Note: I do not agree with the author that Maduro and his regime is transitioning to socialism no matter what he said. Socialism cannot be built in one country and one of the problems with Venezuela's version of it even under Chavez, was that bourgeois property was not appropriated and there was not an attempt to appeal to workers of the region to join in a wider revolutionary movement against international capital. Socialism cannot be built by an authoritarian regime "transferring power" to workers councils. In socialism, workers councils are the power both economic and political and this wasn't the case under Chavez or Maduro. I am not fully aware of the all the details of the situation in Venezuela at the moment but Maduro is an autocratic head of state and his regime an authoritarian one. As one Venezuelan worker put it, we're fighting the US and Maduro here.
Regardless of this, it is the role of the Venezuelan workers, and workers throughout the region, to settle accounts with the Maduro regime and oppose US imperialism's efforts to plunder its resources under the false claim of spreading democracy. In Latin America, the indigenous movements are in the forefront of the struggle against the savagery of capitalism and the market. RM Admin.
Trump administration switches from murdering fishermen to piracy
We were told for weeks that the military build up in the Caribbean was about drug traffickers and was honestly nothing to do with oil, but the US has only gone and stolen a Venezuelan oil tanker.
Even worse, that tanker was en route to Cuba where it would have been a lifeline for people who only have three to four hours of power a day. Remember how the US keeps telling us that socialism doesn’t work? Well, it does everything it can to ensure it fails and this is a case in point.
On 10 December, US forces consisting of the Coast Guard, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and US Navy seized a vessel carrying 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan oil in the Caribbean. The crew were mostly Indian nationals, making this an attack on India as well as Venezuela and Cuba.
The US claims it has the right to keep the oil due to the vessel’s alleged use in sanctioned activities, even without criminal conviction. In other words, they just have to accuse you of something and they get to steal your property. Isn’t that convenient?
The US argues the tanker had evaded US trade restrictions, but unilateral sanctions have no basis in international law and the seizure violates the non-intervention principles of UN Charter Article 2(4).
The US is using the excuse that the vessel was stateless, but 80% of Venezuelan oil exports are carried by stateless vessels because that is the only way to circumvent illegal sanctions. If those vessels carried the flags of other nations, those nations would be sanctioned as would anyone who bought the oil. This is one of the key problems with the US controlling the world’s monetary system and it’s why so many countries are attracted to BRICS. Everyone is sick of this crap.
The US is doing everything it can to prevent Venezuela from selling its own oil and to cripple the Venezuelan economy, so spare me the “Maduro is starving his people” talk. The US is starving the Venezuelan people to pressure them to overthrow their leader.
The Venezuelan government has issued a statement on the oil seizure which is impossible to argue against. Here is an excerpt:
“Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed… It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”
Trump openly boasted of his act of piracy, saying:
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Largest one ever seized actually. And other things are happening.”
When asked what the US would do with the seized oil, Trump simply replied:
“We keep it, I guess.”
The reporting in the mainstream media has been as dire as always with few outlets bothering to mention the illegality, instead regurgitating Trump’s disproven narrative about “narco-terrorists”. Their failure to hold the US government to account amounts to complicity in the starvation of Latin Americans.
Trump casually said: “I think you’re going to find that this is war.” That would be another war for oil. A war that is opposed by 70% of Americans.
Modern imperialism is essentially looting a country while pretending you’re spreading democracy and liberating people. If you claim the US concerns in Venezuela amount to promoting democracy, you deserve nothing but contempt. They want to install Maria Machado as a puppet so they can plunder Venezuela’s vast wealth.
After calling for her country to be invaded by the US, Machado fled to Oslo where she had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She knows she will be safe from the bombs and bullets she wishes on her own people. Note that if the Venezuelan government were half as tyrannical as we’re told, this woman would not be walking free. We’re talking about someone who is a massive fan of the Gaza genocide who said: “Israel’s struggle is Venezuela’s struggle”.
In 2002, Machado signed an order by Pedro Carmona to dissolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and the Bolivarian constitution which had been approved via referendum just three years earlier. This is not the action of someone who cares about democracy.
If the US is successful in overthrowing Maduro, Machado could be installed as puppet dictator and be handsomely rewarded for selling out her people. Thankfully, Maduro is putting the mechanisms in place to prevent Venezuela from collapsing back into the neoliberal hell of the pre-Chavez era.
Maduro said: “We declare ourselves a communal transition government toward socialism, of popular and neighborhood power, founded on the example of Christ the Redeemer.” He is in the process of transferring power to 49,000 communal councils and 4,,000 communal banks that would bypass dollar finance, building new power structures to permanently break away from the bourgeois state form. These are the actions of a man who knows his days are numbered and wants to ensure the liberation of his people. Whether he succeeds or not, only time will tell…
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