As I was leaving the University of the Communes in Tocuyito, after a joyful and uplifting visit, an earnest young Professor came up to me and pulled me aside. Very quietly, he asked me what was going to happen. A number of the students were terrified there would be regime change and they, picked as young socialist leaders in the commune movement, would be imprisoned, tortured and executed.
With students at an agricultural project of the Vittoria commune
It was a sharp reality check after a great day at this fledgling university. But it is very real. I had met sober and professional diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who knew exactly which part of the mountains they would flee to with assault rifles in the event of the right coming to power, and were resigned to a life of guerilla warfare, including partners and children. I have met nobody who doubts that a change of regime in Caracas would lead to immediate mass killings of leftists, and a lengthy civil war.
Almost everything you are told in the West about Venezuela is untrue, and the biggest lie is that Machado, Guaidó and the groupings around them are in any sense democrats or liberal. They are not, and have direct family and political links to the murderous CIA-sponsored regimes of the pre-Chávez years. They also have many scores to settle – Machado’s family, to give just one example, dominated the electricity supply before it was nationalised.
A very large number of the “political prisoners” the West is so concerned about, were involved in efforts at military coup or violent insurrection, of which Guaidó’s comic opera attempt in 2019 was only the most publicised. After the disputed 2024 elections many of those imprisoned were actually brandishing weapons – I met the families of three young men who told me their sons were misled into taking to the streets with guns, and hoped they would get out in the current amnesty.
Sanctions caused great economic hardship which affected government popularity. But it is a huge error to conflate discontent at the Maduro government with support for Machado – there is almost no evidence of the latter, no matter how hard you look. That Machado does not have the internal support to run the country is one of the few things Trump has stated truthfully. The alternative to the socialist government is chaos.
So Delcy Rodríguez has to maintain the Socialist Party in government, or see supporters butchered and the start of a civil war. At the same time she has to contend with the blatant colonialist assertion of control over Venezuela’s assets and finances by the USA, while placating the irascible and irrational Trump.
Let us get one thing straight. I have spoken personally to those closest to President Nicolás Maduro. I have spoken with Francisco Torrealba, who followed Maduro as President of the Transport Workers Union and also took over Maduro’s seat in the National Assembly. I have spoken to Maduro’s son, also Nicolás. None of these people believe for one second that Delcy Rodríguez was in any way implicated in the kidnap of Nicolás and Cilia Maduro.
Why does almost everybody in the West believe a narrative that nobody in Venezuela believes, and which I am quite certain is untrue?
That narrative has been force-fed to you. Trump undermined Delcy Rodríguez by open praise of her and assertion that she is his choice. The truth of course is different: as Maduro’s Vice-President, she naturally assumes the duties of President, as confirmed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court. A co-ordinated effort of briefings to journalists by the Trump administration, by the security services, and by Machado-aligned Venezuelans in Miami, gave to the media in a coordinated fashion a detailed story of negotiations between Delcy and her brother Jorge and the Americans, for a strategy of economic reform that included Maduro’s removal.
I have looked again through many articles that forward this narrative, and all of them very obviously come primarily from Washington sources, and it is a narrative that the United States has been very, very assiduous in feeding you.
It begs the question, if Delcy really is a Western puppet, why is the Western Establishment so keen to tell you that? In every other circumstance, like the Gulf monarchies or al-Jolani, they are always anxious to promote the myth that their puppets are not puppets.
My maxim, that if the government really wants you to know something, it probably means it isn’t true, holds in this case. Trump wants it known that Delcy Rodríguez is his puppet because it is part of his victory narrative, the fake story of Trump greatness. It is also intended to divide and weaken the socialist movement in Venezuela.
We have to look at the night of 3 January when Maduro was kidnapped. There is one key fact which again is simply not part of the Western narrative. It was Nicolás Maduro who instructed the military to stand down and not to fight, in the event of an attempt to take him. In fact he was aware that such an event was imminent, though he did not know the exact date.
Maduro’s primary concern was to avoid war between Venezuela and the United States, war which would devastate this peaceful country.
It is important to note that Maduro was consciously following the template of his mentor President Hugo Chávez in his kidnapping in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 2002. (That link is a wrenching reminder that there was once a Guardian and Observer not captured by the security services). Following armed opposition insurrection on 11 April 2002, in which 19 Chávez supporters were massacred and 150 injured, a military coup captured President Chávez and he was flown to the island of La Orchila in a CIA-chartered plane.
Opposition leader Pedro Carmona was sworn in as President by the military leaders and instantly recognised by the Bush regime in Washington. He announced the immediate repeal of all of Chávez’s reform measures. However the people and bulk of the armed forces rose against the plotters and after only 48 hours took back control. Chávez returned to power. This is the basis of the brilliant Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (which, naturally, was never televised).
The key thing to understand is that – remarkably – Chávez did not execute any of the coup participants, not even those in the military. There were in fact few prosecutions, jail sentences were remarkably light and many – including “President” Carmona – were allowed to “escape” into exile. The longest jailings were for those who actually took part in the massacre of April 11. Chávez gave a December 2007 general amnesty.
The same astonishing tolerance was shown to Juan Guaidó, the Western puppet who attempted a farcical military coup on 30 April 2019. While his coup was a pathetic failure and his total number of military defectors was 50, he nevertheless caused the deaths of four people and wounding of 230.
Again the response of the socialist government was astonishingly lenient. Nobody was executed. Proper trials were held of those accused and jail sentences were remarkably light even for those convicted of treason. It is worth saying that the numbers tried and the sentences were notably lighter than those handed down for the Washington Capitol Hill “insurrection” of 2021.
A group of thirty who took refuge in Bolsonaro’s Brazilian Embassy were allowed peacefully to leave the country. Guaidó was never arrested and was tolerated to wander around the country for years claiming to be President, and travel freely in and out, until he was indicted by the Government of Colombia for entering that country illegally in 2023.
The socialists’ refusal to spill blood has never been mirrored on the right. The large majority of those “political prisoners” you constantly hear about were involved in these or a whole series of lesser-known armed attempts, or in the opposition’s very real links to narcotics trafficking and organised crime.
What is surprising to me is not the claimed authoritarianism of the socialist government but, on the contrary, its quite astonishing leniency with the opposition in the face of repeated CIA-sponsored, frequently armed attempts at overthrow.
One has only to envisage how a right-wing Latin American government would deal with repeated left-wing armed coup attempts, to appreciate just how extraordinary this restraint has been. Lack of violence or vengeance has always characterised the Bolivarian Revolution’s reaction to right-wing coup attempts. Though it is admirably principled, I am not even sure I think this extreme degree of tolerance is wise.
It is in the context of this longstanding socialist reluctance to use violence that you have to view Maduro’s decision to stand down the defence forces in the event of an American kidnap mission. This is a government which does not just use revolutionary slogans, it lives by them, and “peace” is a key one. Maduro almost certainly hoped that domestic solidarity would oblige his return quickly, as had happened with Chávez. It is unlikely it occurred to him that Trump would simply – and pointlessly – remove Maduro and leave his government in power.
Multiple sources have confirmed to me that the Venezuelan forces were ordered to stand down. I visited the hillside location at Fuerte Tiuna where young female Lieutenant Alejandra del Valle Oliveros Velásquez, age 23, refused the order to stand down and continued to stand guard with her gun at a vital hilltop communications facility. She died as it was struck by American missiles.
This is also a point missing from the Western narrative of military events. Venezuela’s defensive posture is hopelessly outdated in the age of precision missile warfare. Its radar installations and anti-aircraft batteries are highly visible on open hilltop locations, not in hardened bunkers. Its troops are in open barracks, like the unnecessarily murdered Cuban guards.
Outrage at the entirely unprovoked American assault has restored a much-needed sense of national unity to Venezuela. In the bitter aftermath of the disputed July 2024 presidential election, many government supporters, including some in office, concede that the wave of arrests went too far. That overreach damaged the government’s moral authority at home and handed valuable propaganda ammunition to its critics abroad.
There was not sufficient discrimination between armed and unarmed protestors, and while many would argue that emergency measures were essential to prevent immediate anarchic violence, it is generally admitted that many incarcerations have gone on far too long.
Acknowledging this does not mean accepting the inflated figures and politicised methodology pushed by Western-funded NGOs such as Foro Penal and their international partners. Those counts routinely lump together genuine dissidents with armed plotters, participants in violent insurrection attempts, and outright criminals — many of whom were brandishing weapons or linked to coup networks.
The NGOs’ inflated numbers are not neutral human rights monitoring; they are part of a longstanding information warfare operation, generously funded by the very governments and foundations that have spent years supporting regime change efforts in Venezuela. Their selective outrage and consistent inflation of “political prisoner” tallies serve a clear political purpose: to delegitimise the Bolivarian process and justify external interference.
Broader perspective is essential. The arrests did not emerge from a vacuum. They followed years of sanctions-induced economic pain, repeated opposition attempts to subvert constitutional order through street violence, election disruption both physical and electronic, and what were forged or selectively manipulated election returns from the opposition. The response was heavy-handed, but it occurred against a backdrop of genuine security threats.
The narrative that the opposition won 70% of the votes in the 2024 election is simply absurd to anyone who knows Venezuela. In their final election rallies, Maduro had 1 million people on the streets of Caracas and the opposition had 50,000. Many of the alleged voting machine printouts bandied about by the Biden regime were very evident forgeries – with the same handwriting in different locations, and multiple examples of returning officers or party officials signing with an X in a country with almost 100% literacy.
The Opposition refused to present these printouts to the Supreme Court for verification. The truth is that the electronic electoral process (I am not a fan) was badly affected by external hacking, almost certainly by the USA. There was indeed popular discontent with the effects of economic sanctions, and many seasoned observers think the elections were close. It will never be possible to discover the real result. But Western claims of 70% opposition support are absolute nonsense.
In fact, I do not believe that either the government or the Supreme Court really knew the true result. I certainly do not. But it was American-orchestrated disruption that made it impossible.
Venezuela is a substantively free country. People have criticised the government to me openly and without fear, including on camera. There was an opposition demonstration in Caracas a few weeks ago. It was very lightly policed. Speakers could say what they wished – support for Donald Trump was a key theme – and nobody has been subsequently questioned. About 500 people turned out. I have seen three or four opposition posters around town. Nobody takes them down.
I have been filming all around Venezuela in total for six weeks, and have never been asked who I am by officials or police, or required to produce identity papers. I received a permit from the Ministry of Communications but nobody has ever looked at it. Nobody has ever suggested what I should say, or instructed me not to film something.
I have been to many different areas and provinces. Everywhere the shops are fully stocked and the bars and restaurants fully operational. People look well fed. I have not seen one drug addict, beggar or homeless person. I have seen five police or military checkpoints in six weeks – three at the Presidential residence, Police HQ, and National Assembly; one checking car tyres and lights; and one at the exit to a national park doing wildlife conservation enforcement.
I have been rather obsessively keeping check because Western journalists always put in police and military checkpoints in their imaginary descriptions of Venezuela, penned from thousands of miles away. The Machado opposition have made it a meme, putting out advice saying you are not obliged to show identity documents at police checkpoints. It would be very hard to find a checkpoint to show your documents to.
This is not a repressive government. The atmosphere of repression is entirely absent and that is because the mechanisms of repression are entirely absent. There is no heavy police presence. People are not scared of informers. I have seen very few guns carried by police, and zero guns carried by anybody else.
The narrative now dominating Western media — that any economic liberalisation or pragmatic opening under Delcy Rodríguez is a sudden capitulation forced by Trump’s pressure — is simply false. Nicolás Maduro himself initiated processes of economic liberalisation years earlier, as a direct survival response to the crushing weight of sanctions. These are Maduro’s policies. The recent legislation liberalising the hydrocarbons sector was entirely developed under, and approved by, Nicolás Maduro.
Dollarisation spread from below as ordinary people sought stability; the government gradually relaxed price controls, permitted greater private-sector involvement in imports and distribution, and developed workarounds for oil sales. These were pragmatic adaptations forced on the revolution long before Trump returned to the White House.
As I told the students at the University of the Communes, if late-stage capitalism were (as it claims) the natural order of society, rather than a series of entirely artificial institutions and arrangements designed to produce an extreme concentration of resources in the hands of an elite, enforced ultimately through the violence of the state, then the capitalist states would not need to crush states practising other systems, through crippling sanctions and isolation from exchange of resources and capital, and ultimately through military force.
Its own founding ideology states that capitalism will naturally prevail eventually in any society through its greater beneficence and more efficient distribution of resources. Yet the rulers of the capitalist states constantly seek to crush any state practising any alternative system. They do this for fear that their own population will see the possibility of a better path than working as effective slaves while the value produced by their labour concentrates entirely into the hands of the Epstein class.
We will never know how the Bolivarian Revolution would have developed were it not for the financial and trade sanctions that crippled it.
But this is the key fact. Venezuela was targeted because of the extraordinary successes of Chavismo, not because it was a failed state. Poverty was more than halved. Literacy increased to better rates than the United States. Free education and healthcare were instituted. Pension recipients were tripled. Utilities were nationalised. Massive amounts of social housing were provided. These were the achievements that precipitated sanctions.
The economic collapse of 2017 was not caused by failures of a socialist system. The collapse – and the subsequent mass wave of emigration – was caused entirely by the sanctions regime, and particularly the blocking of all payment systems and financial transactions.
There is an obvious point seldom discussed: sanctions — particularly the financial sanctions that block normal international payment transactions and banking channels — do not merely cause hardship.
Sanctions actively breed corruption.
When a sovereign government is prevented from conducting legitimate trade and finance through standard global systems, it is driven into the arms of those who specialise in sanctions-busting, informal transfer networks, and money laundering. These forced partnerships with elements outside the formal economy then infect the state apparatus itself, creating new avenues for graft and abuse.
It is a vicious, predictable cycle engineered by Washington policy.
Sanctions force states for very survival to do things classified as illegal, and draw their operatives into the ambit of actual criminals. Some of the criticisms of the Maduro government should be viewed through this prism; and of course there is not, and has never been, any state entirely free of corruption.
Maduro’s rule is not the failure that is routinely portrayed in the West. The economy has rebounded remarkably. Under Maduro, the government scored measurable successes in public security. Murder rates have dropped by over two thirds and the narco gangs are almost entirely off the streets.
Large-scale operations significantly curtailed narcotics production and trafficking routes through Venezuelan territory. Venezuela reported record drug seizures to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs — nearly 66 tonnes in 2025 alone, the highest level in two decades. UN data states that Venezuela plays only a very marginal role in global cocaine flows, and almost none in production. On fentanyl it doesn’t feature at all.
Maduro has succeeded to an extraordinary degree in suppressing drugs on the streets of Venezuela and in stopping trafficking. That he is now in a US jail charged with “narco-terrorism” is truly a sign of how depraved the United States has become.
At the same time, the overall crime rate fell sharply. Cities that once ranked among the most dangerous in the world became noticeably safer for ordinary citizens. Even Venezuelans critical of the government on other grounds acknowledge this improvement in daily life and personal safety. Just two nights ago I was talking to a Venezuelan visiting home from Germany, who told me she used to be terrified to walk the streets of Caracas at night, but now felt perfectly safe.
It is important to understand what kind of socialism Venezuela actually practised under Chávez and Maduro.
The Bolivarian project was never the full state ownership of the means of production and distribution envisaged in classical Marxist texts. Venezuela has always been a mixed economy. Its distinctive feature — and its greatest strength — was the heavy reliance of the state on ownership of the full range of oil sector activity, upstream and downstream, to channel large public revenues into socialist-oriented goals: universal free education from cradle to university, a national health service that brought clinics and hospitals into every barrio, expanded social security, housing programmes such as the Gran Misión Vivienda, and subsidies that kept basic foodstuffs affordable for the poor.
The nationalisation of utilities — electricity, telecommunications, water — followed the same logic. In many respects it resembled the Western social-democratic model of the 1970s, when European governments used progressive taxation to fund the welfare state while leaving large parts of the economy in private hands. The massive scale of affordable decent quality public housing in Venezuela is truly a marvel to behold for a developing economy.
What made Bolivarianism different, and ultimately more radical, was the commune movement. Its philosophy is genuinely grassroots. The communes did not spring from decrees in Miraflores Palace; they grew from below, from the communal councils that ordinary people in poor neighbourhoods formed to solve their own problems — fixing roads, organising rubbish collection, building clinics.
Chávez gave these organic commune structures constitutional recognition and legal power, but the energy came from the communities themselves.
Decision-making in the communes is direct democracy in action: assemblies debate and vote on how to spend the funds allocated to them. The people decide their own priorities. I have always been a sceptic of people’s assemblies and direct democracy. Visiting Venezuela’s communes has converted me. The key factor is the quite astonishing prevalence of political education and social awareness among the ordinary members of the Venezuelan working class.
For a long time the communes remained largely a mechanism for redistributing oil revenue in a more democratic and transparent way. But it was still, in essence, social democracy with revolutionary rhetoric — spending the rents from oil on social goods.
But the commune movement has not stood still. It has begun to push outward, asserting communal ownership over the means of production and distribution. Increasing numbers of communes now run their own small factories, agricultural cooperatives, bakeries, abattoirs, transport collectives and distribution networks. I have discussed with senior government figures how to use commune-owned enterprises as a spearhead in liberalised sectors of the economy, to socialise profit.
Communes are moving beyond simply receiving and spending state money and towards controlling the actual creation and allocation of wealth. This is the qualitative leap that marks Bolivarian socialism as something more than 1970s-style welfare statism.
Maduro instituted the University of the Communes in 2025. It is predicated on providing practical university-level teaching in the areas of particular value to the communes, ranging from public administration to electrical engineering and agriculture. Agricultural production is an area where many of Venezuela’s over 7,000 communes are engaged.
Agriculture collapsed in Venezuela long before Chávez. This is in common with many oil states.
My first overseas diplomatic post was an appointment to Nigeria in 1986, as Second Secretary (Agriculture and Water Resources), where my favourite statistic was that Nigeria went, in just 8 years, from being the world’s largest exporter of palm oil to being the world’s largest importer of palm oil. Oil-backed currencies frequently make agricultural exports uncompetitive and imported agricultural products cheaper than domestic.
This collapsed Venezuela’s cocoa, coffee, maize and other agricultural sectors decades before Chávez came to power.
The communes are reintroducing agricultural production from ground level up. I visited local commune Vittoria not far from the University. It has over 20 agricultural production units, and students were assisting in developing, for example, bamboo cattle pens to replace iron hurdles no longer imported due to Western sanctions.
At the other end of the production process I visited the Metro HQ in Caracas on the day when all the Metro workers and pensioners are given monthly packages including cooking oil, pasta, flour, eggs and tinned meat and fruit, all of it now produced in Venezuela, and almost all are new products since the 2018 crisis.
What strikes every visitor is the extraordinary level of public awareness of socialist philosophy. In the communes, in the Bolivarian universities, in political education circles, ordinary people discuss with real knowledge the difference between social democracy and socialism, the role of the commune as the “cellular tissue” of the new society, and the necessity of moving from distribution to production.
Ideology is lived daily practice. I have heard teenagers and market sellers quote Chávez and Marx with ease, and with confidence their interlocutors will follow.
These are the fundamental elements of Bolivarian socialism that Delcy Rodríguez is now fighting to preserve and safeguard in the face of the Trump onslaught: the oil-funded social democratic state, the nationalised utilities, the direct-democracy structures of the communes, and the moves to spread the assertion of popular ownership over production.
Consider this: Venezuela has the most beautiful Caribbean beaches I have ever seen. They are as good as Mauritius or the Maldives. These are my own photos and the colours are not retouched.
What is remarkable about this is that all the people you see are ordinary Venezuelans. There is not a foreign tourist in sight: no beachside bar, restaurant or hotel chaining off stretches and covering them in sunbeds. Instead you have happy Venezuelan families with coolboxes enjoying the day for free. That is because, Isla Margarita aside, the Bolivarian Revolution protects Venezuela’s hundreds of miles of white sand beach by National Parks.
Where Chavismo sees a great amenity for the people and an astonishing habitat to be preserved, the Kushner and Machado worldview sees billions of dollars of prime beachside real estate, ripe for condominiums and huge hotels. Do not for one moment believe that they do not have their eye on it as part of the Imperialist grab. They do not want Venezuelans frolicking with their families on those beaches. They want them reserved to American and Israeli tourists, with the only Venezuelans in white shirt and bow tie carrying trays of drinks.
It may seem a small digression, but it is I believe a potent, and poignant, symbol of the clash of worldview that is at the heart of the struggle in Venezuela.
What the opposition wish to do is dismantle this entire architecture. Machado is pledged to abolish communes, to privatise utilities, to return Venezuela to the pre-Chávez model in which oil wealth flowed upward to a tiny elite and foreign corporations, while the majority existed only to serve. Delcy’s task is to hold the line so that the communes, and the consciousness they have created, can continue to develop while the universal education, healthcare and social provision are retained.
But this is the reality Delcy Rodríguez now confronts: Trump imposed a physical naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports. Tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to buyers not approved by the US were physically seized by the US Navy. The US thus, by military force, imposed control over Venezuelan crude sales.
Revenues were initially routed to a US-controlled account in Qatar, later shifted to US Treasury accounts. Disbursements to the Rodríguez government are discretionary and ad hoc — for example, only $300 million of the first $500 million was released, with US approval required for its spending. The mechanism operates under executive emergency powers in the USA but under no Venezuelan authority. This is not with Delcy Rodríguez’s agreement.
It is totally illegal in every possible way. The naval blockade, the seizure of tankers, the stealing of oil revenue. All of this is absolutely against international law. Precisely what “Emergency” is justifying Trump’s powers, even in US domestic law, I have no idea.
The United States has no treaty agreement with Venezuela or international mandate permitting it to seize Venezuela’s oil and sell it. It is simple theft.
By controlling the tankers, Washington seized control of Venezuela’s only significant source of foreign revenue and crippled the government of Delcy Rodríguez. Oil accounts for over 70% of Venezuelan government revenue.
Oil cargoes approved by the United States are now sold on the international market, but the proceeds are not paid to Caracas. They are, incredibly, paid to the United States Treasury. The Trump regime dispenses ad hoc payments back to the Venezuelan government — whatever portion it chooses, whenever it chooses — to allow basic state functions to continue. It is a system entirely governed by the whims of Donald Trump, controlling another sovereign state.
This is less structured than the formal occupation authority the United States imposed on Iraq after 2003, but the principle is identical. Iraq’s oil revenues have been treated this way for 25 years. A great many people are unaware that all of Iraq’s oil revenue is stolen into United States Treasury accounts: the legacy media never tell you.
It is the classical colonial model. It is exactly how the British East India Company ran the princely states of India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the local ruler was allowed to remain in nominal office, but the taxes were collected by the British and the local ruler given back whatever they chose. Senior East India Company officials in post were actually titled “Collector”.
Western coverage calls it “safeguarding,” “protection,” or “leverage”; the reality is pure, physical piracy.
Yet Delcy Rodríguez is stuck. She has no military force capable of countering it. The Venezuelan navy cannot challenge the US fleet, while the USA’s giant bombers can reach Caracas with 2,000lb bombs direct from US airbases in Florida. Any open attempt at defiance would spark the US military regime change which would lead to massacre.
Rodríguez is therefore reduced to negotiating with the occupiers over how much of Venezuela’s own money she is allowed to spend on her own people. She is obliged to host a series of sickening visits from smirking Trump henchmen, openly humiliating and raping Venezuela. The claims that Rodríguez wants this, still more that she engineered this, are nuts.
I have seen criticism from the political left in the West, that Venezuela should have fought, should still fight, should join the anti-Imperial resistance. I have seen Venezuelans criticised as “sell-outs”.
Rather few of those making these criticisms have personally taken to the mountains with an AK47 to fight a superpower which has openly abandoned all pretence to follow the laws of war on protection of civilian life and infrastructure. It is certainly an option; but the death toll would be appalling and Venezuela would be condemned to many years of civil war and US military occupation.
It is a suicidal option, as Maduro himself recognised.
Delcy Rodríguez is struggling under an almost unbearable burden. A lifelong socialist whose own father was tortured to death by a CIA-run Venezuelan security service, she now finds herself effectively a prisoner of the United States. Venezuela is not Iran. It does not possess the military capacity, the strategic depth or the alliances to fight the United States. If Trump wakes up one morning and decides on full regime change — and he could — the result would be an immediate bloodbath and the total erasure of all the social gains of twenty-five years of Chavismo.
To prevent that catastrophe Rodríguez must placate Trump. She must speak the language of economic liberalisation that Washington wants to hear, even though the actual policy shifts amount to only the smallest rightward adjustment in an economy that remains overwhelmingly mixed. The fundamental social-democratic achievements — the education, the health missions, the housing programmes, the pensions and welfare, the privatised utilities — are being preserved.
Rodríguez’s strategy is therefore one of grim endurance: hunker down, preserve what can be preserved, and wait for a change of political wind in Washington. Sources very close to her repeatedly mention the November midterms in the USA as the next possible turning point.
The tragedy is that this woman must endure the portrayal abroad, spread from Washington, as a traitor to her class and her country. She cannot publicly kick too hard against Trump without risking the provocation of the psychopath to the very violence she is trying to avert. A friend who has known her for decades told me: “She is doing what she can to keep the peace in this time of war.”
There is very concrete evidence of Rodríguez’s loyalty to Maduro. Far from erasing Maduro or positioning herself as the new face of the revolution, Delcy Rodríguez has covered Venezuela in highly visible “Free Nicolás and Cilia” billboards and street art, while introducing no material that praises herself or attempts to construct her own cult of personality. This public symbolism is a powerful, real-life counter to narratives of disloyalty or betrayal. 
One of my personal critiques of Chavismo is that it is too centred on cult of personality. It is a key fact that Rodríguez is doing the very opposite of trying to move that spotlight onto herself.
Most of Rodríguez’s critics, especially those in the Western media and commentariat, know almost nothing of Venezuela. Most of what the Western public think they know is the very opposite of the truth; the ability of Western media to maintain a false narrative is astonishingly evident on a visit here.
I have now spent a total of six weeks in the country over two trips, talking to students, diplomats, union leaders, commune activists and people inside the government – and a great many barmen. What I have seen and heard convinces me of one thing above all: Delcy Rodríguez is not a traitor. She is a socialist doing the only thing possible to her in this impossible situation — buying time for the Bolivarian Revolution to survive.
———————–
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Thankyou for this once again
Great piece of intensively-researched analysis.
‘One has only to envisage how a right-wing Latin American government would deal with repeated left-wing armed coup attempts, to appreciate just how extraordinary this restraint has been … Though it is admirably principled, I am not even sure I think this extreme degree of tolerance is wise’.
Indeed. This misconceived tolerance has not earned even a sliver of respect from western human rights organisations or any honest reporting from the likes of the Guardian, BBC, C4 News, etc. Instead, it merely encouraged the compradors and their foreign sponsors to re-double their efforts to overturn democracy and get the country’s state assets back in the hands of the Machado family and US vulture capitalists. This lesson keeps needing to be re-learned, over and over again, through bitter experience, by revolutionary governments. They are under siege from remorseless enemies.
Are there any organised criminal gangs or cartels in Venezuela? I rather thought there were. Anyone who has watched TV shows such as “Narcos – Mexico” (loosely based on real events) will understand the massive extent to which the cartels infest the police, judiciary, and high political office.
Craig’s story doesn’t touch on the subject so I don’t know. Is it possible that the US tight control of Venezuela’s economy is to create a stranglehold on the gangs and money-laundering?
Very possible. Otherwise we’re being asked to believe that Donald Trump and Narco Rubio would just invent a brazen lie to try and justify plundering Venezuela. How realistic is that?
An excellent analysis. Thank you.
I believe that we all have much to learn from Venezuela’s experiences and hopefully, eventually, how they disengage themselves from western imperialism.
For the moment best look for asymmetrical protest. Things like oil deliveries to the tanker fleet taking days instead of hours. Bedbugs in the hotel rooms of visiting US overseers, hired cars breaking down and so on.
Trump runs the U.S. like some mob boss running a protection racket, with ‘Little Marco’ – with hindsight, aptly nicknamed by Trump – demanding : pay up, or your shop gets firebombed! Never before has an administration been so brazen in its criminality; nor a president’s family been so brazen in enriching themselves from public office; accepting gifts(Qatari 747 ~ $400 m) and contracts; unqualified son-in-law Kushner’s diplomatic role meeting Russians, Iranian diplomats and his role in Gaza redevelopment, aka, luxury apartments and paving over the dead bodies.
Despite western liberals’ disgust for the Trump administration, history shows Trump is far from unique in his wickedness. The opposition Democrats’ leadership have had very little to say about this turn towards extortion / international gangsterism. And similar discretional oil revenue release arrangements, Venezuela looks like being subject to, has applied to Iraq under presidents and congressional/senate majorities of both parties since their inception. Were Trump to add Iran, making for an unfortunate trio, would the Democrats seek to return economic sovereignty to Iraq, Venezuela and Iran? Previous form suggests that’s unlikely; they’d most probably renew Trump’s arrangements via executive order.
Mr Murray, the United States was founded by thieves, the signatories of the declaration of independence were all debtors to the crown, they went on to steal the land from the indigenous people, they admire, nay, hero worship criminals like Billy the kid and Bonnie and Clyde. The father of their most admired president, John Kennedy, was a rum runner and bootlegger who made his money during prohibition. They used TWO nuclear bombs on innocent people. They are a vile nation with absolutely nothing to recommend them.
Make America British Again
Vaguely interesting that in his 5000-word essay, our host refers to the idea of the sovereign nation of Venezuela attempting to reverse an illegal blockade of its mainstay export by military means as a ‘suicidal option’, yet heralded the events of 7 October 2023 – in which (in case anyone’s forgotten) Hamas & co massacred hundreds of Israeli civilians, directly leading to the (far greater) carnage we’ve seen in Gaza & Lebanon, as well as the death penalty now being imposed on Palestinians but not Jews* – as simply a case of ‘the boot being on the other foot’.
* Andrew Feinstein claims this makes Israel ‘the most racist state the world has ever known’. I think he might need to brush up on Nazi Germany.
IMO.
7 October 2023 was yet another Israeli false flag.
There is no evidence whatsoever of how many people were actually killed by Hamas, Other Palestinians or Israelis, but it’s worth noting that Hamas didn’t and doesn’t have Tanks, F35s, Helicopter gunships or cluster munitions.
The genocide was not a consequence of 7th October, it was the Israeli, planned objective of the false flag event.
By any measure the actions of Israel and their supporters since 1948 is much worse than the actions of Nazi Germany.
/IMO
Crawl back under your rock.
I won’t thank you for that reply Steven, and I’m afraid I’m not going to ‘crawl back under my rock’, especially as I barely comment on this site anymore (is it any wonder?). Now where did I say that all of the 900 or so civilians were killed by Hamas & co? That’s right, I didn’t. As far as I’m aware, though, the leadership of Hamas have never denied being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians on 7 October, or ever claimed that it was a false flag*.
Holding Israel responsible for all deaths (civilian & military) in the 1948 War, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the 1st & 2nd Intifadas, Israeli incursions in Gaza & Lebanon before 2023, and all violent deaths in the middle east since 2023, the total comes to around 175,000. For comparison, six million people died in the Holocaust alone – or are you claiming that was a false flag as well?
* Anyone looking for actual false flags may wish to start here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-salisbury-poisonings-episode-was-all-staged/page/6/#post-103404
No-one, apart from rabid zionists, use the six million figure anymore, so yes it is a false flag used as a political device. The actual much lower figure is still appalling, but zionists don’t let facts get in the way of their warped agenda.
Good grief, Steven. Circa six million Jews who lived in Central & Eastern Europe before WWII were not living there after it. Roughly half were gassed in the death camps and most of the rest were shot by Einsatzgruppen death squads (only a few hundred thousand escaped to what is now Israel). If you’d care to look, there’s literally more evidence for this than for the moon landings*.
* On which note, good luck to NASA’s finest tomorrow (assuming the launch isn’t postponed again). Surprisingly all four of them are older than me.
I think the 11 million figure for all the victims of the extermination campaigns is well established. Those were people targeted for various reasons: being Jewish, Roma, Slavic, trade unionist, socialist, communist, homosexual, inconvenient to the regime, etc. Could be that half of them were Jewish, rounded up to 6 million (I’ve never seen a suggestion that the figure was rounded down, oh no), but how many were targeted because they were Jewish and how many because they fell into one of the other categories is never mentioned. Hardly ever mentioned of course are the other half of the victims. People doing that have been accused of “antisemitism”. As they say in Hollywood, “There’s no business like Shoah business.”
“roughly half were gassed in the death camps and most of the rest were shot by Einsatzgruppen death squads (only a few hundred thousand escaped to what is now Israel).”
An internet search has failed to find any confirmation of this: it seems the Einsatzgruppen killed about 1.3 million, but I have not been able to find a figure for the number gassed. It seems likely that this figure was a lot lower then half: why would the Nazis gas Jews they could work to death? It also seems very likely that a huge proportion simply starved, given the food shortages in wartime Germany and its occupied countries. Not that that makes it any better, of course
“Could be that half of them were Jewish, rounded up to 6 million ”
I’ve seen the figure of 5.7 million, so just over half.
Thanks for your replies. I see it appears to be Holocaust minimisation day, as well as April Fools’ Day. I’m not denying that millions of non-Jewish civilians were killed in WWII, Steve, but they weren’t subject to a deliberate campaign of execution designed to eradicate an entire group of people. Most Soviet citizens were Slavs, and technically all were communists, but they weren’t systematically rounded up and shot because of this. I’m well aware of the increased prominence given to the Holocaust in the Western world over recent decades, as well as what was legally being depicted in popular adult Israeli comics with sado-masochistic themes in the 60’s & 70’s (they weren’t exactly Viz). However, this doesn’t mean that around six million Jews weren’t murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish.
Approximately three million people were gassed in the six main extermination camps, Bayard (over 1.1 million in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone). The vast majority of them were Jewish and were killed solely because of this, with the Nazis devising strict rules to determine who was and who wasn’t a Jew. Hundreds of thousands more were killed in other camps. The figures I’ve seen estimate that around two million Jews were killed in the Soviet Union by the Einsatzgruppen and their allies. This all sums to ca. six million give or take a few hundred thousand. For the avoidance of doubt: in my opinion, none of this justifies most of what Israel has done over the past couple years in Gaza & Lebanon.
Whether warranted or not, I think there is likely to be more scepticism from now on of historical narratives used to advance zionism. Certainly outside approved establishment spaces. People like Simon Schama and Simon Sebag-Montefiore who support genocide, apartheid, gang rape and the slaughter of children are the kind of men who have been writing our history books for centuries. I suspect a great deal of what we have been told about the past is a lie.
“Most Soviet citizens were Slavs, and technically all were communists, but they weren’t systematically rounded up and shot because of this.”
However far more of them died than the Jews because of deliberate starvation, so overall, that is worse. I am not sure that those who starved to death considered themselves fortunate that they weren’t killed by gassing or gunshot.
“Approximately three million people were gassed in the six main extermination camps, Bayard (over 1.1 million in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone). ”
Given that I have looked and failed to find any verification of that figure, it would be helpful for you to point towards some verification. That’s all I was asking for. Ditto the Einsatzgruppen figure which doesn’t agree with the one I found.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. About four million Soviets died due to the Hunger Plan, which was aimed at securing food supplies for Germans and others in German territories – similar to the earlier Holodomur in Ukraine, which wasn’t a deliberate plan by the Russians to eradicate Ukrainians. Another million died in the seige of Leningrad. So overall, fewer than in the Holocaust.
As regards the Holocaust numbers, you obviously haven’t looked very far:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution
The key data are presented in Table 1.
For anyone claiming that this is all just Jewish/Zionist lies, I’m sure the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC (a city I heartily recommend visiting by the way) has documentation to support their figures. If there were credible evidence that these numbers were way off, I’m sure that people like David Irving & Arthur Butz would be all over it.
“So overall, fewer than in the Holocaust.”
Where are you getting your figures from, the Holocaust Museum? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties gives Soviet civilian deaths at 12,500,000 to 19,000,000, of which 8,000,000 to 9,000,000 were “civilian deaths due to war related famine and disease”.
Zionists say it’s true, regardless of prussian blue, it’s gotta be true.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. Nope, Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. His 4 million figure includes millions of Soviet PoW’s as well as tens of thousands of Jews starved to death in ghettos.
I’ve had a look at the Wiki page you linked to. The 8-9 million figure given has three references (all in Russian), of which the relevant sections of two have handily been translated into English: Evdokimov (1995) claims that 6.6-7.1 million Soviets died of famine & disease in the War, whereas Erlikman (2004) claims 5.5 million. So overall, not too dissimilar from Snyder’s numbers. Note that malnutrition-related disease is not the same as starvation – many people in the overweight/obese West essentially die of malnutrition today.
World Jewish population figures from The Jewish Virtual Library:
World Jewish population in 1880 – 7.8 million
World Jewish population in 1939 – 17 million (more than doubled in 59 years)
World Jewish population in 1945 – 11 million
World Jewish population in 2020 – 15 million (increased by less than 50% in 75 years)
I have no idea how these figures are determined but they do seem very strange to me.
Snyder is another exemplar of who gets elevated to the top of the historian profession. A man who claims Russia is clearly guilty of genocide in Ukraine while refusing to say Israel (let alone the broader west) is guilty of it in Gaza. Another Samantha Power type figure. Please, please trust these people! No, I don’t think I will.
On the broader point, the cynical use of the Holocaust has never been more evident, with ghouls like Starmer demanding solemn remembrance at the height of providing every conceivable form of support to the Gaza Genocide.
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/uk-israel-gaza-genocide-media
Another brilliant take from Our Greatest Historian yesterday..
‘The whole Iran war is looking more and more like a gimmick to drop energy sanctions on Russia and pressure Europeans to do the same. A war to make Russia’s much larger war easier and possible to sustain.’
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/2039397698319613985
A 4D chess move by Trump to help Russia take Ukraine! Why? No need to explain.
“Nope, Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.”
That’s even worse. If Snyder told me it was raining, I’d go outside to check. If the Wikipedia entry is wrong, why has no-one corrected it, especially on such a touchy subject as WWII war crimes? No-one can go and correct Snyder’s books. Having started to read one of his books “The Road to Unfreedom”, I could see he was a man with an axe to grind and such people are never to be trusted. Once I’d found the first piece of verifiable bullshit, I stopped reading.
“So overall, not too dissimilar from Snyder’s numbers.”
Nope, because Snyder’s figures include military deaths (PoWs) and the Wikipedia figures do not.
” I suspect a great deal of what we have been told about the past is a lie.”
I suspect that the same proportion of what we have been told about the past is a lie as what we are told about the present. Exactly the same incentives apply now as applied then.
Thanks for your replies. I wonder whether there’s any chance people on here could attempt to play the ball rather than the man. If I only believed things written by people who share my exact political views, I’d barely believe anything – not too many Georgists about, and even fewer writing books.
As I’ve outlined above, Bayard, Snyder’s figures are roughly in agreement with those of the Russian historians. The exact translated quotes from Evdokimov & Erlikman are as follows: ‘6.6 to 7.1 million deaths due to famine and disease including 4.1 million in German occupied USSR and 2.5 – 3.2 million deaths in area not occupied by Germany’ and ‘5,500,000 famine and disease deaths plus repression 1.4 million deaths (200,000 executed, 1.2 million deaths in Gulag and Special Settlements)’ – no restrictions to just civilian deaths, that’s just what’s written in the column heading. (If anyone can read Russian, feel free to post your own translations). I suspect the reason that no one has corrected the entry is because few people in the West are particularly concerned with what happened in the Soviet Union in WWII. If my experience is anything to go by, most people in the UK think that Britain won the Second World War with just a bit of help from the Americans and the Russians.
I’d imagine the reasons that the rate of growth of the global Jewish population from 1945 has slowed compared to the period 1880-1940, Tez, are similar to those for Western populations generally: the sexual revolution, greater access to contraception etc. Trump might not be playing 4-D chess, zoot, but there’s probably a reason why he hasn’t stopped the bombing, declared the War in Iran to be a “tremendous victory” and tried to do a “tremendous deal” with the Iranians to get the Straits of Hormuz re-opened. By the way, the Biden administration didn’t want Ukraine to win either – they were just a bit more subtle about it.
” If I only believed things written by people who share my exact political views, I’d barely believe anything ”
You didn’t read my comment, did you? If you had, you would have seen that the reason that I distrust Mr Snyder is not that he disagrees with my views, but that I caught him out in a falsehood, which, as far as I am concerned is the only reason for distrusting anyone. I am not sure why you believe a man who is obviously a Russophobe over a publicly editable resource like Wikipedia, but perhaps it’s because you agree with what he writes, which is a rotten reason for believing anyone.
“I wonder whether there’s any chance people on here could attempt to play the ball rather than the man.”
You need to look up the meaning of that expression. Clue, it’s not how you use it there.
“As I’ve outlined above, Bayard, Snyder’s figures are roughly in agreement with those of the Russian historians. The exact translated quotes from Evdokimov & Erlikman are as follows: ‘6.6 to 7.1 million deaths due to famine and disease including 4.1 million in German occupied USSR ”
Nope, a figure of 4 million is not “roughly in agreement” with a figure of 6.6 million. 2.6 million is one hell of a lot of dead people.
Yawn, whatever. Off you pop and collect your sheckles. This isn’t the audience for you, perhaps try TikToc or even children’s theater.
I won’t thank you for that reply Dean. Never touched a Shekel in my life , nor do I want to. The moderators will decide what is and what isn’t suitable for this blog’s readership (as they’ve done many times in the past). If you don’t like what I’ve written above, you could always try explaining why.
Congratulations, once again you have subverted the comments section by with your whataboutary, commenting on a turn of phrase (“suicidal option”) to bring up your hobbyhorse (War crimes against a minority) and inflamed Craig’s more impassioned supporters to make counter allegations. The subject is the attempt at regime change in a sovereign nation by a more powerful one. Have you any opinion on that as opposed to speculation on figures about who killed whom and when, which may never be resolved.
I won’t thank you for that reply Peter. My original comment was a genuine enquiry as to how our host could justify his support for the 7 October attacks along with support for the pacifist stance of the Venezuelan regime, despite both Gaza and Venezuela being under naval blockade (replete with a footnote which tangentially referred to the Nazis). I might have expected not to receive a reply from him, but I wasn’t expecting having to expend comment after comment trying to deal with Holocaust deniers/minimisers* – but here we are.
In case you’re unaware, the US hasn’t attempted regime change in Venezuela, since its administration appears to be happy for it to continue under Delcy Rodriguez, provided Venezuela sells all of its heavy oil to the States at a knock-down price, rather than just some of it. My opinion on that is that nation states shouldn’t attempt to impose their will by force on other states without very good reason and a UN Security Council mandate – whether that’s the US in Venezuela, Israel and the US in Iran, Israel in Gaza & Lebanon, Russia in Ukraine, and so on. I wouldn’t have thought that wasn’t too controversial. Anyway, that’s me done on this cess-pit of a comments section – I really have had enough. Many thanks to PoliticalEconomist & Ricardo Sanchez for interesting comments that bucked the general trend.
* There was a time when that sort of stuff was quickly deleted by the mods. Times change.
—
[ Mod: Yes, R-LA, there is indeed a ban on Holocaust denialism noted in the moderation rules for commenters:
“… no holocaust denial. I do not believe it should be illegal (I am against thought crime) but I do not wish to have it on my blog as those associated with it often have very unpleasant sympathies. That is not to say the subject of the holocaust can never be mentioned – it will never be possible to ascertain the precise number who were killed, and it is important we remember not only the Jews but the Poles, gypsies, gays, freemasons and numerous others who suffered. But the basic facts are not in doubt. It is surprising how often people attempt to insinuate holocaust denial.”
Notably, Craig also took a dim view of the commenters who were often attempting to elicit such controversial statements:
“This is a final warning to you, ResDis and Habby. Any attempt to introduce the subject of Jewishness or anti-Semitism into a thread where no such intimation exists, will result in immediate banning that will be enforced by deleting any comment by anybody we even vaguely suspect might be you. … This will be enforced absolutely arbitrarily, quite probably unfairly, and without discussion.”
Participants in this tangential discussion should take heed of those reminders. ]
Would the mods take kindly then to your disgusting falsehood triggering all this, at 15:53, that H*mas caused the recent and ongoing genocide of Palestinians by provoking “Israel” by massacring “civilians”? which clearly has nothing to do with this article? And then inviting an antisemitism discussion by reference to Nazi Germany?
Thank you very much. It is both heart-warming and heart-rending. It’s incredibly draining to resist the sense of powerlessness that creeps in. I understand Maduro’s decision and approve of it, but I fervently hope that Iran, which has other means at its disposal, will, beeing confronted with the same monster – and even if no government I would touch with a barge pole emerges successfully from the struggle – finally strip Tronald and the u.s. of their aura of invincibility.
Terrific piece. Thank you.
I said as much in my own highly nuanced article about Venezuela published in 11 January 2026, which can be found at the web link below:
https://sharpfocusafrica.substack.com/p/when-trump-cosplays-a-viking-warlord
I agree that Delcy Rodriguez probably did not collaborate with USA to remove Maduro. There wasn’t anything Venezuela could do since China and Russia were never going to intervene on their behalf. Having said that, there is some evidence of betrayal because a senior Venezuelan Army general was arrested after Maduro was kidnapped by Trump.
I also don’t agree that Venezuela was ever a “Marxist” state given that the rightwing Upper-class families were allowed to keep their mansions, their private businesses, and even their private TV/Radio/Newspapers that were hostile to the Bolivarian Republic.
Another important note– When righwing Venezuelan politician Henrique Capriles moderated his rhetoric and began to criticize aspects of American interference in his country, he was immediately sidelined by the US government, which favoured the Machado
“Delcy Rodríguez is not a traitor. She is a socialist doing the only thing possible to her in this impossible situation — buying time for the Bolivarian Revolution to survive.” This is the first time I have come across this viewpoint and I genuinely hope you are right. But unless she can improve the economic situation, is there any way forward for her that won’t trigger a right wing coup?
This article is so important it should be shared by everyone. The US has cleverly drawn a cloud of confusion over the role of Delcy in the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, a cloud that Craig has utterly dispersed. For a vivid picture of life in Venezuela before Chavez I recommend the songs of the late, great Ali Primera, especially his “Casas de Carton” (houses of cardboard).
Very comprehensive and interesting work, thank you for this. An on-the-record report from the ground – shame (and very telling) that you couldn’t find any other real journalists there with whom you could compare notes.
Robert Fisk frequently voiced his displeasure at ‘journalists’ content to lead their articles with “Officials say…”
Almost all our conventional wisdom about the place, received from well funded MSM sources, appears to be flat out falsehoods. Makes one wonder how much one can trust them on pretty much all other matters.
Have you tried contacting Byline Times about all this? They are – perhaps – one of the last outlets available with the courage and honesty to publish the truth on such things.
Your best report yet on Venezuela. Maduro comes across as a self-sacrificing hero, a true patriot. I hope that Rodriguez’ patient endurance will be rewarded, and that she will see the change she hopes for come the US mid-terms. However, I also hope that Venezuelan politicians like her (and Maduro, if he is acquitted and returns soon) will strengthen their hand and mandate by organising elections in which they return to paper ballots, that cannot be hacked.
Possibly you should write a book about Venezuela that will both inspire and educate!
The Venezuelan govt, as it was prior to the U.S.kidnappings, observed an oil embargo with regards to Israel. Venezuela has rejected stories appearing in the media recently, suggesting its crude is being shipped to Israel. But how much is Venezuela’s denial only technically correct, insomuch as, they have no say once they relinquish ownership?
Media reports stated that the vessel, Poliegos, carrying one million barrels of Venezuelan crude oi of which: 200,000 barrels are reportedly destined for the refinery in Haifa, owned by Israeli crude oil company Bazan and 800,000 barrels will go to the Saras refinery in Sarroch, owned by Swiss-based trading company Vitol.
Quote :
“Research by PICS and DisruptPower uncovered in 2025 that Vitol’s Saras refinery in Sarroch provided 17% of Israel’s imports of oil and refined products.
Following the US bombing of Venezuela’s capital Caracas and the kidnapping of its president and his wife, the US has imposed a scheme to plunder and control Venezuelan natural resources: the country can only sell its oil to two US vetted companies, which then take control of the resources.
The Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy trading company Vitol, which has sold the petroleum to Bazan and is the controlling shareholder of the Sarrach refinery, is one of them.
Prior to the US attack, the Venezuelan government had observed an energy embargo on Israel. It is now denying involvement in sales of oil to Israel, further highlighting the US role in quashing Venezuelan self-determination.
Norway’s Gard – Insuring genocide
Norway’s marine insurance company Gard provides the necessary insurance for the Poliegos and its criminal voyage.
From here: https://bdsmovement.net/news/Act-Now-Stop-Venezuelan-Oil-Shipment-Israel
Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am for this truly nuanced, thoughtful, and well-studied article. May God protect you in your travels.
Thank you, Craig. As an old socialist, I have long had a soft spot for Venezuela because of what Chavismo has achieved for its people. It’s wonderful to see an independent analysis written after extensive in-depth on-the-spot investigation.
It looks as if Trump’s deliberate fawning over Delcy Rodriguez is not only intended to humiliate and undermine her in the eyes of the extremist Machado opposition but also among those who might / would support her, including the more centrist-right factions who, in a more normal political environment (without Western hostility and sanctions), would oppose or partly oppose the Bolivarian socialist side on the grounds of economic management and choice of economic policies and programs alone.
This is in addition to the humiliation designed to encourage those in the centrist-left factions (those who would call themselves democratic socialists) to desert Delcy Rodriguez as well, in a future scenario where an opportunity for regime change that replaces her with Maria Corina Machado or any one of Machado’s allies arises.
Thus, the entire political spectrum in Venezuela is being weakened and fragmented, and this surely strengthens the extremists represented by Machado.
Apart from this, a big Thanks to CM for his efforts in covering as much of Venezuela’s life, economy and politics in the time he spent there.
PS – One thing that might be missing from CM’s coverage is the role that indigenous communities might be playing in the revival of agriculture through the communal movement – I should think they not only have a large role but also in parts of the country they are leading the way in bringing back traditional knowledge and skills in farming.
Superb work, Craig. Is there a better journalist than yourself in the U.K? IMO, no, there isn’t.
Hoping you can find the time to write about the upcoming Scottish Elections & your participation in it.
With the ( undeserved ) good fortune – from the SNP’s POV – of circumstances aligning in their favour ( apparently ), eg the implosion of ALBA, non-participation of Your Party and internal combustion damaging the Alliance ( hopefully not fatally ), a tangible mood of weary resignation has cast a gloomy shadow over the entire proceedings at the prospect of the SNP being handed another 5 years to slurp lumpy Holyrood gravy and serve-up the watery gruel of obscurantist agendas – PARDONS FOR 15th CENTURY WITCHES. NOW! – whilst administering the coup de grace to any possibility of progressing the cause which was once their raison d’etre: we need at least the possibility of something good emerging from the looming Shit Parade. Like, eg you – and ideally some of the other genuine Independistas – winning your seat/s.
Excellent article, here’s hoping Maduro and his wife are released by the US, they appeared in a US kangaroo court recently – a second appearance before their show trial, I wonder what trumped up (no pun intended) charges they have against Maduro?
Maybe some BS charges about the oil infrastructure – belonging to the US, or some shit like that.
President Gorbachev could have handed over the collective wealth to the communes and not to the oligarchs before the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. He didn’t want to. He wasted a collective chance at healing and his own. What is related in the article shows that communes can function.
Talking of pirates and gangsters, Campain (campain.org) posted the following piece on their website recently, which I’d not heard about before, regarding Little Marco (as someone up the page referred to him):
The year after Rubio was born, his sister started dating a Cuban exile called Orlando Cicilia. Cicilia figured prominently in Rubio’s childhood, and got into the drugs business working in support of the Tabraue family that was operating an illegal operation behind the front of an exotic animal business – including predators that were reportedly an important part of the intimidating image Tabraue family sought to project.
Mario Tabraue was outstandingly ruthless and cruel, and is widely believed to be the true-life character behind the murderous screen villain Scarface, reported to have used a chainsaw to carve up the body of a federal informant who had succeeded in penetrating his operation. Cicilia was described as the front man and number two for the Tabraue family operation, and came to run a $75 million drug ring right out of his home.
During the 1980s, Rubio started working for Cicilia….
Tkacik thinks Rubio is the architect of a cynical policy to put drug cartel bosses and their cronies atop Latin American countries, in the name of fighting drug cartels. This may seem a bit far-fetched, but she marshals significant evidence supporting her theory…..
https://www.campain.org/post/who-is-marco-rubio
PS Absolutely brilliant post Craig, and WELL worth waiting for!
This narrative is completely unconvincing.
1. Murray claims that Maduro told the military to stand down. Yet no official Venezuelan source has ever said this. Why would they hide that when it would arguably reflect well on Maduro and badly on his abductors?
2. Why would Maduro tell the military to stand down but not his own bodyguards who were then slaughtered? And how would he have even known to tell the military before Venezuelan airspace was breached?
3. Murray posted multiple comments on Twitter/X before he ever went to Caracas dismissing the concerns about Delcy Rodriguez. In other words, he had already made up his mind before gathering any actual information.
I don’t know whether Delcy betrayed Maduro or not, but I am none the wiser after reading this long but ultimately dubious essay. There are many facts about her that have come to light that raise serious concerns. And the coincidence of her being on holiday on a nearby island when the abduction happened is just one of them.
I’ll try to write up a more objective assessment on my Substack soon. Feel free to follow along (or not):
https://substack.com/@politicaleconomist
“Yet no official Venezuelan source has ever said this. ”
Where, precisely, would they say it? The NYT? The WSJ? The BBC?
‘There are many facts about her that have come to light that raise serious concerns. And the coincidence of her being on holiday on a nearby island when the abduction happened is just one of them.’
Given that Nicolas Maduro foresaw the possibility of being kidnapped, it is of course quite likely that they decided to have Delcy Rodriguez somewhere safe and sound in case of such an eventuality. And somewhere where the US was unlikely to bomb, if such should happen. Which it did of course.
A tangenital point to follow:
I saw a tweet of a picture with King Charles and Syrian Interim President Al-Sharaa today. A sceptical person I was with said this was an April Fool. Having done a check, France 24, Yahoo and Reuters reported that PM Starmer and King Charles met Al-Sharaa on Tuesday 31st March 2026. Not a dickie-bird from my search engine of any UK MSM report. I checked the national broadcaster [BBC] and nothing there. I found this strange as last night I was in company with Newsnight [BBC 2] and the lead story was Charles’s upcoming state visit to the US and the proposed itinary that he should meet Epstein/Andrew victims. This was the lead story on the day King Charles met Al-Sharaa. And people question as to why the MSM would not report “that Maduro told the military to stand down” ?
Some would say she’s playing a weak hand well. Trump did after all, threaten to bomb Venezuela if they refused to cooperate, and despite the international moral outrage doing so would generate,not to mention the criminality. Would anyone bet against this ‘maniac’ rampaging ‘Epic Fury’ version of Trump, doing such a thing?
It’s clearly an unsustainable arrangement however; Rodriguez’s role is akin to acting as Trump’s administrator. Questions like for how long? and what about future elections? will come into focus. Can Rodriguez risk being perceived, whether a fairly or unfairly, of being nonchalant about Nicolás Maduro and his wife’s fate? Apparently, they are being held in very poor conditions, with no privileges you’d expect for a head of state. As I suppose was predictable from a U.S. administration as vindictive and vicious as Trump’s.
The real test for Rodriguez will likely come after November’s midterms, if (big if) US voters humiliate Trump and his party. It’s becoming an urgent priority with Trump’s declining cognitive state and mounting list of war crimes. As a lame duck. president Trump will be lucky to avoid impeachment, so bombing Venezuela will be out of the question. That’s the time for Rodriguez et al to take a stand.
One (possible) answer to your Question 2 is that Maduro’s bodyguards, or the chief bodyguard among them, agreed to accept money to the tune of US$50 million from the CIA. One presumes he would then direct the other bodyguards to perform certain actions – perhaps even kill Maduro – in the event of a kidnapping.
Maduro may have known what happened behind his back. By instructing the military to stand down, his bodyguards stood exposed as traitors. During the kidnapping and whatever aftermath followed, all his bodyguards were killed. US$50 million goes begging.
What complicates matters is that the Cubans who came to Maduro’s defence were killed and Russian military in the vicinity apparently fought Maduro’s bodyguards.
We may never know the precise details of what happened, and of what Maduro’s bodyguards did or did not do, until years later.
Another excellent article. Some readers might start to think you are a journalist !! They wouldn’t be wrong.
Your readers may be interested in a counterpoint regarding the section about beaches and environmental protection, particularly in relation to Los Roques, which is often considered the jewel of Venezuela’s coastline.
Los Roques is a unique protected national park with very fragile ecosystems including coral reefs, mangroves and important wildlife habitats. It was actually the first marine national park in Latin America, established in 1972. For decades after that designation, development was very limited. The main settlement on Gran Roque remained small, and the archipelago stayed relatively undeveloped compared with other Caribbean destinations.
However, in recent years the Maduro govt has permitted airport runway expansion and inexcusable tourism infrastructure developments within the park itself, with environmental concerns raised about damage to reefs, mangroves and turtle nesting sites.
That example suggests the situation may be more complicated than the idea that coastal areas are simply being preserved for public use and environmental protection. In Los Roques at least, the government appears to have supported tourism developments (and construction of luxury holiday homes for los enchufados) inside a protected ecosystem.
This does seem to be a notable example where environmental protection and development policy are in tension, and it is probably an important part of the overall picture when discussing how coastal areas and tourism are being managed in Venezuela.
One area where I wish Craig would apply some more scrutiny is the discussion of the 2024 election and the claims about forged tally sheets, hacking and opposition fraud. The issue here is not the ideology of government versus opposition, but evidence, and there are some crucial facts that still need to be addressed.
The central documents in the Venezuelan election dispute are the actas, the printed tally sheets produced by each voting machine at the end of voting. These are not abstract data – they are physical printouts generated at each polling station and signed by witnesses from different parties. The opposition collected copies of these and published a very large number of them (over 25,000) online for anyone to examine. According to those published documents, Maduro secured only 30% of the votes cast. They indicate that he lost by a huge margin. There the actas have sat online, since about 48 hours after the polls closed in 2024. The dispute therefore revolves around those crucial documents.
This is where the argument about forgeries becomes problematic. If the actas are forged, then it should be possible to demonstrate that by identifying specific forged documents and showing what is wrong with them. That would immediately destroy the opposition’s credibility. But simply stating that there are forgeries without identifying which ones, and without demonstrating the forgery, is not evidence at all. It’s opinion. The actas are publicly available and have QR codes and machine data within them that can be readily cross-checked, so the debate should be about specific documents, not general allegations.
Independent election experts and observers examined these tally sheets and stated that they appeared legitimate and consistent with the voting system output. The Carter Center, which observed the election and has monitored Venezuelan elections for decades, stated that the election did not meet international standards and that the official results could not be independently verified.
But the most important issue is transparency, and this is where the Maduro side faces the most difficult questions. The opposition published thousands of the tally sheets. The government, however, did not. The detailed results by voting machine and polling station have never been produced, and this lack of transparency is one of the main reasons the election result is disputed internationally.
So the key question is simple. If the opposition actas are fake, where are the real ones? The government controls the electoral authority and the voting system. It should be able to publish the official tally sheets from every machine and polling station. The fact that this detailed data was not released is a major part of the controversy. And no, they were not seen and adjudicated on by any court in Venezuela because they’ve simply never been produced.
Then there is the claim that the machines were hacked. This argument is difficult to understand because Venezuela’s voting system is not internet voting. Votes are cast on electronic machines but they aren’t connected to the public internet – not even to transmit their results. They also produce a paper receipt, and the results are transmitted over a private circuit after voting closes. The system is extremely secure and was historically praised by observers precisely because it produced both electronic and paper records that could be audited.
Simply claiming “the machines were hacked” is not a sufficient explanation. Any claim of hacking would need technical evidence showing how the system was compromised and how that altered results across thousands of machines, including changing all the paper tally sheet data. Without that evidence, it remains an assertion rather than a demonstrated fact.
In summary, the problem with the entire argument that the opposition fabricated results or forged tally sheets is that it is not supported with any specific evidence. The actas are public and can be examined. Independent observers said the official results could not be verified. The opposition published detailed tally data. The government did not publish results by machine. And claims of hacking have not been supported with technical evidence explaining how the system was compromised.
The election dispute therefore comes down to a fairly straightforward transparency issue. One side published detailed polling station data. The other side announced a national result but did not publish the disaggregated results needed to verify it. Until both full datasets are available and audited, the dispute will remain unresolved.
That is the core issue, and it is fundamentally about evidence and transparency rather than ideology. Worthy of a separate article, I think.
They’re not bothering to use that anymore. Too much naked banditry under the bridge. Not that anybody ever took seriously their effort to coup Venezuela as being motivated by democracy, human rights etc.
It’s the ‘naked banditry’ that should be spelled out, in detail and with evidence, not merely asserted. If the opposition version is fraudulent, it should be easy enough to point to why and how. Elections are decided by verifiable results, not by the character of the candidates. That is why transparency and evidence matter. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
“The opposition collected copies of these and published a very large number of them (over 25,000) online for anyone to examine.”
What proportion of the total number produced are these actas?
” If the actas are forged, then it should be possible to demonstrate that by identifying specific forged documents and showing what is wrong with them.”
Many things should be possible, that doesn’t mean they are, or even, if they are, that it is not almost impossible for them to happen. Thanks to computers, forgeries are now easy to make and very difficult to detect, especially when you are looking at an electronic photograph of a paper printout and even a free image manipulation program gives anyone with a computer the ability to edit such pixel by pixel.
“The system is extremely secure and was historically praised by observers precisely because it produced both electronic and paper records that could be audited.”
Anything that uses electronics is not secure: there is no visible or verifiable connection between the physical act of casting the vote and the machine printing the result. Even a computer software engineer would be hard put to prove that the output accurately reflects the input. Viruses in computers can go undetected for years. The only secure system is paper. There are no reasons to have electronic voting apart from the opportunities it gives for fraud.
Those are fair points and worth discussing properly.
‘What proportion of the total number produced are these actas?’
The opposition did not publish all of them, but they did publish copies from over 80% of polling stations. At that scale, the issue becomes statistical and internal consistency rather than individual documents. Based on those actas, the totals indicated roughly 67% for González and about 30% for Maduro. Even if every missing acta showed a Maduro victory, the overall result would not change.
https://resultadosconvzla.com/
‘Thanks to computers, forgeries are now easy to make and very difficult to detect…’
Individual documents can of course be forged. But these actas were uploaded in large numbers within about 48 hours of polls closing. To fabricate tens of thousands of internally consistent tally sheets with correct machine IDs, polling station codes, QR codes, vote totals and signatures in that timeframe would imply a very large and organised operation involving many people. That claim that should be demonstrated with specific evidence and inconsistencies in the documents.
In addition, in the Venezuelan system, multiple copies of each tally sheet are printed and distributed to party witnesses at the polling station. That means government party witnesses received copies of the same actas. So if the opposition copies are fake, the government should be able to publish its copies of the real tally sheets. Publishing the official actas would resolve this dispute very quickly.
‘The only secure system is paper. There are no reasons to have electronic voting apart from the opportunities it gives for fraud.’
The Venezuelan system is actually hybrid rather than purely electronic. Each vote produces a paper receipt and each machine prints a tally sheet before results are transmitted. The system was historically praised by international observers and even described by Jimmy Carter as one of the best voting systems in the world. The electronic totals can be audited against the paper ballots, so the key issue again becomes whether full audit data and disaggregated results are published.
“To fabricate tens of thousands of internally consistent tally sheets with correct machine IDs, polling station codes, QR codes, vote totals and signatures in that timeframe would imply a very large and organised operation involving many people.”
Since we are talking about digitally altering an image, the amount of information on it is irrelevant. Everything except the actual results can be left unchanged. Nor would any of the sheets that showed a win for the opposition need to be altered.
“That claim that should be demonstrated with specific evidence and inconsistencies in the documents.”
Why? the burden of proof lies with the opposition. All the government has to do is ignore it, as it has done. The opposition has failed to get anywhere with these charges, which shows that the government’s decision was the right one. Do you not think that, if 80% of voters in the country had really voted for the opposition and been denied their choice, there would not have a bit more done about it than what has actually happened, which appears to be almost nothing? Even in Britain, if the ruling party pulled a stunt like that, there would probably be riots. Are you suggesting, that, contrary to what our host reports, Venezuela is a police state where any dissent against the ruling junta is firmly stamped out and he has failed to notice this?
“The system was historically praised by international observers and even described by Jimmy Carter as one of the best voting systems in the world.”
I fail to see what advantage is gained by moving from paper ballots to a machine which counts the votes and produces a paper result. With a paper ballot, the votes can be counted in public, so any concerned person can see for themselves the connection between the votes cast and the result. Not only that, but paper ballots make a recount possible as there is a physical record of the votes. I am not sure that an endorsement by a US politician is worth very much.
Here’s Trump, last night, lying through his teeth again, over and over and over again, and being his usual modest self. The following clip is where he brings up Venezuela, in passing:
In a matter of weeks, our enemies are losing and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning and now winning bigger than ever before.
Before discussing this current situation, I also want to thank our troops for the masterful job they did in taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes, that it was quick, lethal, violent, and respected by everyone all over the world.
After rebuilding our military during my first term, we have by far the strongest military anywhere in the world. And now we’re working along with Venezuela and are in a true sense joint venture partners. We’re getting along incredibly well in the production and sale of massive amounts of oil and gas, the second largest reserves on Earth after the United States of America.
‘Iran war is OVER’ – Donald Trump HITS OUT at allies in conflict update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n3BizMOTms (Daily Record 18mins 40secs)
Search Assist Results:
Top Countries by Natural Gas Reserves
Rank Country Natural Gas Reserves (Trillion Cubic Meters)
1 Russia 47.8
2 Iran 34.0
3 Qatar 24.7
Additional Notable Countries. Beyond the top three, several other countries also have significant natural gas reserves:
United States: Approximately 13.4 trillion cubic meters
Turkmenistan: About 6.6 trillion cubic meters
Saudi Arabia: Roughly 9.4 trillion cubic meters
United Arab Emirates: Around 6.1 trillion cubic meters
China: Approximately 6.7 trillion cubic meters
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves with 303 billion barrels, followed by Saudi Arabia with 267 billion barrels and Iran with approximately 208 billion barrels.
Wikipedia: The US has 74 billion barrels
Allan Howard,
Trump has to spin a narrative – he marched them to the top of the hill – and, I guess, it must be the Iranians who asked him to march them down again. He will ultimately be back to where he was when he walked away from the JCPOA – and the war is truly irrational; unless you are looking at it through the same lens as Netanyahu.
Yes, otherwise known as the Threat of a Good Example.
After the terrible, lethal, collapse of the Argentine economy in 2002, Néstor Kirchner, as President from May 2003, built back an economy that functioned, that began to rebuild the country’s infrastructure – both civil and commercial – and repay the IMF and other loans taken out and then defaulted on by previous governments.
Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela since April 2002 (and VP before that) was a strong supporter of this new direction for Argentina, and was the central figure in building what looked to be a new “golden age” for Latin America. Ricardo Lagos, social democrat, was president of Chile until 2006, followed by Michelle Bachelet, and Evo Morales became president of Bolivia in 2006. Lula de Silva was president of Brazil 2003 to 2011
The violent US empire was focused on it wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East (West Asia), and for this brief period seemed to ease the pressure of its heavy boot on the backs of Latin American countries.
And then Néstor Kirchner, aged only 60, died suddenly in Oct 2010 (during his wife’s presidency – he was expected to return to the presidency after his wife’s first term), and Christina Kirschner gradually lost her way, swamped partly by pressure from the US vulture funds, and by rightwing machismo pressures from within.
Then Hugo Chávez, aged only 59, died in March 2013 of a cancer he suggested may have been deliberately induced by the US [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-16349845] .
It has all been downhill for Argentina since then, with two US supported, right wing governments (Mauricio Macri 2015 – 2019, and now Javier Milei since 2023) to help the deterioration along.
Argentina is again a basket case, with more and more Argentines disillusoned with Trump’s little puppet Milei. Those old enough to remember very much miss the days when Chávez lived, and Latin America looked as if it might have thrown off the US yoke of oppression.
Imperialism works in Mysterious Ways.
You would think The Don of Don’s Imperial Military might have flicked Iran’s people and Military out of the game in -oh say……….three or four days?
Why?
Because despite the criticisms of Trump’s Plan to have No Plan from the Minor Imperialist Powers they thought the same as Trump.
Everyone knew it was coming – everyone thought it would be over quickly – not just Trump or Netanyahu – all of the West’s leaders thought that.
The mirror opposite has happened and the MSM in The West ( who also believed the change could be done in 3 or 4 days) are biting their well manicured nails in disbelief at the consequences of the attack on Iran by the US and Israel and The Gulf States.
Investments may crash – their Pension Schemes may lose a lot of money – Alfalfa Sprout prices may go through the roof and the holiday or Tax Exile in Dubai and the other Gulf States is out of the question now.
The look on their faces and the same with the politicians is priceless.
The ‘ Victory ‘ is all in Trump’s Orange Head and nowhere else in reality.
The reality sems to be that Iran will decide who or what goes up The Straits of Hormuz and what goes down it.
Not Trump – not Netanyahu and ( dare I say ?) Sir Kier Starmer.
That’s how it looks to me.
If Trump in his child like vengeance does what happens a lot in wars that are being lost goes full on Stone Age attack then the Iranians and others will attack everything that id dear to The US and The gulf States.
You mean the people?
Think the credulous media.
No – the oil/gas/LNG – de -salination plants – the airports – Palantir – AWS – Google etc etc.
Everything that would lose them enormous amounts of money in destruction.
Maybe some wiser counsels have told Trump that this is not a war the US can win.
The US can’t win this one.
They can back away secretly and ready themselves for another go later but. the main thing for Trump personally
is:
How does he explain to Netanyahu that the US can no longer afford to be directed by the Israeli Lobby and Israeli politicians in general?
That game is slowly coming to an end and if Tel Aviv doesn’t want to be flattened the Israelis would be wise to seek some kind of temporary peace so as that they will live to attack again another day too.
We shall see what happens but the MSM are coming to the realisation that what they – Trump and The west assumed was incredibly wrong about Iran.
That seems like a pretty accurate synopsis of the current situation vis-a-vis the U.S/Israeli unprovoked war on Iran and the * evolving ” relations between those two seriously morally/mentally ill countries ( USRael ), Mark.
The only imponderable is who/what is actually driving this insanity.
Personally, I’m finding the various * takes *, eg ” we thought it would be over in 4/5 days “, ” Netanyahu gulled Trump into it ( against the latter’s better judgement, HAHA, Trump doesn’t have the capacity for ” better judgement ” ) ” they drastically underestimated Iran’s strategic intelligence and resolve ” unconvincing, to say the least. This U.S Admin may be ( is ) unhinged & completely intoxicated by it’s ability to inflict extreme violence & murder on it’s designated ( by whom, though? ) enemies, but it’s stretching credulity to think they never foresaw any of the consequences that are now – AND ALWAYS WERE LIKELY/CERTAIN TO BE – happening.
Which begs the question……what other agendas could this – on the surface, lunatic, military adventurism be serving?
If, as appears to be the case, Neolib/con Capitalism is going through a potentially debilitating convulsion – more like a life-threatening financial epileptic seizure – a result of it’s own all-consuming, manic avarice and psychopathic disregard for the welfare of the mass of humanity and the planet itself, War is the * perfect * cover/justification for bringing in radical measures to attempt to rescue the ” Financial System “, ie the Plutocracy from severe damage, not to say the collapse of the * System ” in toto.
Measures like accelerating the erasure of cash money and it’s replacement with CBDCs, in order to gain even more, ie complete – control over over this System: at the same time clamping down on the Public’s ability to resist, or even demonstrate against such State control of the individual’s financial autonomy ( such as it is ) by policing/prosecuting language on, eg Social Media platforms and that ancient ruse, the creation of bogeymen – in this manifestation…. Chinese looking Iranians-with-Russian accents-carrying- N.Korean weapons ” under the bed ” . They create enemies and tell us to hate/fear them, all the while imposing new restrictions on our freedoms and placing us in ever deeper peril: physical as well as economic.
There is, of course, the U.S/West’s existential dread of BRICS succeeding and displacing the former from it’s hitherto unchallenged global supremacy; which is undoubtedly a major factor in what we’re witnessing. But one thing does not obviate the other; BRICS- fear and a ” reordering ” of the Western Financial System ( + Social Order ) can be seen as complementary – if not symbiotic
Even though America ‘looses’ the price of crude oil is still high enough to put American shale oil into profit, and with the destruction by Iran of the refineries in West Asia America will be self sufficient in oil and in profit for a long time to come and they won’t need West Asia. If they don’t need West Asia then they don’t need Israel so some of America’s oligarchs may be getting ready to dump Israel. Wrecking by Iran will help with this.
Indeed, Johnny, and as Trump has recently boasted ” we don’t need oil ( via the Gulf ), we’re a nett exporter of the stuff ( mmmm the usual moronic over-simple braggadocio from the Curious Orange there ). So, having successfully booted Europe in the economic bollocks via tariffs, compelling it to buy much more expensive ( than the sabotaged Russian source ) energy & obliging it to wreck it’s economies even more by the ludicrous idea of ” Military Keynesianism ” – which requires, literal, Permanent War to * work *, an ” Oil Shock ” could work greatly in U.S favour – at least in the favour of the tiny % that benefits from/exploits the Market volatility of this ” black gold “, eg Trump & immediate family + Insider Traders, like ….eh……Comical Petey ( Hegseth )
War is – ever more apparently – Business and I doubt there’s ever been a POTUS/US Admin as deranged by their lucre-lust as the present incumbent/s
Robert Hughes
If the world price of oil and gas is high then the Private US firms will export to the highest bidder.
The US says it has a lot of supply – OK but they have limited refineries I would imagine.
They have the crude stuff but that needs to be refined somewhere.
The 20% missing can not be made up for by a boast from Trump – it is extremely real.
That means the US people will have to pay for imported oil which of course will be a high price too.
He could of course Nationalise US oil/gas but, there is as much chance of that happening as me inviting Nigel Farage out for a drink in a pub.
So, in the West it looks like subsidies to the ‘ most vulnerable ‘ paid for by the most vulnerable and the better off vulnerable like for The Financial Crash Bailout and Covid.
Simply put:
We’ll all be paying for our selves again.
Of course the Rich won’t and that’s the main thing.
This is what centrism is for – it is its political role.
Wearing thin now though.
This Global Chaos is all about stopping China and the BRICS for me and very little else.
Ex Big Imperialist Powers don’t go gracefully or quietly and the difference between Rome and the US is that Rome didn’t have Nuclear Weapons.
That is THE danger to me.
Agreed on all counts – particularly here….. ….’So, in the West it looks like subsidies to the ‘ most vulnerable ‘ paid for by the most vulnerable and the better off vulnerable like for The Financial Crash Bailout and Covid.
Simply put:
We’ll all be paying for our selves again.
Of course the Rich won’t and that’s the main thing.
This is what centrism is for – it is its political role.’
“OK but they have limited refineries I would imagine.”
As far as I can remember, the price of fuel shot up in 2022 because, what with “Net Zero” and all that pushing down the likely future need for capacity and the astronomical cost of building new refineries, or even keeping the old ones going since they have to be practically rebuilt every so often, an awful lot of the refining had been farmed out from the US and the EU to other countries, like Russia, and, presumably, the Persian Gulf countries.
@Bayard – I’m unable to post this as a reply to your earlier response to mine, because the spam detector thinks I’ve already posted it, I think. So I’m trying here, as a new post.
I don’t think the scale and structure of the actas make the issue quite that simple.
The opposition didn’t publish a handful of documents. They published actas from around 83% of polling stations, gathered in a coordinated operation involving thousands of volunteers. These documents were uploaded within roughly 48 hours of the polls closing.
So, the claim would not be that a few images were edited. The claim would have to be that tens of thousands of tally sheets were fabricated or altered at national scale in a very short period of time, with data that matches up across thousands of machines and polling stations.
The actas are not just images with numbers on them. They include QR codes that contain the machine data for that polling station. If someone edited the numbers on the image, they would also have to regenerate the QR code so that the encoded data matched the printed totals. Doing that consistently across tens of thousands of tally sheets would require reconstructing the machine data for thousands of polling stations, not just editing images.
That is not impossible in theory, but it would imply: A huge pre-planned operation, thousands of documents where the numbers and totals all agree with each other, matching machine IDs and polling station identifiers, matching turnout figures, matching QR data, matching totals across regions, consistency between different copies held by witnesses.
If it were true, one would expect detectable inconsistencies somewhere. Large-scale fabrication usually leaves statistical or technical patterns.
Most importantly, copies of each tally sheet were given to party witnesses present at the polling station. That means: opposition witnesses received copies, government party witnesses received copies, polling station officials retained copies, and the electoral authority retained copies.
If the opposition copies are fake, the obvious question is: “Where are the government copies of the same tally sheets?”
Publishing those would settle most of this dispute very quickly.
More details in this video: “Electronic voting system in Venezuela” – https://youtu.be/npriP7Rurv4?si=pEcn9KnzheVwtmLO
I would disagree with that in terms of electoral process.
In most electoral systems, the electoral authority publishes detailed results by polling station so the result can be independently verified. Indeed, Venezuelan electoral law requires the publication of results disaggregated by polling station, which did not happen.
So, it’s not simply a question of opposition allegations. The issue is that the official detailed results were not published, which makes independent verification impossible.
Transparency normally comes from the electoral authority, not from opposition groups.
There actually were protests and repression reported after the election, including arrests and political persecution.
It’s not accurate to say that nothing happened afterwards.
The Venezuelan system is not purely electronic voting. It is a hybrid system.
The voting tables record the votes electronically, print a paper receipt for each vote, store paper ballots in a ballot box, print a tally sheet (acta) at the end of voting, involve audits comparing electronic totals to paper ballots.
This is known as a voter-verified paper audit trail system, which is designed specifically so that electronic totals can be audited against physical ballots. Recounts and audits are possible because the paper ballots exist.
See the following TeleSUR clips for more details:
“This is How Venezuelan Electoral System Works” – https://youtu.be/8BLMZFVCDmA?si=3Eh6bL477q13Nvq-
“Venezuela: One of the World’s Most Transparent Electoral Processes” – https://youtu.be/DumFaUruA-o?si=yno6irR_boOHJ0Jw
“Among U.S. critics, We Tested The Venezuelan Electoral System” – https://youtu.be/M9XUW9isZf4?si=n_WNjwD5nVvdX2VU
The Carter Center was invited by the Venezuelan government itself and has been involved in Venezuelan elections since 1998, including during the Chávez era.
TeleSUR coverage from 2024: “Venezuelan CNE hosts Carter Center commission” – https://youtu.be/4aFA68zcj48?si=BagseZ0J2HTvem8C
And here’s Padrino Lopez in 2024, praising the Carter Center for it’s work: “Venezuela | Carter Center to participate as observers in July 28 elections” – https://youtu.be/9fY3zgyL-XA?si=24WCiAiABTuWULov
The Maduro government and pro-government activists have frequently quoted Jimmy Carter in this context. For example:
“Former US President Carter: Venezuelan Electoral System “Best in the World” – https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7272/
Basically, the entire dispute over the 2024 election seems to come down to three very simple questions
1) Where are the official polling station results from the electoral authority?
2) Where are the tally sheets held by government party witnesses?
3) Why not publish all tally sheets and audit data so they can be compared?
Until those questions can be answered, the opposition’s claim of Maduro’s illegitimacy will not go away.
“The opposition didn’t publish a handful of documents. They published actas from around 83% of polling stations, gathered in a coordinated operation involving thousands of volunteers. These documents were uploaded within roughly 48 hours of the polls closing.”
That’s what they say they did. Have you checked that they actually did it?
“It’s not accurate to say that nothing happened afterwards.”
I didn’t say nothing happened, I said almost nothing, compared to the alleged fact that half the electorate had been denied their choice of government. These days protests and accusations of vote-rigging from the losing side in an election seem to be de riguer, even in countries like the US. Absent a repressive police state, which, it appears, Venezuela is not, do you really thing a full half of the country would have taken this lying down? You make a big point about the government not producing their copies of the actas, but they haven’t had to , have they, so why should they?
In any case, it seems entirely likely that the great mass of the Venezuelan people would be far worse off under a USA-friendly government that allowed US corporations to control the country’s resources and industry for their own profit, than they are under the Bolivarian government that they actually have. Just look at Argentina. Do you really think they haven’t twigged that? You are, in essence, suggesting that the Venezuelans are a bunch of turkeys who voted for Christmas and I find that implausible.
Thanks for the reply. I’ll try to respond to your points one by one.
I have obviously not audited all 25,000 actas myself. But I have checked a number of them myself by drilling down through the site to individual mesas, and the documents and data are there exactly as described on the site.
The site allows you to navigate from state → municipality → parish → voting centre → table, and at table level you can see:
1) the vote totals for that specific table,
2) turnout and electorate figures,
3) downloadable CSV data,
4) a scan of the actual tally sheet (acta),
5) signatures of officials and witnesses,
6) a QR code,
7) integrity hash references for the dataset.
There is also a cedula lookup tool where a Venezuelan voter can enter their ID number and see the result for the table where they were registered to vote.
Here’s an example of an acta:
– https://resultadosconvzla.com/mesa/4521/4473
– From this centre: https://resultadosconvzla.com/centro/4521
– In this parish: https://resultadosconvzla.com/parroquia/605
– In Sucre municipality: https://resultadosconvzla.com/municipio/174
– In Miranda state: https://resultadosconvzla.com/estado/13
This is not just a spreadsheet of numbers or random images of voting documents. It is a huge document archive tied to specific polling tables.
The key point is that the actas are publicly available and structured so that anyone can examine them. In addition to individual checks by people like me, and by external experts in the field, Venezuelan voters themselves can look up their own voting table and see the corresponding result.
So the claim the opposition made was not just “trust us”. The evidence is open to public scrutiny.
Because it is not just a matter of whether they feel like publishing them.
Venezuelan electoral law and procedures require the electoral authority (CNE) to publish results disaggregated by polling station and complete the post-election audit process. Do you not find it odd that this did not happen?
In circumstances like this, where the authority that is supposed to publish the official detailed results does not do so, the absence of corroborating evidence becomes evidence in itself.
Transparency comes from the electoral authority publishing detailed results, not from opposition groups publishing their own copies.
I think this is where the discussion has to become more nuanced, because repression is not only about armoured vehicles on the streets or people being shot for protesting. In reality, repression is often more selective and structural. It involves intimidation, loss of employment, denial of state services, selective arrests, surveillance and occasional high-profile detentions to deter others.
Is Venezuela a repressive state?
There is a vast body of reporting from the UN OHCHR, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and others documenting arbitrary detentions, political prisoners, torture and ill-treatment in custody, intimidation of opposition activists, pressure on public sector workers, and restrictions on civil and political rights in Venezuela.
UN OHCR Report 2017
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is neither a US politician nor a right-wing figure. She was herself a victim of political imprisonment and torture under the far-right Pinochet dictatorship. So she is not someone who is likely to make casual or politically motivated accusations about repression or torture.
Over several years working for the UN, her office documented arbitrary detentions, torture and political persecution:
UN OHCR Report 2019 – Bachelet Mission
Later UN fact-finding missions have described ongoing repression, surveillance, arbitrary arrests and restrictions on democratic space.
That kind of environment creates a climate where many people are afraid to participate in protests or political activity. Add to that the fact that millions of Venezuelans have emigrated over the last decade, and the idea that the only possible reaction to a disputed election would be nationwide riots is less convincing.
Structural pressure in the public sector
A very large proportion of Venezuelans are employed directly or indirectly by the state, or depend on state programmes such as food distribution (CLAP), pensions, public employment, or state contracts.
Public sector workers are often expected to support the government politically and risk losing their jobs or benefits if they are identified as opposition supporters. Many people are therefore economically dependent on the state and politically cautious.
An example of how this works in practice is the infamous Tascón List which led to many Venezuelans being denied public sector jobs, government contracts, passports and other social services for years.
Many Venezuelans fear that political activity against the government could have personal consequences.
Post 2024-election repression and the “Tuntún” campaign
As Craig alludes to in his article above, after the 2024 election, there were arrests of protesters, opposition activists and campaign workers. The government also launched what was referred to as the “Operación Tun Tun”, targeting people accused of promoting unrest or opposition activity.
Whether one supports or opposes the Maduro government, it’s clear this contributed to an environment where political opposition carried personal risk.
Whether a different government would be better or worse is a political question.
The right to choose your government in a genuine election is a basic democratic right. The real question is not ideology, but whether the election result reflects the will of the voters and can be transparently verified.
On the contrary, Craig details the extraordinary leniency with which violent, anti-democratic right-wing coup participants have been treated by Maduro (and by Hugo Chavez before him).
He asks readers to consider how a right-wing Latin American government would deal with repeated left-wing armed coup attempts.
Do you think they would apply the same degree of extreme tolerance and restraint as Maduro has?
As to the naked banditry you claim not to have seen evidence of, how would you categorise the kidnap of a sovereign president and his wife by Donald Trump and their imprisonment in an imperialist dungeon on laughable charges?
Are you even aware of it? Nothing in any of your lengthy ‘apolitical’ contributions suggests that you are.
I don’t think that comparison really answers the question being discussed.
The issue is not whether Maduro is more or less tolerant than Pinochet, or another right-wing military regime. The issue is whether Venezuelans could freely choose their government in elections and whether the results can be independently verified.
Even if one accepts the argument that Maduro has been more lenient than right-wing Latin American dictatorships, that does not tell us whether the 2024 election result was accurate or whether the official results should be published for verification.
Comparing one government to worse governments is not how you democratic legitimacy.
One can oppose US intervention and still expect transparent elections. The US doing something wrong does not make unverifiable election results legitimate.
Blimey, the US ‘intervened’ and did ‘something’ wrong .. ?
Ricardo, why do I suspect you care about electoral niceties in Venezuela about as much as Trump, the US Democrats or our old pal ‘Luis Silva da Cuhna’?
“I have obviously not audited all 25,000 actas myself. But I have checked a number of them myself by drilling down through the site to individual mesas, and the documents and data are there exactly as described on the site.”
Was that “within 48 hours of the election” or years afterwards?
“There is also a cedula lookup tool where a Venezuelan voter can enter their ID number and see the result for the table where they were registered to vote.
The key point is that the actas are publicly available and structured so that anyone can examine them. In addition to individual checks by people like me, and by external experts in the field, Venezuelan voters themselves can look up their own voting table and see the corresponding result.”
So why haven’t more Venezuelans availed themselves of this and checked the results for their polling station? We’re talking about a claimed 70% of the electorate here. Surely they wouldn’t all have said, “Nah, can’t be arsed, I’ll leave it to the Opposition party to sort this one out”.
“The right to choose your government in a genuine election is a basic democratic right. ”
That doesn’t mean it is necessarily a good thing. “Democracy” has given the world some pretty repressive and nasty governments, including, let us not forget, the Nazi Party in Germany. You may say that a population that elects a bad government deserves what it get, but that doesn’t make it any better in absolute terms. Nobody has suggested there was widespread electoral fraud on the scale that you claim in Britain during the last election and yet it can also be said of that country that The generalized and systematic use of excessive force during demonstrations and the arbitrary detention of protestors and perceived political opponents indicate that these were not the illegal or rogue acts of isolated officials. So much for the wonderful democratic process.
“The real question is not ideology, but whether the election result reflects the will of the voters and can be transparently verified.”
Indeed, the question is not ideology, but probable outcome. I am struggling to think of a single right-wing, USA friendly government that has replaced a left-wing one and conspicuously bettered the lot of the great mass of people. Perhaps you can point one out. I would agree that political parties seeking election to government, by dint of sheer mendacity, can get themselves into power, Zelensky in Ukraine and Trump being good examples. Both ran on a “peace” ticket and then took their countries into war, another “feature” of the wonderful democratic process, that politicians can promise whatever it takes to get themselves into power and then go back on every single one and there is damn all anyone can do about it. Perhaps you would like to explain why “A number of the students were terrified there would be regime change and they, picked as young socialist leaders in the commune movement, would be imprisoned, tortured and executed.”
Nor have you answered Craig’s points that “In their final election rallies, Maduro had 1 million people on the streets of Caracas and the opposition had 50,000. Many of the alleged voting machine printouts bandied about by the Biden regime were very evident forgeries – with the same handwriting in different locations, and multiple examples of returning officers or party officials signing with an X in a country with almost 100% literacy. The Opposition refused to present these printouts to the Supreme Court for verification. “
Excellent comment/riposte, B. ( What passes for ) Democracy in the West leaves a lot to be desired/has a lot answer for
I don’t understand the relevance. The documents exist and can be examined. If the actas are forged, that should be provable by identifying specific forged documents and explaining what is wrong with them.
How would either of us know how many people have checked? Election verification doesn’t depend on millions of individual voters checking a website. It requires publication of detailed results and audit data that can be independently analysed. Since that is a legal requirement under the Venezuelan system, the CNE’s failure to follow the due process looks highly suspect.
Of course, democracy doesn’t guarantee good governments. But it does guarantee that governments can be chosen and removed by voters. Whether those voters choose wisely is a different matter from whether their votes should be accurately counted and transparently reported.
Britain is far from perfect but the standard I am talking about here is election results that are transparent, auditable and verifiable. In the UK, they are.
I fundamentally disagree. What matters in a democratic process is whether the result objectively reflects the will of the voters. You seem to be saying what matters is whether the outcome is politically desirable. One standard is objective and evidence-based, the other is entirely subjective.
With tens of thousands of documents publicly available, even one clear example of such a forgery should be easy to demonstrate. What’s the source of the claim and where’s the evidence to back it up?
“Britain is far from perfect but the standard I am talking about here is election results that are transparent, auditable and verifiable. In the UK, they are”
Ricardo Sanchez.
Really?
https://nitter.poast.org/thomsonchris/status/1928533883525775405#m
—
[ Mod: Please don’t simply say “Really?” followed by a URL that people have to click on to find out what point you’re making.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve suspended many comments from you that chiefly featured an unexplained link, and we annotated each one with a reminder about the Contribute rule in the moderation rules for commenters:
“Contribute
Contributions which are primarily just a link to somewhere else will be deleted. You can post links, but give us the benefit of your thoughts upon them.”
The intention is that you will add some text explaining what you’re linking to, and repost. But you don’t do that. (Perhaps you’re unable to read suspended comments, and assume they’ve just been deleted.)
So for the benefit of other readers, here is the tweet that your above URL links to:
Christophe Dorigné-Thomson on X/Twitter:
“Unmasking the Manipulation of Scotland’s 2014 Referendum. The @UN through its decolonisation mechanisms will prevent such manipulation.
The 2014 Scottish independence referendum has often been hailed by the English establishment as a triumph of democratic expression, a peaceful, decisive moment where the people of Scotland “chose” to remain in the ‘United Kingdom’. Yet, this narrative collapses under even modest scrutiny. Behind the ceremonial surface of ballot boxes and televised debates lay a calculated system of structural manipulation: a media environment rigged by state broadcasters, an electoral franchise designed to dilute the Scottish voice, and a campaign of fear orchestrated at the highest levels of government and finance. What occurred was not an equal contest between competing futures, but a managed defeat, engineered to preserve Westminster’s colonial grip on Scotland under the guise of democratic legitimacy. Let’s reopen the record to expose how the British state, through psychological warfare, economic coercion, and covert interference, ensured the survival of its shrinking Union by strangling the very principles it claimed to uphold.” ]
“I don’t understand the relevance. ”
The relevance is that, if convincing forgeries take time to make, then, during the time between “48 hours after the election” and now, there has been ample time to do that, which rather demolishes the “it couldn’t be done in the time” argument.
“How would either of us know how many people have checked?”
The number that have checked is irrelevant. What is relevant is the lack of pushback, which either means that very few outside the opposition party care enough about the actual outcome of the election to check or that many did check and didn’t care enough about what they found to kick up much of a fuss about it. Since, as I keep pointing out, we are talking about a supposed 70% of the electorate that have been denied the government they voted for, I find this very strange, especially in a Latin American country, where, on the whole, people tend to care more about this sort of thing than in the apathetic North.
“Britain is far from perfect but the standard I am talking about here is election results that are transparent, auditable and verifiable. In the UK, they are.”
Whilst you may see that as an absolute good transcending all others, I don’t. I care more about the government I end up with, no matter how it is elected. You may prefer to live under a corrupt repressive virtual dictatorship so long as the electoral process by which it got into power is squeaky clean, (cough, Nazi Germany, cough) but I would not. I would prefer to live in a country where there is no danger of “the knock on the door in the middle of the night”, no matter how the government got into power. There is noting democratic about “democracy” anyway. The ability to chose the people who run the country every five years from a predetermined list is not “rule by the people” in any way shape or form. Even Aristotle called our form of “democracy” what it really is, oligarchy.
“What’s the source of the claim and where’s the evidence to back it up?”
You need to ask our host that. Why don’t you? You could ask about the rally figures, too since I very much doubt you believe those either.