Tag: venezuela

Tensions flare as Russian lawmaker accuses US of PIRACY after Trump’s forces seize two ships in daring raids

The United States has seized a tanker linked to Russia off the coast of Europe and a second vessel in the Caribbean in an escalation of the enforcement of the Venezuela oil blockade.

Dramatic footage showed American special forces boarding the M/V Bella 1 in the Northern Atlantic after pursuing it for weeks in an operation inflaming tensions with Moscow.

The Coast Guard also captured a second vessel – the Motor Tanker Sophia – off the coast of the Caribbean in the coordinated operation on Wednesday morning.

In response to the interceptions, Andrei Klishas, a member of the upper house of Russia’s parliament said the US actions were ‘outright piracy.’ 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put the world on notice by saying that the blockade of Venezuelan oil is in full effect, and said no ship is safe anywhere in the world.

The Russian Transport Ministry then responded by saying: ‘no state has the right to use force against vessels properly registered in other countries’ jurisdictions.’ It added that US forces boarded the Marinera at 3pm Moscow time, where communications were shortly lost with the vessel after.

Donald Trump appears to have dismissed the threat of Vladimir Putin‘s forces lurking nearby, including reports of a submarine.

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White House Says It Will ‘Dictate’ the Decisions of the Venezuelan Government

The White House on Wednesday claimed that the US would be “dictating” the decisions of the Venezuelan government moving forward, as the Trump administration is attempting to control Venezuela’s oil supply following the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“We’re continuing to be in close coordination with the interim authorities,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, referring to Maduro’s government, which is now led by Acting President Delcy Rodriguez.

Leavitt added that “their decisions are going to continue to be dictated by the United States of America.” In Caracas, Rodriguez and other Venezuelan officials are putting a very different message.

“The government of Venezuela is in charge in our country, and no one else. There is no foreign agent governing Venezuela,” said Rodriguez, who has called for the US to free Maduro so he can return to his position.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said that the US can control Venezuela by deciding where it’s allowed to sell its oil.

“We control the energy resources, and we tell the regime, you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest, you’re not allowed to sell it if you can’t serve America’s national interest,” Vance said.

President Trump is also threatening to bomb Venezuela again and potentially send troops if the government doesn’t do the bidding of the US, and appeared to threaten Rodriguez’s life by saying she would have a fate worse than Maduro if she didn’t fall in line.

On Tuesday night, Trump said that Venezuela will be “turning over” between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the US. He said the oil will be “sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.”

Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, said in a statement that it was advancing an oil sale to the US and that it would be similar to deals with Chevron, the US oil firm that has continued to operate in the country. “The process … is based on strictly commercial transactions under terms that are legal, transparent and beneficial for both parties,” PDVSA said.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that the US will control Venezuela’s oil sales “indefinitely” and will deposit revenues from the deals into US-controlled bank accounts.

In a follow-up post on Wednesday, Trump claimed that under the deal, Venezuela will be purchasing US goods with the money made from the sale. “I have just been informed that Venezuela is going to be purchasing ONLY American Made Products, with the money they receive from our new Oil Deal,” he said.

The president continued, “These purchases will include, among other things, American Agricultural Products, and American Made Medicines, Medical Devices, and Equipment to improve Venezuela’s Electric Grid and Energy Facilities. In other words, Venezuela is committing to doing business with the United States of America as their principal partner – A wise choice, and a very good thing for the people of Venezuela, and the United States.”

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Venezuela issues 90-day order to ARREST anyone backing US attack as armed motorcycle gangs hunt down Trump supporters in Caracas

Gangs of armed men on motorcycles are patrolling the streets of Caracas, looking for supporters of Donald Trump and his military operation in Venezuela with the support of at least one key government official. 

The Colectivos are a group of paramilitary militias that still support deposed leader Nicolas Maduro and have been searching vehicles at checkpoints. 

The bikers, many of them masked and armed with Kalashnikovs, have searched phones and cars looking for evidence of people backing Trump’s action in Caracas as an unofficial tool of the state. 

In the wake of Maduro’s arrest, a 90-day state of emergency put in place by the Venezuelan government orders police to ‘immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States.’

They have already arrested 14 journalists, 11 of whom come from out of the country, while others remain missing, The Telegraph reported. 

Many of the members of Colectivos have been seen posing with Maduro’s Interior, Justice and Peace Minister Diosdado Cabello, who still clings tight to the notion that Maduro is the nation’s lawful president. 

‘Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations,’ Cabello said in a statement through the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

A video of Cabello – who has a bounty of $50million on his head in the US for drug trafficking – with the militia members that has circulated on social media sees them chanting a slogan that translates to: ‘Always loyal, never traitors.’

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TALKING POINTS: Kimmel, Colbert, and Fallon All Make the Same Stupid Joke About Trump and Venezuela

Late night TV shows are dying for a very good reason. They’ve become unfunny, overly-political, and they’re all the same, with the single exception of Greg Gutfeld, who gets better ratings than all of the others.

During the course of the last week, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon, all made the same stupid joke about Trump and Venezuela. Talking points clearly went out.

These guys are such talentless hacks.

NewsBusters reports:

On ABC, Jimmy Kimmel quipped that “President Trump said his New Year’s resolution this year is peace on earth, and that lasted for just under two days. If you are wondering how bad these Epstein files are for Trump; turns out they’re ‘invade Venezuela bad.’ This is literally the plot of the movie Wag the Dog. The president gets caught in a sex scandal, so he attacks a smaller country to distract us, and here we are, distracted.”…

Back on CBS, Stephen Colbert began The Late Show’s final year by echoing Kimmel, “Do you know what this means? Those Epstein files must be crazy! I mean, bomb something! Bomb anything! This operation, launched just two days into the New Year, came as a shock, especially since—and this is true — Trump’s New Year’s resolution was ‘Peace on Earth.’ Well, that didn’t last long. And as a result, neither did my resolution to switch to clear liquor.”…

Earlier, Meyers’s NBC colleague, The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon, echoed Kimmel and Colbert on the Epstein point, “Good luck to everyone who’s made New Year’s resolutions. Yeah, some people want to lose weight while others want to gain Venezuela and—. Yeah, the big news from this weekend is that President Trump sent U.S. troops into Venezuela to capture the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro. Yup, the news took everyone by surprise. When I heard there was an operation to extract a president, I just assumed Trump got stuck in his tanning bed… it turns out Trump’s New Year’s resolution was to distract everyone from the Epstein files.”

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Trump: Venezuela to Turn over 30-50 Million Barrels of Oil to U.S.

President Donald Trump announced that the “interim authorities” in charge of Venezuela would be giving between 30 and 50 million “Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil” to the United States.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump explained that the oil would “be sold at its Market Price,” and that Trump would ensure the money from the sales would be “used to benefit the people of Venezuela” and the U.S.

“I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” Trump said. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

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Trump Rules Out Elections in Venezuela, Anticipates Sending Troops to Occupy Venezuela

President Donald Trump said the US had no plans to hold elections in Venezuela. He said elections are currently impossible, and the country must first be helped by the US. 

“We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” Trump said about the possibility of a vote in the next month. “No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health.”

The President explained that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and White House adviser Stephen Miller would be responsible for running Venezuela. 

While Trump is laying out a massive nation-building project, he insisted that the US was not at war with Venezuela. “No, we’re not [at war],” Trump said. “We’re at war with people that sell drugs. We’re at war with people that empty their prisons into our country and empty their drug addicts and empty their mental institutions into our country.”

Since returning to office, Trump has ordered extensive sanctions on Venezuela, the seizure of two oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, strikes on Caracas, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, all acts of war. 

The President went on to say that he is anticipating sending US troops to occupy Venezuela and enforce his will on the country. The US continues to conduct surveillance flights near Venezuela. 

Trump believes the rebuilding of Venezuela will take about 18 months and come at a massive cost to US energy firms. “It’ll be a lot of money.” The President continued,  “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

Venezuela’s heavily contaminated crude oil is difficult to reach and expensive to refine. Oil prices need to exceed $100 per barrel to make for companies to see profits. Crude oil is currently under $58 per barrel. 

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Russia sends navy to guard oil tanker being pursued by US in North Atlantic after fleeing Venezuela for Russia

Russia has dispatched navy assets to protect a sanctioned oil tanker as it crosses the Atlantic, amid mounting threats from the US to seize the vessel.

The move comes after US forces were said to be preparing to board the ship, which has a long history of transporting Venezuelan crude oil and was last believed to be sailing between Scotland and Iceland.

According to CBS News, Russia has now stepped in to escort the tanker in a development that raises the prospect of a dramatic showdown between the superpowers on the high seas.

By sending navy ships into the North Atlantic, Vladimir Putin is signalling to Donald Trump that he can’t act without consequences, following the US president’s threat to use the military to seize Greenland. 

The vessel, which is currently empty, had previously operated under the name Bella 1. Last month, the US Coast Guard attempted to board it in the Caribbean, armed with a warrant to seize the ship over alleged breaches of US sanctions and claims it had shipped Iranian oil.

However, the tanker then abruptly changed course, renamed itself Marinera and reportedly reflagged from Guyana to Russia.

Donald Trump last month said he had ordered a ‘blockade’ of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, a policy the government in Caracas branded ‘theft’.

In the run-up to the US seizure of the country’s former leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump repeatedly accused Venezuela’s government of using ships to smuggle drugs into the US.

Two US officials told CBS News on Tuesday that American forces were planning to board the Marinera and that Washington would prefer to seize the vessel rather than sink it.

Moscow’s Foreign Ministry says it expects Western countries to respect principles of freedom of navigation. 

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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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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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