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As Trump Talks of Taking Cuba, Havana Promises “Impregnable Resistance”

March 18, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/18/as-trump-talks-of-taking-cuba-havana-promises-impregnable-resistance/

As Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced escalating threats from Donald Trump, Havana made clear that any U.S. attempt to impose regime change by force would not go unanswered.

“The United States threatens Cuba publicly, almost daily, with overthrowing the constitutional order by force,” Díaz-Canel wrote, accusing Washington of manufacturing crisis conditions through an economic siege that has targeted the island for more than sixty years.

He argued that the same powers tightening sanctions and restricting fuel are now presenting Cuba’s hardship as justification for intervention — a pattern familiar across decades of U.S. policy toward governments unwilling to submit to Washington’s demands.

“They announce plans to seize the country, its resources, its property, even the economy they themselves are trying to suffocate,” Díaz-Canel said, warning that collective punishment of the Cuban people is being openly paired with renewed language of occupation. “Any external aggressor will collide with impregnable resistance.”

The warning came after Trump declared from the White House that he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba,” speaking as if sovereignty itself were negotiable.

The remark landed amid intensifying pressure on the island, where fuel shortages and blackout conditions have deepened under a tightening oil embargo imposed after the U.S. confrontation with Nicolás Maduro.

According to recent reporting, officials inside the administration are treating Díaz-Canel’s removal as a condition for any future talks, reviving a familiar regime-change formula dressed up as diplomacy.

Marco Rubio, long one of Washington’s most aggressive voices on Cuba, reinforced that message by saying the island “has to get new people in charge,” a statement widely read in Havana as confirmation that coercion — not negotiation — remains U.S. policy.

Yet public support inside the United States for another foreign intervention appears thin. Recent polling shows more Americans oppose than support the embargo, while only a small minority back military action against Cuba.

Meanwhile, the economic war continues to hit ordinary Cubans hardest: prolonged blackouts, fuel shortages, and collapsing infrastructure remain the immediate consequences of sanctions that Washington insists are aimed at the government.

Against that backdrop, the first delegation of the Nuestra América Convoy reached Havana this week carrying humanitarian aid — food, medicine, and energy supplies intended to bypass the blockade’s human toll.

Editors from Current Affairs joining the mission said the convoy is meant not only to deliver material support but to send a political message: that many Americans reject threats of annexation, strangulation, and forced political change carried out in their name.

“Words like “sanctions” and “restrictions” really don’t capture the reality. This is an undeclared economic war, and a lethal one. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to bring about regime change in Cuba, and have demanded that President Miguel Díaz-Canel resign from office. So they’re inflicting as much pain and suffering on the Cuban people as they can, in hopes of bringing the entire nation to its knees. If the blackouts continue, they will kill people; it’s possible they already have.

Now, it’s the rest of the world’s turn to come to Cuba’s aid. This month, a coalition of activists from around the globe are launching a humanitarian aid mission to Cuba to break the siege. Modeled after the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring aid to Gaza last year, the Nuestra América Convoy will converge in Havana on March 21, with participants coming from around the world by air and sea… Alex Skopic and Nathan J. Robinson: Why We’re Going to Cuba

For many on the American left, the convoy is more than a humanitarian delivery — it is a direct rejection of a foreign policy that continues to treat economic deprivation as leverage and sovereignty as conditional. At a moment when Washington openly discusses who should govern Cuba while tightening measures that deepen daily hardship on the island, the mission underscores a longer political truth: sanctions are never merely abstract instruments of pressure. They land in darkened homes, empty pharmacies, strained hospitals, and disrupted food supplies, while officials in Washington frame that suffering as evidence that the system must collapse. In traveling to Havana, the delegation is asserting that solidarity means refusing the logic that punishment can be called diplomacy when an entire population is made to absorb its cost.

At a time when American officials speak casually of deciding Cuba’s future, the deeper question is whether empire still assumes it owns that right. For Cuba, the message from Havana is equally blunt: pressure may deepen, but surrender is not on offer.

March 20, 2026 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran: ‘Just a question of time’

Kevin Breuninger, Fri, Mar 6 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/trump-cuba-iran-regime-change.html

Key Points

  • President Donald Trump suggested his administration will turn its sights to Cuba after U.S. military operations in Iran are done.
  • It “will be just a question of time before you and a lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” Trump told a crowd at the White House.
  • On Iran, Trump said the U.S. and Israeli militaries are continuing to “totally demolish the enemy.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested his administration will turn its sights to Cuba after U.S. military operations in Iran are finished.

“What’s happening with Cuba is amazing,” Trump said at the White House while participating in a visit of Inter Miami CF, the 2025 Major League Soccer champions.

“We think that we want to fix — finish this one first, but that will be just a question of time before you and a lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” Trump said to the Miami-heavy audience that included people of Cuban heritage.

The comments show Trump, less than a week into an escalating military conflict in the Middle East, is considering another major foreign policy move.

“We want you back, and we don’t want to lose you. We don’t want to make it so nice that they stay. But some people probably do want to stay. They love Cuba so much,” he said. “That was another one that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Trump turned his focus to Cuba after providing a boastful update on the war in Iran, where he said the U.S. and Israeli militaries are continuing to “totally demolish the enemy.”

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been “doing a fantastic job.”

“And you’ve been doing a fantastic job on a place called Cuba,” Trump added, prompting applause from the room.

Trump’s latest remarks on Cuba follow previous hints, some less subtle than others, that he and his allies have dropped about their plans for the Caribbean island nation.

“Cuba’s next,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on Fox News after the Iran strikes began.

In an interview with Politico earlier Thursday, Trump predicted that after Iran’s regime is toppled, “Cuba’s going to fall, too.”

Trump also took credit for choking Cuba’s economy to force them to the negotiating table, which he had vowed to do after the U.S. military in January attacked Venezuela, a major supplier of oil to Cuba.

“We cut off all oil, all money, or we cut off everything coming in from Venezuela, which was the sole source. And they want to make a deal,” he told Politico.

“We are talking to Cuba,” Trump also said in that interview. “How long have you been hearing about Cuba — Cuba, Cuba — for 50 years?” he added. “And that’s one of the small ones for me.”

March 13, 2026 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

New Addition to List of Nuclear Near Catastrophes

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 23, 2026, https://worldbeyondwar.org/new-addition-to-list-of-nuclear-near-catastrophes/

There are many lists of nuclear close calls. We have a new one to add.

On Monday I visited a site in Caracas, Venezuela, where, very early in the morning on January 3, two powerful missiles slammed into the top of a hill, several feet apart, both beneath a tall telecommunications tower. The tower is largely gone. Debris flew for great distances — many times the distance of 270 meters to a nuclear reactor (white in the background in the photo above on original) and nuclear storage facility. The Earth shook. Buildings a great distance away were damaged and glass windows broken. A building adjacent to the nuclear reactor had rooms most significantly damaged. Electricity was cut off to a wide area, including to the nuclear reactor.

Any use of force whatsoever on any target at all is excessive when attacking someone’s country with violence, but it’s likely that much less force than two massive missiles could have sufficed for the crime of depriving people of electricity and communications. It’s also possible that something could have gone slightly wrong, resulting in a need to evacuate millions of men, women, children, and infants.

Does this bode well for the crime, threatened yet again, of attacking Iran? Will care be taken to avoid nuclear disasters, or in fact will such care be strictly avoided?

Or if Trump loses interest in Iran, could worse be in store for Venezuela?

The site of this nearly nuclear attack was the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research, a non-military facility. The nuclear reactor is for medical purposes, and nuclear materials are returned to this site from hospitals for storage.

The missiles were reportedly fired from perhaps a kilometer away by an F-35 — a wonderful airplane with its own long list of horrors and disasters.

The attack put a halt to research at the institute, and — according to people who had worked there for 30 years — was the first crime of any kind committed on the campus.

Workers were able to use generators and then to restore some power to the reactor in 4 days and full power in 10 days. There is talk of rebuilding the tower. There has also been a proposal to build a memorial on the site.

Visiting this location was part of the fourth day of a peace delegation to Venezuela. See reports on the first three days here:

March 5, 2026 Posted by | incidents, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

66 years of US sanctions and embargo degrading Cuba have become depraved under Trump.

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 19 Feb 26, https://theaimn.net/66-years-of-us-sanctions-and-embargo-degrading-cuba-have-come-to-this/

President Trump just made one of the most depraved statements about destroying living conditions for a foreign people ever uttered by a US president. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Trump doesn’t just talk depravity. He practices depravity. He’s ratcheted up America’s 66 yearlong campaign of economic sanctions and embargo to unprecedented heights. For the 11 million beleaguered Cuban people that means a new low in living standards from Trump’s cruelty.

Trump‘s criminal intervention in Venezuela allows him to cut off Venezuelan oil which suppled one third of Cuba’s oil. Not satisfied with that, Trump is pressuring Mexico to cut off the 44% of Cuban oil it supplies. If successful that would cut Cuba’s oil supplies by 78%. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum cancel one oil shipment but says Mexico will still provide Cuba oil based on “humanitarian needs.” Tho reducing oil shipments, Mexico is sending two ships containing 800 tons of desperately needed food, water and hygiene products. Hopefully Trump won’t mistake the Mexican ships for drug boats to be obliterated.

The oil shortage has already created a humanitarian crisis as less than half of Havana’s garbage trucks have fuel to cope with mountains of waste.  Russia has ordered all its tourists out of Cuba. The collapsing tourist industry is destroying one of Cuba’s last economic lifelines.

But that is not good enough for Trump who’s considering a total blockade on oil imports to collapse the Cuban economy and depose the communist government. Last month Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba. Seeking to out-deprave the depraved Trump when it comes to Cuba, U.S. Charge d Affaires in Havana Mike Hammer told his staff “Now there is going to be a real blockade. Nothing is getting in. No more oil is coming.”

Nine years ago my wife and I visited Cuba for 10 days before newly elected Trump began dismantling Obama’s wonderful détente with Cuba. While his détente reestablished diplomatic relations and increased badly needed US tourism, it did not end the embargo which requires Congressional legislation. It was heartbreaking being there to ponder the madness of US policy inflicting such cruelty on such a beautiful country and its people for the past 57 years.

I’d been studying US Cuban relations since January 1, 1959 when news broke on Castro’s successful takedown of the brutal US supported Batista regime. I welcomed the news that 60 years of US exploitation of Cuba following our takeover of Cuba from Spain in 1898 had ended. Sadly, Ike rescinded his initial outreach to Castro within a year over US obsession in destroying any popular left wing government seeking to uplift its people suffering under colonialism.

My visit greatly expanded all I’d been studying about Cuba since 1959. It inspired me to develop a talk entitled ‘US Cuban Relations 1898 to Present: What They Didn’t Teach Us in School’ which I’ve presented many times. I end the talk imploring attendees to stay informed, support end to America’s cruel, heatless embargo, and visit Cuba to see for yourself its beauty and the need to end senseless US cruelty.                  

Alas, at next presentation I’ll drop the third request they visit Cuba to see for themselves its beauty and its people. The current depraved US administration is making Cuba unlivable for its 11 million citizens and any tourist who dares visit.

February 20, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

We’re being turned into an energy colony’: Argentina’s nuclear plan faces backlash over US interests

Gioia Claro and Denali DeGraf in Cerro Cóndor, Guardian, Argentina, 10 Feb 26

Push to restart uranium mining in Patagonia has sparked fears about the environmental impact and loss of sovereignty over key resources

On an outcrop above the Chubut River, one of the few to cut across the arid Patagonian steppe of southern Argentina, Sergio Pichiñán points across a wide swath of scrubland to colourful rock formations on a distant hillside.

“That’s where they dug for uranium before, and when the miners left, they left the mountain destroyed, the houses abandoned, and nobody ever studied the water,” he says, citing suspicions arising from cases of cancer and skin diseases in his community. “If they want to open this back up, we’re all pretty worried around here.”

Pichiñán lives in Cerro Cóndor, a hamlet with a sparse Indigenous Mapuche population due to the area’s harsh summers, cold winters and little rain. The National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) mined uranium here in the 1970s and it is now in focus as President Javier Milei aims to shift Argentina’s nuclear strategy.

The remote region sees few visitors, but in November, a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited as part of an Integrated Uranium Production Cycle Review. Cerro Solo, adjacent to the shuttered mines, is one of CNEA’s largest proven uranium deposits, and restarting mining of the ore is the first step in Milei’s new nuclear plan.

The others are to develop small modular reactors, use them to power AI datacentres, export reactors and uranium, and partially privatise Nucleoeléctrica, the state-owned nuclear energy utility.

Yet the plan is facing fierce criticism from both pro- and anti-nuclear voices. Argentina’s non-military nuclear programme is 75 years old. It exports research reactors that produce isotopes for medical radiology and science, and its three nuclear plants – Atucha I and II and Embalse – provide about 5% of the country’s electricity.

Uranium production in Chubut declined in the 1980s, and the mines were closed in the 1990s; since another closed in Mendoza in 1997, Argentina has imported uranium, so many see restarting uranium extraction as a strategic move.

Adriana Serquis, a nuclear physicist, is not so sure. She was president of CNEA until 2024 and was recently elected to congress. She says: “The plan doesn’t seem oriented toward supplying our own plants, but rather exporting uranium directly to the US. It would appear the objective is to satisfy others’ needs while destroying our own capabilities.”

Dioxitek, a state-run subsidiary of CNEA, processes imported uranium into uranium dioxide for use in Argentina’s power stations, but signed a commitment in August last year with the US-based Nano Nuclear Energy to supply it with uranium hexafluoride. As Argentina’s reactors run on natural or low-enriched uranium oxide rather than uranium hexafluoride, it is likely that any uranium extracted in Argentina would be exported to the US rather than be used for local energy production.

In parallel, Nano Nuclear Energy signed a memorandum of understanding with the British-Argentinian company UrAmerica, which has large holdings in Chubut and plans to mine uranium. One of the stated goals of the agreement is “strengthening US energy security by sourcing materials for nuclear fuel from a reliable partner”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

All this comes in the context of Milei’s chainsaw-style dismemberment of public research and environmental protection agencies. “Milei took office with a potent discourse of stigmatising science and technology, and rapidly defamed them across the board, from CNEA to the National Water Institute to the National Weather Service to public universities,” Hurtado says. “It’s catastrophic.”

Trade unions claim that between 80% and 90% of CNEA workers receive salaries below the poverty line – increasing emigration and brain drain. In 2024, the country’s secretariat for innovation, science and technology only spent 7% of its allocated budget. Public universities have seen budgets slashed.

Partially privatising the public nuclear utility, Nucleoeléctrica, sets off other alarm bells. The plan, formally launched by the economy ministry in November, aims to sell 44% of the state company to a private investor. Although not holding an absolute majority, the buyer would have the largest stake, giving them decision-making control.

Demian Reidel, Milei’s lead on nuclear matters, was the chair of the council of presidential advisers until being appointed as head of Nucleoeléctrica, where he is now facing a scandal about the company’s procurement and alleged overpricing of service and software contracts……………………………………………………………………………………

Chubut has a broad-based and deeply entrenched grassroots anti-mining movement. A 2003 referendum on open-pit gold-mining received an 81% “no” vote, leading to a law prohibiting the practice throughout the province. In 2021, lawmakers tried to open the central steppe to mining but withdrew after protesters blocked highways, swarmed the capital and set fire to government buildings.

The anti-nuclear movement goes back to the 1980s, when a radioactive waste dump was proposed near Gastre, a remote village in central Chubut. After years of popular opposition scuttled the project, cities and towns across Patagonia passed anti-nuclear ordinances banning the presence or transit of nuclear materials.

Now, near the old mine sites in central Chubut, tens of thousands of tonnes of old uranium tailings sit behind only a chain-link fence and a sign that says “Restricted Area”.

Orlando Carriqueo, spokesperson for the Mapuche-Tehuelche parliament of Río Negro, an Indigenous organisation in another Patagonian province, says public opinion in the region is concerned about the consequences of uranium mining for fuel production and about waste management. “We’re being turned into an energy colony,” he says.

Reports by CNEA over the past three administrations show no radiation monitoring at the site. Less than a kilometre away, the Río Chubut flows past on its way to supply drinking water to the towns of Trelew, Gaiman and Rawson on the Atlantic coast.

Pichiñán, riding his horse past the abandoned mines, says he fears that future generations could be deluded by the same broken promises of the past. “What happened back then, when they told us we were going to be rich? Where’s all that wealth? Where are the people who were going to have work and money?” he asks.

“I don’t want my child to be 30, 40 years old one day and have to show them this kind of abandonment,” he says. “Whatever happens, we can’t let them do this.”

The CNEA declined to comment. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/09/energy-colony-argentina-patagonia-uranium-nuclear-plan-backlash-over-us-interests

February 12, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

How New Venezuela President Will Save Us from Trump’s Crazy

The Radical Pragmatist versus Rubio’s Vulture

by Greg Palast. for Raw Story, Substack and Thom Hartmann, January 14, 2026

Trump aims to drop oil to $50 a barrel; Chavez offered that years ago.

The US press is confused. Nothing new there. They are confused about the Acting President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez.

The New York Times says Rodriguez “Went From Revolutionary to Trump’s Orbit”

Oh no, she didn’t.

Rodriguez still attacks Trump as an outlaw kidnapper and imperialist invader. But, at the same time, she says she’s seeking the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and offers tens of millions of barrels of oil to Trump.

I’ve known Rodriguez for years. Is she a militant Leftist or a moderate pragmatist?

The answer is, “Yes.” I’d call Rodriguez a “radical pragmatist.”

Trump is wise to keep Rodriguez in the Presidential office. Did I just associate “Trump” and “wise”? Yes, but it seems Trump’s wisdom may be accidental. He is reported to be furious at the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Maria Corina Machado, for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize instead of leaving it to Trump. And the result is that he has vetoed installing her in power.

Notably, oil and finance interests want the “Leftist” Rodriguez to stay — even the CIA wants her to stay. But Sec. of State Marco Rubio and an outlaw US billionaire want her out. Who wins? I’ll handicap the race below.

Trump wants Venezuelan oil — that we already had

Rodriguez and Trump desire the same thing: to send Venezuelan oil to the US. But Donald, we already had Venezuelan oil…until YOU embargoed imports of their crude.

Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez enjoyed taunting George W. Bush. I remember when Chavez spoke at the UN General Assembly right after Bush left the podium. Chavez began, “There is a distinct smell of sulphur here.” Bush went after Chavez. It was a bit less subtle than Chavez’ comment. Bush backed the kidnapping of Chavez in 2002. Unlike Trump, Bush’s scheme face-planted and Chavez was returned by his kidnappers, more popular than ever.

But despite the barbs and kidnapping, Bush, with Chavez’ encouragement, kept Venezuelan oil flowing to the US, more than a million barrels a day.

Trump is crowing that, “we’re going to be taking oil” from Venezuela. Mr. President, we were taking Venezuela’s oil until you stopped the flow with an embargo.

Now, it will be nearly impossible, and cost a prohibitive amount, to crank up Venezuela’s production to get back up to the flow quantities we had before Trump’s embargo. Because, when the extraction of super-heavy oil of Venezuela stopped, it congealed into tar and then into asphalt. Refineries and pipes are choked and destroyed, a destruction Trump engineered through blocking Venezuela from paying for equipment to maintain the lines. Now, Trump is trying to bully US oil companies to invest as much as $100 billion to restore the oil infrastructure that Trump himself destroyed.

Trump wants praise for (expensively) rebuilding what he demolished. He’s like an arsonist who wants praise for calling the fire department.

Chavez’ $50/barrel offer

US voters have decided that price inflation is a real bummer. So, Trump has decided, correctly, that unleashing Venezuela’s oil is the way to go. Trump states bluntly that he wants to open Venezuela’s oil spigots to bring down the price of crude to $50 a barrel. Today, crude sells for just under $60/bbl.

But Venezuela already offered to cap the price of its oil at $50/bbl years ago. In one of my interviews with Chavez for BBC Television, he said he would agree to cap oil at $50 if the US would guarantee that oil would not slip below $30/bbl. Venezuela, unlike Saudi Arabia, could not afford another crash to $10 a barrel, as happened in 1998, which bankrupted South American OPEC members. So, Chavez enthusiastically endorsed this idea of a “band” — you give us a bottom and we’ll give you a top — which was first suggested, notably, by industry consultant Henry Kissinger.

Chavez told me he got along well with Kissinger and George Bush Sr., a fellow oil man. And, as Chavez noted, he was “a good chess player,” a pro at realpolitik, a skill he passed to his protégé Rodriguez.

In other words, Trump killed a hundred people in his coup (and thousands may yet die) to get something by force that he could have gotten by contract.

OPEC: “no brainer” or “no brains”?

The first strike against right-wing fave Machado is her avowed desire to sell off Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA, pronounced, Pay-day-VAY-sah). What Machado, a neophyte to petroleum economics, does not understand is that full privatization is a direct threat to the oil majors and OPEC.

I’ve seen this movie before. Leading up to the invasion of Iraq, neo-cons within the Bush Administration wanted to privatize Iraq’s state oil companies, selling the fields to American and European majors who would then, the neo-con plan went, compete to maximize output, crash the price of crude and bring OPEC to its knees. Ari Cohen of the Heritage Foundation told me this scheme was a “no-brainer.”

But then I spoke with Philip Carrol, past President of Royal Dutch Shell USA who said, “Anyone who thinks pulling out of OPEC is a ‘no brainer’ has no brains.” Oil companies are not in the business of getting oil; they are in the business of making money. A crash in the price of crude could indeed end OPEC’s price-setting power and no US oil company wants to see their revenues collapse.

There’s also a legal issue. There is no way for Venezuela to stay in OPEC if its state oil company is sold to US interests because US law makes it a crime to participate in a price-fixing cartel. But our government has carved out a convenient exception for state-owned oil companies allowing Exxon and Chevron and their buds to surf on the high prices set by the OPEC monopoly.

Rodriguez is not only Acting President, she remains the Minister of Petroleum and Hydrocarbons. She has a detailed knowledge of the hard realities of oil production. But, she’s a patriot, too. She will not allow the theft or seizure of Venezuela’s oil, but she sure as hell wants to sell us oil again. Chevron, which has worked closely with
Rodriguez, couldn’t be happier. Oil companies don’t want to own oil fields. That’s not how the industry operates. They don’t want the real estate; they want profit. They work with OPEC nations through PSA’s, Profit Sharing Agreements. The issue is always the split of the revenues, not ownership; with the state’s share paid as a “royalty” for US tax purposes.

The last thing the oil companies need is Machado, a free-market fanatic, creating a civil war over ownership of fields that the majors want to drill, not own.

And there’s a practical problem. At $50/bbl, no one is going to drill in the Orinoco Basin, where most of the oil is, because it’s just not profitable to try and pull up the sulphurous gunk there. As petroleum engineer Beck would say, “It’s a loser, baby.” That’s why Trump was so frustrated with the oil big wigs who just met with him at the White House. He’s telling them to dump tens of billions into a money pit, rebuilding what Trump destroyed…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.gregpalast.com/how-new-venezuela-president-will-save-us-from-trumps-crazy/

January 18, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

Cuba Vows to Defend Itself Against Trump to ‘The Last Drop of Blood’

“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” said Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel in response to the latest threat from the authoritarian US president.

Jon Queally, Jan 11, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-threatens-cuba

President Donald Trump was ripped by humanitarians and anti-war voices on Sunday after he again threatened Cuba by saying the US military would be used to prevent oil and other resources from reaching the country, threats that come just over a week after the American president ordered the unlawful attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

In a social media post Sunday morning, Trump declared:

Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided “Security Services” for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE! Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last weeks U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT

Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected Trump’s latest comments and threat of military force, saying the island nation was ready to defend itself.

“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” Diaz-Canel said in a social media post. “Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the US for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”

Progressive critics of the US president were also quick to hit back. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, said the “true extortionist” in this situation is Trump himself, as she detailed the mutual benefit of the relationship between the Venezuelan and Cuban governments over recent decades:

“What is extortion?” Benjamin asks. “It’s what Donald Trump is doing: taking over those oil tankers, confiscating 30-50 million tons of oil—that is extortion. And saying to Venezuela, ‘We’re going to run your country.” Donald Trump is the greatest extortionist our country has seen.“

Reuters reports Sunday, citing shipping data, that Venezuela has been Cuba’s “biggest oil supplier, but no cargoes have departed from Venezuelan ports to the Caribbean country since the capture of Maduro.

Speaking with CBS News on Sunday, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) said that Trump’s threats to strangle the people of Cuba by enforcing a resource blockade were “like magical” in her ears and those of her right-wing constituents who live in Miami’s large community of Cuban exiles.

Welcoming Trump’s efforts to bully Cuba into submission, Salazar claimed that Cuba’s government is “hanging by a threat” she said, before correcting herself, “a thread, I should say.”

Oddly—but notably—Salazar continued her remarks by saying it was Cuba that has been an “immense” threat to the United States, as she described it as a nation “with no water; they have no electricity; they have no food—nothing. So if you think Maduro is weak, Cuba is even weaker. And now they do not have one drop of oil coming from Venezuela.”

But progressive voices opposed to Trump’s authoritarian violations of international law, his bullying of allies and enemies alike with claims that the US can do whatever it likes in the name of national security and claims of national interest, are warning that the threats against Cuba and other nations represent a chilling development that must be met with international opposition and condemnation.

“The US blockade of Cuba is the longest-standing act of collective punishment in the world,” said David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, pointing to Trump’s remarks. “It is condemned by the entire international community every year at the UN. And now, the US president is doubling down on this cruel and illegal punishment. Enough.”

“This is an emergency,” Progressive International explained in a dispatch last week, warning about Trump’s overt hostility toward Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and other nations in the wake of the US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores.

“The United States is rapidly escalating its assault on the Americas—and the principle of self-determination at large,” warned the international advocacy group. “Under the banner of the Monroe Doctrine, Donald Trump and his cronies are leading a campaign of imperial aggression that stretches from Caracas to Havana, Mexico City to Bogotá.”

According to the dispatch:

What we are witnessing today is class struggle played out through imperial violence. The United States stands as the political and military instrument of capital: Big Oil bankrolling politics; arms manufacturers profiting from destruction; and financial power thriving on plunder and permanent war. These sections of capital pay for the policies they desire and are richly rewarded. The share prices of US oil majors soared around 10% following Maduro’s kidnapping, representing a return of around $100 billion on an investment of $450 million in the last US elections.

The government serves its donors, so aggression can proceed without consent. Public opinion has repeatedly shown opposition to U.S. military action in Venezuela — a gap between elite appetite and popular will bridged by force, not democracy.

Venezuela — like many nations before it — represents a different possibility: that the popular classes might govern themselves, control their resources, and chart a future beyond imperial command. And that possibility represents an existential threat to empire.

The group said Sunday’s latest threat by Trump against Cuba—openly saying that the US military might will be used to prevent life-sustaining resources from reaching the island nation—should be seen for what it is: a coercive “threat to strangle Cuba of critical energy and resources” at the end of a barrel of a gun.

“Through manipulation, coercion, and now direct military action,” the group warns, the US government under Trump “has made absolutely clear its intention to dominate Latin America.”

January 14, 2026 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Oil in Venezuela: Strangulation, Not a Steal

8 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/oil-in-venezuela-strangulation-not-a-steal/

It’s not drill baby drill, after all. Picture a vast, rusting skeletal oil rig off Venezuela’s coast, derricks frozen mid-stroke like the limbs of some colossal fossil. If you’ve heeded Stenographers R Us, the mainstream international media franchise embedded with the rich the powerful and the fabulously ruthless, you’d think Washington’s frenzy over this country boils down to a simple heist. But you’d be wrong.

Put to one side Bull Dust Trump’s buccaneering fantasy, a daring smash and grab raid for the world’s largest proven oil reserves, a tanker-load of cut-price fuel so cheap that every man can run at least one Ram V8 or Ford F-Series truck. And one for the little woman. Above all, it’s the heist that pays for itself. You steal Venezuela’s oil. Take over their country. All free of charge; funded by the plundered oil.

Trump’s lying. Of course. Like his career as a deal-maker, turning Caracas into a McDonald’s hamburger franchise is a fantasy founded on a fiction based on a lie, pure and simple. Behind the headlines, see the levers of power post-Maduro’s Manhattan manacles, muffs and blindfold, the full, Gitmo rig, and a sharper, more sinister pattern swims into view. Not just touring the trophy in a van with the back door open. This isn’t about nicking the black gold. It’s all about the chokehold, a slow but sure squeeze to block off the oil, denying the flow not just to Venezuela, but to anyone who dares defy The Hulk.

The Chokehold Takes Shape

Cast your mind back to the early 2010s. US sanctions began to creep from diplomatic tiffs to industrial strength sabotage. PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil mammoth, didn’t just falter; it was engineered into failure. Spare parts were embargoed, rigs starved of foreign cash, refineries left to rust in the tropical brine and the sulphur that makes the nation’s heavy, treacle-thick crude, notoriously hard to refine.

Output didn’t dip, it plummeted from three million barrels a day to under 800,000. The Intercept, and Democracy Now! map the blueprint: not haphazard penalties, but a calculated corrosion of the coronary arteries of the economy. And here’s the exquisite irony in the crude itself; that heavy, sour Venezuelan black isn’t some elixir of cheap bounty.

It demands bespoke refineries, the kind that gobble margins unless global prices pitch high, say at the $60-70 per barrel sweet spot for US shale outfits. By idling millions of barrels, Washington doesn’t just punish Caracas; it rigs scarcity, propping up prices for its own patch and Saudi bedfellows.

Why would the planet’s oil glutton sabotage a gusher? Follow the boardroom gaze across the trading floors: scarcity keeps the market taut, volumes crimped, returns plump for the anointed players. The Grayzone and The Real News call it engineered sabotage, with Chevron and Exxon not clamouring for a bargain-bin blowout, but biding time for PDVSA’s orderly dismemberment and disembowelling. It will be privatised, of course, to some asset-stripper, on terms dictated from Foggy Bottom.

The Empire’s Ledger: Workers Foot the Bill

Yet no imperial romp runs on fairy dust, and the tab for this buccaneering lands not in some mythical oil jackpot, but squarely on the brows of ordinary Americans. Imagine the bills: 80 billion dollars a year vanishing into overseas bases, the concrete teeth enforcing sanctions and glowering at rivals across 25 countries since 2001.

Tack on another 62 billion in fossil fuel subsidies; bargain priced pollution, tax loopholes ladled to a coterie of oil titans, as with our gas industry, and the mathematics unmasks itself. The truck driver filling up at dawn, the nurse tallying grocery receipts inflated by freight costs: they’re clobbered doubly, once by the pump’s regressive bite from jacked global crude, again by tax dollars greasing the imperial gears. No plunder’s bounty offsets it; this is a quiet expropriation from wage packets to corner suites.

Now widen the lens to Latin America, where the rogue elephant lumbers, trunk swinging. Step forward Marco Rubio, son of Cuban exiles, his irony bypass a marvel of surgical precision. There he is on ABC’s 7:30 Report, cool as a Miami breeze, labelling Havana a “huge problem” mired in “a lot of trouble” for cradling Maduro; ripe, he implied, for Uncle Sam’s rapture. Rubio has the gall to scorn Cuba’s “senile incompetents” while a demented Donald Trump cheers intervention and why stop with Venezuela?

Trump paints Colombia’s Petro a narco-overlord and Mexico’s Sheinbaum a cartel consort.

Cuba’s original sin harks to 1959, when Fidel Castro’s revolution swept away the neon bordello Washington had bankrolled. Havana wasn’t just a city then; it was an offshore playground for Mafia dons and sugar barons, gangsters and generals carousing amid the roulette wheels while peasants toiled in the cane fields. Paradise Lost. Be not afraid. Trump has the team to turn back the clock.

Socialism didn’t just nationalise assets; Cuba reclaimed dignity, dodging the fate of a permanent Americano brothel. The reprisal? The Bay of Pigs bloodbath, a six-decade embargo tighter than a drum, whispers of invasion perennially on the wind. Rubio’s ire isn’t bungled governance; it’s the gall of autonomy. Now Venezuela’s shell is broken, Havana may well be next; Latin America is no mere backyard, but a type of professional wrestling tournament where Trump shows off US muscle.

China’s Jolt: Crude Hijacked, Chains Rattled

Beijing, too, savours the aftershock. Picture the tankers rerouted: China guzzles 60-90% of Venezuela’s exports, some 470,000 barrels daily. That’s 4-7% of its total crude thirst, a sliver that balloons to strategic heft in a 30-35% import pool menaced by US writ (Iran in the crosshairs too).

Trump’s hijack doesn’t just nick barrels; it disrupts The Panda’s supply lines, spiking costs and forcing frantic diversification. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry thunders condemnation, pledging legal armour for billions in PDVSA loans, but the calculus shifts: no Taiwan gambit while Washington clutches the taps.

Trump: Puppet or Pyromaniac for Neocon Zealots?

Spare us the fairy tale about “transactions”.

Trump isn’t negotiating. He is issuing demands. He is the public face for a crowd that thinks power makes the rules. Stephen Miller says the quiet part out loud: America has “rights” to Greenland, and the military is “always an option”. That is not diplomacy. It is threat.

Greenland is the test case.

If the United States says it can take what it wants from an ally’s territory, then NATO is no longer a defensive pact. It becomes a protection racket. Denmark’s Prime Minister is right to spell out the obvious: if an ally is the aggressor, Article 5 becomes meaningless. The alliance stops. The guarantee dies. The post-war settlement cracks.

Europe can see it. Britain, France, Germany can mouth support for Denmark’s sovereignty, but the damage is already done. You cannot demand unity on Ukraine while leaning on a founding member with a bully’s grin. You cannot preach rules and practise coercion.

This is the return of gunboats.

The language changes first. “Rights” becomes a blank cheque. “Security” becomes a pretext. “Options” becomes a threat. Then the map changes. Resources become the prize: minerals, oil, shipping lanes, bases, ice. Sovereignty becomes conditional. Obedience buys “stability”. Independence buys punishment.

Greenlanders don’t want American rule. Danes are no longer sure America is a safe partner. That is what this behaviour produces: distrust, hedging, rearmament, fragmentation. Not order. Not peace. Not alliance.

And it’s the same playbook in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s mistake was not incompetence alone. It was disobedience. It traded with Russia and China. It tried to keep control of its crude and its policy. For that, it was put in a vise. Sanctions dressed up as morality. Pressure dressed up as rescue. A national oil company turned into a target.

The aim is simple: break the state, break the industry, and decide the terms of recovery. Not to “liberate” Venezuelans, but to control the output, the contracts, and the alignments. To make sure rivals don’t benefit. To make sure the price, and the leverage, stays where Washington wants it.

Call it what it is.

Greenland is not a quirky real estate stunt. Venezuela is not a humanitarian project. They are chapters in the same doctrine: America takes, others comply, and law follows power like a dog behind a ute.

If you keep pretending it’s “dealmaking”, you help the fraud along.

Name the grip. Or live inside it.

This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES 

January 11, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

US will ‘fix’ Cuba and Nicaragua – Republican senator

7 Jan, 2026. https://www.rt.com/news/630708-us-senator-cuba-colombia-nicaragua-to-be-fixed/

Rick Scott issued threats to the socialist countries after American commandos abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Republican US Senator Rick Scott has said that Washington would install a new president in Colombia, as well as “fix” Cuba and Nicaragua.

He made the remarks in an interview with Fox Business, just days after US commandos abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during a raid in Caracas.

US President Donald Trump described the operation as his enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, designed to ensure Washington’s domination in the Western Hemisphere and said American companies must gain access to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves.

Trump’s actions would “change Latin America,” Scott told Fox on Wednesday. “We’re gonna fix Cuba, Nicaragua will be fixed. Next year, we’ll get a new president in Colombia,” the senator added, declaring that “democracy is coming back to this hemisphere.”

The US first imposed a trade blockade and sanctions on socialist-run Cuba and Nicaragua during the Cold War. Last year, Washington imposed restrictions on Colombia’s left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused of aiding drug cartels. Petro denied the allegations and has heavily criticized Trump for ordering strikes on alleged narcotics smuggling boats in the Caribbean.

Asked by journalists aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he was planning to attack Colombia, Trump replied, “It sounds good to me.”

Petro, a former member of a communist guerrilla group, denounced Trump’s threats. “I swore after the 1989 peace agreement never to touch a weapon again, but for the sake of the homeland, I will take up arms once more, even though I do not want to,” he wrote on X earlier this week.

The US Department of Justice indicted Maduro and Flores on drug-trafficking and weapons charges, to which they pleaded not guilty when they were brought before a New York judge on Monday. Venezuela condemned the US operation as a violation of its sovereignty, with Acting President Delcy Rodriguez denying that the country would be ruled by foreign powers.

January 11, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

Delcy Rodríguez swears to uphold sovereignty of the nation as acting president of Venezuela

Rodríguez promised to respect the constitution and uphold national sovereignty following the US attack on Venezuela, which left more than 80 people dead and resulted in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

January 08, 2026 by Pablo Meriguet, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2026/01/08/delcy-rodriguez-swears-to-uphold-sovereignty-of-the-nation-as-acting-president-of-venezuela/

On January 5, Delcy Rodríguez assumed the presidency of Venezuela. The former vice president swore before parliament that she would uphold the constitution and the sovereignty of the nation after the US attack on January 3, in which the US military took President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores prisoner.

The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, urged the president to protect Venezuela “for her honor, for the people of Venezuela, for the example of the Liberators of America to zealously guard our sacred territory.”

Delcy Rodríguez stated that she accepted the task under very difficult circumstances, but that she would not rest until Venezuela was a free, sovereign, and independent nation. “I come with pain for the suffering that has been caused to the Venezuelan people after an illegitimate military aggression against our homeland. [There are] two heroes whom we have as hostages in the United States of America: President Nicolás Maduro and the first combatant of this country, Cilia Flores,” she told Venezuelan parliamentarians.

Rodríguez also promised to ensure an administration that guarantees peace for Venezuelans: “[We will build] a government that provides social happiness, political stability, and political security. [I ask all sectors of Venezuelan society to] move Venezuela forward in these terrible times of threat to the stability and peace of the nation.”

Although Rodríguez initially stated in a Council of Ministers meeting that Venezuela has only one president, Nicolás Maduro, a Supreme Court ruling ordered the vice president to assume the office of president to avoid a power vacuum.

The weight of the most dangerous presidency on the planet

Rodríguez has insisted in her recent speeches that her administration does not imply a break with the Chavista process. In this regard, she has taken every opportunity to demand Maduro’s release and condemn the US military attack. On January 6, Rodríguez declared seven days of national mourning for the death of the “young martyrs” who “gave their lives defending Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro.”

However, Rodríguez has now inherited an extremely difficult task while in the crosshairs of the most powerful army in the world. Trump himself demanded “full access” to natural resources, while warning of new attacks: “If [the new government] doesn’t behave, we will launch a second attack.”

Trump also stated that major US oil companies will begin operating in Venezuela and that, in addition to making significant profits, they will have to rebuild the South American country’s oil industry.

It is not yet clear what agreements Rodríguez has reached with a US administration that has demonstrated its military power and whose pressure on Caracas has reached levels of violence never before seen against Venezuela.

In this regard, with the threat of more deadly attacks on one hand, a virtually devastated air defense system on the other, and the top leader of Chavismo under arrest, Rodríguez does not have much room for maneuver or negotiation.

Hence, Trump has assured that Venezuela will deliver between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil (worth USD 2.8 billion) in the coming months, and news about the negotiations was confirmed by Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA on Wednesday, January 8.

However, it appears that the Trump administration also recognizes, for the time being, Chavismo as the primary national actor with whom it can negotiate and achieve its geopolitical and economic objectives. Trump has publicly rejected María Corina Machado as the new leader of Venezuela and the idea that elections should be called immediately.

But it is still too early to draw conclusions in a situation that remains unclear amid the dust of missiles, gunfire, and collapsed buildings following the January 3 attack. What is certain is that communication channels have not been closed, nor have the agreements that, it seems, will continue to be made to avoid a new military scenario.

January 11, 2026 Posted by | politics, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

Analysts Warn Venezuela Invasion Could Empower Trump to Take Actions Elsewhere.

“The invasion of Venezuela is a blatant violation of international law,” “It is a prelude, potentially, to a long and violent conflict within Venezuela. And it’s a throwback to other times when leaders who had broken democracy, who had exploited their peoples in Haiti in 1915 or in Panama in 1989, became the fodder for further U.S. invasions and occupation.”

“We’re ready to go again if we have to,” Trump said in a press conference after the invasion. And not just against Venezuela. Trump has threatened military action in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.

The US’s first unilateral invasion in South America is Trump’s testing ground for military supremacy in the region.

By Michael Fox , Truthout, January 6, 2026

The bombs fell in the early hours of January 3. They cascaded over the city, one and then another. The bright orange explosions rocked Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, shaking people awake.

“The bombs lasted a while,” Caracas resident and community organizer Yanahir Reyes told Truthout. “And you could hear the helicopters, the planes. It was terrifying.”

The U.S. forces rained down fire — focused on the military barracks in the capital and nearby states, but also hitting surrounding neighborhoods.

Videos of the invading forces spiraled quickly onto social media. Countless videos of the bombs falling, people screaming, trying to make sense of it all, while the explosions shook buildings and destroyed homes. And the sound of the arrival of the U.S. forces echoed across the city.

Shock. Fear. Confusion………………………………………

This was the invasion that Donald Trump had vowed for months. An invasion that U.S. administrations had threatened for years and decades, going all the way back to President George W. Bush.

And it marked the U.S. once again deploying direct military action in other countries in the region. A return to President Theodore Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy, where the United States pushes its agenda and its interests by force. The Monroe Doctrine on steroids, or what Trump has called it his own “Donroe Doctrine” — Donald plus Monroe.

It is a terrifying precedent. It is the first time the United States has taken unilateral military action against a nation in Latin America in more than 35 years. Many analysts and Latin Americans had hoped this bellicose foreign policy and direct U.S. aggression had been relegated to the history books.

But those playbooks have been dusted off and are being used again, echoing the December 20, 1989, U.S. invasion of Panama. And it was a copy and paste job — give or take some minor alterations.

“The invasion of Venezuela is a blatant violation of international law,” John Lindsay-Poland told Truthout. He’s the author of the book Emperors in the Jungle, about the history of U.S. intervention in Panama and the 1989 invasion. “It is a prelude, potentially, to a long and violent conflict within Venezuela. And it’s a throwback to other times when leaders who had broken democracy, who had exploited their peoples in Haiti in 1915 or in Panama in 1989, became the fodder for further U.S. invasions and occupation.”

As the 1989 invasion of Panama would be considered a training exercise for the ensuing U.S. wars in the Middle East, the Venezuelan invasion on January 3 was Trump’s testing ground for military supremacy in the region.

“We’re ready to go again if we have to,” Trump said in a press conference after the invasion. And not just against Venezuela. Trump has threatened military action in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.

“We should be concerned,” says Steve Ellner, an associate managing editor of the journal Latin American Perspectives, who taught for decades at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. “And we should be concerned because this is meant to send a message way beyond Venezuela, not only way beyond Venezuela in the region, but worldwide.”

1989 Panama Invasion

On December 20, 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion of Panama. Twenty-six thousand U.S. troops invaded the country. They rained down fire and bombs — attacking the barracks of the Panama Defense Forces in the capital of Panama City and other areas.

The U.S.’s goal was to capture President Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges.

Neighborhoods like Panama City’s El Chorrillo went up in smoke. Twenty-thousand homes burned. U.S. forces killed hundreds of people. They dumped bodies into mass graves.

When I visited El Chorrillo in late 2023 to report for the episode of my podcast Under the Shadow about the U.S. invasion, I saw the open wounds that still remain. The bullet holes left by U.S. troops. The pain in people’s voices as they remember that night and the subsequent U.S. occupation.

“So many innocent people died,” said resident Omar Gonzalez, who was only 12 at the time and watched fires engulf homes. “Friends of ours. Children we knew. People. Men and women. Some people who were sleeping at that moment. Elderly people who couldn’t stand up or run away because they lived close to the barracks. And this is the history. It’s painful, more than anything else.”

U.S. forces killed more than 500 people. Victims and their families are still demanding justice. Large murals cover walls, like one depicting a U.S. helicopter flying over rubble engulfed in flames. It reads: “Never forget. Never forgive.”

The Panama invasion marked a new era for U.S. foreign policy in the region in a number of ways………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://truthout.org/articles/analysts-warn-venezuela-invasion-could-empower-trump-to-take-actions-elsewhere/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=7f1612e76d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_01_06_10_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-7f1612e76d-650192793

January 10, 2026 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Caught between Trump and Musk’s rockets, a Mexican village despairs

7 Jan 26, https://www.indiavision.com/national/caught-between-trump-and-musks-rockets-a-mexican-village-despairs/598008/

Space Race Echoes on Mexico’s Shores: A Coastal Community Grapples with Progress

Playa Bagdad, a once-tranquil fishing village nestled along the northeastern coast of Mexico, finds itself at the intersection of ambitious technological advancements and the complex realities of community life. Situated just south of the United States border and within earshot of the din of rocket testing, the village is experiencing profound changes, both environmental and social, as the global space industry expands its reach. The narrative unfolding in Playa Bagdad serves as a microcosm of the broader challenges faced by communities bordering burgeoning spaceports around the world.

For generations, the residents of Playa Bagdad have relied on the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihoods. Fishing has been the lifeblood of the community, passed down through families, and deeply intertwined with the rhythms of the sea. However, the increasing frequency of rocket launches and associated activities has raised concerns about the potential impact on marine life and the overall health of the ecosystem. Noise pollution, vibrations, and the potential for accidental spills are among the anxieties voiced by local fishermen and environmental advocates.

Beyond the immediate environmental concerns, Playa Bagdad is also grappling with the socioeconomic shifts accompanying the space industry’s presence. While some residents see the potential for new jobs and economic opportunities, others fear displacement and the erosion of their traditional way of life. The influx of workers and investment can drive up property values and the cost of living, potentially making it difficult for long-time residents to remain in their homes. Furthermore, there are concerns that the focus on technological development may overshadow the needs of the local community, leading to neglect of essential infrastructure and social services.


The situation in Playa Bagdad underscores the importance of responsible and sustainable development in the space industry. As humanity ventures further into the cosmos, it is crucial to consider the impact on communities located near launch sites and to ensure that their voices are heard. Transparent communication, environmental impact assessments, and community engagement are essential to mitigating potential negative consequences and fostering a mutually beneficial relationship between the space industry and the communities that host it.

The Mexican government, along with international organizations, faces the challenge of balancing the economic benefits of the space industry with the need to protect the environment and the rights of local communities. Finding solutions that promote both technological advancement and social well-being is paramount. This requires a collaborative approach, involving government agencies, space companies, environmental groups, and, most importantly, the residents of Playa Bagdad themselves.

The story of Playa Bagdad serves as a potent reminder that progress should not come at the expense of vulnerable communities. As the space race intensifies, it is imperative that we prioritize ethical considerations and strive to create a future where technological innovation and human well-being go hand in hand. The fate of this small Mexican village, caught between the allure of space exploration and the realities of life on Earth, offers valuable lessons for navigating the complex landscape of the 21st century and beyond.

January 9, 2026 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, space travel | Leave a comment

“We’re Going to Run the Country:” Preparing an Illegal Occupation in Venezuela

This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.

 January 3, 2026, By: Michelle Ellner , https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/03/were-going-to-run-the-country-preparing-an-illegal-occupation-in-venezuela/

I listened to the January 3 press conference with a knot in my stomach. As a Venezuelan American with family, memories, and a living connection to the country being spoken about as if it were a possession, what I heard was very clear. And that clarity was chilling.

The president said, plainly, that the United States would “run the country” until a transition it deems “safe” and “judicious.” He spoke about capturing Venezuela’s head of state, about transporting him on a U.S. military vessel, about administering Venezuela temporarily, and about bringing in U.S. oil companies to rebuild the industry. He dismissed concerns about international reaction with a phrase that should alarm everyone: “They understand this is our hemisphere.”

For Venezuelans, those words echo a long, painful history.

Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the U.S. can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under U.S. criminal law. That the U.S. can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and “rebuilding” is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat.

We have heard this language before. In Iraq, the United States promised a limited intervention and a temporary administration, only to impose years of occupation, seize control of critical infrastructure, and leave behind devastation and instability. What was framed as stewardship became domination. Venezuela is now being spoken about in disturbingly similar terms. “Temporary Administration” ended up being a permanent disaster.

Under international law, nothing described in that press conference is legal. The UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against another state and bars interference in a nation’s political independence. Sanctions designed to coerce political outcomes and cause civilian suffering amount to collective punishment. Declaring the right to “run” another country is the language of occupation, regardless of how many times the word is avoided.

Under U.S. law, the claims are just as disturbing. War powers belong to Congress. There has been no authorization, no declaration, no lawful process that allows an executive to seize a foreign head of state or administer a country. Calling this “law enforcement” does not make it so. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States. It has not attacked the U.S. and has issued no threat that could justify the use of force under U.S. or international law. There is no lawful basis, domestic or international, for what is being asserted.

But beyond law and precedent lies the most important reality: the cost of this aggression is paid by ordinary people in Venezuela. War, sanctions, and military escalation do not fall evenly. They fall hardest on women, children, the elderly, and the poor. They mean shortages of medicine and food, disrupted healthcare systems, rising maternal and infant mortality, and the daily stress of survival in a country forced to live under siege. They also mean preventable deaths,  people who die not because of natural disaster or inevitability, but because access to care, electricity, transport, or medicine has been deliberately obstructed. Every escalation compounds existing harm and increases the likelihood of loss of life, civilian deaths that will be written off as collateral, even though they were foreseeable and avoidable.

What makes this even more dangerous is the assumption underlying it all: that Venezuelans will remain passive, compliant, and submissive in the face of humiliation and force. That assumption is wrong. And when it collapses, as it inevitably will, the cost will be measured in unnecessary bloodshed.  This is what is erased when a country is discussed as a “transition” or an “administration problem.” Human beings disappear. Lives are reduced to acceptable losses. And the violence that follows is framed as unfortunate rather than the predictable outcome of arrogance and coercion.To hear a U.S. president talk about a country as something to be managed, stabilized, and handed over once it behaves properly, it hurts. It humiliates. And it enrages.

And yes, Venezuela is not politically unified. It isn’t. It never has been. There are deep divisions, about the government, about the economy, about leadership, about the future. There are people who identify as Chavista, people who are fiercely anti-Chavista, people who are exhausted and disengaged, and yes, there are some who are celebrating what they believe might finally bring change.

But political division does not invite invasion. 

Latin America has seen this logic before. In Chile, internal political division was used to justify U.S. intervention, framed as a response to “ungovernability,” instability, and threats to regional order, ending not in democracy, but in dictatorship, repression, and decades of trauma.

In fact, many Venezuelans who oppose the government still reject this moment outright. They understand that bombs, sanctions, and “transitions” imposed from abroad do not bring democracy, they destroy the conditions that make it possible. 

This moment demands political maturity, not purity tests. You can oppose Maduro and still oppose U.S. aggression. You can want change and still reject foreign control. You can be angry, desperate, or hopeful, and still say no to being governed by another country.

Venezuela is a country where communal councils, worker organizations, neighborhood collectives, and social movements have been forged under pressure. Political education didn’t come from think tanks; it came from survival. Right now, Venezuelans are not hiding. They are closing ranks because they recognize the pattern. They know what it means when foreign leaders start talking about “transitions” and “temporary control.” They know what usually follows. And they are responding the way they always have: by turning fear into collective action.

This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.

If this stands, the lesson is brutal and undeniable: sovereignty is conditional, resources are there to be taken by the U.S., and democracy exists only by imperial consent.

As a Venezuelan American, I refuse that lesson.

I refuse the idea that my tax dollars fund the humiliation of my homeland. I refuse the lie that war and coercion are acts of “care” for the Venezuelan people. And I refuse to stay silent while a country I love is spoken about as raw material for U.S. interests, not a society of human beings deserving respect.

Venezuela’s future is not for U.S. officials, corporate boards, or any president who believes the hemisphere is his to command. It belongs to Venezuelans.

January 6, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

Following U.S. coup in Venezuela, the CIA’s former station chief is advertising support for corporate exploitation of the country’s oil

The CIA’s former Venezuela chief of station, Enrique de la Torre, advertised that his lobbying firm, Tower Strategy, is supporting clients “rebuilding the country’s energy sector.”

Jack Poulson, Jan 04, 2026, https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/following-us-coup-in-venezuela-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1269175&post_id=183365776&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8cf96&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in and spend billions of dollars and fix the oil infrastructure — the badly broken oil infrastructure — and start making money for the country,” U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Saturday morning. The remarks followed a raid by the U.S. military’s elite commando team, Delta Force, which kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia, using what Trump described as cover of darkness implied to have been provided by a U.S. cyberattack.

“It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off, due to a certain expertise we have,” Trump stated, before adding that, “It was dark, and it was deadly.” A series of photos from the “deadly” raid was quickly published by the wire service Reuters.

A special operations source was summarized by the investigative journalism outlet The High Side as stating that a “local source network … helped install jammers and other technical equipment on the ground, including beacons for airstrikes.” “The operational preparation of the battlespace was conducted by Task Force Orange, which throughout its history has been known by a host of cover names, including the U.S. Army Office of Military Support, Titan Zeus and the Intelligence Support Activity,” reported The High Side.

“We’re ready to stage a much larger second attack,” continued the U.S. president, before adding that, “we have a much bigger wave that we probably won’t have to do.”

A recent CIA chief of station in Venezuela, Enrique de la Torre, quickly took to the professional networking site LinkedIn to claim that his newly formed lobbying firm with former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James B. Story, Tower Strategy, was “already working with clients focused on democratic recovery, restored U.S. engagement, and the serious work of rebuilding the country’s energy sector.”

Tower Strategy has so-far publicly disclosed representing four companies: the controversial treasure-hunting company Odyssey Marine Exploration, the Singapore-based and Tether-affiliated cryptocurrency company Bitdeer, the solar supply chain company T1 Energy, and the international solar power export company UGT Renewables / Sun Africa.

De la Torre spent roughly the first ten months of 2025 working for the lobbying and foreign influence firm Continental Strategy, which is run by Carlos Trujillo, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States with close ties to U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio. The former CIA station chief’s partner at Tower Strategy, Ambassador Story, further launched the consulting firm Global Frontier Advisors alongside former Pentagon artificial intelligence chief Michael S. Groen in late July, with partner David Kol noted in the press release to be the CEO of Zodiac Gold Inc.

Former CIA director Michael R. Pompeo similarly told the media platform Fox & Friends on Monday that the U.S. Government’s seizures of Venezuela-linked oil tankers was the “right course of action” and that, in the event of the overthrow of the Maduro government, “American companies can come in and sell their products — Schlumberger, Halliburton, Chevron — all of our big energy companies can go down to Venezuela and build out an economic capitalist model.”

Trump further declared in his Saturday press conference that, “We’re going to run the country [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” further stating that the members of his administration standing behind him in the press conference would be designated to lead the country in the short term. Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez, who was today sworn in as the new leader of the country following the U.S. kidnapping of President Maduro, was claimed by Trump to have effectively agreed to concede to U.S. demands in a recent conversation with U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio.

Trump described his government as having “superseded” the longstanding U.S. policy of dominating the politics of the Western Hemisphere, known as the Monroe Doctrine, by “a lot.” “They now call it the Donroe Doctrine,” Trump stated, in reference to the now-popular phrase.

The U.S. Government’s claim to legal legitimacy of the kidnapping and broader coup have centered upon allegations that Maduro and his administration have been engaged in large-scale cocaine trafficking meant to destabilize the United States. A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) jacket was partially visible in the background of a photograph published by Trump on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday, showing a blindfolded Maduro aboard the U.S. warship Iwo Jima.

Several U.S. State Department-backed media and lobbying organizations helped amplify the impact of unilateral U.S. sanctions over the past several years, effectively providing a form of international legal top cover for the Trump administration’s coup this morning. The most notable were perhaps Transparency International through its Venezuelan branch, the National Endowment for Democracy-backed media platform Connectas, and the CIA-affiliated think-tank Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS).

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemned the unilateral U.S. kidnapping of Venezuela’s leader as having crossed “an unacceptable line,” while UN ⁠Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the U.S. raid as setting “a dangerous ​precedent.”

Jack Poulson

Jan 04, 2026

January 6, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

I stand with the people of Venezuela

This is not strength. It is lawlessness.

The U.S. Constitution is explicit. Congress – not the president – has the power to declare war.

3 January 2026 Roswell, https://theaimn.net/i-stand-with-the-people-of-venezuela/

I never imagined I would be writing these words, but here we are:

I stand with the people of Venezuela.

Not with any particular government or leader, but with a nation that has just been attacked – illegally – by the President of the United States, without the approval of Congress, in clear violation of both American constitutional law and international law.

Yet, true to form, Trump will demand universal acceptance. To trust the instincts of a man who has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarians, hostility to international law, and contempt for democratic norms. A man whose foreign policy is indistinguishable from impulse, grievance, and spectacle. A man who treats war as performance and human lives as collateral to political theatre.

The precedent here is terrifying

If the United States – a country that never stops lecturing others about the “rules-based international order” – can simply discard those rules when inconvenient, then they cease to be rules at all. They become weapons, deployed selectively against enemies and ignored for friends.

This is how the post-war order collapses: not with a single catastrophic moment, but through repeated acts of hypocrisy that hollow it out from within.

Let’s be honest about who pays the price.

It will not be Donald Trump, safely insulated from consequences.

Strip away the chest-thumping rhetoric and the familiar justifications, and what remains is uncomfortable in its simplicity: a unilateral act of war, ordered by one man, without democratic consent, against a sovereign country that posed no imminent threat to the United States.

This is not strength. It is lawlessness.

The U.S. Constitution is explicit. Congress – not the president – has the power to declare war. That safeguard exists precisely to prevent impulsive, politically motivated, or self-serving military adventures. When a president bypasses it, he is not defending democracy. He is undermining it.

International law is just as clear. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force against another state except in self-defence or with Security Council authorisation. Venezuela attacked no one. No such authorisation exists. Labeling this as anything but an illegal act of aggression demands willful ignorance.

It will not be the architects of escalation in Washington think tanks.

It will be Venezuelan civilians – people who have already endured years of economic pain, sanctions, and instability – who will now live under the shadow of foreign bombs and regional chaos.

Standing with Venezuela does not require romanticising its politics or ignoring its internal problems. It requires recognising a basic principle that should never be negotiable: no country has the right to attack another simply because it can.

For decades, the United States has insisted that sovereignty matters – except when it doesn’t. That democracy must be respected – except when the outcome is inconvenient. That international law is sacred – except when it restrains American power.

This attack strips away the pretence.

If you believe in peace, you must oppose it.

If you believe in democracy, you must oppose it.

If you believe in international law, you must oppose it.

Silence now is complicity. Hand-wringing later will be meaningless.

The world does not need another “coalition of the willing”, another illegal war sold with vague threats and manufactured urgency. It needs restraint. It needs accountability. It needs leaders who understand that power without law is not leadership – it is empire in decay.

So yes, I stand with the people of Venezuela.

I stand against illegal war.

I stand against presidential authoritarianism masquerading as strength.

I stand against the dangerous idea that some nations are entitled to break the rules simply because they wrote them.

And I stand with the people – everywhere – who will suffer the consequences long after the press conferences end.

History is watching. And it will not be kind to those who cheered this on.

January 6, 2026 Posted by | politics international, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

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