Venezuela-US tensions

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Trump orders US carrier strike group to Caribbean

Source: Politico

President Donald Trump has ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean, a major escalation of warships in the region as the U.S. attacks alleged drug-running boats and increases pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Deploying a carrier is a significant move for any White House, and often suggests larger scale military operations.

The arrival of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, the Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier from the Mediterranean, alongside several destroyers and a submarine, will add to what is already the world’s largest naval deployment.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the move on X, saying the deployment “will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere. ”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/2 ... n-00621968

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I Met Chávez and Maduro. I know Drugs are Not the Reason Trump Wants War with Venezuela
By Greg Palast
October 25, 2025

Introduction:

(Raw Story ) I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolás Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first you must know three things about Venezuela, to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government
・1.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.
・2.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.
・3.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

Additional Extract:

Trump has accused Maduro of running a cartel dumping fentanyl into the US, an accusation as credible as Trump’s claim against that other alleged narco-terrorist nation, Canada.

I am no fan of my once-friend Maduro, now a brutal authoritarian and vote thief, a Venezuelan Putin. But drug lord? No sane drug dealer would run drugs from Caracas to Miami. In fact, according to the latest UN World Drug Report, Venezuela is neither a major drug producer nor a key trafficking corridor to the US.
…
So where are the drugs coming from, if not Venezuela or Canada? According to a New Yorker investigation, one of the world’s largest and most violent cocaine cartels, the Kinahan Organized Crime Group, is run out of — you guessed it — Abu Dhabi.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ ... 17&ei= 57

[firestar464]

Mostly solid article. However, a brief note:

Third try: During Trump I, the US attempted to bully Venezuelans into electing a white guy named Juan Guaidó (who lived in the US) whom Trump hoped would defeat Maduro in an election. But the Black and Indian population of Venezuela, after they finally elected one of their own, Chávez, were not going back to white minority rule which had crushed them for 400 years. Guaidó never even ran for president, but the US government nevertheless declared him the true president and gave this grifter all the US assets of CITGO, the Venezuelan oil company.

The reason Guaido was considered the president for some time was because the National Assembly appointed him as president in an attempt to resist Maduro's power grab. However, Guaido lost legitimacy over time, as his government in exile failed to accomplish much. By 2023, his govt dissolved itself in light of this.

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Latin American Leaders Reacts to Trump’s Expanding Military Campaign
By Isabela Dias
October 25, 2025

Extract:

(Mother Jones) The expanding campaign (described earlier in this thread), which legal experts have warned violates international law and amounts to extrajudicial killings, has raised alarm in Latin America, worsening tensions between the Trump administration and leaders in the region, and reviving the specter of American meddling and intervention in other countries. Reacting to news of the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, (Venezuela’s President Nicolás) Maduro charged the administration with “fabricating a new war.”

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Speaking last month at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro condemned the attacks and called for an investigation into President Donald Trump and other US officials involved in the strikes. “Launching missiles over two people in a small boat is a war crime,” Petro told CBS News this week.
…
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also opposed the Trump administration’s strikes. “Obviously, we do not agree,” she said of the military campaign during a recent press conference. “There are international laws on how to operate when dealing with the alleged illegal transport of drugs or guns on international waters, and we have expressed this to the government of the United States and publicly.”
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In a recent interview with the AFP, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s adviser Celso Amorim expressed concerns about what a potential direct military intervention in Venezuela to topple Maduro could mean for the rest of the region. “We cannot accept an outside intervention because it will trigger immense resentment,” he said. “It could inflame South America and lead to radicalization of politics on the whole continent.”

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/ ... campaign/

[firestar464]

similar shit

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In Deadliest Maritime Attacks Yet, the U.S. Kills 14 in Strikes on Alleged Drug Boats in Pacific
By Joey Garrison and Davis Winkie
October 28, 2025

Introduction:

(USA Today ) WASHINGTON ‒ The Pentagon on Oct. 28 said it carried out three strikes on four alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 14 people, in the most significant wave of attacks so far in President Donald Trump's military campaign targeting the flow of illegal narcotics.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said one individual survived the strikes, which he said took place on Oct. 27 in international waters. No United States service members were injured.

"The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands," Hegseth wrote in a post on X that included video footage of the strikes. "Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them."

The assaults bring the total number of airstrikes on boats to 13 ‒ and total deaths to at least 57 ‒ in a campaign that has drawn criticism from Democrats who question the legality of using deadly military force on targets that don't pose immediate threats to the U.S.

Additional Extract:

Trump still has not delivered evidence to Congress supporting claims that the alleged drug boats were carrying narcotics. Democrats in Congress have said they've received no information about the identities of those killed or the intelligence that showed the boats were trying to transport drugs into the U.S.

Read more here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/po ... 4146007/

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[firestar464]

More on that by The Hill:

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5601 ... caribbean/

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‘Regime Change’ in Venezuela Is a Euphemism for U.S.-Inflicted Carnage and Chaos
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
November 12, 2025

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that US bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth—it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other US interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.

As a US armada gathers off Venezuela, a US special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR)—the “Nightstalkers”—the same unit that, in US-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.

Additional Extract:

Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the US has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.

But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. US presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.

In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots—attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean—have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by US senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/n ... venezuela

[firestar464]

"euromaidan bad"

*sighs*

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Supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford Enters U.S. Southern Command’s Area Of Responsibility
November 11 , 2025

Introduction:

(The War Zone) The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its air wing have officially joined the enhanced counter-narcotics mission under U.S. Southern Command’s (SOUTHCOM) purview, the command said in a statement on Tuesday. The carrier had been ordered to the Caribbean, but it stalled for a number of days off Africa before proceeding. You can catch up with our previous reporting on this operation, which is also designed to pressure Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, here: https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-e ... -caribbean

The Ford, the first in the newest class of aircraft carriers, is now in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility (AOR), the command stated, without giving the ship’s precise location. It transited from the Mediterranean region through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic on Nov. 4.

Read more here: https://www.twz.com/sea/supercarrier-u ... nsibility

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[firestar464]

More on that by The War Zone:

https://www.twz.com/air/rc-135-accompan ... s-official

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