Tag: venezuela

Venezuela Announces Capture of Alleged DEA Agent With Massive Drug Shipment

Venezuelan authorities announced on Wednesday the seizure of nearly 3.7 metric tons of cocaine and the arrest of several individuals, including a man they claim is a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said security forces intercepted a speedboat in the waters off Falcón state on September 14, carrying 100 sacks of cocaine and 2,400 liters of fuel. The operation, which Cabello described as “clean,” ended with five arrests. The detainees were identified as Joel Luis Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús Antonio Quilarte Carreño, Jhonny José Salazar Gutiérrez, Carlos Alberto Bravo Lemus, and Levi Enrique López, who Cabello alleged is linked to the DEA.

According to Cabello, the detainees confessed the shipment was part of a “false flag operation” designed to incriminate Venezuela in international drug trafficking and justify external aggression. “The four detainees are saying they work for the DEA,” Cabello told state television, calling the alleged plan a “maneuver for destabilization.”

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Trump reveals secret third blast against Venezuelan boats as intensifying drug war prompts talk of invasion

American forces have blasted three Venezuelan vessels out of Caribbean waters in recent weeks, President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday, revealing the expanding scope of his military campaign against  ‘narco-terrorists.’

The commander-in-chief posted a video to his Truth Social account on Monday evening showing U.S. military action against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean.

It was the second apparent operation against what the administration claims are narcotic traffickers bound for America.

But not even a day later, the president divulged that an additional third strike was carried out on a ship after receiving a question about rising tensions with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

‘We knocked off, actually three boats, not two, but you saw two,’ the president said on the White House‘s front lawn just before departing for the U.K. with his wife, Melania Trump.

‘And the problem is, there are very few boats out in the water. There are not a lot of boats out in the water. I can’t imagine why. Not even fishing boats. Nobody wants to go take a fish,’ the president continued.

The video Trump posted on Monday evening shows a boat out at sea before being engulfed in flames following a military strike. Three confirmed narcotics traffickers were killed in the operation, the president claims.

The Trump administration is restricting congressional oversight of recent military strikes on Venezuelan vessels by barring senior House staffers from classified briefings, according to The Intercept.

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So Much for the Nobel Peace Prize

The first seven months of Donald Trump’s second term as president has seen a remarkable transformation. In his inaugural address, Trump said that “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” He promised to “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” “That’s what I want to be,” Trump said, “a peacemaker.”

Seven months later, Trump changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. It is not just a change of name. It is a change of “attitude,” that rebrands the image the Trump administration wants to project to the world. Trump’s executive order says the name change “conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve compared to ‘Department of Defense,’ which emphasizes only defensive capabilities.”

From 1789 until 1949, the department was named the Department of War. As the Department of War, the U.S. won every war, Trump said. “And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to Department of Defense,” Trump said.” Pete Hegseth, whose sign on his door was quickly changed to “Secretary of War,” says that the U.S. is “going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.” That is not the language of a President or an administration that wants to be remembered as “a peacemaker” that is judged by “the wars that we end” and “the wars we never get into.”

Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambition to win a Nobel Peace Prize. He has brought it up and campaigned for it in interview after interview and speech after speech. In June, Trump took to Truth Social to boast of his role in brokering peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia… and I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East… No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran… but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me.”

But the change of names to the Department of War betrays that campaign. And it is more than just a change of name. The rebrand reflects the ever bloating role of the military in the Trump administration to push out diplomacy and law enforcement. Trump pushed aside diplomacy that was working with Iran with an unprecedented bombing of Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. And he has pushed aside law enforcement with military action against drug cartels in Latin America.

On September 2, the U.S. claims to have identified a speed boat that was running drugs for a Venezuelan drug cartel. They did not turn to law enforcement, as has, until now, been standard operating procedure by having the National Guard interdict the boat and arrest the suspected drug smugglers. Instead, either an attack helicopter or an MQ-9 Reaper drone fired on it, killing all 11 of its crew. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking for an administration that wants to be a “peacemaker” that is judged by “the wars we never get into,” explained that “What will stop them is when we blow up and get rid of them.”

In order to prevent the flow of drugs into the United States, Trump and his Department of War have sent three Aegis guided-missile destroyers, several P-8 spy planes and at least one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine. Apparently insufficient to deal with the problem, the U.S. has now sent ten F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to help carry out the operation against the drug cartels.

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US Bombs Another Boat Near Venezuela

The US military on Monday bombed a boat near Venezuela and killed three people, according to a statement released by President Trump on Truth Social.

President Trump claimed without providing evidence that the boat was carrying drugs and that the three people who were killed were “narcoterrorists.” He made similar claims about the first US military strike on a boat near Venezuela that occurred on September 2, which he said killed 11 “narcoterrorists.”

The president also posted a video that purported to show the Monday strike. It showed what appeared to be a boat that was drifting at sea, followed by an explosion.

“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said. “The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US.”

The president also signaled that more US strikes on boats in the region were coming. “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” he wrote.

The second US bombing in the region came after the Venezuelan government said that personnel from a US warship boarded a Venezuelan tuna boat that was in Venezuelan waters. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said 18 armed US troops were on the vessel for 18 hours, a claim that hasn’t been confirmed by the US military.

“Those who give the order to carry out such provocations are seeking an incident that would justify a military escalation in the Caribbean,” Gil said.

While Trump and other US officials claim the military action and pressure on Venezuela’s government is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean. Gil said that the real purpose of the US operations was for the US to “persist in their failed policy” of regime change in Venezuela.

The Venezuela policy is being largely driven by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long pushed for regime change in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday called out Rubio in response to the US boarding the tuna boat, calling him a “lord of death and war.”

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Pentagon Barred Senior House Staffers From Briefing on Venezuela Boat Strike

The Department of War is thwarting congressional oversight of the Trump administration’s attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela earlier this month.

Senior staff from House leadership and relevant committees were barred by the Office of the Secretary of War from attending a briefing on the attack last Tuesday, according to three government sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The military cited “alternative compensatory control measures” — the term for enhanced security procedures designed to keep information under wraps — as the reason.

The War Department has attempted to conceal numerous details about the attack that killed 11 people in the Caribbean, including the fact that the vessel altered its course and appeared to have turned back toward shore prior to the strikes. Men on board were said to have survived an initial strike, The Intercept reported last week. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.

“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump Administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela,” Rep., Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, said of The Intercept’s coverage. “They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings — and teased more to come.”

A very small number of Senate and House staffers, mostly from the Armed Services committees, received highly classified briefings about the attack last Tuesday, after the military delayed the meeting for days. Staff for key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversee war powers, were conspicuously absent.

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Coast Gard Personnel From USS Jason Dunham Intercept Venezuelan Boat, as Maritime Siege Is Now Reinforced by Stealth F-35 Fighter Jets

Maduro talks, the US acts.

Under the extreme pressure of the US authorities and military, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro makes bombastic speeches every day, is trying to unite his broken ‘Bolivarian’ Republic and mobilize his military against what he expects is an imminent attack/invasion of the US forces besieging him.

On the US side, very little is being said, but a lot of activity can be seen.

After an alleged Venezuelan drug boat was pulverized by an airstrike on September 1st, marines from the destroyer USS Jason Dunham boarded and seized a Venezuelan boat on Friday (12).

Described as fishing vessel, it was the object of an inspection related to suspected drug trafficking. No drugs were reportedly found, and the action has been condemned by Venezuela as an act of ‘piracy’ and a violation of sovereignty.

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Operation “Let’s Grab The Oil”

I don’t know if you remember it, but last year I hypothesized that the Trump administration would focus their attention on a North/South axis of power… and less on an East/West.

Part of this is down to the fact the US Military is stretched globally, and likely no small part comes down to the fact that their ability to project power has for decades been reliant on their naval capabilities. These are now rendered obsolete due to the Russian missiles which can sink them and are unstoppable. All parties know this, though it remains to be seen whether US hubris may ignore it nonetheless.

In any event, focusing on the easy prey — the US own backyard, so to speak. Canada (remember the comments about “Governor Trudeau?”) and the political pressure on Mexico. Then there is the strong allegiance now with Argentina and the pressure being placed on Brazil, the focus on Panama — the canal being all important, of course. All of this is due to a North/South pivot.

So included in this is, of course, Venezuela.

The Escalating Political Showdown: Trump vs. Maduro Over Venezuela’s Black Gold

The relationship between the Donald and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has devolved into one of the most hilarious and contentious international political feuds of recent years, with both leaders engaging in increasingly hostile rhetoric. Of course, it’s all theatre — a sideshow masking the real prize: the struggle over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest proven reserves in the world.

Why, for example, is Don not blabbing about Costa Rica or Honduras or any other country in the region?

The Bounty That Started It All

Back in March of 2020 the US administration placed a $15 million bounty on Maduro’s head through the DEA’s “Narcotics Rewards Program.” They accused Maduro and other Venezuelan officials of “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking conspiracy charges. This bounty, along with similar rewards for other Venezuelan officials totaling over $55 million, marked the first time the United States had placed such a substantial price on a sitting head of state.

The US justified this action by claiming that Maduro’s regime had transformed Venezuela into a “criminal enterprise” that facilitated drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the time declared that the Venezuelan government had become “one of the most corrupt and destructive forces in the Western Hemisphere.”

In reality, the CIA doesn’t like competition, but anyway…

Maduro’s Counterattack: The Epstein Files Gambit

Maduro’s response was swift and inflammatory. Taking to his official social media accounts, he pointed out who Trump pays allegiance to (Mossad) and suggested a release of the Epstein files. It’s all highly entertaining… except if you’re a Venezuelan, of course, wondering if Trump drops a “big beautiful bomb” on your head.

The Prize: Venezuela’s Oil Wealth

Behind this political theatre lies the true source of tension: Venezuela’s staggering oil reserves. According to OPEC data, Venezuela possesses approximately 303.8 billion barrels of proven oil reserves — roughly 18% of the world’s total. This makes Venezuela’s reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels) and represents more oil than the combined reserves of Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait.

Despite this wealth, Venezuela’s oil production has plummeted from over 3 million barrels per day in the 1990s to barely 800,000 barrels per day by 2020, largely due to mismanagement, corruption, and international sanctions.

The Trump administration’s sanctions effectively cut off Venezuela’s access to US refineries and financial systems, costing the country an estimated $116 billion between 2017 and 2020. So there’s definitely no love lost there.

Social Media War

The conflict has played out extensively on social media platforms, with both leaders using their accounts to escalate tensions. Trump frequently posted on Truth Social about Venezuela, calling Maduro a “dictator” and claiming that “Venezuela’s oil belongs to its people, not to corrupt narco-terrorists.”

Meanwhile, Maduro has used his platforms to portray himself as a victim of “Yankee imperialism,” posting: “They want our oil, our gold, our resources. But the Bolivarian Revolution will never surrender to the gringo empire.”

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Venezuela says US intercepted and boarded a tuna vessel in hostile manner

The Venezuelan government announced on Sept 13 that a US destroyer intercepted, boarded and occupied a Venezuelan tuna fishing vessel for eight hours in the waters of the South American country’s special economic zone on Sept 12.

In a statement read by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil, the government said tuna vessel Carmen Rosawas boarded in an illegal and hostile manner, and that it was crewed by nine “humble” fishermen and was “harmless”.

Tensions have been mounting between Washington and Caracas. On Sept 2, a US military strike in the Caribbean 

killed 11 people and sank a boat from Venezuela that US President Donald Trump’s administration claimed was transporting illegal narcotics.

The Trump administration has provided scant information about the attack on Sept 2, despite demands from US Congress members for the government to justify its actions. The Venezuelan government has said that 

none of those killed belonged to the gang Tren de Aragua, as the US has alleged.

US officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the alleged incident on Sept 12.

The Venezuelan government identified the US vessel as the USS Jason Dunham, “equipped with powerful cruise missiles and manned by highly specialised marines”.

It demanded that the US immediately cease targeting vessels, which it said puts “the security and peace of the Caribbean at risk”. 

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The Roots Of Trump’s Continued Wars On Terror Trace Back To 9/11

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an “invasion” at the border.

Unfortunately, more than two decades of widely-accepted, bipartisan laws and norms first laid the groundwork for this to occur.

After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list, and Congress expanded the pre-existing Foreign Terrorist Organization list. These lists allow the executive branch, at its sole discretion, to add and remove individuals and groups to standing lists of “terrorists,” a term that is defined broadly.

The Trump administration has exercised this authority to formally designate transnational cartels as “terrorists” due in part to their role in the flow of people and drugs across the southern border into the United States. They have leveraged this designation to justify a range of actions, including deploying troops to Los Angeles and deporting immigrants to a brutal Salvadorean prison without due process.

Another post-9/11 legal invention that paved the way to what the Trump administration is doing today was the USA PATRIOT Act’s updates to immigration law that allowed deportation of not just those involved in actual violent acts of terrorism, but also those loosely associated with designated “terrorist groups,” even if those associations were peaceful and law-abiding or involuntary and a result of duress. People who have previously been excluded from the United States by these provisions include Iraqi interpreters for U.S. troops, victims of forced labor by violent armed groups in El Salvador, and even Nelson Mandela. These provisions mean that not just alleged members of cartels, but also cartel victims could be denied entry into the United States or deported if already here.

These same post-9/11 immigration law amendments also allow for revoking or denying immigration benefits to foreign nationals who “endorse or espouse” “terrorist activity,” defined broadly. The Trump administration has already revoked the visas of several immigrant students and scholars solely for their nonviolent activities criticizing the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza, as part of what they call a “zero-tolerance” policy for terrorism. The administration has primarily leaned on an older and more obscure provision of immigration law to carry out these attacks on immigrants’ free speech rights. But if current efforts are blocked by courts, or they wish to go further, post-9/11 immigration law may give them the tools to justify doing so.

The original decision to treat the 9/11 attacks not as crime but as warfare, and to launch a literal “war on terror” in response, remains the primary post-9/11 legal innovation on which so many abuses are made possible. Under this global war paradigm, the Obama administration carried out ruthless drone killings, including one that targeted a U.S. citizen, and justified the strikes with a mish-mash of legal standards that applied rules of war outside of actual war zones, and expansively interpreted what constitutes an “imminent threat” and resulting “self-defense” powers.

Every post-9/11 president has claimed wide authority to use military force so long as it serves a vague “national interest.” We can see echoes of this in the Trump administration’s insistence that the small Venezuelan boat blown up by the U.S. military posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” that the strike complied with the laws of war, and was “in defense of vital U.S. national interests.”

Commentators are entirely correct to denounce these assertions of legal authority. But policymakers have spent more than two decades accepting a war paradigm against whomever presidents determine to be “terrorist,” making it politically and legally all the more difficult to push back against what the Trump administration is doing now.

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Taking the Constitution Seriously

Last week, the President of the United States did not take the Constitution seriously. He ordered the murders of 11 people who were riding in a speedboat in the Caribbean Sea around 1,300 miles from the U.S.

Afterward he said he did so because he believed that they were members of a “narco-terrorist gang” and were delivering illegal drugs to America. He also did so, he said, as a “message” to other drug dealers who should fear a similar fate.

The boat had no ability to reach the U.S. According to the former head of drug interdiction for the Department of Justice, this so-called boat gang is not known for trafficking in illegal drugs. The crimes that the president said these folks committed did not occur in the U.S., and if they had, do not permit the imposition of the death penalty.

He offered no evidence to support his claims and didn’t even suggest that the riders in the boat posed a threat to the American military personnel who killed them. He couldn’t say if anyone in the boat was an American.

When he was asked for the legal authority for these killings, President Donald Trump replied that these folks were waging war on the U.S., and, because he is the president of the United States, he can do as he wishes to them.

These are constitutionally ignorant, morally repugnant, profoundly erroneous responses from a person who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

Here is the backstory.

When British monarchs wanted to dispose of inconvenient adversaries, they often accused them of vague crimes because they were able to define the crime however they saw fit. St. Thomas More, Henry VIII’s former Lord Chancellor, was executed for his silence. The monarch’s target was given a quick trial and then often a slow and excruciating public death – to send a message.

Mindful of the tyrannical impulses of monarchs and familiar with British history, even personally aware of folks in the colonies charged with crimes in London — where they had never been — and transported there for prosecution, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Founding Fathers most responsible for crystallizing the American ethos of natural rights and due process, crafted founding documents that articulated condemnations and prohibitions of tyranny and tyrannical behavior here.

Thus, Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence characterize human rights as the gift of the Creator, which cannot be taken away by executive decree or legislative enactment – ut only by a jury verdict.

And Madison’s words in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment declare that “no person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The use of the word “person” makes it obvious that due process applies to all human beings.

Due process requires a fair jury trial, with counsel and the opportunity for confrontation of witnesses and evidence produced by the government. It also requires proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty to a neutral jury, not to the accuser. And it requires conviction prior to the imposition of a legislatively prescribed penalty.

This was novel and radical in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, but it is neither novel nor radical today. Today, due process is the foundation of American law. It is what lawyers call black-letter law: Those in government are expected to know it and understand it and abide by it.

Until now.

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