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Machado Offers To Sell $1.7 Trillion Of Venezuela’s Assets To US Corporations

November 13, 2025 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , ,
María Corina Machado is a far-right Venezuelan coup leader who has been funded by the US government since at least 2003. The Donald Trump administration is waging war on Venezuela, and if it can succeed in overthrowing the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro, Machado would help to lead the new pro-US regime in Caracas. Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that she openly supports Trump’s war on her country. She has for years called for a US military intervention to violently topple President Maduro.

Trump Orders CIA To Attack Venezuela

October 20, 2025 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , ,
The United States is waging war on Venezuela. This is not a hypothetical; it is happening. The Donald Trump administration is using extreme violence to try to overthrow Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. The US military has killed dozens of Venezuelans in strikes on boats in international waters without charge or trial. UN experts have publicly condemned these attacks as “extrajudicial executions” that violate international law. It is not only Venezuelans who have been executed by the US military. Among the victims of these illegal US attacks have been fishermen who were citizens of Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Venezuelan Coup Leader Maria Corina Machado Vows To Privatize Oil

October 16, 2025 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was given to María Corina Machado, a far-right, pro-war Venezuelan opposition leader who has been funded by the US government for more than two decades. Machado has helped to lead numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, in 2002, 2014, 2017, 2019, and again today. She is now at the center of the US government’s regime-change war against Venezuela. In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations.

Brazilian Oil Unions Demand Energy Embargo On Israel

May 31, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , , ,
Two of Brazil’s largest federations of oil trade unions have called on the country’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to impose an energy embargo on Israel over its brutal war against the Gaza Strip.  The National Federation of Oil Workers and the Single Federation of Oil Workers signed a letter to the Brazilian president and a number of his ministers urging the government to take a firmer stance against the genocidal war against Palestinians.  The federations said Brazil must do more than make public statements and impose a full ban on oil sales to Israel in an effort to actively prevent the “ongoing Nakba” – using the Arabic word for catastrophe, which refers to the ethnic cleansing and mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948. 

Trump’s Détente With Venezuela

March 4, 2025 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Trump’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine – “speak loudly AND carry a big stick” – has not been applied full force on Venezuela…as of yet. Instead the new administration appears to be testing a more nuanced approach. In his first administration, he succeeded in crashing the Venezuelan economy and creating misery among the populace but not in the goal of changing the “regime.” Back in 2019, the Bolivarian Revolution, initiated by Hugo Chávez and carried forward by his successor, current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was teetering on collapse under Trump’s “maximum pressure” offensive.

Trump: ‘Resume Kurdish Oil Exports Or Face Sanctions’

February 22, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , ,
Officials in the government of US President Donald Trump say Iraq must allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, Reuters reported on 21 February, citing eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Washington wants oil exports from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to resume to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports. President Trump has pledged to cut oil exports from Iran to zero as part of a new "maximum pressure" campaign against the Islamic Republic. On Monday, Iraq's oil minister made a surprise announcement saying exports from Iraqi Kurdistan would resume next week. 

BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries

December 25, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , ,
With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP). The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals. At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future. Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.

US Senator Lindsey Graham: Ukraine Sits On ‘Trillion Dollars Of Minerals’

September 17, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , ,
US Senator Lindsey Graham has argued that Washington must support Ukraine because of its lucrative natural resources. During a visit to Kiev in September, Graham published a video standing next to Ukrainian leader Zelensky, in which the US senator said, “They’re sitting on a trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be good to our economy”. “They just need weapons”, Graham implored, calling for more arms shipments to Kiev. The US senator added that Ukraine is “trying to stop the Russians, so we don’t have to fight them”. Zelensky expressed gratitude for the “bipartisan support” he has received in Washington.

The Other Occupation: US Forces In Syria

August 19, 2024 Mohamed Nader Al-Omari, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , ,
The strategic placement of US military bases in northeastern Syria is no coincidence. Extending from the Syrian–Jordanian–Iraqi border in the southwest of the country, to areas west of the Euphrates in the northeast, are 28 US installations – 24 of them US military bases. This deployment, carefully planned out with specific geostrategic objectives, is there only to serve Washington’s local, regional, and international interests. According to US data, the number of American occupation soldiers in Syria increased dramatically from 50 troops in 2015 to over 2,000 by the end of 2017. Reports in April 2017 even suggested that then-national security adviser Brigadier General HR McMaster considered deploying up to 50,000 troops to Iraq and Syria.

Why The United States Is Reimposing Sanctions On Venezuela

February 3, 2024 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , , , , ,
Even the US business magazine Forbes expressed surprise at the reimposition of US sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sales and its threat to do the same with oil. The oil sanctions especially, if reinstated, would precipitate higher gas prices and further debilitate the Venezuelan economy, forcing more people to leave the country out of economic necessity. The Venezuelan government, for its part, has not been contrite. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez protested “the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela.” She warned that if Washington takes the threatened measures, Venezuela will cancel repatriation flights returning Venezuelan immigrants back from the US.

China Deepens Ties With Venezuela, Challenging US ‘Hegemonic Mindset’

September 17, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , ,
Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro took a historic trip to China this September. There, the two nations signed 31 comprehensive agreements and formally “upgraded” their relations to an “all-weather strategic partnership”, one of Beijing’s highest designations. China and Venezuela jointly blasted the “hegemonism” of the Western powers. Beijing formally condemned the illegal sanctions that Washington has imposed on Caracas. Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized this his government will “firmly support” Venezuela’s “just cause against external interference”. The global political and economic order is changing rapidly.

New Reinforcements Reach US-Occupied Syria

September 6, 2023 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
The Pentagon deployed new reinforcements from Iraq to Syria late on 5 September, as local reports say a military convoy consisting of 30 trucks entered the oil-rich Hasakah governorate via the illegal Al-Waleed border crossing. This was the second military convoy headed for US occupation bases in northeast Syria to cross from Iraq on Tuesday and the third since the start of September. According to the Sputnik correspondent in Hasakah, the convoys consist of dozens of trucks carrying “military and logistical equipment, electric generators, fuel tanks, cement blocks, and closed boxes.”

US Pressures Saudi Arabia To Sell Oil In Dollars, Not Chinese Yuan

August 11, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
The United States is negotiating behind the scenes with Saudi Arabia, pressuring the country to keep selling its oil in dollars. Washington is concerned that Riyadh may price its crude in other currencies, particularly China’s renminbi. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s top three oil producers. Since the 1970s, Riyadh has agreed to sell its crude in dollars, helping maintain the greenback’s hegemonic status as the global reserve currency. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US is working on a diplomatic deal in which Saudi Arabia would agree to normalize relations with Israel’s apartheid regime.

Trump Boasts He Wanted To Take Venezuela’s Oil After Overthrowing Its Government

June 16, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
Former US President Donald Trump gave a speech in which he boasted that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela and exploit its large oil reserves. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door”, Trump said. “But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. So we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it”, he added. Trump made these remarks on June 10, at a speech for a convention organized by the North Carolina Republican Party. The US government initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela in 2019.

The West’s Economic War On Russia Has Failed

May 16, 2023 John V. Walsh, Antiwar.com. , , ,
The US with its EU vassals in tow has carried out a two-pronged attack on Russia. The first is Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war on Russia, with its cynical use of Ukrainians as cannon fodder. The second prong is the sanctions war designed to destroy Russia’s economy. The economic war is a failure. Russia has won. This verdict comes not from a Russia-friendly source but from two well-known British publications. One is the UK’s oldest political magazine, The Spectator. The other is The Daily Telegraph, a British broadsheet that supports the Ukraine war and has always endorsed Conservative candidates. Boris Johnson was once the editor of the former and a columnist for the latter.
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