuela. These wishes were expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu—an internationally indicted war criminal welcomed in the White House—during his interview with Fox News just three days before the illegal American operation in Venezuela. Not surprising, Israel was possibly the only country who praised Trump for kidnapping Maduro.
If Trump can be the bully of the “neighborhood” and topple or coerce regimes that do not comply with his political and financial desires. Why not for Russia or China in their alleys? What stops China from “trumping up” charges in its courts against Taiwanese political leaders? What stops Russia from kidnapping political figures it deems hostile under the guise of law enforcement?
In fact, China has a far stronger historical, geographic, and political claim to Taiwan than the United States has to Venezuela more than 2,500 miles from American shores. Russia, likewise, has greater strategic ties to countries on its backyard than Washington does in Latin America.
Enforcing international law by local courts only leads to the collapse of international norms. Countries should not be able to use its legal system to supersede international law and UN Charter. The International Criminal Court (ICC), is the only body that can indict and issue arrest warrants. Claiming a law enforcement operation does not make it lawful, especially when the White House welcomes a war criminal and refuses to enforce the ICC arrest warrant.
Unfortunately, the attempt to topple Maduro is not a one off in Latin America. Washington has a bloody history of intervening and regime change, propping dictators, and removing democratically elected leaders. Unlike this case, most were done under the CIA clandestine operations. To name just few, and not in any order: The 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, the 1971 coup in Bolivia, Chile military coup in 1973. The CIA coups in Ecuador between 1960 and 1963, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Israel’s influence over US foreign policy has become so pervasive that America is perceived as a rattle saber wielded to settle Israeli scores with other countries, sanctioning the ICC, and even suppressing local dissent against Israel. By conflating American national interests with Israel’s strategic objectives, Washington is inviting international chaos, and serving Israel by diverting global attention from Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
And the American taxpayer is paying for all of it. Since 2001, the US has spent more than eight trillion on made-for-Israel wars. This is enough to give 32 million American families free homes ($250,000 each).
Not passing a judgment on the legitimacy of Maduro or his style of governance, that is for the Venezuelan people alone to decide. But an administration that openly expresses admirations to “friendly” dictators, where free press and elections do not exist, has neither the credibility nor the moral standing to decide on legitimate systems of government.
Kidnapping Maduro from his bedroom is not about democracy. It is an exercise of power on behalf of oil profiteers and Israeli strategic interests. The United States does not advance freedom in Latin America by violating international law, nor does it serve Americans when the US army is outsourced to serve the desires of the Israeli lobby, Zionist implants in the administration, and Israel-first donors.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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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.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. (Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
“It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies,” said one critic.
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the deadly riots incited by President Donald Trump at the US Capitol Building, the Trump White House on Tuesday unveiled a website loaded with false claims about the events that took place on January 6, 2021.
The official White House January 6 website features multiple falsehoods and distortions about the Trump-incited Capitol riots, including brazenly false claims about the Capitol Police “escalating” tensions with rioters by firing “tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters.”
In reality, Trump supporters stormed past police barricades that had been set up at the Capitol and then smashed windows to enter the building and illegally disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump falsely claimed to have won.
The website also blames former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to unilaterally discard certified election results from key swing states, which would have put the election results in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures to falsely certify Trump as the winner.
The Trump White House’s revisionist history of the riots falsely claims that rioter Ashli Babbitt was “murdered in cold blood” by Capitol Police, when in reality she was shot while trying to break into into the Speaker’s Lobby after being warned multiple times by officers to stand back.
The Capitol rioters garner significant praise from the White House website, which falsely portrays them as peaceful demonstrators who fell victim to the actions of Capitol Police and overly zealous Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors.
“On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol—many mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ,” the website says.
The blatantly false claims on the website drew a horrified reaction from many critics, including some journalists who were at the Capitol on that day and witnesses the riots firsthand.
“Never forget that Trump attempted a coup to stay in power after losing reelection, ending with the violent insurrection he incited that left 140 cops injured, five dead,” wroteHuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte on X.
“The White House’s new January 6 page is filled with lies, misrepresentation, and reality denial,” wroteBellingcat founder Eliot Higgins on Bluesky. “It’s a clear attempt to rewrite history and frame Trump in heroic terms.”
Author Mike Rothschild accused the White House of engaging in historical revisionism on par with the government depicted in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, arguing that Trump and his underlings of embracing “an alternate reality so hackneyed and obviously fake that it would make Orwell stick his head in a wood chipper.”
Victor Ray, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, raised alarms about what the January 6 White House website says about Trump’s mental health.
“This is batshit,” he wrote. “The White House is doing alternate reality history. It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies.”
Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, reacted to the section of the website blaming Pence by describing it as an ominous sign that a future coup attempt by Trump to illegally remain in power might actually succeed.
“Trump replaced Pence on the ticket with someone he fully expects would carry out this deranged scheme if he has the opportunity, instead betraying the Constitution,” he wrote, referring to Vice President JD Vance, who criticized Pence for fulfilling his constitutional duty and certifying the 2020 election results.
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.
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.
OUTRAGE: Protesters hold signs calling for the release of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro outside Manhattan Federal Court before his arraignment in New York, on Monday January 5
