Tag: perpetual war

Witkoff: Significant Progress Made on Security Guarantees for Ukraine

Following talks with European and Ukrainian leaders, President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, said significant progress had been made in establishing security guarantees and a “prosperity agreement” for Ukraine. 

On Tuesday, Witkoff and Ukrainian President Zelensky met with the “Coalition of the Willing” to discuss the war in Ukraine. “We have made significant progress on several critical workstreams, including our bilateral security guarantee framework and a prosperity plan,” Witkoff wrote on X after the summit. “We agree with the Coalition that durable security guarantees and robust prosperity commitments are essential to a lasting peace in the Ukraine and we will continue to work together on this effort.”

At a press conference, Witkoff said the prosperity agreement would involve BlackRock and that he is working with the firm’s CEO, Larry Fink. 

The Coalition of the Willing is a bloc of European nations led by the UK, France, and Germany, with the goal of supporting Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday’s meeting resulted in a “significant step” towards ending the war in Ukraine. 

During the summit, Kiev, Paris, and London signed an agreement to send troops and weapons to Ukraine after a ceasefire is established. The Coalition of the Willing said the deployment will receive support from the US. 

“Military officials from France, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine worked in detail on force deployment, numbers, specific types of weapons, and the components of the Armed Forces required and able to operate effectively,” Zelensky wrote on X. “We had very substantive discussions with the American side on monitoring — to ensure there are no violations of peace. The United States is ready to work on this.”

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Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

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The FDR Pearl Harbor Question That People Are Afraid to Ask

Did you know that FDR likely had foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor but chose not to stop it resulting in the immediate loss of over 2,400 American lives and, subsequently, the U.S. entering World War II, resulting in over 400,000 more conscripted American deaths?

Declassified documents and testimonies from the time reveal a complex web of intelligence reports and intercepted Japanese communications, suggesting that U.S. officials, including President Roosevelt himself, had significant forewarning of Japan’s intentions.

One of the key pieces of evidence is the McCollum memo, written in October 1940 by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence. This memo outlined a potential strategy for forcing Japan into war with the United States, including actions that could provoke a Japanese attack. Additionally, the U.S. had been monitoring Japanese communications through its ‘Magic’ cryptographic program, which had successfully decrypted numerous Japanese diplomatic cables, including those hinting at a possible strike.

Despite this, no definitive action was taken to bolster defenses at Pearl Harbor, leading to the devastating attack on December 7, 1941. The consequences were catastrophic.

This might sound like a crazy conspiracy to some readers. I know I would have considered it such a thing at one time (albeit many years ago).

But there is a ton of historical evidence to support Allman’s central claim: FDR had plenty of reasons to suspect a Japanese attack was coming—and he wanted an attack to happen.

I first came to this troubling realization more than two decades ago after reading Thomas Fleming’s 2001 book The New Dealers’ War. (If I recall correctly, I bought my father the book for Christmas, partly because I wanted to read it myself.)

Fleming, who died in 2017, provided a page-turning history that makes a convincing case that FDR was angling for a war with Japan and searching for a casus belli.

It’s been years since I read the book, but I recall it’s beginning quite well. Fleming describes in great detail a poorly-equipped Naval vessel from the Spanish-American War trolling around in international waters where Japanese subs and other far more sophisticated war ships were roaming.

The vessel was never attacked, but Fleming used the episode to support his broader thesis: FDR wanted the US in World War II, was preparing for war well before Pearl Harbor, and appeared to be searching for an event that would justify America’s entry into the conflict.

Most Americans don’t know this today, and relatively few would accept it if they did. It strikes too close to the heart of the mythology of America the wish to believe, or too closely to the politician or ideology they revere.

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International Law Experts Agree: Trump-Ordered Attack on Venezuela 100% Illegal

Protests have erupted in the US and around the world following President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, and international law experts on Monday joined in rebuking the deadly military operation, with several outlining exactly how Trump’s actions were unlawful.

At Just Security, University of Reading professor of international law Michael Schmitt, New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, and NYU Reiss Center on Law and Security senior fellow Tess Bridgeman explained that the US military’s bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro differs legally from the dozens of boat strikes the US has carried out in the past four months.

The attacks in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed more than 100 people and have also been violations of international law, according to numerous legal experts—but they “have occurred in international waters against stateless vessels,” wrote Schmitt, Goodman, and Bridgeman.

In contrast, the operation in the early morning hours on Saturday took place within Venezuelan borders and “is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter,” they wrote. “That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small states from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war.”

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The Trump Effect: One Day After Maduro Capture, Reports Say Iran’s Supreme Leader Preparing to Flee Country to Moscow

Call it the Trump Effect. Or the Maduro Effect, if you don’t like naming it after Orange Man Bad.

The point is, if a report in Sunday’s Times of London is to be believed, it’s very real — and it could mean regime change is coming to Iran the same way it came to Venezuela.

Just one day after the daring capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in an early-morning raid, the Times quoted intelligence sources which said that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader of Iran’s theocratic regime, had formulated a back-up plan to get out of Dodge (or Tehran, in this case) if the protests against his regime, which began in late December, intensified.

Mass uprisings in Iran have been nothing new, especially under Khamenei. In 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022, Khamenei’s government has faced massive popular opposition; it’s as regular as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, almost, only if the swallows were forced to wear the niqab and were gunned down by the IRGC if they did not disperse.

This spate of protests is fueled by the same reasons past protests have broken out, as well: economic collapse and political repression. But, for several reasons, things could be different.

First, the country’s paper tiger status was fully confirmed with the 12-Day War, in which Israeli and U.S. forces were able to operate without even the slightest resistance inside Iran’s airspace, crippling the country’s military and nuclear facilities.

Second, Trump has taken an active interest in the protests, saying on Truth Social that “[i]f Iran [shoots] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”

Third — well, you probably know by now.

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Fetterman: If We Didn’t Want Maduro Removed, Why Did Biden Have a Bounty on Him?

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) pointed to President Joe Biden raising the bounty on Nicolas Maduro to $25 million in January of 2025 and said, “Democrats, years ago, wanted to eliminate him, and why have a bounty of $25 million if we didn’t want him gone? Why would you do these things if you weren’t willing to actually do something other than harsh language?”

Fetterman said, “I’ve seen the speeches from — whether it’s Leader Schumer or…past tweets from President Biden, we all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone.”

He added, “Democrats, we all used to describe him as a dictator or a tyrant or a terrible person, and it wasn’t less than a year ago, President Biden raised the bounty [to] $25 million, less than a year ago.”

Fetterman further said, “Now, remember, we all — Democrats, years ago, wanted to eliminate him, and why have a bounty of $25 million if we didn’t want him gone? Why would you do these things if you weren’t willing to actually do something other than harsh language?” And “if you are putting in these $25 million [bounties] and calling that he has to go…are you willing to do more than just harsh language on social media?”

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Trump DOJ Admits Venezuela’s ‘Cartel De Los Soles’ Isn’t An Actual Organization

A major plank in the Trump administration’s case for military intervention in Venezuela is looking thinner today, as the Department of Justice has retreated from the notion that captured President Nicolas Maduro was the head of an organized drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles. The DOJ now says the term “Cartel de los Soles” is merely descriptive of a “culture of corruption” fueled by the illegal drug trade.

This isn’t semantics: Both the Treasury and State Departments had officially designated the non-existent group as a terrorist organization. The latest development seems to at least partially confirm doubts raised by outside observers and lend credence to denials by the Venezuelan government. In November, the country’s foreign minister said he “absolutely rejects the new and ridiculous fabrication” by which Secretary of State Marco Rubio had “designated the non-existent Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization.”

The retreat from the idea that Cartel de los Soles is an actual organization was apparent in the DOJ’s filing of a superseding (updated) indictment. The previous indictment referred to the supposed cartel 32 times, naming Maduro as its chief. The new one only mentions the term twice, and says it’s only descriptive of a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” propelled by drug money. That’s consistent with the fact that the DEA’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment has never mentioned any “Cartel de los Soles” in its cataloguing of major traffickers.  

In July, the Treasury sanctioned Cartel de los Soles as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” claiming it was a “criminal group headed by…Maduro.” The “cartel” was accused of providing material support to two groups already on U.S. terrorist lists: Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. Of course, those terrorist designations are themselves controversial, with critics saying the government is purposefully conflating criminality and terrorism. The latter term has long been understood to describe violence directed at civilians with the goal of achieving a political or ideological goal. Historically, exaggerated use of the term has largely been confined to the left. 

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Switzerland freezes assets of Venezuela’s Maduro and his inner circle

Switzerland has frozen all assets belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and individuals from his close circle, the Swiss government said.

“The Federal Council decided to freeze any assets held in Switzerland by Nicolas Maduro and other persons associated with him with immediate effect,” the statement reads.

The measure is said to ensure that “any illicitly acquired assets cannot be transferred out of Switzerland in the current situation.” The Federal Council added that the asset freeze targets individuals who have not previously been sanctioned in Switzerland and will not affect members of the current Venezuelan government. “The asset freeze is in addition to the sanctions against Venezuela that have been in place since 2018 under the Embargo Act,” the statement says.

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Colombian president vows to ‘take up arms’ if US attacks

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has vowed to “take up arms” in the event of a US attack.

His statement followed multiple threats from President Donald Trump in the wake of Saturday’s US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its leader, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, the US president accused Petro of orchestrating the cocaine trade and hinted that he could soon also be removed. When asked if the US would launch a military operation against Colombia, Trump replied: “sounds good to me.”

In an X post on Monday, Petro promised to resist.

“Although I have not been a military man, I know about war and clandestinity. I swore not to touch a weapon again since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the Homeland I will reluctantly take up arms again,” he said.

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Revealed: Deep State Saboteurs TRAITOROUSLY LEAKED Trump’s Venezuela Plans BEFORE The Raid

In a brazen act of betrayal, holdovers from the Biden era leaked classified details of President Trump’s high-stakes military operation against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to legacy media giants, aiming to torpedo the mission and potentially cost American lives.

Yet, in a rare show of restraint born from fear, The New York Times and Washington Post sat on the story, citing concerns for troop safety – a decision likely influenced by Trump’s relentless legal assaults on defamatory reporting that have left the media reeling.

The operation, greenlit by Trump on Friday night, culminated in Maduro’s swift capture early Saturday, marking a decisive blow against the socialist regime that has flooded America’s borders with chaos and drugs. However, it could have all gone disastrously, given that details of the top-secret incursion were leaked to both The New York Times and The Washington Post by an unidentified party, according to sources familiar with the communications.

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