My first video report from Venezuela:
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Great stuff, Craig. I am not carping given the logistics but you might get your team to check what happened to the sound, it is audible, but very low quality for whatever reason.
Suggest you get rid of the musical background on the video. I don’t know if the inspiration is Southfront but it’s distracting.
This really is not a good piece of journalistm Craig – albeit clearly well intentioned. It is windy, repetitive and not very informative. You do not explain that there were US oil companies operating in Venezuela until Trump more or less ordered them out in 2017; nor that the country’s oil industry was nationalised in….1976 under President Carlos Andrés Pérez who also established the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). It would have been useful, also, to talk about the use Chavez made of oil income – when prices were high – to improve the welfare of the poor (education, health care etc) but dependency on oil was also the country’s achilles heel. Until very recently, there was very little manufacturing in Venezuela and minimal agricultural production. An estimated 95% of the population lived in urban centres (still largely the case) which has meant that the countryside lacked both people and farmers. Oil paid for cheap imports of food but left the country vulnerable not only to oil-price fluctuations but to US strangulation.
I thought it informative with regard to the current situation, but I do not see that the video purely of Craig talking adds anything of value to what could have just been a written column. I expected illustrations of what life is like in Venezuela today. We have been told that the shelves are full and life goes on normally, but are not shown any evidence.
“You do not explain that there were US oil companies operating in Venezuela until Trump more or less ordered them out in 2017; nor that the country’s oil industry was nationalised in….”
Probably because Craig didn’t set out to produce an Encyclopaedia Brittanica entry encapsulating the totality of how Venezuela is today and its history over the past few decades, but limited himself to the much narrower task of pointing out that the US claims that they were responsible fr the measure just passed by the national assembly and that they now controlled Venezuela through its current president were complete bunk. You already appear to know all the stuff that you say Craig missed out and now we know it, too, although I can’t say that it adds much to the picture of Venezuela today that Craig is trying to draw. For those who wish a greater knowledge of Venezuela’s recent history, there is always the internet: no-one needs to wait for Craig to tell them.
I would recommend a read of the chapters on Venezuela in John Gunther’s “Inside Latin America” (1942) and “Inside South America” (1967).
Of course I already hear the sneers of “Oh, that superficial American” and “he only spoke to the head honchos and never looked at how the people live”, etc, but the reader will find, as I did, much information to help him get an understanding of why and how the Venezuela 20th century past has determined the course towards the “Chavez period” and informs the political, economic and social life of that period.
The two chapters (especially the second one) are particularly interesting on the rôle of oil in the economy, the consequences of that rôle and how the balance between domestic and foreign oil interests evolved between 1942 and 1967; idem on the overall standard of living of the Venezuelan-on-the-street.
I would tend to agree with Walt (22:54 yesterday) that filming should focus more on ordinary life as seen on the street (or even visits into people’s homes if possible) rather than be used for explanations which could indeed be just as easily and perhaps better explained in plain text.
I couldn’t see why Craig did that either, apart from saving time.
What you fail to mention yourself, Jeremy Fox, is that President Carlos Andrés Pérez brought the Venezuelan economy to the brink of collapse. He gave in to pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, the state was only receiving 1% of royalties from foreign oil companies and only 36% of PDVSA’s revenues, even though PDVSA belonged, at least in appearance, to the state. The door was wide open for the reprivatization of the industry. He imposed drastic austerity measures, leading to massive popular demonstrations across the country. The army was ordered to fire live ammunition at the demonstrators. It was at this point that Hugo Chávez, refusing to obey this criminal and murderous order, attempted a coup against the Pérez regime. It was Hugo Chávez who returned full control of oil revenues to the state, and in 2007 he nationalized the vast oil fields of the Orinoco, which were almost entirely in the hands of foreign multinationals.
You also fail to mention that, despite a massive economic war lasting nearly two decades, they have managed to diversify their economy and their partners, and that today Venezuela produces more than 90% of its food.
By the way, Declassified UK has just published an excellent article entitled: “One hundred years of British interference in Venezuela.”
Glad to hear that many misconceptions surrounding the Maduro / Flores kidnapping and its immediate aftermath have been cleared up.
I would like to know, though, of the 100 individuals who died in connection with the abduction, how many of those people were security guards, esp Maduro’s own bodyguards. There have been rumours that the head of Maduro’s personal security had been bribed. He is now apparently dead as are supposedly all of Maduro’s personal security detail.
There are stories also that Russian security personnel running to the aid of President Maduro had to defend themselves against his bodyguards. A number of Cuban security guards were also apparently killed on the same night.
Going off topic, I am concerned that recent photos of the Maduro couple in New York show Cilia Flores with facial bruises. She is said also to have two (?) fractured ribs. Knowing how she was injured would go some way to resolving the mystery of how she and her husband were so quickly taken and whisked away to the US.
Traitors presumably hope for rewards – but more often end up with their throats cut, and serve them right.
I don’t think anything has been ‘cleared up’. I would be interested to know how exactly?
It seems increasingly likely to me that this entire thing was pre-planned with the collusion of the Venezuelan military and political ruling party
Thanks for another eye-opening report, the YouTube link of which I’ve sent to my MP, with the suggestion that the UK ought not to be complicit in international theft (or the illegal seizure of Venezuelan gold kept in the Bank of England).
“with the suggestion that the UK ought not to be complicit in international theft (or the illegal seizure of Venezuelan gold kept in the Bank of England).”
That would, of course be flying in the face of a very ancient tradition.
I had not realised that the UK had a tradition of seizing foreign gold reserves kept in the Bank of England.
The only case I can recall of gold reserves being illegally held is that of the gold reserves of the Republican Spanish government which were shipped to Moscow to avoid being captured by the Spanish nationalists but never returned (up to the present).
A couple of European governments loaned their gold reserves in London to the UK in the early days of WW2, but as far as I know they were returned (either as gold or in specie) after the war.
To assess whether this “tradition” really existed one would have to have concrete info on (1) which countries (if any) kept their gold reserves in the UK and (2) which of those deposits were seized and never returned.
You might be interested in the Tories’ claim that in the run up to/immediately after the official Brexit day (that triggered the start of the Transition Period) exports were up…what they didn’t mention was that the main contributor to that was gold. I.e. people WITHDRAWING their gold from the UK because it was no longer viewed as a safe place to store it…
Well they siezed Russia’s gold reserves after the revolution and I dare say there were others. However, you are being too literal. I meant that Britain has an ancient tradition of nicking other countries’ gold and other international theft, especially countries considered uncivilised.
A lot of Russia’s gold reserves (the largest in Europe in 1914) certainly disappeared during and after the October revolution but it is doubtful that Britain and the Bank of England played any part in that for the simple reason that those reserves were held in Russia itself and not in Britain.
Ironically, Queen Elizabeth I’s loyal “privateers” with their letters of marque seized all sorts of Spanish ships laden (mainly with silver, actually, but some gold). That was one of the main provocations that led to the Spanish Armada.
To add a couple of things. In WW1 some states sold gold to finance warfare. The price remained level, though.
Then later it remained level throughout the whole of the second third of the 20th century, 1934-1967.
It has trebled since the start of Covid in 2020.
Many people who own very small amounts of gold are selling it to be able to survive.
The rich are buying gold like no-one’s business – that’s why the price is going up.
Australia sent nearly all its gold reserves to the Bank of England for vault storage back in the late 1990s, when John Howard was Prime Minister and Peter Costello was Treasurer.
Since then, only a partial audit of Australia’s gold reserves has been carried out (in 2013, when Julia Gillard was Prime Minister) and the results of that audit have never been released. To my knowledge, that occasion is the only time when an audit, or an attempt at a proper audit, was done.
What Happened To Australia’s Gold?
Well of course gold is not a rare metal, but if you control it’s mining and control the storage then it becomes ‘rare’, and you can then control the price.
Same with rare earth metals, they aren’t rare, it’s just that you have to mine and process thousands of tons of ore just to get a few kilograms.
Control the source, control the product. Water supplies are next !
Nice theory, but, unfortunately, not true. Rare earth metals are so called because they are just that, rare.
Jen
Is your comment intended to back up Bayard’s claim?
Re the partial audit you say happened in 2013, one should perhaps not be especially worried that the results were never released to the greater public. Why should they have been, given that the interested parties were the UK and Australian governments (or Treasuries, I should say)? I would not read confiscation or theft into that and I hope you’re not doing that either.
Re your quote, well, that comes from a “precious metals analyst” based in Singapore, working for a private company. He appears also to be complaining about a lack of transparency on the part of both the Australian National Bank and the Bank of England. So what? The ANB may have sold some of the gold and didn’t want it to be known for fear of (irrational) market reaction. Again, to give this quote in support of a theory which claims that the UK has made a habit of stealing other people’s gold is a little peculiar, not to say misplaced.
“Why should they have been, given that the interested parties were the UK and Australian governments ”
Why should they not have been? The gold belongs to Australia, why should its whereabouts be a secret to the Australian people? What has either the RBA or the BoE got to hide? Secrecy may be the default of most governments, but that doesn’t mean that it should be.
“The ANB may have sold some of the gold and didn’t want it to be known for fear of (irrational) market reaction.”
Duh, it was the ANB that was asking for the audit. If they had sold some of the gold, they wouldn’t need an audit to tell them that. Quite obviously, they were worried that the BoE had sold some of the Australians’ gold and hadn’t told them.
I don’t know why you are trying to defend the BoE. They have previous for nicking other countries’ gold so they are obviously quite capable of doing it and even a cursory glance at the maritime activities of the British in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries will demonstrate the tendency of the British to steal other countries’ gold and other valuable objects.
Jen: The RBA website (Q&A No. 6) indicates that its gold is audited with no problems.
Bayard (14:08)
I think that a fair reading of my posts will reveal not an attempt to “defend the Bank of England” but rather an attempt to elicit from you some examples to back up your assertion of a day or two ago that the Bank of England had a tradition of stealing other people’s gold.
Since you are now doubling down on the assertion (“They have previous for nicking other countries’ gold”), I’m afraid I will have to ask you again for examples of the Bank of England stealing or otherwise sequestering other countries’ gold reserves.
The only example you have put on the table is that of the Russian gold reserves after the October revolution, but that is nonsense, because, as I have already said, there were no Russian gold reserves in London for the Bank of England to steal.
Which observation leads me to the thought that if the Bank of England had been in the habit of stealing other countries’ gold reserves, would other countries not have deposited their gold reserves elsewhere?
So : some examples please, rather than just doubling down on previous assertions and deflecting to English piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries (NB – the Bank of England was founded in 1694).
Thank you.
“So : some examples please, rather than just doubling down on previous assertions and deflecting to English piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries”
This is getting silly. You yourself gave the example of the BoE taking the Spanish government’s gold. That it was sent to Moscow is neither here nor there: it wasn’t returned to the Spanish. The Tsar kept much of his gold in the BoE. After the revolution, there is no evidence that it was ever returned either to the Romanovs or to the Russian state. Thus the BoE must have hung onto it, even if it doesn’t still have it. More recently, the BoE has grabbed Venezuela’s gold, or are you disputing that, too?
In any case, I was not “deflecting to” Britain’s long history of international theft, on the high seas and on land: that is what I meant by “ancient tradition” in the first place. It is you who are deflecting from that to the specific example of the Bank of England.
@ Luis Cunha da Silva:
My comment was in answer to yours (8 February 2026 at 19:19).
@ M. J.
The audit carried out in June 2025 sampled 460 gold bars out of a total Reserve Bank of Australia holding of 6,372 gold bars at the Bank of England. That is roughly 7.22% of the total holdings. Some commenters here might think that sample size is not enough for a proper audit.
Incidentally the Reserve Bank of India has been flying its gold reserves in the BoE back to India over the past few years.
How and why RBI is flying more of India’s gold back home
@ Bayard (21:59 yesterday)
“This is getting silly”
It certainly is. That is why this will be my last response to you.
Firstly, I told you that the Spanish Republic’s gold was shipped directly to the Soviet Union, whence it was never returned. Therefore I could not have given that as an example of the Bank of England stealing other countries’ gold.
Secondly, as I also wrote, Russia’s gold reserves were not kept at the Bank of England, therefore the Bank of England could not have stolen them, nor could it have returned them to anyone. I would add that it generally admitted that most of the gold simply disappeared during the unrest, fighting and chaos of the revolutionary period. How could this have been the case if the gold was in London and not in Moscow and Petersburg?
Thirdly, I am not disputing that the Bank of England is sequestering Venezuela’s gold. I don’t know, and therefore I shall not, in the fashion of some commentators on this blog, automatically deny something because it doesn’t suit my case. What I am disputing is your assertion that the Bank of England “has previous”. I have asked you for examples, but you have been unable or unwilling to provide any (apart from the false claim about the Russia gold).
Fourthly, I have to note that you made a specific allegation against the Bank of England – and no doubt in despair, suddenly started talking about English piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries (although the Bank of England was founded at the very end of the 17th century. Deflection or what?
A word of advice – when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Jen
What, in your opinion, is meant by “sampling” an item of bullion (eg, a gold bar)?
Jen February 9, 2026 at 23:17: the RBA themselves seem quite satisfied with the results of their audit. Therefore I would lose no sleep over it.
Without getting involved in this argument: since 2010, many states have repatriated a lot of gold. These include Germany and France (the world’s 2nd and 4th biggest holders), India (8th), Netherlands (9th), Austria, and Turkey. Quite possibly others have done the same on the quiet. To put it mildly, this suggests they think there’s a fair chance that international relations and the security of international transport may soon be radically different from what they are now.
If a government is worried about the existence of its supposed gold bars on the BofE (or anywhere else) why not just sell the gold bars in situ, without moving them, to a third party (I believe this is an option with the BofE ) and buy some more gold in another location with the profits from the sale?
LCdaS , a word of advice in return, read what people wrote before replying to it. My comment “In any case, I was not “deflecting to” Britain’s long history of international theft, on the high seas and on land: that is what I meant by “ancient tradition” in the first place. It is you who are deflecting from that to the specific example of the Bank of England.” seems not to have got from the screen into your consciousness.
No doubt you feel you are on much firmer ground there than addressing Britain’s long history of international thievery, but the Bank of England, which, is, I would admit, slightly less larcenous than I thought, (although they didn’t until 2019 give the Poles back their gold that the Poles had sent to the UK for safe keeping before WWII, because they disapproved of the post-war Polish government, in an exact parallel to the Venezuelan gold) was a subject that you yourself introduced.
Whilst on the subject of advice, you seem to seize on a particular meaning to people’s comments, without stopping to think that they may have meant something else. In this particular exchange, you appear to have thought that my reference to “a long tradition” referred to the Bank of England. It didn’t. It referred to the very history of international larceny that you are so keen to dismiss as a deflection. I know what I had in mind when I wrote it, you don’t.
@ M.J.
The proportion of the RBA’s holdings that was sampled (7.22%) does seem quite small.
If you are satisfied with how the RBA audits its gold holdings at the Bank of England, then good for you, but some commenters here might query the methods and methodology the RBA uses to do the audit. That’s all.
Love your work. You are a very brave soul. Question for you. Can Americans legally donate to your efforts? Knowing nothing of UK laws, I wouldn’t want to put you (nor myself) in any sort of civil or criminal liability. Thanks.
That’s a kind thought. Lots of Americans do donate and there is no legal barrier to my knowledge.
Done! Sent you $100 from my wife’s PayPal account to your Venezuelan fund.
I’m sorry, I want to support you, but 17.5% overhead for GoFundMe is way too steep. It’s a rip off.
Jon, I don’t like GFM, but you can easily move the slider to set your “tip” to zero.
We live in a world of reasonably simple ways to send funds from person A to person B without any middle man taking his cut. Craig shows his full bank transfer details and addresses of two cryptocurrency wallets. I can confirm that sending to Craig’s bank account (at least from UK) does work and there is no fee.
What are some reasonably simple ways to avoid paying a fee when sending funds to an account in another country denominated in another currency?
As for sending
Ponzicoincrypto, doesn’t it always involve a fee? (It’s probably called a Freedom Rebellious Coolkid Mining Charge or something like that.)I am not trying to be rude, but you said “we live in a world”, not a country. Whenever I’ve sent money from my sterling-denominated account at a British bank to an account outside of Britain denominated in another currency, a fee has always been paid. Believe me, I would avoid doing this if there were a “reasonably simple” way.
There’re several banks and payment companies that will move money between countries for a very small fee, sometimes for nothing other than an exchange rate markup. Wise.com, Zen.com and Xe.com are the three that immediately come to mind, but there’re many more out there.
I bow to Craig’s great expertise about Venezuela. But the desperation of US-dominated British mainstream media to depose our own political leader, Starmer, seems palpable today. What hypocrisy, or worse, of those Guardian columnists who rubbished Corbyn for all those years, then praised Starmer to the skies, and are now calling for him to go.
Ironic, really, given that the Guardian was once so deeply in love with the New Labour government crew – of which the most visible figures were Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, and Peter Mandelson – as to be vomit inducing.
I doubt any of them will even wonder who “must go” given that “Prince” Andrew has now been caught passing government documents to an agent of a foreign power called Jeffrey Epstein, literally five minutes after he got them. Surely those are prima facie grounds for a prosecution for espionage.
Several figures will be relieved they’ve got through 21 hours of Sunday so far. The position seems to be that Genocide Starmer is weak and there’s no obvious replacement – not Andy Burnham, not tax fiddler Angela Rayner, not Peter Mandelson’s buddy Wes Streeting… Could it possibly be Ed Miliband from Doncaster North Les Deux Eglises © [*]?
Note
* Any journalist who refers to Doncaster North Les Deux Eglises can thank me by making a financial donation to this blog.
Brian
At the risk of being thought pedantic, could I appeal to you to stop using inverted commas around certain words?
Inverted commas are put around words to indicate that the writer is contesting whatever the word claims to be; for example, if you write “it is claimed by “experts” that higher taxes are a good thing”, you are indicating that you believe those who claim that are not experts at all, or at the very least you are expressing strong scepticism.
Given that, it is pointless putting inverted commas around, for instance, titles belonging to the royal family. To write “King” Charles is silly, because, whether you approve of the monarchy or not, Charles is the king of the United Kingdom; that is a fact which you cannot contest. Similarly, to write “Prince” Andrew in the past was silly, because he was, in fact, a prince, and to write “Prince” Andrew now is otiose because he is no longer a prince, which is also a fact. (you could try “former Prince Andrew” if you want to be 100% precise).
Otherwise, I rather like (some of) your posts…..
Ever since the foundation of Israel in 1948, and actually long before, many people have acted as Israeli agents in all Western nations. Some of them even handed over design documents for nuclear weapons. None of them was ever punished.
Others who gave equivalent information to the USSR were executed to general applause.
Nonsense. Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to a long gaol term in the US (of all places). The only executions of Soviet spies in the West were those of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the US (and not to general applause either, whether in the US itself or in Europe).
I’ll try and give a bit more on Friday.
See I do comment.
I found Craigs piece very interesting.
I remember watching president Maduro basically saying that all interested parties in the Oil Business
were welcome to come to Venezuela and strike deals.
Delcey Rodriguez is said to be the brains behind these deals in the past with Chevron and other oil companies.
So, as Craig says – this is nothing new.
What is new is that Trump is handing over the Pirated oil to a private company and not The US treasury and taking
a big kickback personally.
A bit like the CIA’s drugs cash business in the countries they are always moralising about to a credulous MSM.
It does look like a TACO type win for Trump but, you can’t build an oil company or companies by nicking tankers
every so often.
Then again the same chump Bankrupted Three Casinos.
So, what do I know.
Next TACO business for Trump is how to back down from his threats to Iran without endangering the wrath of his Israeli donors.
Oh and to hope that he avoids any scandal or evidence in The Epstein Files.
That is not over by a long chalk and it haunts Trump by the hour.
Not to be unkind but the situation in Venezuela surely deserves a carefully written essay/piece.
It is difficult to comment on a piece to camera.
I’d be interested in interviews with political leaders – government and opposition – and yes, a walk past the notorious El Helicoide political prison.
Why is the Acting President releasing political prisoners (some or all)?
Is this performative – to curry favour with the Trump regime – or a real attempt to reach out to the opposition?
“Why is the Acting President releasing political prisoners (some or all)?”
Or, indeed, any?
Bayard
February 9, 2026 at 09:26
Are you suggesting that political prisoners are *not* being released by the Venezuelan government?
How do you know that they are, have you been there?
Bayard
February 9, 2026 at 14:10
“Venezuela frees prominent opposition members as prisoner releases continue”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelan-politician-juan-pablo-guanipa-freed-prisoner-release-2026-02-08/
It was in Reuters, so it must be true, eh? Once again, I ask you to consider the main argument of this and Craig’s previous post on Venezuela.
Bayard
“How do you know that they are, have you been there?”
With great respect, that is a very silly thing to say. If having visited a country were a qualification for being able to say anything about it, then the majority of the commentators on this blog would be disqualified from commenting on anything that goes on outside England, Scotland and Wales.
On the other hand, however, it is perfectly in order to ask for sources and/or to ask “what are your reasons for saying that” or “how do you explain that”.
Bayard
February 9, 2026 at 18:27
You don’t believe any reportage, relying only on your own personal observations?
No offence intended but your experience of the world is limited by your financial resources and your available time, your physical endurance etc.
I expect that if I trawled through your posts here I’d find links to online accounts by persons other than yourself?
Perhaps you mean that you only trust reportage by …. people that you trust?
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-amnesty-law-would-cover-political-protesters-return-assets-draft-shows-2026-02-05/
Do you not believe this?
“then the majority of the commentators on this blog would be disqualified from commenting on anything that goes on outside England, Scotland and Wales.”
That is indeed the case, if they wish to present their comments as the absolute truth.
“You don’t believe any reportage, relying only on your own personal observations?”
No I don’t and neither should you. I will admit the possibility that it might be true, even the high probability that it might, but to state it as the absolute truth, like you do, no.
“Perhaps you mean that you only trust reportage by …. people that you trust?”
Is that not a sensible attitude to take? Nothing destroys trust faster than the knowledge that the source of the information is someone or an organisation that is prepared to lie to you, no matter what the subject matter of the lie. If you can’t trust them on everything, you can’t trust them on anything, as how can you tell when they are lying and when they are telling the truth? This is why adultery so often leads to divorce.
“Do you not believe this?”
No, for the simple fact that both this post and the previous one on Venezuela has been about how the Western MSM, which includes Reuters, has been telling porkies about what is going on in Venezuela. Now that I know they are capable of lying to me, I cannot trust a single thing they say.
Bayard
February 9, 2026 at 18:27
“Prominent Venezuelan opposition politician detained hours after release.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/09/machado-ally-juan-pablo-guanipa-kidnapped-venezuela
There’s a lot going on in Caracas for Craig to investigate.
Note the reference to a demonstration outside the El Helicoide prison…
“Note the reference to a demonstration outside the El Helicoide prison…”
You really struggle with the concept that the MSM, which tells you so much that you want to hear, might be lying to you, don’t you? Quoting the MSM (and the Guardian, FFS) to prove that the MSM isn’t lying to us is not going to convince anyone whose reasoning powers have not long since shut down, leaving only prejudices.
Bayard
February 10, 2026 at 07:53
“You really struggle with the concept that the MSM, which tells you so much that you want to hear, might be lying to you, don’t you? Quoting the MSM (and the Guardian, FFS) to prove that the MSM isn’t lying to us is not going to convince anyone whose reasoning powers have not long since shut down, leaving only prejudices.”
Perhaps we can agree that a more inquisitive approach by Craig could be informative.
The reaction by the State authorities to a walk to and past the El Helicoide prison by Craig with a camera operator, interpreter et al. would tell a lot.
I’d also be interested (curiosity really) in the organisation of the visit. Is Craig the guest of the Government or of some local pro- (or anti-) Government group? Or of some civil society group?
“The reaction by the State authorities to a walk to and past the El Helicoide prison by Craig with a camera operator, interpreter et al. would tell a lot.”
I dare say it would be exactly the same reaction as if he did the like outside Belmarsh.
“I’d also be interested (curiosity really) in the organisation of the visit. Is Craig the guest of the Government or of some local pro- (or anti-) Government group? Or of some civil society group?”
As far as I can make out, he went off his own bat.
JK Redux
I’m not sure that interviewing political leaders of whichever persuasion would greatly increase our understanding. The only greater understanding that one obtains from listening to interviews with, say, UK politicians of various stripes, is that one is more convinced than ever that politicians are experts in evasion, deflection and propaganda.
“It is difficult to comment on a piece to camera”.
Very true, although a compromise would be to read a previously prepared piece.
You are being very misleading Craig. In the 2000s, U.S. sanctions on Venezuela were symbolic and targeted, focused mainly on arms sales and specific individuals, not on the economy. The first meaningful economic sanctions did not begin until 2017. U.S. sanctions were not the original cause of Venezuela’s oil industry collapse. Production began falling in the early 2000s after the politicization of PDVSA, mass firings of skilled staff, chronic underinvestment, mounting debt, and widespread corruption; by 2016—before oil sanctions—output had already dropped sharply from its peak. The 2019 U.S. oil sanctions significantly worsened and prolonged the decline by restricting access to markets, finance, and key inputs, but they acted as an accelerant, not the root cause of the industry’s collapse.
Could it also have been that demand for Venezuela’s type of oil, known as “heavy crude” (I think) was falling given the fall in price and increased supply of lighter oil from elsewhere?
If you want Craig, or, indeed, anyone else to take notice of what you write, there is little point in presenting something that reads as your own unsupported opinion. We do not “hold these truths to be self evident…” even if you do.
Perhaps one test of whether there is political freedom (and how much of it) in Venezuela would be if Mr Murray could gain access to random people’s houses and interview/film them there (using an interpreter, of course). If it would be easy to do this – that is, if the people were willing to talk in front of the camera without fear – then that could be a sign that there is little or no repression. If, on the other hand, people proved unwilling, one could infer the contrary.
Just a suggestion!
A useful experiment that RT’s rick Sanchez could repeat in Iran, where he is currently. However, there will always be those who will claim that the whole thing was staged in both cases.
Staged by whom? Mr Murray or the people into whose dwellings he penetrated?
Mr Murray of course, to bring that lovely Mr Trump that nice Mr Rubio and those beacons of probity, the Western MSM into bad odour with his reading public.
The interpreter would appear to be the weak link here. Can they be trusted to make an accurate translation and where do they come from? Can Craig be sure they aren’t a government stooge? Even if those he’s interviewing are suspicious and just think the interpreter is there to spy on them they might be careful about what they say.
Plenty of examples of people having the wool pulled over their eyes by oppressive regimes. GBS and Stalin for one, Malcolm Caldwell and Pol Pot another.
“Plenty of examples of people having the wool pulled over their eyes by oppressive regimes. GBS and Stalin for one, Malcolm Caldwell and Pol Pot another.”
I wonder how much walking around unescorted and talking to people GBS and Malcolm Caldwell did. Given that they talked to the very powerful rulers of the countries they were in, probably very little, as “one doesn’t just walk into…” the USSR or Cambodia and talk to Pol Pot or Stalin.
Bayard
I am confused now – you say they talked to the very powerful rulers, and then in the rest of the sentence you imply that thy DID talk to the No. 1 honchos?
Anyway, let me give you a summary of what I know about the reports from and visits to the USSR.
1/. Most of the reporters in the late 1920s and in the 1930s knew what was going on, including as regards the show trials. Some of them didn’t report what they knew (eg, Duranty), others did but their newspapers refused to print most of what they wrote (Malcolm Muggeridge). To be noted that most of those reporters did not speak Russian. However, they all had eyes.
2/. There were all sorts of distinguished visitors – GBS, the Red Dean, Eleanor Roosevelt, VP Henry Wallace, André Gide…….
All were of course accompanied on their tours, none spoke Russian. Some were isolated from contact with the man in the street and areas of distress, others were egregiously deceived by modern-day Potemkin villages (cf Wallace’s visit to Kolyma). The point in common was that they all wanted desperately to believe that Soviet communism was the way to the future at a time when the Western capitalist world was going through the great depression.
“I am confused now – you say they talked to the very powerful rulers, and then in the rest of the sentence you imply that thy DID talk to the No. 1 honchos?”
Now I am confused: who are the “No1 honchos” if they are not “the very powerful rulers”.
My point was not that no-one went to the USSR or Cambodia and spoke to people, but that it is unlikely that GBS and Malcolm Caldwell did.
@ Bayard
Apologies for the confusion I caused with my comment on your comment.
I should have made it clearer that you wrote (1) “Given that they { GBS and Caldwell} talked to the very powerful rulers of the countries they were in { Stalin and Pol Pot respectively}”
and that you then went on to write ““one doesn’t just walk into…” the USSR or Cambodia and talk to Pol Pot or Stalin.”
Now, I may have missed something, but it is not clear, to me at least, whether you are saying that GBS and Caldwell did meet and talk to Stalin and Pol Pot or that they did not.
Or is this an example of doublethink?
When I wrote ““one doesn’t just walk into…” the USSR or Cambodia and talk to Pol Pot or Stalin.”, I meant, they would have had to have been invited, not just turned up on a tourist flight like Craig going to Venezuela, or else they wouldn’t have got to see the “No 1 honchos”. If they were invited they would have had a guide and an interpreter assigned to them and it is very unlikely they would have been able to stroll around and talk to random members of the public.
Pears
OK, you might be right about the interpreter, although I do think that is pulling things by the hair. But in that case, as Mr Murray does not speak Spanish (as far as I know), you might as well give up. All that is left is Mr Murray (1) wandering around the streets filming and (2) -perhaps – Mr Murray speaking with (anglophone) political leaders fro both sides.
Or taking his own, trusted, interpreter.
Certainly!
But, in the light of what Bayard has been writing, can one trust trust?
Thanks Craig for these on the ground reports from one of the crime scenes of western elite banditry.
The truth about western imperialism and western ruling-class culture has been laid bare before the world over the past two years.
With the Epstein revelations showing a cabal at the top of the pyramid of western global power politics, indulging themselves in all manner of depraved and plainly illegal and inhuman perversions, it is clear that this ruling elite look upon all of humanity as their slaves, and glory in the immunity conferred by their wealth and power.
Millions of politically-illiterate workers are becoming conscious of these facts. Millions of workers and peasants around the world have become conscious, at the same time, of the illegal genocide being perpetrated by Israel-US-Britain in Palestine and across the Middle East.
Millions have seen the flagrant attack, initiation of aggression and illegal war, upon Iran and Venezuela, and Cuba. The capturing and internment in imperial dungeons of a SITTING PRESIDENT, Nicolas Maduru, and the first lady of Vennezuela, Celia Flores.
It is quite clear that the Epstein operation was being run by Israel and that Israel is a key player in the Anglo-American imperialist empire. Criticism of Israeli genocide is being made illegal, on pain of imprisonment and excommunication from work and normal life, participation in society – and the IHRA definition is being used as a central tool of political repression in Britain and the west.
Many – not unreasonably – are reaching for easy answers: ‘its satanism, its the Jews, its a loss of moral faith.’ All of this and endless personal prurient speculation is in fact a part of the psychological operation to distract us from the bigger truths that we are seeing: this is our Wage Slavery, and the global system of the Anglo-American imperialist exploitation and oppression
The billionaire elite are the enemy. They are the ones that must be destroyed. And the weapon is also under our noses: take their possessions!
Give the wealth generated by work, back to the working people. And let the working people plan, produce, distribute and govern.
The only way to control billionaire wealth is to formally define what is ‘acceptable personal wealth’, IMO. Obviously the capitalists would be all over this as backdoor socialism/communism, but what is acceptable ?
One suggestion is limiting executive pay to a set multiple (e.g., 12 or 20 times) of the lowest-paid worker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_ratio
For example. The median, not lowest, UK salary is said to be ~£39k [eg. a nurse], which would mean a max. [NHS] CEO salary of £468k – £780k. [Actual NHS execs salaries are lower than this] Is this acceptable ?
This is a bit of a rabbit hole, with no obvious answers, unless you just outlaw billionaires.
It would happen if we had genuine democracies. These billionaires are all dead set on becoming trillionaires and are devouring us now just as they did in the past. Only once have they been stopped in their tracks since the advent of capitalism, briefly for a couple of generations after 1917. Held temporarily in check by the threat of worker revolution and forced to provide concessions to ordinary people. They returned to nature, in earnest, after 1991, determined to grab back everything that had ameliorated ordinary life through the post-war decades.
I don’t know how we get back there under the prevailing conditions of what they call liberal democracy. Look at the depths they plumbed to stop even with compatible old Corbyn, what they are doing to socialist countries like the one Craig is currently in, what they did to Gaza. A savage age. We haven’t seen a fraction of the reality of what they really got up to with Epstein either.
“Held temporarily in check by the threat of worker revolution”
Not so much the threat of worker revolution as the threat of armed revolt by thousands of trained soldiers.
The danger there is that the limit becomes an entitlement, like speed limits or tuition fees, or they just pay larger bonuses which should be linked to the company’s overall performance.
“The only way to control billionaire wealth is to formally define what is ‘acceptable personal wealth’, IMO.”
Nope, that’s yet another “solution” that presupposes there is a magic sieve that can be passed through the population to leave the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other, so that the good guys can keep the bad guys in order. The actual solution is much simpler: work to prevent greed and selfishness and stop normalising the idea that anyone has a greater right to wealth than anyone else, regardless of how much or little wealth they actually have. A society that idolises material success (as encapsulated by the term “loser” for anyone less fortunate) will always suffer from the greedy and unscrupulous ending up with a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth. The oligarch class in Europe has survived for centuries not because they are a race apart, Homo Superior, preying on the toiling Homo Pauperensis, but because they are exactly the same people as the people they rule. Plenty of the ruled have exactly the same desires and instincts as the rulers, they just don’t have the wealth, power or connections. Thus the oligarch class is continually refreshed from below. Any examination of the ancient oligarchy in the UK, the nobility, will show this process in operation. If you simply get rid of the billionaires, you will just have new, slightly less rich oligarchs to replace them. The wealth might be less, but the concentration of power and influence will remain the same, as will the desire to become one of that charmed circle. Unfortunately, it seems that only a full-scale war is capable of making the necessary attitude adjustment.
Meanwhile back in the real world …
As you infer, the problem is human nature. War isn’t going to change that, only pause it at best. The reality IMO is that mankind, in general, hasn’t yet evolved to the point where inherent selfishness/survival of the fittest can be overcome. So, in the meantime we’re left with laws and taxes as the only way to curb excesses, albeit not very successfully.
“The reality IMO is that mankind, in general, hasn’t yet evolved to the point where inherent selfishness/survival of the fittest can be overcome.”
Well, not in Europe or any of its colonies or ex-colonies, no it hasn’t. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other societies that have managed it. However, given that there are almost no areas of the world that remain unaffected by European colonialism, it is hardly surprising that examples are few, if not non-existent today.
Bayard
Your comment reminds one of the old saw that Communism would be great except it’s never been fully implemented anywhere (or been allowed to be implemented).
Your use of the word “affected” is clever, because otherwise I would have taken the example of Siam/Thailand, which was never colonised, and asked whether that society managed it. But of course every country is “affected” to some extent by almost everything that goes on almost everywhere else, so you’ve escaped from that trap.
But let me not be churlish, let me remain optimistic : you say that there may still be a few examples today. Please share them with us.
The oligarchs are not exactly the same people as the people they rule. The oligarchs having the kind of society they want has led to a process of anti-evolution [*] for our species. This has been especially evident over the past 20 years and it’s increasing. (Hello mass smartphone addiction. Hello hardly anyone under 40 knowing how to do joined up writing. Hello the widespread fatalism among parents as they shirk their parental responsibilities. Hello young adults hardly socialising with each other in the real world any more.) Consider the advances we made in the past with our invention of language, and then much more recently with our invention of writing – in the latter case, kept out of reach of the vast majority of us for millennia, but eventually becoming a majority thing in the 1960s. Could there be more progress in the future? Damned right there could! We’re a great species. But is any progress happening? Is any on the horizon? The answers are NO and NO. The species is going backwards (and fast) and this is all the fault of the blood-drinking ruling oligarchs. What humanity needs is for the bastards’ rule to come crashing down around their ears. This is not just what the exploited majority needs, but what humanity needs.
Note
Anti-evolution is known by biologists as “devolution”, “de-evolution”, or “backward evolution”. But let’s not hold our breath for an anti-Richard anti-Dawkins to come among us brandishing a popular science book contract.
Brian. Evolution, like climate, takes hundreds of thousands of years if not millions, for changes to filter through. ‘We’ are essentially the same beasts as our far, far ancestors, albeit with more toys. As I mentioned war won’t change anything and we, the people, would just end up impoverished trying to survive in total chaos, no electricity, no Tesco’s !
I have no idea what the solution to the billionaire problem is, but taxes and laws would be a start.
@Stevie – There is a theory that language and writing “filtered through” after a million or so years of non-actualised preparation in the evolution of the brain, but that is reminiscent of a certain loony ultraleftist group’s view of the “subterreanan maturation of consciousness” – i.e. people bending a theory into a peculiar shape to get a view of facts that otherwise don’t fit with it. I don’t like Dawkins one bit, but there’s nothing wrong with considering the development of spoken language and then written language as part of evolution.
What, then, can we say about the smartphone plague? To come it at it from an angle which isn’t the only possible one: what does survival of the fittest mean when most young men pick their phones all the time? Surely this behaviour doesn’t make fertile-age women think those guys will be good at protecting them and future children?
“But let me not be churlish, let me remain optimistic : you say that there may still be a few examples today. Please share them with us.”
Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t know any, which is why I said “examples are few, if not non-existent today.” Tonight’s game of whack-a-mole is hereby cancelled. As to Siam/Thailand, unfortunately it doesn’t make the list of countries never invaded by Britain.
“Evolution, like climate, takes hundreds of thousands of years if not millions, for changes to filter through. ”
Physical/genetic evolution, yes*, but social evolution/regression is far far quicker. In my own lifetime I have seen the state of indebtedness going from something to be avoided if at all possible to something considered a normal part of life, for instance.
* There is increasing evidence that our genetic code is not fixed at what we inherited at conception from our parents, but is constantly being edited.
“Your comment reminds one of the old saw that Communism would be great except it’s never been fully implemented anywhere (or been allowed to be implemented)”
That is one of those phrases that is trotted out by people who’ve never given a moment’s thought to it. A very brief reflection will tell you that mankind spent millions of years living communistically as hunter-gatherer societies and probably some still do. Indeed, once you remove the concept of land ownership from a pre-industrial society, there is not much left not to hold in common. What has failed is the attempt to impose, from above, Communism onto a society that previously had the concept of private ownership of property highly developed. They have failed not because it was Communism being imposed but precisely because it was an imposition.
Bayard (08:02)
Putting on one side hunter-gatherer societies for the moment, and staying with the slightly more modern example of the Soviet Union, your argument appears to be that communism would have been fine – and worked – if it had not been imposed from above but if it would have grown up, organically,from the roots of society, ie, from below.
Have we read you correctly?
If not, read no further. But if we have, do you have any thoughts on why that didn’t happen?
Take as a basis of your possible reply Communism as set out by Marx and Engels.
Bayard (11th Feb, 20:46)
You’re a slippery customer when playing whack-a-mole. I believe you were going on about colonialism, but you’ve now switched to invasion.
I have no idea if Siam/Thailand was ever invaded by the British (perhaps towards the end of WW2?) but it was certainly never colonised, whether by the British or others.
So my point holds.
LCdaS, is English not your native language? I ask because you are continually getting the wrong end of the stick about what I write. To wit: I wrote “However, given that there are almost no areas of the world that remain unaffected by European colonialism, it is hardly surprising that examples are few, if not non-existent today.” and you start complaining I have “switched to invasion.” from “going on about colonialism”. What, do you imagine, was the reason that Britain invaded Siam/Thailand? Could it have possibly had something to do with the British Empire, or do you think the British monarch at the time got out of bed one day and thought “I’m fed up with thinking about the colonies, today I am going to do something different, I’m going to send my troops to invade Siam”? So Siam may not have been colonised, but it was certainly affected by interaction with a colonial power.
Similarly you state, “your argument appears to be that communism would have been fine – and worked – if it had not been imposed from above but if it would have grown up, organically,from the roots of society, ie, from below.”
I didn’t say that, I said that, for millions of years, communism was how human society operated and then, over a period of thousands, possibly millions of years, in many parts of the world, the concept of private property evolved and societies stopped being communist. The mistake that Marx and Engels made was thinking that a process that took hundreds of generations could be reversed in one by simply imposing it from above.
It would be useful, I think, to seek out and test some “information” we get outside of Venezuela, like on the BBC Newshour on NPR today, I heard an interview with a doctor who said he was imprisoned and kept in filthy conditions on spurious jumped up charges. This kind of thing is no credit to the government, if true, but I feel that there is something fishy about such stories and that needs checked out. If armed gangs are doing this in the name of the government then the truth of it needs to be admitted, but I feel we are (obviously) not getting the whole story and I would love to see you come up with the truth about such allegations. (Yes – and throw them back in the teeth of the alligators, I know…) 🙂
In my opinion the Achilles Heel of Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro was:
They made a lot of money when oil prices were high.
Their oil was refined in the USA.
The reason why the US is pissed is simply because the oil money ( and I will say where there is money to
be made it will attract corrupt people – see Mandelson for details) was spent on education – healthcare and
helping the poor.
Trump and his mates didn’t like the idea of that version of Socialism hence the sanctions.
Rubio hates Cuba even more for that and they have no oil.
So, I am all in favour of that but, the economy never diversified into much industry and the poorer
peasant farmers may have fared better under the Chavistas but when the oil price fell and the
economy was squeezed by flooding the place with dollars it got worse.
A similar but bigger game was recently played in Iran with The Markets this time.
The Saudis and other oil producers have to send all their income/profit to the US and the US
nearly tells them what they can or can’t do with that money.
Trump and Bessant want to do the same with any oil producing country across the globe.
Unfortunately for Trump not everyone wants to play that game.
The problem for Trump is that an attack on Iran would quickly backfire on the very same Markets
Trump represents.
The Americans export a lot of their oil and get a good price for it – even more for LNG.
Imagine if they had to sell that same oil and gas to their people at Full market rates?
And then go into the Mid term Elections with Gas (as the Americans call it) 2 or 3 times
the price they used to pay due to the shortage.
Add in energy inflation and he has a big problem with The Folks Back Home.
Does he obey the Israeli Lobby or obey US and International Markets?
Starmer’s problems are much less significant than Trumps
Tor was created by the US military.
Note: the same point cannot be made about PGP, for which the maths (the RSA algorithm) was discovered at GCHQ. Tor is a network. PGP really is secure if you use it properly.
There are a number of encryption methods around. PGP is one of them. Their two weaknesses are Man In The Middle, which PGP’s Web Of Trust tries to counter, and traffic analysis since the encrypted messages can still be seen in transit. For the spooks and others, seeing who is communicating with who is almost as useful as knowing what they are saying and seeing that the messages are encrypted suggests they might be particularly worth tracking. Tor is supposed to obfuscate the passing of messages by bouncing them around so much that they can’t be traced. Whether there’s a back door for Western spooks in there I can’t say but it’d have to be extremely well hidden to be unidentified by state-level adversaries. Of course it could be that the West doesn’t care and Tor is just a honeypot for all the spooks to identify people of interest.
With PGP you don’t have to jump into a web of trust that you may not have good reason to trust. You can use it with your mate. It is not vulnerable to the Man in the Middle if you authenticate (and generate) your keys properly.
“(A back door in Tor for Western spooks would have) to be extremely well hidden to be unidentified by state-level adversaries. Of course it could be that the West doesn’t care and Tor is just a honeypot for all the spooks to identify people of interest.”
If state-level adversaries of the USA identified a back door in Tor, why would they say so publicly? Tor was invented by the US military for their own purposes but they realised that if they didn’t let others come in they would be the only guys there, which would make them rather obvious, so they opened it out.
Issues of traffic analysis apply generally. The rule for electronic communications that you don’t want to be listened to is to use them as little as possible. VPNs are suicidal. People praise Proton without realising that Tim Berners-Lee, who is about as an “establishment” figure as it’s possible to get, is on the board. Nobody in their right mind would trust NordVPN either. There are far too many people who think they are being secure when they aren’t, e.g. leaving unsent messages for each other on Yahoo or Gmail.
“RSA encryption got its name from the surnames of its creators, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, who described the algorithm while working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology back in 1977.”
As I understand it, it’s the Diffie Hellman protocol that lets two entities establish a secret key over an insecure channel that was developed at GCHQ. Of course it’s vulnerable, like everything else without out-of-channel authentication, to Man In The Middle. If you delve into the mathematics, there’s a lot in common between it and RSA. But RSA is far more complex, particularly the process of generating a public-private key pair. I’ve written code to do RSA encryption and decryption myself from scratch for an embedded system and it wasn’t too difficult but I’d never try to write code to generate keys. No need. It’s already out there.
The agency of the USA is central to any discussion about countries like Cuba, Russia, Iran and of course Venezuela in that its long term policy is regime change, irrespective of which faction is in power. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans is in the means to achieve a common goal. Both use information, economic and military methods of warfare In different ways and to different effects, measurable against their success in achieving the long term goal.
Where Obama – Biden and Trump have gone wrong in their different ways has been to believe that their own lies and propaganda created by their information warfare weaponry provides enough analysis coupled with their economic strategies to weaken Venezuela sufficiently to make it ripe for regime change in the shorter rather than the longer term. Trump’s illegal, illegitimate and brutal kidnapping and arraigning of Maduro and his wife was as a military response a sign of desperation and admission of failure that he is not going to be the one to achieve the American dream in this regard.
He might get his oil, but not much more. If only the Americans could wake up and realise that they have a murderous megalomaniac in charge well aided and abetted by a psychopathic entourage but that the alternatives are not essentially different, they might do something to effect real change in their country’s approach to other countries.
America, and many Americans, see themselves as ‘exceptional’, special, better than the rest of us. This is inbred as part of their education systems. The rest of the world are seen as of lower intellect, capability and just exist to feed the hegemon, cattle. With a powerful military and control of the banking systems force can be used to control the cattle. Until America learns to respect the rest of the planet as equals then problems will continue.
Trump is a symptom, it’s the entire American system that is the real problem.
I have just posted a poem on the previous Filton Thread entitled: Filton 6- The Verdict (04/02/2026)
If the US is not controlling Venezuela, then why isn’t Venezuela sending much needed oil to Cuba?
Ismaele
February 10, 2026 at 15:44
The USA is definitely (trying to) control ship traffic into and out of Venezuela.
An aircraft carrier and a bunch of smaller warships are on station just offshore.
I expect even the most solipsist poster would agree.
And do you think the presence of a mere “aircraft carrier and a bunch of smaller warships” is somehow OK? !!!
Crispa
February 10,
Of course not.
But his Navy is doing what the Mango Mussolini tells them.
In addition to my comment above, I would also like to point out that apparently Venezuela is sending oil to Israel instead of Cuba (see Bloomberg article in the link below), something that neither Hugo Chavez nor Nicolas Maduro would have ever done. Craig, still convinced that Chavistas are in control of Venezuela? I think Americans are, as I said soon after the Maduro’s abduction on my substack (link further down).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-10/venezuela-sending-first-crude-oil-cargo-to-israel-in-years
https://geopolitiq.substack.com/
Here is my article on 8th January 2026 where I clearly stated who is in charge of Venezuela now: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/venezuela-conforming-to-us-decisions?r=25fc37
Hi Ismaele, thanks for the link to your article, well researched, but a tad derogatory. For example ‘Trump makes announcements’ whilst you describe ‘Delcy Rodriguez is blabbering’.
Care to explain why you regard a pirate stealing oil and denying it to other nations such as Cuba is ok, whilst keeping your economy and people safe is just blabbering. Why this bias?
Nevermind
February 11, 2026 at 08:19
Yes “blabbering” is unkind but Delcy Rodriguez is certainly speaking inconsistently, claiming agency and autonomy while, seemingly, following American direction.
Maybe she is playing a long game but “in the long run we are all dead”.
In the meantime she does appear to be doing what Trump wants.
In the meantime, we are all doing as Trump says waving our poodle tail.
Time to play hard ball with that genocidal crook. Delcy is keeping a balanced attitude and I don’t believe any of the fake MSM news provided on issues Venezuelan.
Hi Nevermind,
First of all, thanks for reading my article.
Please mind that I have no pro-Trump bias at all, actually quite the opposite. I am as concerned as you are regarding Trump (or any other US President) stealing oil from Venezuela (or any other country). Do not focus on a few single words. I have actually been very wary and critical towards Trump since the beginning, as my long-time readers know: pick up any of articles from early 2025 and you will see it by yourself. Here are a few for your convenience:
– https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/is-a-ceasefire-in-gaza-finally-approaching (08/01/2025)
– https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/trump-wants-to-expel-palestinians (26/01/2025)
– https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-festival-of-hypocrisy (06/02/2025)
Also, I think I can safely claim that I was one of the very first people to notice the warmongering attitude of Trump towards Venezuela in August 2025 and dismantle the narrative of the US fighting against “narco-terrorists”: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/is-trump-about-to-wage-war-against
Thanks for that Ismaele, a lot to read for me, I was merely concerned of the choice of words, not your conviction.
You seem a good character from what you write, dont think I am judging your conviction on the main issues that move all of us on this blog.
Well, nearly all of us, bar pearcing Migraine.
“Craig, still convinced that Chavistas are in control of Venezuela?”
It depends what you mean by “control”. If a mugger demands your wallet at gunpoint and you, sensibly hand it over, you are no longer in control of your wallet and its contents. However you are still in as much control of the rest of your life as you were before.
Doesn’t that depend on what your hypothetical wallet contained?
No, as a few moments’ quiet reflection will tell you.
“In addition to my comment above, I would also like to point out that apparently Venezuela is sending oil to Israel instead of Cuba (see Bloomberg article in the link below)”
FWIW, “Venezuela confirmed. They sent no oil to Israel but the Trump administration did. Commodity traders sold Venezuelan crude to an Israeli refiner as part of the Trump-enforced administration of the Caribbean nation’s oil exports. ” Still convinced that Chavistas are in not control of Venezuela?
Interesting article from Declassified in Venezuela Analysis (Feb 9th 2026), “One Hundred Years of British Interference in Venezuela” which highlights the efforts of the Blair government to protect the interests of Shell, BP and other British grounded oil companies. Article links to the events of 2002 when the USA backed opposition staged its short lived coup only for public pressure to result in the reinstatement of Chavez.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/one-hundred-years-of-british-interference-in-venezuela
Long standing class and race struggle seems to me to be what determines the political dynamics at any one time in Venezuela as it arguably does across South America with a racially mixed oppressed working class pitting itself against a largely white capitalist oppressor class descended from the original colonial settlers.
The latter with their immense USA support evidently still wields huge power outside of the urban areas where the commune movement provides the main resistance. However, recent events suggest that the working classes are at least holding their own and one hopes that the government will not let them down by acts of appeasement. Hopefully too Craig’s reporting will provide evidence of this.
Craig, I don’t understand why you are defending the ‘interim’ Venezuelan President and government to the degree you are. Just today it has been disclosed that a license issued by the US Department of the Treasury specifically prohibits any oil transactions between Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, China and Iran. How is Venezuela still a sovereign country in those circumstances? Additionally can you explain why Delsy Rodriguez met with the head of the CIA just hours or days after Maduro’s kidnapping?
There are many more questions than answers about how all of this could possibly have happened but perhaps Occum’s Razor is at play.
Let’s keep it in mind that the game isn’t about Venezuela. It’s Rubio’s game about Cuba.
Venezuela mattered only as Cuba’s key backer. This has now been sorted with Rodríguez agreeing to reducing economic support to the island, incl. halting of oil exports. As long as Venezuela sticks to this new policy, I doubt we’ll see more US threats towards it.
Now, in a new development, Cuba seems to be getting China’s back, perhaps in Beijing’s attempt to mirror the Taiwan situation, or at least link to it. Interesting developments!
Of course, Narco Rubio is part of the south american drug mafia that inhabits Florida, In bed with the CIA and Mossad, these are the same people that were responsible for the ‘bay of pigs’ and the murder of JFK.
“US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has falsely informed President Donald Trump that “high-level” negotiations are taking place between Washington and Havana – despite no such talks existing, Drop Site News reported on 9 February.
According to the report, Rubio has fed this information to Trump as part of “his ambitious play to overthrow the Cuban government.”
Five Cuban and US officials told Drop Site News that “there are and have been no negotiations involving high-level officials between Havana and Washington.””
https://thecradle.co/articles/rubio-deliberately-lies-about-cuba-talks-in-push-for-regime-change-report
“these are the same people that were responsible for the ‘bay of pigs’ and the murder of JFK.”
Nope. Those people are long dead.
Besides, Cuba is for the US what Taiwan is for China: an enemy-aligned country next to own borders, within a 15-minute missile flight. It’s absolutely rational for the US to have policies hostile towards the Cuban government.
It’s also quite natural for immigrants and their children who had been forced out of their country to despise those countries’ governments and systems. We’ve seen it with Eastern European immigrants in the UK since the 1950s, who passionately hated the Communist governments. We’re seeing it in the Cuban immigrant community in Florida. That Rubio’s policies reflect his upbringing shouldn’t be really a surprise.
Ultimately, it’s the Cuban government’s decision who to align with globally so as to make their population thrive. I do not – do NOT believe that Communist dictatorships (yes, they aren’t democracies) are the best form of government, despite initial social successes when moving from feudalism/colonialism a century or so ago. The millions of Cubans and Venezuelans who have left their countries for greener pastures are a testimony to that.
You can’t just blame economic sanctions for all the evil. Sanctions are part of political reality, and as a government official,you’re paid to govern the country in such a way as to steer clear of such risks. Being a small and weak country, you need to make compromises and sometimes rethink whether your ideology and political direction really serves the nation.
Looking at other nations in the Carribbean, it’s clear that Communism or anti-Americanism aren’t indispensable to having a thriving, well-off society. Quite the opposite: they tend to be associated with economic hardship.
Communism, in its core ideology, proclaims a constant struggle “for the better world”. Lenin’s “permanent revolution”. Suffer now so that the future can be bright. Which never comes.
If the ouster of Maduro and wife was a bagatelle and it’s true that Cuba has been cut off from Venezuelan oil and that oil is being sent to the zionazi genocidaires instead, who is running Venezuela?
Exactly.
Pretending that Venezuela is still an independent, sovereign country at this point makes no sense whatsoever and is disingenuous.
I’m not saying I don’t understand why Venezuela has capitulated but let’s be real about it.
“I’m not saying I don’t understand why Venezuela has capitulated but let’s be real about it.”
Venezuela may have capitulated on the matter of its oil exports because of force majure, but that doesn’t mean it is not still a sovereign country. To use the example I gave above of someone being robbed at gunpoint: they become a poorer person, not a slave.
Bayard, we will have to agree to disagree. For instance not a peep out of Rodriguez today about Cuba during her meeting with the US Energy Secretary. She looks more and more like a US stooge all the time. I’m simply not seeing any evidence that’s not the case.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Under your definition of sovereignty, there are only a handful of sovereign countries in the world.
Squeeth
February 11, 2026 at 15:54
I’ll be very interested to see Craig’s next post.
In the meantime
https://youtu.be/bLw3omzSW8s?si=5iVxbhcm9DbYD6q1
Seems we are supposed to believe that some colonialism is good while some is bad, and that other colonialism isn’t colonialism at all.
No-one in the MSM has explained the meaning of the fact that oligarch Jim Ratcliffe, who says that Britain has been colonised by immigrants, is himself a resident of Monaco. It’s not just that he’s an emigrant from Britain. He’s also a) an immigrant in Monaco who causes other British people to pay the taxes to the British government that he avoids paying, and b) a colonising immigrant, as are about 70% of the population in Monaco.
Call the occupation regime in Palestine a settler colonialist arrangement, which is precisely what it is, and you will be called anti-Semitic.
Certainly the USA will observe the Russian (non-)response to its actions against Venezuela when it weighs up a possible attack on Cuba.
Brian Red
February 12, 2026 at 10:24
The Russian non-response to US actions against Venezuela is due to
Russia’s disastrous committment of its military in a war of choice in Ukraine
and
Russia’s attempts to ingratiate itself with the Trump regime in the hope that Trump will enable a Russian victory over Ukraine.
@JK – There’s no doubt Russia is putting a lot of resources into the war effort and the country is feeling the pinch. Around the world they seem to have upped sticks in both Syria and Venezuela. Geopolitically it’s taking time for them to build an alternative to Visa and SWIFT, and I doubt China will be much help. Hopefully there will be somewhere in the world that Russia can wipe Trump’s face in his nappy for him.
Is your assessment that the USA will attack Cuba?
As for Ratcliffe, perhaps he has Ratnered the Manchester United brand in many markets with his asinine comment followed by his asinine non-apology. Many MUFC supporters around the world are people of colour. E.g. in India, Indonesia, Thailand, etc., and in Britain too.
Brian Red
February 12, 2026 at 13:03
IMO Rubio intends to starve Cuba into submission (starve them of fuel and consequently of electricity, food storage, air, sea and road transport).
For the avoidance of doubt, this is an outrageous breach of international law….
A good question would be: if the US succeeded in overthrowing the current Cuban government, would the Cuban -in -the -street be any worse off in the medium (or even short) term than he is now? Or is there a fair chance that he would be better off?
The advent of a post-Communist government would likely see the end of import and export sanctions, ie a greater availability of goods and inputs in the widest sense of the term, certain export possibilities and renewed investment from abroad.
Set against that, it is not evident what the downside would be (again, for the Cuban-in-the-street).
Is there any brutal and illegal Epstein-class regime change you would *not* support, Luis?
There were very good reasons why the Cubans threw them out.
If I remember well, there has been some talk in previous threads about the cleavage in Venezuelan politics (and economics being along racial lines. The thesis being that the opposition politicians are mostly whites (Caucasians) whereas the left wing, government politicians are mestizos and from other non-Caucasian groups
That may be the case. However, to see things more clearly, one should perhaps test this idea by taking a closer look at the Venezuelan government ministers. I wonder how any of them are mestizos and other non-Caucasians? Perhaps they are mostly Caucasians, just like President Maduro?
The same question could be posed of the Cuban government and leadership. One would not, I suspect, find many black or mestizo faces there. Let it be noted that the upright, idealistic, heroic El Lider was as Caucasian as the bloody, corrupt, evil dictator….Fulgencio Battista.
Zoot
Is that question somehow connected with what I was wondering in my post?
In your considered judgment, what would the downside of an overthrow of the current Cuban government be for the Cuban-in-the-street?
Try to avoid the ad hominems and imputations when answering.
“would the Cuban -in -the -street be any worse off in the medium (or even short) term than he is now? Or is there a fair chance that he would be better off?”
Given by what happened in other Latin American countries when a socialist government was replaced by a US backed dictatorship, I would expect the answers are yes and no in that order.
“I wonder how any of them are mestizos and other non-Caucasians? Perhaps they are mostly Caucasians, just like President Maduro?”
Please do try to carry out the bare minimum of research before putting finger to keyboard. Craig’s last post on Venezuela gave a picture of the current government, so there is absolutely no need to wonder.
“
@JK – To consider the US aim… On a local or regional level there would be the goal of Trump reversing the indignity suffered by Meyer Lansky and reopening casinos etc. in Havana, re-establishing the city under the kind of mafia control it used to be under – kinda like Miami but more so, run by returning wiseguy Cuban criminals from the USA, doubtless with a Trump Tower and a board that Trump can be king of. Either making Cuba join the USA or turning it into a colony like Puerto Rico. Geopolitically? I doubt Trump understands this level at all, but those who pull his strings do. Russia would be unlikely to be able to enforce a security guarantee. China would probably respond somehow. My gut feeling is that Cuba could still be a useful point on the map for those who want to trigger a world war.
@Luis – If we imagine that the USA overthrows the Cuban government, first they gotta try to. How are they going to do that? You don’t take into account that many “Cubans in the street” would resist. Try asking the question about Vietnam 1965 or Iraq more recently. Compared with the USA, Cuba has far superior public health provision, a better literacy rate, no child homelessness, etc. Many people value those things. Many are also far more aware of what it means to be a comprador than most people are in Britain, where I am probably the only person in my social circle who uses the phrase “brain drain”. Nowhere in the world have conditions improved for the “person in the street” as a result of the
GreatLittle Satan overthrowing the government.Luis
As Bayard says, yes and no in that order.
Now please answer my question. It’s prompted by your takes on Iran, Venezuela and now Cuba.
” Russia’s disastrous committment of its military in a war of choice in Ukraine
and
Russia’s attempts to ingratiate itself with the Trump regime in the hope that Trump will enable a Russian victory over Ukraine. ”
Christ! Is that your actual perception of events, JK?
How many times must it pointed out to you that Russia, having been subjected to relentless provocation, eg the ” not one inch Eastwards ” duplicity by Nato-ie-U.S + Euro Vassals, endless sanctions, contemptuous disregard by the Epsteinocracy of Russia’s entirely legitimate security concerns, was given no choice but to respond militarily to the turning of Ukraine into both a bait & battering ram against them. I’ll ask once again the question that people like yourself never answer……would the U.S tolerate Russia or China placing WMD on the Canada or Mexico- US border? You never answer, but you know the answer nonetheless.
As for Russia ” ingratiating ” itself to Trump – HA HA, that is such a ridiculous idea it kinda illustrates how bananas your * take * on this situation is. President Putin is clearly humouring the idiot Trump, playing the game if you like; leaving open the POSSIBILITY of getting actual, real, constructive dialogue with the US whilst, I’m fairly sure, knowing that the likelihood of that is remote.
Pay attention to what Lavrov is saying, to paraphrase, ‘ given the demented stance of Europe and it’s slavish adherence to US diktat, plus the latter’s erratic, unhinged behaviour and endless bad faith, there is currently no possibility of mature dialogue on the aforementioned Russian security concerns and how to end the bloodshed in Ukraine ‘. Do you think Lavrov would be saying such things without the imprimatur of V Putin and the Russian Gov?
Gotta laugh, if Russia – or China – had intervened directly in the US fuckery in Venezuela – or Syria, Yemen, Gaza etc, people like yourself would be screaming ” SEE! THEY’RE TRYING TO START WW3 ” or some such bollocks. It would also very likely have started WW3. Is that what you would like to see happen?
WAKE UP ma man, and smell the hegemonic intent and desperation of the U.S as it enters it’s phase of irreversible imperial decline
would the U.S tolerate Russia or China placing WMD on the Canada or Mexico- US border?
If the US invaded Canada or Mexico on this premise, on the grounds that America’s security concerns were being ignored, presumably you’d be as vociferous in your support as you are Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
How many WMDs were stationed in Ukraine? Why is Russia so scared of NATO which we’re repeatedly told is incapable and completely outclassed by Russia’s hypersonic ‘wonder weapons’? Why hasn’t Russia moved against Finland if having NATO on the border is so intolerable?
Whatever the reason it was Russia who chose war and it is turning out to be disastrous.
” If the US invaded Canada or Mexico on this premise, on the grounds that America’s security concerns were being ignored, presumably you’d be as vociferous in your support as you are Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?”
Well, DUH! of course I would, for the same reason, ie every country has an obligation to it’s people to defend it’s borders and in this hypothetical situation, that right would extend to the US, as much as any other country. It’s the principle we’re talking about here. FFS look at the ( entirely manufactured ) hysteria about Russian vessels – supposedly – entering UK waters; what is that about if not the integrity of national borders?
The fact is you and your ilk simply refuse to concede to Russia the same absolute right to protect itself that you automatically grant to your ” side “. I’ll ask again……why should Russia be expected to tolerate actions that the US/West never would?
” ……….blah……..and it is turning out to be disastrous.” . Oh, isn’t it just. Have you seen the state of Europe recently? Have you registered the catastrophic effects of the economic suicide Europe has chosen in it’s pathological Russophobia? Not only cutting off the supply of cheap Russian energy that has kept ( most of ) Europe in relatively good economic shape for decades, but to double down on the headshaking idiocy, making itself dependent on – much more expensive – US energy. Time will tell upon whom this disaster landed the most grievously. My sense is that it won’t be Russia
“Whatever the reason it was Russia who chose war and it is turning out to be disastrous.”
Yes the Russians seem to be disastrously winning and the Ukrainians seem to be gloriously losing.
Well, DUH! of course I would,
Well you’d have to say that obviously. No leader would be doing his country any favours by sending its young people off to die in an avoidable war and trash the nations economy at the same time. Especially when, as in the case of Ukraine, the threat is imaginary, theoretical at best. Positioning your own missiles along the border then negotiating a climb down would be a more statesman like approach; cheaper in blood and treasure too.
If you think this war isn’t proving to be bad for Russia you haven’t seen the latest economic data. If it’s so easy why the continued desperate attempt to freeze and starve out the civilian population?
https://fortune.com/2026/02/08/russian-economy-financial-crisis-warning-summer-putin-ukraine-war-too-big-to-fail/
Robert Hughes
February 12, 2026 at 18:36
Well Robert.
India must suffer the presence of Pakistan on its West and China on its North.
Russia must suffer the presence of China to its SouthEast.
China, indeed, has Russia to its North and India to its South.
But somehow Russia has some authority to reduce its Western neighbours to vassalage.
Because reasons…
“Because reasons…”
Those reasons being the presence or absence of US bases. Why, do you imagine, does the US keep bases in so many countries of the world? It wouldn’t have anything to do with “vassalage” by any chance, would it?
Bayard
February 12, 2026 at 21:22
Russia has far more to fear from China than it does from Ukraine.
Russia’s Far East is underpopulated and very vulnerable to a Chinese “drang nach Norden”..
Of course, now that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO, Russia’s strategic position in the West has further weakened.
Terrible sad for little Vladimir Vladimirovich..
Very likely that China would like North Manchuria back but rather than crudely sending in the army they’re more likely to use the same neocolonialist tactics they’ve used elsewhere; encourage Russia to run up a massive debt then offer to write it off in return for creeping control of the area, probably starting with the mineral rights, then the infra-structure and so on.
“Russia’s Far East is underpopulated and very vulnerable to a Chinese “drang nach Norden”.
A woman on her own at night is very vulnerable to rape. That doesn’t mean she is going to be raped, even though every passing able-bodied male has the ability to do it. Just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it is likely, or even probable.
“they’re more likely to use the same neocolonialist tactics they’ve used elsewhere; encourage Russia to run up a massive debt then offer to write it off in return for creeping control of the area, probably starting with the mineral rights, then the infra-structure and so on.”
By they, I think you mean the US? Those are the tactics that the US uses, are they not?
After the Yeltsin years, the Russians are liable to be very wary of being caught again with the same tactics.
@ JK Redux:
“… Russia’s Far East is underpopulated and very vulnerable to a Chinese “drang nach Norden”…”
China’s Northeast region (the old Manchuria) lost over 14 million people in a period between 2010 (when the population hit its peak) and 2026.
China’s population falls for fourth year amid economic woes
Luis Cunha de Silva
If the U.S. stopped screwing around with Cuba, the Cuban in the street would be much better off, with the added benefit of maintaining pride and self respect. Are those two thing of no value?
Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Would effectively becoming yet one more colonised US * dependency * be worth whatever materialist baubles, bangles & bombs might ensue from surrender to the U.S? And, yes, maybe if big bully boy Uncle Sam hadn’t spent decades blockading, sanctioning not to mention numerous attempts to assassinate Castro,in other words, if Cuba had been allowed to develop in the way IT wanted, that country may have been spared the privations – and repressions – it has been forced to endure since booting-out the Mafia and the internal regimes which facilitated that mob of murderous psychopaths
Robert
Please see my answer to GFL.
Your apologia for the Castro governments reminds one of the apologia one used to hear a long time ago (but no longer!) for the Leninist and Stalinist terror regimes. Oh, how things would have developed differently, more sweetly, more kindly, if only the capitalist world had not been so beastly to the Soviet state!
LCdS. Of course we’ll never know what would/could have happened had the US not interfered so deleteriously in Cuban affairs. Maybe it would have followed the same course; but, somehow I doubt it. And, as it goes, the same DOES apply to Russia – and any other country that attempted to apply Socialist/Marxist ideas. This in no way is intended to excuse the terrible excesses of, in particular, Stalinist Russia.
The bottom line is, by what right does the US claim the role of World Policeman? – selectively, of course, it has been always been ready to facilitate murderous despots of one hue or another – as long as they adhered to US interests.
How about letting countries develop in ways they choose; is that too much to ask?
Apparently it is. America seems afraid to let any country demonstrate an independent spirit. Perhaps it is afraid of being shown up as the tawdry, money-grubbing, racist tyrant that it really is. So all alternatives must be sabotaged and wrecked.
“Your apologia for the Castro governments…”
If you want to be taken seriously, you would do well to avoid classing any description of a government of which you don’t approve that falls short of outright condemnation as an “apologia”. See also “regime”.
Bayard
I’d prefer it if you didn’t get personal and addressed the substance.
But I shall offer you an answer to set your mind at ease : I don’t give a FF whether you take me seriously or not.
—
[ Mod: You should care whether the mods do, though – given that we’ve been playing our own game of whack-a-mole. While it’s been amusing to observe the twists of your latest incarnation, now that your problematic traits have resurfaced you’ll find your opportunities to pop up again drastically reduced.
Game over, Habbabkuk. ]
“Oh, how things would have developed differently, more sweetly, more kindly, if only the capitalist world had not been so beastly to the Soviet state!”
Very true. Although obvious.
@Luis – You essentially ask what Cuba would look like after US conquest, but you ignore the point about the mafia. @Robert, @Johnny, and I are all raising this.
Luis
Have you noticed any changes in state provision for ordinary people in the capitalist world in the decades since the ‘spectre’ of communism disappeared?
GFL
Certainly pride and self respect are of great value. But I’m not certain that the history of Cuban government since the revolution
GFL
I’m sure you’re right, but that’s not really an answer to or a reasoned argument against what I was wondering, is it?
We are where we are – and my question stands. To rephrase it : could/would things (economically, freedom-wise, etc) get any worse for the Cuban-in-the-street if today’s Cuban government were swept aside?
” : could/would things (economically, freedom-wise, etc) get any worse for the Cuban-in-the-street if today’s Cuban government were swept aside?”
They could loose free health care and education and other kinds of state welfare while gaining a dictator sponsored by the CIA who would violently suppress anything that stood in the way of profit for American companies.
Also, with Cuba’s proximity to Florida it would make a handy narco-state for supplying drugs to the USA, money laundering etc. as in the good old days of Batista before the communists took over. Remember; there have been no examples of Western intervention which have left anywhere in better shape and there have been a lot of interventions.
Luis
You seem to believe the Epstein class delivered for Cubans before the revolution and that they would not only maintain lifelong free education and healthcare on the island but try and make life even better for the ordinary people. The Epstein files revealed excited exchanges about the numbers of children that can be abused in new US protectorates like Kosovo, Ukraine etc.
Luis Cunha da Silva.
It would be a bit like this;
From the US:
You know that noose that we had round your neck before Socialism existed after the Bay of Pigs
debacle?
If you let us do that again (and win this time) – we’ll just loosen it a bit and even
though you still can’t breathe much as before – you can breath a little bit more.
Because it was Castro who was doing your strangling and not us.
Honest!
By the way, this is not dis-similar to Venezuela.
Delsey Rodrigueuz is in a bind.
With a rope not of her making.
[ Mod: Important news about the proscription of Palestine Action moved to previous thread Filton Acquittals Demolish Starmer and Cooper Lies About Palestine Action. Please post any responses there. ]
—
Despite the important legal developments in England and (?) Scotland, it would be very welcome if Craig resumed his analysis of the situation in Venezuela.
There is almost no reportage of the strange de facto American protectorate (if that is the case).
Craig’s resumption of his focus on Caracas, if English events allow, would help to fill that void.
“Laura Dogu, newly appointed US envoy to Venezuela, is described by the Los Angeles Times as an appropriate choice because she “navigated crises” in Nicaragua and Honduras during periods of “social and political volatility.” What the LA Times fails to add is that it was precisely Dogu’s job to create crisis and volatility in both countries.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/laura-dogu-washington-regime-change-playbook-nicaragua-honduras-venezuela/5915715
The regime change agenda continues. One wonders why these at risk nations allow these USA meddlers and their NGOs into their countries in the first place. Keep the Yankee dogs out would seem to be the best strategy, IMO.
Stevie Boy
February 15, 2026 at 09:28
Dogu sounds like a nasty piece of work all right.
Looking forward to an update from Craig.
Interesting though uncritical article about Dogu in the Miami Herald: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article314573640.html
Thank you. I have been desperately trying to find the truth on behalf of the UK National Democratic Party. Will share on our FB site.