Photograph Source: Jujovar2010 – CC BY-SA 3.0

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

– Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, Trish Regan Prime Time, Fox Business Report, January 28, 2019

President Donald Trump triumphantly announced on November 10 that the U.S. Coast Guard had seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, while failing to identify it by name or specify where it had been intercepted, typical omissions for the “very stable genius.” This is but the latest news accompanying the massive U.S. military build-up in the Caribbean, which includes aircraft carriers, fighter jets, landing ships, and thousands of U.S. troops. At the same time, Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro that he “could be next”–presumably a threat of regime change–after Washington launches a military attack on the Venezuelan government, which Trump says is imminent.

The attack against Venezuela’s principal revenue source has nothing to do with drug trafficking–military operations abroad are the least effective method of combating drugs–but rather, reflects an imperial desire acted on by the last five U.S. administrations to expel the Bolivarian Revolution from power and install a puppet regime in Caracas that will hand over the largest oil reserves on the planet to Western corporations.

This lust for hydrocarbons, which should have been subdued some time ago in order to deal with growing climate breakdown, has gone full force with the second coming of Trump and his determination to extract and burn off as much oil as possible while eliminating even the most modest efforts to ameliorate the climate crisis. In July, for example, the Trump administration eliminated a regulation limiting toxic emissions from cars and power plants, and a week ago rolled back automobile fuel efficiency standards. This will aggravate the ecological crisis by increasing fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide production.

One can reasonably wonder whether the ongoing attacks on Bogota and Caracas are actually part of a Washington plan to take possession of........

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