This little piece came courtesy of the Daily Dose of Democracy, a Democrat newsletter tearing into Trump and the Republicans and all their sordid works. Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been condemned by the left and various countries around the world as a violation of international law. Critics of the invasion state that it gives a precedent for Putin and China to invade whomever carve up the world however they like. This point is well made in a video put up by mellifluous Irish left-wing YouTuber Maximilian Robespierre in a video in which he tears apart the bonkers and ignorant opinions of Reform’s Richard Tice on the invasion. As I write, another video’s gone up stating that the Greenlanders are worried in case Trump invades them. And this article below states clearly that the invasion is probably motivated by greed for the country’s oil, and that Trump will most likely install another right-wing dictator.
So American politics as usual in Latin America.
‘Trump has started carving up the world. Now it’s Putin and Xi’s turn
Brynn Tannehill, The New Republic: “The U.S. invasion of Venezuela late last Friday shocked the world for many reasons. It represents another fundamental departure from the post-WWII order supported by the United States for the last 50 years. It was also an unprovoked, naked act of aggression based on the flimsiest of pretexts. Congress was not consulted, and the executive branch has far exceeded the 60 days allowed by the 1973 War Powers Act to get congressional approval for ongoing military action. Far worse than these shattered norms are the horrifying possibilities this action raises. President Donald Trump and the GOP have laid bare their desires for hegemony, colonialism, and empire, and the dangerous global consequences of America pursuing these cannot be understated. Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was an unpopular kleptocratic dictator, and this article should not be in any way interpreted as a defense of him; but it is a warning of what this invasion means, and what is to come. Perhaps the most blatant of all the recent acts is Trump’s own declaration that the U.S. will ‘take control’ of Venezuela ‘for a while’ to seize and exploit the oil resources of the country. He will undoubtedly place a right-wing dictator beholden to him in charge of the country, opening the door to yet another avenue for foreign money flowing to him. Similarly, oil companies will compete with one another for access to the seized assets, meaning more money being laundered to Trump, his family, and other supporters in this spoils-of-war system. This act has also sent a chilling message to the world that the United States is beginning the process of carving up the world into spheres of influence run by dictatorships (namely the U.S., Russia, and China). Russia was Venezuela’s benefactor and ally but has been strangely quiet. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Fiona Hill testified to Congress in 2019 that Russia was ‘signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine.’ In other words, the U.S. could have Venezuela if we let Russia have Ukraine. This strongly suggests that the price for letting the U.S. go after Venezuela without any protest was, and will be, Ukraine. It also suggests that Tawain may already be on the table as a bargaining chip with China, in order to secure its acquiescence to further U.S. regional hegemony in the Americas. Trump has signaled that the global order of the past 80 years means nothing, and the U.S. is back in the business of colonial empire-building as if it was a pre-World War One great power. Canada and Greenland should be extremely alarmed by this. Both of these countries have been put on notice since the beginning of the second Trump administration that he intends to annex them, and this overt, over-the-top act of war against Venezuela confirms that there’s nothing stopping him from finding some pretextual casus belli to justify a U.S. annexation of Greenland. Denmark, Canada, and Greenland are all NATO members, and it appears the U.S. is barreling toward a confrontation with that organization. Leaders of democracies around the world need to understand this for what it likely is: the opening salvos of a broader campaign of modern Lebensraum and Anschluss. History teaches that the best time to say no in concrete terms is early, and not after despotic nations are deciding who gets to keep which parts of countries they invaded.”‘
And here’s the video from Maximilien Robespierre, taking apart, among other things, Tice’s weird view that Putin is a Communist. He isn’t. He’s a Russian nationalist, but obviously as regards Tice and Reform, the Fall of Communism and its banning in Russia just never happened.
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 