Trump Moves Closer To War With Venezuela, And Other Notes

Reading by Tim Foley:

President Trump announced a “total blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela” on Truth Social on Tuesday, saying that “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

Trump told the press on Wednesday that Venezuela “took all our oil from not that long ago, and we want it back. But they took it. They illegally took it.”

Of course, this is complete nonsense; Venezuela has done no such thing. These empire managers really believe the global south’s resources are their property, and that setting their own energy policy in their own interest is an act of theft.

Venezuela has ordered its navy to escort the nation’s oil tankers to protect them from acts of piracy by US forces like the one we saw last week, which places the US and Venezuelan militaries on a collision course.

We’ll see what happens, but as things sit right now it’s not looking good for peace.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

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Been thinking about this tweet ever since I saw it. Mainstream American journalists think unilateral US sanctions are *the actual international law*, and anyone who tries to circumvent them is a criminal. These are the people who are informing the American public about the world.

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If you weren’t having enough Iraq flashbacks lately, Trump just signed an executive order naming the drug fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction”. The Trump administration has been accusing the Venezuelan government of trafficking the dangerous narcotic despite the US government being fully aware that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl.

That’s right buddy, the US is preparing for a regime change war justified by lies again, in an oil-rich nation again, and they’re citing “weapons of mass destruction” again.

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It’s so American how the Sackler family caused a national opioid crisis which ultimately led to the fentanyl crisis, and instead of imprisoning them the US eventually went “Hang on, we can use this as an excuse to start a war with a country that doesn’t even produce fentanyl.”

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I hate right wing Venezuelans. They’re the worst of everything. They use the same “how DARE you tell us about our lived experience??” identity politics shtick that shitlibs love in order to shout down anyone who points out that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous, while also using all the sleazy reptile-brained political weapons of rightists to attack women, minorities, and socialists. They’re like Latino Israelis.

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Lindsey Graham, who is arguably the nastiest warmonger in the US Senate, is defending Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean by saying that “I have every confidence that what they’re doing is no different than what Bush did.” This is the same Lindsey Graham who said “Trump is my favorite president” because he’s “killing all the right people.”

Who loves Donald Trump? Only people who love war.

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Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

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So you agree. Israel is a western settler-colonialist project that was artificially implanted in west Asia? https://t.co/KIRHjZlbaD

Joel Berry @JoelWBerry

Israel is a part of Western Civilization.

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Palestine supporters: Backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities is going to cause antisemitism and violent extremism in the west.

Israel supporters: Shut up!

[Violent extremism happens in Australia]

Israel supporters: See this proves we need to ban protests against Israel’s genocidal atrocities.

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There’s a video of a Biden administration Ukraine proxy war architect named Amanda Sloat casually admitting to Russian pranksters who were posing as Ukrainian presidential aide Igor Zhovkva that Ukraine could easily have avoided this horrific war by declaring neutrality instead of allowing itself to be turned into a NATO military asset.

“We had some conversation even before the war started, about what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion,’ which at that point it may well have done,” Sloat said, adding that this “certainly would have prevented the destruction and the loss of life”.

Gosh, you mean those of us who said this horrific war was provoked by NATO expansionism and the US refusing off-ramp after off-ramp toward peace were objectively correct, and everyone who called us Putin apologists for saying this were wrong? Golly gosh, how interesting.

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The Nation has an article out titled “What the Noam Chomsky–Jeffrey Epstein E-mails Tell Us” defending the extensive ties which have been revealed between the respected leftist scholar and the deceased Israeli intelligence operative, which include an email where Chomsky describes Epstein as a “highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation.”

It’s a trip how close Chomsky came to sneaking out death’s door before his Epstein ties became subject to public scrutiny. If he hadn’t lived so long his parting would’ve been massively mourned; now when his time’s up everyone’s just gonna go “Oh hey Epstein’s friend died.”

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Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/United States National Guard.