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Venal Reactions: US Allies Validate Maduro’s Abduction.

5 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/venal-reactions-us-allies-validate-maduros-abduction/

On the surface, abducting a Head of State is a piratical act eschewed by States. A Head of State enjoys absolute immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction, known as ratione personae, at least till the term of office concludes. The International Court of Justice was clear enough about this principle in the 2002 Arrest Warrant Case, holding that high ranked government officials such as a foreign minister are granted immunity under customary international law to enable the effective performance of their functions “on behalf of their respective States.”

That said, international law has been modified on this score by the jurisdiction of theInternational Criminal Court, whose founding Rome Statute stipulates that the official standing of a serving Head of State is no exemption from criminal responsibility. The effectiveness of this principle lies in the cooperation of State parties, something distinctly unforthcoming regarding certain serving leaders. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu springs to mind.)

US domestic law puts all of this to side with the highwayman logic of the Ker-Frisbie doctrine. Decided in Ker v Illinois in 1886, the decision overlooks the way, lawful or otherwise, a defendant is apprehended, even if outside the jurisdiction. Once American soil is reached, judicial proceedings can commence without challenge. The US Department of Justice has further attempted to puncture ancient notions of diplomatic immunity by recategorizing (how else?) the standing of a leader – in this case Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro – as nothing more than a narco-terrorist. Maduro was seized, explains US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as part of a law enforcement operation.

In addition to being a violation of the leadership immunity principle, the January 3 kidnapping of Maduro and his wife by US forces was an audacious breach of the sovereignty guarantee under Article 2 of the United Nations Charter. Operation Absolute Resolve involved 150 aircraft, strikes on military infrastructure including surface-to-air missile and communication systems, and various depots. The security fantasists from the White House to the State Department treated Venezuela as not merely a dangerous narco-state but one hosting undesirable foreign elements, but it has never posed a military threat to the US homeland.

In the face of such unalloyed aggression – a crime against peace, if you will – the response from Washington’s allies has been feeble and worse. This is made all the more grotesque for their claims to purity when it comes to defending Western civilisation against the perceived ogres and bogeymen of international relations: Russia and China.

From the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer could not have been clearer about his contempt for the processes of international law. “The UK has long supported a transition of power in Venezuela,” he declared in his January 3 statement. “We regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President and we shed no tears about the end of his regime.” Having given a coating of legitimacy to the banditry of the Trump administration, he could still claim to “support” international law. His government would “discuss the evolving situation with US counterparts in the days ahead as we seek a safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people.” Certainly, judging from this, the will of President Donald Trump.

An official statement from the European Union released by its high representative, Kaja Kallas, was even more mealy-mouthed: “The EU has repeatedly stated that Nicolás Maduro lacks the legitimacy of a democratically elected president and has advocated for a Venezuelan-led peaceful transition to democracy in the country, respectful of its sovereignty.”  

The tactic here involves soiling the subject before paying some false respect for such concepts as democracy and sovereignty. We can do without Maduro, and won’t miss him, but make some modest effort to respect some cardinal virtues when disposing of him. All those involved should show “restraint […] to avoid escalation and to ensure a peaceful resolution of the crisis.”

The arrogance of this position is underlined by the concession to diplomacy’s importance and the role of dialogue, when there has been no dialogue or diplomacy to speak of. “We are in close contact with the United States, as well as regional and international partners to support and facilitate dialogue with all parties involved, leading to a negotiated, democratic, inclusive and peaceful resolution to the crisis, led by Venezuelans.”  

From the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anita Anand, there was not a whisper of Maduro’s abduction, or the US breach of the UN Charter. The phantom conveniently called the Venezuelan People stood as an alibi for lawbreaking, for they had a “desire to live in a peaceful and democratic society.” And there was the familiar call “on all parties to exercise restraint and uphold international law,” marvellous piffle in the face of illegal abductions.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did little to improve upon the weak formula in his shabby statement, similarly skipping over the violations of the UN Charter and Maduro’s abduction. “We urge all parties to support dialogue and diplomacy in order to secure regional stability and prevent escalation.” A bland acknowledgement of “the need to respect democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms” is made, along with the risible reference to supporting “international law and a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people.”

Who, then, are these idealised people? Presumably these Venezuelans are the vetted ones, sanitised with the seal of approval, untainted by silly notions of revolution and the poverty reduction measures initially implemented by the government of Hugo Chávez. But if EU officials and other states friendly to Washington thought that a Venezuelan appropriately representative of the People’s Will might be the opposition figure and travesty of a Nobel laureate, María Corina Machado, Trump had other ideas. To date the Maduro loyalist Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, has caught his fickle eye. “I think,” he said with blunt machismo, “it would be very tough for [Machado] to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.” The Venezuelan people’s choice will be, putting democracy and dialogue to one side, the same as Trump’s.

January 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Maduro’s kidnapping marks the return of spheres of influence to geopolitics

The UK and Europe will be the biggest losers

Ian Proud, Jan 06, 2026

In my first ever full YouTube video, I spend half an hour talking about the dramatic kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and his wife at the weekend.

Let’s be clear, this was not about drugs, but about Trump announcing that the USA now decisively controls the western hemisphere.

This was foreshadowed in the new US National Security Strategy.

The Russians may make noise but will accept it, as Putin is more concerned about a bigger strategic reset with the US and finishing the Ukraine war on terms favourable to Russia.

China will see a massive opportunity to gain more influence in the developing world and Trump’s actions will manufacture more consent for a muscular Chinese posture over Taiwan.

But Europe and the UK will be diminished most by this move. Unable to criticise Trump, for fear of losing his support for the Ukraine proxy war, they will appear increasingly duplicitious and mendacious, shattering their geopolitical credibility in the developing world even further.

Buckle up for the return of spheres of influenc

January 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: New Year’s Notes on Purported Leaders.

The power Bibi exerts in Washington and most of the European capitals transcends geography by a long way.

Caitlin Johnstone put it best in her Dec. 28 newsletter. “They’ve stopped making up pretend nonsense about nuclear weapons,” she wrote, “and now they’re just going, ‘We need to attack Iran because Iran is rebuilding its ability to stop us from attacking it.’”

December 31, 2025,  Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/31/patrick-lawrence-new-years-notes-on-purported-leaders/

It is no use hoping for any alteration in the collective West’s course so long as today’s “purported leaders” remain in office. 

“Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.” So did Chinese peasants celebrate their distance from the Forbidden City over many centuries now past. I imagine a similar sentiment may prevail in the hyper-centralized People’s Republic.

When power is to one or another degree autocratic, power is best when power is distant. So it was for me, if briefly, as 2025 drew to a close.

I spent the Christmas holidays, courtesy of my kindly mother-in-law, in the Pacific Northwest and was blessedly far from post-democratic power in any of its manifestations.

The nearest elected official purporting to competence was Kim Lund, the mayor of Bellingham, Washington, whose purview extends to one of those downtown revitalization plans you often come across in our deindustrialized republic.

It seemed an occasion to view from afar those major figures who, for better or worse but decidedly the latter in almost all cases, now determine the destiny of what we call, a little quaintly at this point, the Western world.

I had never previously considered these people as if they make a single group, a motley (very) crew. And it has been an interesting exercise by way of some year-end conclusions.

Here in no particular order are a few of my “takeaways,” as headline writers at the mainstream dailies so tiresomely put it.

One, the distance between the Western powers’ purported leaders and their citizens is more or less complete. Power now operates in supreme sequestration.

Two, wars, a genocide, drone invasions, assassinations, deportation gangs, censorship, sanctions, eroded civil liberties, lawlessness: There is no assuming post-democratic electorates favor any of this over peace and a moral order.

No, people are better understood as resigned to impotence—stunned into silence as power is no longer answerable and they, those now ruled rather than governed, have no connection to their rulers.

We are all Ming Dynasty peasants now, to put his point another way.

“Two, wars, a genocide, drone invasions, assassinations, deportation gangs, censorship, sanctions, eroded civil liberties, lawlessness: There is no assuming post-democratic electorates favor any of this over peace and a moral order.”

Two, it is no use hoping for any alteration in the collective West’s course so long as this crowd of self-interested second-raters remains in office. These people have condemned us, while acting in our names, to regimes of wanton brutality.

Three and more significantly and imposingly, it follows that the systems and political processes that thrust them into positions far beyond their capacities have to be dismantled or otherwise radically reformed before there is a chance of restoring ourselves to any kind of just, humane order.

Four and reading out of Nos. 1, 2, and 3, post-democratic disempowerment and the West’s sponsorship of rampant disorder burdens citizens with great responsibilities.

Chas Freeman, the emeritus ambassador and energetic commentator, surprised me this past autumn by stating during a podcast that we—we Americans—have entered a pre-revolutionary period in American history. I will let Chas’s remark stand as an explanation of what I mean by responsibilities. The future is up to us, to put this point another way.

Finally, there are a few exceptions to this assessment of the West’s purported leaders, and we must look to them for slim rays of light—suggestions of what is still possible when people of integrity serve in high office genuinely in the names of those who put them there.

It is time to face these truths—long past time, indeed. The year to come will bear this out. The collapse of democratic processes and the prevalence of what looks like indifference but is better understood as resignation—these have landed the Western world with a mob of “leaders” who are clinically neurotic, narcissistic, sociopathic, megalomaniacal, operating well beyond their competence—or some or all of these in combination.

Only 20 years ago it was a not-done to speak or write of the West’s decline. One was a “declinist”—remember that word?—and this left one somewhat in the desert. Now that our late-imperial decline is beyond denying, who would have guessed that it would prove so shabby, so undignified, so embarrassing in its way—and, of course, so careless of human life and law.

Have you ever studied a photograph of Bibi Netanyahu—the features, I mean? I never miss a chance, so fascinating do I find his visage, and I urge this if you have not taken a  close look. As any good psychiatrist or clinical psychologist will tell you, this is the face of a psychotic as defined in the good old DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The Israeli prime minister’s record is well-enough known. A 76–year-old with a tenuous relationship with reality, I mean to say, is now the most powerful person in West Asia—and at this point well beyond.

But Netanyahu is not a Western leader, you say. Oh, no you don’t: The power Bibi exerts in Washington and most of the European capitals transcends geography by a long way. He takes a prominent place in this pencil-sketched group portrait. At writing, Netanyahu has just finished his fifth visit to President Trump during this, the Trumpster’s first year back in office. Think of it: A psychotic and an emotionally-arrested narcissist who seems to have something to prove to somebody, probably his father, spent the Monday of Christmas Week planning another military operation against the Islamic Republic — this one to destroy its missile program and air defenses.

Caitlin Johnstone put it best in her Dec. 28 newsletter. “They’ve stopped making up pretend nonsense about nuclear weapons,” she wrote, “and now they’re just going, ‘We need to attack Iran because Iran is rebuilding its ability to stop us from attacking it.’”

There are also Netanyahu’s various predicaments at home to consider. He is on trial on multiple corruption charges, he faces elections in 2026 he is likely to lose, and he is cravenly beholden to the Zionist fanatics with whom he has stocked his cabinet. Does this mean Itamar Ben–Givr, Bezalel Smotrich, et al. have an indirect but powerful influence in global politics? I propose we skip the question, as I cannot bear to risk the answer.

During my Christmas idyll among the firs and soaring cedars of the Pacific Northwest, the others who came to mind were those across the Atlantic who account for what we call Core Europe. Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz — the British prime minister, the French president, the German chancellor: I would write these guys off as palookas except that palookas are oafish louts who never get anywhere in life.

These three are oafish and loutish in their way but have got way too far. Since Merz’s election last spring they have formed a sort of triumvirate that more or less dictates Europe’s collective direction. Russophobes all — Merz the worst of them — they’ve got Britain and the Continent all stirred up about a purely imaginary Russian invasion while  burdening their populations with generations’ worth of debt to keep the criminal regime in Kiev going in a war Ukraine lost (by my reckoning) more than a year ago.

Yet worse, across much of Europe, and certainly in the U.K., any expression of support for the Palestinian people is now effectively criminalized. As someone remarked on “X” the other day, you get arrested and jailed in Britain for denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza while the Starmer regime gives red-carpet welcomes to Israeli officials directly  responsible for it.

What is our word for these people? To study them together, it seems to me it must be feckless or immature — juvenile, maybe, or underdeveloped. Accustomed to sheltering under the umbrella of American hegemony, they prove incapable of thinking or acting responsibly and so seek a new refuge in the citadel of “centrist” ideology, which is not the center of anything unless it is liberal authoritarianism.

A clinically disturbed prime minister, a solipsistic president bought by the Zionist lobbies, three Europeans without a leadership bone in their bodies: I refer repeatedly to these as the West’s “purported leaders” because they do not lead anything. Let me call them “PLs” for the rest of this commentary.

The PLs of our time are entirely comfortable in their sequestration from their citizens, as this leaves them free to act entirely in their own interests. And self-interest is fine if that is the god one wants to serve, but not when a grotesquely violent world order is the price of it. I celebrated last October, when the Irish elected Catherine Connolly their president by a very wide margin. It is a ceremonial post, O.K., but Connolly’s principled politics, notably but not only on Israeli terror and the Palestine question, stand for Ireland’s.

To bring this point home but briefly, the Irish now plan to turn the former Israeli Embassy, empty since its Zionist ambassador was hounded out of Dublin this past year, into a museum dedicated to Palestinian art and artifacts. Is this splendid or what? There is no beating the Irish gift for mixing irony, humor and politics. They have been at it for some centuries, after all.

I saw a map of Netanyahu’s flight path on “X” just before he departed for Mar-a–Lago over the weekend. His plane flew over Greece and Italy before turning sharply northward toward France so as to avoid Spanish airspace. This reminded me, although one needs no reminding, of the principled position the government of Pedro Sánchez has taken on Israel and its crimes.

Spain’s Socialist premier seems to miss no chance to denounce the Zionist regime. “Those responsible for this genocide will be held accountable,” Sánchez said in a speech this past year. And: “We do not do business with a genocidal state, we do not.”

To wit, the Spanish parliament imposed a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel last summer and immediately began to enforce it. In the autumn Banco Sabadell, an old-line Barcelona institution, began freezing the accounts of Israelis.

There are other such honorable cases, although they may not be so forthright as the Irish and Spanish. Their righteousness is important in itself, of course, but also for what it shows the rest of us.

The PLs will be the end of the West’s story only if Westerners acquiesce to them. Resignation is not native to the late-imperial Western consciousness: It is conditioned. And there is a point to overcoming it.

January 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment